Garden Railway Forum

I've finally made a start on my railway and I thought I would try and keep a photographic diary of construction.


Initially a few images of the area where the line will run.
The line will run along the trellis on my workshop side, at either end of this image the line will dive into the garden on the left where two balloon loops will return the route back to itself.






So to enable the line to cross the Arbour, I need to build a "Level Crossing", first I set a level chord (only to discover that the garden is far less flat than I thought) from one side of the garden to the other.

The next step is to lift the slab under the Arbour, I had not intended to lift this much but in order to avoid a lengthy cutting in a boggy area of the garden I've lifted the line height a couple of inches.




A second slab (actually two slabs) is now laid leaving a gap through which the line will run.
Next is the first of two embankments either side of the Arbour & slabs.




The second embankment is laid.




Next I disappeared into the workshop for two hours and construct a four foot length of track from nickel rail and brass sleepers to lay into the gap.
Unfortunately I neglected to take a photo of the track, sorry.

Then the track is laid into place together with two points to support the track in place, then the gap is back filled with a good strength mortar. After much cleaning of the rails (especially between the rail and check rail a round house Jack was pushed across the Crossing to check all was good.




On order are ten bags of Gritstone for ballast.
I saw this on one of the forums recently and bought a test sample, which I tried in the image below.
The Gritstone is terrific, I think that due to it's irregular size the cement used to glue it all together worked really well. I used a mix of two parts Gritstone to one cement. The staining is from something else entirely...




More as soon as it happens...

Great work, i love your attention to perfection shown with the string line you put to get a perfect straight. When i laid my own track i just looked at it crouching down with a beer in one hand and thought, ''that looks about right to me''

The ballast looks great Andrew.

Look forward to more updates.

Cheers,

Tom

Thanks for the comment guys.

A quick update,

IMPORTANT:- I love narrow gauge railways that squeeze through narrow spaces, to me this is the most important aspect that makes a narrow gauge railway unique against other lines.

I've now built the rest of the embankment in front of my workshop. This was cast in two batches, and I've laid some track on the first part. Various locos have been on “Gauging Trials”, the most important of which was my Rheidol. I think if the Rheidol don't fit then nothing will...




The points on the line are from “Garden Railway Specialists” and while I was in the shop, I picked up a Tenmile Point Lever. A little messing around and I've found a real simple way to get them to operate the point. Again some “Gauging” tests.

Another quick shot, this time of a Penrhyn Hunslet.
This view is from my workshop door, as I use the workshop on a daily basis to earn a living I can know say I have a steam railway next to my place of work...

That has to be some of the best-looking model ballast I've ever seen.

AFGadd:73348 wrote:After much cleaning of the rails (especially between the rail and check rail a round house Jack was pushed across the Crossing to check all was good.

A length of string placed in each flangeway before you apply the mortar saves a lot of fiddling about later!

tom_tom_go:73370 wrote:The ballast looks great Andrew.

Look forward to more updates.

Cheers,

Tom

Tom, I've just realized that I found the "Gritstone" from a post of yours, in your "RWLR Begins" Thread, HERE.

So many thanks for the heads up on this.

The mix of 2 parts Gritstone, 1 part fine sand & 1 part cement seems to be working really well.
In some places I've used the ballast mix up to 1" thick to level up the track. It seems to have set totally solid, but only time will tell.

PS. It looks like I could end up with LOTS of this Gritstone left...
Anyone live in Oxfordshire???

TonyW:73503 wrote:

AFGadd:73348 wrote:After much cleaning of the rails (especially between the rail and check rail a round house Jack was pushed across the Crossing to check all was good.

A length of string placed in each flangeway before you apply the mortar saves a lot of fiddling about later!

Thanks for that Tony, I'm not totally sure I'm done with level crossings yet...

Spent a few minutes with AnyRail to create a track plan.

The plan is not 100% to scale as I'm using trackwork not in the AnyRail library.

Of note on the plan are:

How much I've been "ALLOWED" to squeeze into such a small area!

Use of the new Peco 38" radius curves, these are used (45 deg) as transition curves in the balloon loops to the Peco 30" radius curves.

The use of 2'6" radius points from GRS, including a 2'6" Y.

The section completed is the top righthand section of the plan.




Incidentally, I've found yet another benefit of being a Scout Leader...
The use of the Scout Hut to layout the track and make various measurements...

Slight variation to the track plan, now includes a turntable at the terminus.
This allows me to move the two right-hand points and create another passing-loop/station on the right-hand balloon-loop.

The only problem being, I'll need to build a turntable...
However, in view of some of the locos I want to operate (more on this shortly) a turntable will be desirable.

I started this post on 29 July 2012 and I finished my railway exactly one year later on 29 July 2013...
I know it's some months on, but I've nothing to do for twenty minutes.

I never did keep a running diary of construction but thanks to my mobile phone I did take a few photos of the line as it progressed.

Below are just a few of these images to give some idea of the build and finished line.

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for this update. Your line looks really smart. Very neat and tidy track. How do you fix it down and are your bricks founded on anything?

I'm in the early stages of planning my own line and am very interested in formation construction techniques.

What make are your turnouts?

Sorry for asking so many questions!

All the best,

Andrew

Looking very smart and prim - that pot plant would make a great scale tree if set into the ground near the railway.

A great line! Looks really well built aswell! I recall watching a video of this line on fb resently.

well done looking very good

That really is a very neat line. Will you be adding any buildings ?

A very nice line! Can you give me the measurements of the return loops please? What is the radius of the curves? What can you get around them?

Have you any details of the locomotive in your profile picture?

Soar Valley Light:96036 wrote:Hi Andrew,

Thanks for this update. Your line looks really smart. Very neat and tidy track. How do you fix it down and are your bricks founded on anything?

I'm in the early stages of planning my own line and am very interested in formation construction techniques.

What make are your turnouts?

Sorry for asking so many questions!

All the best,

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

The construction is based on a method my father used some 45 years ago and is still as sound now as the day he built it...

I've place the bricks on a 6 inch foundation of hardcore (broken bricks) held together with a mortar mix and onto which the bricks were laid.

I've used lengths of old brass rail I found to hold the foundations together at crucial points.

All the curves are peco set track sections, 2'6" at the tightest (on the inner sections of the balloons but with the new 38" curves leading into the 2'6" curves.

The track was all laid onto ballast and the ballast then built up to level and camber the track. Once I was happy with the track and ballast it was all liberally soaked with a 50/50 waterproof PVA mix.

Experiments showed that the cement & ballast mix did not hold up very well over winter. The 50/50 PVA mix was after experimenting with weaker mixes.

There are two different point makes:
1, 2'6" radius turnouts from GRS (these were bought before peco introduced the 38" turnouts)
2, 38" radius turnouts from peco (there are three of these on the spur in the last image)

Hope that helps a bit?

Thanks Andrew,

That's very useful information. Keep up the good work and keep us posted. It's all very interesting.

All the best,

Andrew