Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2025 i Garden Rail

SHOW SEASON As usual, our March issue features the showguide for the Midlands Garden Rail show. Time to head to the outskirts of Leamington Spa to enjoy large scale railway modelling in the warmth of an indoor setting. An opportunity to chat to friends old and new, while watching the trains go by. And of course, we mustn’t forget that this show, and others later in the year, gives us the chance to stock up on materials for future modelling. Of course, you can order through the post, but sometimes it’s good to pick up a sample model on a stand to have a good look at it. I know I like to get hands-on with projects before shelling out my cash. With the price of postage these days, a…

A pologies to Dave Rowlands for appropriating the title of his iconic article in the June 1981 Railway Modeller describing our first encounters with a ‘Jack’, which we were fortunate enough to be able to borrow for a while. After Stewart Browne’s success with meths as a fuel for his pot-boilered and internally fired locos, he decided to offer a ‘proper’ coal-fired engine. It was a fairly accurate representation of a chunky 0-4-2 side tank built by Bagnall in 1915 for the Cliffe Hill Mineral Railway. Specifications included two cylinders, slip eccentric valve gear, a multi-tube boiler, water in the side tanks with a hand pump and a crosshead-driven feed pump. Standard controls were a regulator, steam blower, pressure gauge, water by-pass valve and a real functioning whistle. The standard…

Lining a coach 1| Trimline is the quick and easy way to line your coach, but I thought I would have a go at masking the coach with automotive lining tape. The coach was prepared in matt white and then rubbed down, you need a really flat finish to apply the tape to, as it is so narrow. You will not see if you have done it right until you remove this tape, so this stage must be well-prepared. 2| This is the hand-in-heart moment. After the coach was painted with DHR blue from Coach & Wagon Works, the lining tape can be carefully peeled away. If you got the tape firmly stuck down, there should be very few paint runs if any, and any little patches can be carefully…

Thump. A small box unexpectedly arrives from Model Engineers Laser. Inside is a kit for an ex-RNAD (Royal Navel Armaments Department) flat wagon, as now used on the TR apparently. So far, so normal. We’ve built a lot of wagons in Garden Rail. You might ask what makes this one special. Well, as it turns out, lots of things. First, the materials used. MEL are engineers, the clue’s in the name, and so they make metal things out of metal. 1mm thick steel in this case. Next, it’s the design of the model. This wagon is fully sprung, just like the real thing. Combined with the weight, 300g, it should stick to the track. We don’t have any structural glue, everything is supposed to be soldered or bolted together. Once…

We are planning to build our next garden railway in 32mm scale. A new start in a new scale, and we thought it would be better to build some rolling stock first, which would allow us to get used to things and have items that we could use for establishing curve radius and clearances. This approach has come with a problem; it’s fine building these kits on the workbench (well, small folding table in the lounge surrounded by part-packed removal boxes, if we’re honest), but it’s nice to see how the models look in the great outdoors. Until recently, most of our model-making, especially with large-scale trains, was for photography and art projects, which meant shooting pics out and about in the great outdoors. Over the years, we’ve used a…

My enthusiasm for G scale started 22 years ago when my wife bought me a train set for £19.99 in Lidl. It was a battery-powered Wild West style, with sound and smoke. The locomotive wore out about 15 years ago but the rolling stock and sound box is still used today on my railways. Twenty years ago, we ran it round the ceiling in my wife’s office, which was a spare room in our house then. My collection slowly increased over the years, sticking to the early American style locos and rolling stock, the kind that you might see in cowboy films, primarily from LGB and Bachmann. A few years ago, we moved to a small holding in Lincolnshire as we were semi-retired. My wife suggested that we run the…

I had always wanted a Locobox oscillating loco but never seemed to have the funds. By the time I did, they were no longer made, and those who had them weren’t selling – a lesson to us all there, I think. Their design is unusual in that, unlike Mamods, the oscillating cylinders drive the rear axle, giving a much more realistic appearance, making the cylinder waggle less obvious, and enabling them to run more smoothly at low speeds. Rather different than the original Mamods, which had a tendency towards Mach 1 if one opened the reverser just a teeny bit too far. When Simon Whenmouth of Anything Narrow Gauge offered a Locobox Isabel as ‘spares or repairs’ at a knock-down price of £150, I almost bit his hand off. To…

