Garden Railway Forum

The moral of the story is use the largest radius practical.  I am lucky in that 5' is the minimum I need to make it fit, and that is only where there is an awkward little jink in the geography of the yard.  It replaced a 10' radius S curve that was the source of many derailments due to the Norwegian...

Daffodils around the church, warm temperatures all last week, it was looking good for the spring tracklaying season - until I got up this morning and IT WAS SNOWING Spring has truly sprung - it is snowing in Mile-Hi Arizona! Our reputation for barmy (rather than balmy) weather is upheld once again L...

Don't worry!  Our narrow gauge railways belong to the era of the high-visibility oily flat cap and keeping your ears open rather than that of the orange w***er jacket (as we used to call them in the sorting office)..

Peter in AZ

Having recovered from the annual paperwork hell hole that is annual reports, etc., I managed to get back to the railway today, though I have been piddling about off and with little jobs. Task #1 was to buy ballast.  This involved a trip to 'the Dirt Mines' at the north end of town.  It is the sort o...

The colour is very reminescent of the one the Isle of Man Railway used 1946-67. This was made in the works by grinding haematite ore with oil to produce a brownish-red paint. This slowly weathered to a reddish brown due the the slow oxidization of the pigment in the paint. I imagine the lads at Bost...

I have no cat problem - between the Cayotes in the creek and the resident Westies they are either quick or dead.

Peter in AZ

For the time being I enjoy manual, but I can imagine fitting R/C it 10 years time when various Rugger injuries and the years spent leaping on and off a Post Office bike catch up with me.  For now I am content to walk alongside the train and tweek the regulator.  However, my line does have one inesti...

Since the last comment I have managed to coax Ruby No.1 back into life, and order her a new rear axle. No.2 is still somewhere in the clutches of the Postal Service, along with a book that was shipped almost a month ago. I hope they both appear soon. The four wheeler is coming along nicely. I instal...

Congratulations on quitting the ciggies, it will save you a heck of a lot of money, and you already know what to spend it on ;) I find that the Graden Railway is my great stress reliever. Nothing like watching the trains trundle by, or tinkering about getting something just right to take my mind off...

Picky, picky!  What I forgot to explain is what does "depend" is the degree of accuracy you need to employ in order to get it right.  With chains you can be a bit off and not effect performance, with choppers you need to be more accurate.   Anyway I corrected what I wrote above so that tho...

Depends whether you are using chopper couplings or hook and chain as to the degree of accuracy you need to emply.  However, the procedure is the same for both types 1. Drill holes at correct height in ends of vehicles.  The SM32/45 standard seems to be 24mm.  That said, the three foot gauge brigade ...

Murphy's Law struck again, and the bg project is now repairing the eccentric rods on Ruby #1, and is therefore in the shop awaiting spares. Ruby #2 is not here yet, so services are temporarily suspended. Instead I have been getting on with the Schull and Skibberen inspired four-wheel first class sal...

As 'paint it black' is the S&CLR&T default when it come to motive power, the matt black for cab and smokebox will eliminate one detailing job if I ever buy a Roundhouse loco. I am not sure about the painted domes, though, I like my shiny stuff.

Peter in AZ

What am I doing in the USA? Working and avoiding the EU. The unfortunate thing with the USA is that covering a large proportion of a continent it is incredibly insular. Yes, there are some excellent garden railway publications over here, but only if you are interested in U.S. 3' gauge prototypes, Ga...

Statistically most folks who have garden railways are working in Gauge 0, or Gauge 1 to 7mm, 10mm, 15mm or 16mm scale. 7/8ths is a strong minority scale in Garden Railways terms, but anything bigger than that is getting up into Model Engineer territory, though they cover marine engines, hot air engi...

Got an early finish today, so I did a bit more ballasting on the runround loop I laid yesterday, then spent an hour sorting out the valve events of an ailing Ruby.  She was running much better by the time I had finished.  Did a little bit more to the first class saloon I am working on after dinner. ...

Some of us just plain old don't like R/C. For me it makes the experience of running a garden railway too much like running electric rats inside. Also R/C has a habit of 'dumping' at unfortunate moments, even though it is more reliable than it used to be. Also, if you go back to meths days, which you...

Roundhouse locos are generally 10'8" tall and 8'4" wide in 15mm scale. The vertical dimension isn't so bad, but the width is about 1'6" wider than most Irish three foot gauge lines. Strange as it may seem, my Accucraft Ruby is in gauge being roughly 10' tall and 7' wide in 15mm. My Cl...

Thank you! I'll see if they have/sell a spare rear axle assembly. As for the alternative; I was thinking along the lines of using some elements of Joy's valve gear to provide the back and forth motion to the valve, but retain the centre piston reverser as there is nothing amiss with it. I think I ne...

S&CLR&T No. 1 - a large cylinder Ruby - seems to be suffering from excessive wear on the eccentrics inspite of regular and thorough (by my standards) cleaning due to our intermittently dusty environment. The rod that drives the left hand rocker arm can be moved back and forth about 2mm indep...