The UK’s only magazine that’s 100% dedicated to outdoor railway modelling. Expect to see stunning garden railways from the UK and abroad, expert advice to help you create one of your own, show reports plus product news and reviews.
BRING ON THE NEWBIES I recently found myself in conversation with someone senior at Hornby. He was explaining how he sees the challenges of bringing people into the hobby, and then retaining them. Yes, you can hand over a train set, but what happens next? How do you explain the wonderful range of possibilities from building scenery to electronics, making buildings, learning to operate realistically – the list goes on? In the larger scale, we have things a little easier. You can start with an easy-to-assemble laser-cut kit, such as the contractors loco on page 12 of this issue. £60 isn’t chicken feed, but it’s a lot less than buying ready-to-run in OO gauge, and the finished model comes with a good dose of ‘I built that’ feeling. This might…
I suppose my interest in having a model railway outdoors stems from the fact that, for many years, my family lived with my Granddad, who had a very large garden, without a model railway. Despite some subtle hints, my youthful aspirations were never realised. Nevertheless, railway modelling indoors was encouraged and supported, and many layouts have followed over the years in 4mm scale, three of which reached the covers of national magazines. The desire to have a garden railway, however, never went away. The opportunity to fulfil my dreams came with retirement and the purchase of an Accucraft ‘Caledonia’ from Carnforth Models. Not only was this a beautiful model in its own right, but it gave impetus to the idea of having a garden railway based on one of my…
We started Confessions of Smalltown in 2020 as a way of entertaining the family during the pandemic lockdown. My husband, Mark, had built a model railway in the garden, and as he started adding more model figures and houses, I got the idea to make these little stories. First, this started as a bit of a joke on my personal Facebook page, but so many people were telling me it was bringing them joy during the difficult lockdown period that I set up my own public page. I thought it would just be for friends, but soon I had people from all over the world contacting me saying they enjoyed the garden railway as well as the poetry, we also put up videos of the railway in action, which many…
Last year, when looking for a project, I bought a Box Cab Loco kit from Houston Gate Loco Works. This turned out to be a nice, small, and easy-to-build kit. This year, looking for something new to build, I returned to the HGLW website and this time selected David’s contractors loco kit. This kit is a bit more complicated than the other, and has required more thought into its build, but was nonetheless, an enjoyable project. The kit comes as four sheets of MDF, plus a bag of motor, wheels, battery holder, bearings, etc. The downloadable instruction sheets, there are nine pages, which I thought were a little sparse on words, relying mainly on photos of an actual kit under construction. I started off by building the basic inner and…
A vailable for some time, the Locobox range of locomotive cases are well-known. I have ended up with at least half a dozen, mostly having bought them with another second-hand loco. Many suppliers now offer a Locobox box as part of their package deal when you buy your shiny new loco. In a quirky reverse moment of fate, when I bought my new Roundhouse Bulldog 16mm loco at the 16mm Peterborough show in 2021, it came directly from Locobox stand, and, you guessed it, included one of its boxes to perfectly suit the loco. Adding things up, solid boxes are no-brainers. After all, we spend anywhere from £500 to several thousands of pounds on our shiny new locos, so it makes perfect sense to cocoon them in protective cases for…
I’ve always had a liking for trams, and steam trams in particular. I own two, and when Mamod announced its Kitson a few months ago, I was tempted to purchase a third. Unfortunately, I found the Kitson’s 140mm width was too wide for parts of my garden layout. I still fancied having a third tram, which prompted me to consider having a go at building my own. Designing it myself would ensure it has the necessary dimensions to run on my railway, which also has steep gradients and tight curves. This meant the tram would have to be either geared, radio-controlled, or both. I opted for gears. Then, there was the question of what it should look like. After lengthy internet searches, I was no further forward, so decided to…