The department store Harrods has a rich, illustrious, and of late, a somewhat controversial history. But ignoring more recent events (it is Garden Rail you are reading after all and not Private Eye), it is still where the posh people go, or where the less well-heeled visit just for the experience. I had a dip into its Christmas catalogue for 2024 and the most expensive item I found was a Waterford Crystal glass set of nutcrackers for a nut-busting price of £20,650. I’ll have two, please! Thankfully, for £20,615 less than this, you can still add a touch of luxury to your railway with this Walker electric van from Modeltown. With all the current hype about electric vehicles, it is hard to believe this technology has been around for decades.…

WARWICKSHIRE LOCO WORKS ‘Winifred’ Penrhyn Quarry Hunslet ready-to-run 16mm scale ‘Winifred’, works number 364, was built in 1885 for the Penrhyn Slate Quarry. She spent most of her working life at Port Penrhyn shunting wagons of slate ready for loading onto ships for transport all over the world, but her last decade was spent working in the quarry itself. Deiselisation saw her sold to America, where she spent the next 50 years in a museum store. She was purchased by Julian Birley in 2012, and brought home to the Bala Lake Railway, where, after an extensive overhaul, she returned to steam in the spring of 2015. Warwickshire Loco Works is a new name in the garden railway world, although ‘Winifred’ in model form has been seen at several shows on…

Write in and share your ideas with other enthusiasts Letters are welcomed on any aspect of large scale railway modelling. Please email the Editor: phil.parker@warnersgroup.co.uk or post to The Editor, Garden Rail Magazine, Warners Group Publications, West Street, Bourne, Lincolnshire, PE10 9PH. Kent Garden Railways I had been after an Accucraft guards van to complete my grey rake of wagons, so when I saw Kent Garden Railways had a data grey version with SR decals added in stock, this was my Christmas present to self. I ordered this late on Sunday, December 22nd, and amazingly, it arrived on the morning of the 24th, Christmas Eve! The order must have been picked up almost immediately and despatched on the Monday with next day delivery to me. The model was superbly packed…

Once the novelty of having a 3D printer and printing out objects downloaded from Thingiverse and other online repositories of 3D drawings has worn off, you might wish you had the skills and knowledge to design and draw your own models for 3D printing. I tried unsuccessfully to master conventional 3D CAD packages such as Sketchup, FreeCAD and Fusion 360, but then discovered TinkerCAD, which I found to be more suited to my way of thinking. Maybe it’s because it has been specifically designed for use with 3D printers – or maybe it’s because it is designed for children to use. Either way, I have now designed and printed dozens of items for my garden railway, and so wondered if you too might want to share in my experiences. The…

For me, the world of 16mm narrow gauge railways started 35 years ago. I’d been bought up on weekends of historic transport and Industrial Revolution ideas and outings. I decided to link my model steam workshop, situated in the shed at the bottom of Dad’s garden, with the model steam traction engines on the patio at the top of the garden. The link, a 16mm narrow gauge railway. Eventually, I drifted away from my 16mm railway. Life, work, relationships, full-sized steam roller, the usual excuses. I still have my original modified Mamod loco and cereal cardboard packet/balsa wood carriages, and I’m still very proud of them. Fast forward to now, a friend of mine had recently taken up model engineering. I asked if he’d make me additional methylated tanks for…

In the winter, evergreens come into their own. During the spring and summer months, flowers can often steal the show, and when it comes to demanding attention in autumn, it is the varied leaf colours that do so. The evergreens do what it ‘says on the tin’, they are EVER green. Evergreen shrubs and trees give a garden, be it full-sized or miniature, some structure throughout the year, and in winter, this structure stands out when all around is dark brown and soggy. Some of these evergreen shrubs lend themselves to being clipped in shape and used as hedging and are ideally suited for giving structure to a 16mm garden railway. A few years ago, the obvious evergreen to provide effective structure and shape to a knot garden or miniature…