Garden Railway Forum

Just heard the very sad news that Steve Warrington passed away this morning.
RIP

Waterfield Hall has it's own FB page
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Waterfie ... 6937610397

I was too busy at Perrygrove, but here's a vid of me having fun with Soony last November..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mICYpJfftUQ

Well the loco performed very well at York show, I hadn't charged the battery pack since it had arrived through the post a couple of weeks ago and it didn't need charging until the end of the second day! The loco now has it's mane and works plates. Last night we had a bit of a running session in the ...

This is all I'm doing before this weekends York show (hopefully name and works plates will arrive at the show), as you can see the driver and cab controls have now been fitted. The driver is one of the Busybodies/Modelearth figures and being 7\8 scale is only 5' tall in 1;12 - this wouldn't have bee...

A quick phone vid of the loco running round the garden tonight, I still need to finish the cab interior and install the driver, fit the name and works plates and do some weathering.... But she runs, the vid shows her running at full speed on the 7.2v battery pack - taking nearly 4 mins to do a circu...

Over the last couple of days I've been doing some work on the bonnet and fitting the couplers. Next job will be to finish the cab (it's just resting there in the pics). I'm still hoping to have it running at York show over the Easter weekend - not long now........ I have also settled on a name, afte...

and another...

Very nice Matt, what gauge is this going to be? Well I spent an enjoyable few hours yesterday building up the radiator components, beautiful etches from Allen Law as usual. Tonight I finally figured out where to hide the forward/reverse switch, I turned a brass filler cap for the rad and soldered th...

Over the last few days I have taken hacksaw to plastic and been modifying the Accucraft 'footplate/frames', should be fairly obvious from the pics..... Yesterday this all got a couple of coats of satin black, just waiting for the Talisman couplers to arrive now. Last night I picked up the etchings f...

Over the last few days I've been making a start on the cab, after a lot of consideration the cab design is being based on the Fowler 'Resilient' class 2' gauge locos but with a drop footplate.... The new rear buffer beam is made from 2mm steel, the other parts are brass with solder, rivets and 12ba ...

Looking really good, just found this thread - interesting as I'm planning to build one of these buildings in 1:12 scale for my garden line. I've been looking at the drawings of the original short version (one door, one window) with the 45 degree chimney. Many years ago I built Drybrook Road station ...

Matt, is Rockclimber regaugable? you said it was going to a 15" line this year....

Try this....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1WJAqAe9Jk

Here are some pics of the chimney, they are both turned from old plumbing fittings, the stack itself is one piece and the base three pieces. As you can see the base is drilled ready for the speed control pot. The stack will have a length of brass rod soldered across the middle which locate in the sl...

Fowler never built any diesels in 15" gauge but they did build various designs in 2' gauge.... I'm planning a 'might have been' 15" estate railway loco based on this ./myff/1716674/100_9298.JPG The model will be built around an Accuaraft Baguley chassis which will be converted to battery p...

If you read 'Landscape with machines' you'll find out that Tom Rolt, as a very small child living in Chester, was taken in his pushchair to see Katie crossing the road outside Eaton Hall - which he says is what got him into railways. So without Katie, Dolgoch and many others may never have been save...

Has to be Heywood's 0-4-0 'Katie' as this humble little loco is single handed responsible for the entire rail preservation movement....

Forest Classics produce this http://www.forest-classics.co.uk/bix029.htm which I have not tried but as they are only up the road in Milkwall it might be worth popping in for a chat.....

To be honest the garden railway is mostly buried under magnolia leaves at the moment......... we have also decided to take out a very large evergreen in one corner of the garden over the winter and this might lead to us rebuilding one end of the line? Just not sure how it's going to look with the tr...