Garden Railway Forum

This thought had occurred to me, but I don't have confidence that my drill would leave behind a smooth surface, especially without a drill press. Looks like GRS sell exactly what I'm after, however, so I shall put an order in with them. I actually picked these coach kits up from a guy in Texas. I fi...

So, slight hiccup. Coach is complete, save for bolting on the wheels and axleboxes. Turns out the wheels I had set aside for it have 3.2 mm axle-ends, and the Brandbright journals are 2mm ID. The wheels I have are from USA trains, and they basically tick all the boxes aside from this, being heavy, m...

Still working on Newspaper. Busy weekend, but managed to get quite a bit done, despite some setbacks. Interior painted and fitted: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v492/big-ted/20170311_170303.jpg Roof painted. 5th coat currently drying as I type: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v492/big-ted/2017...

And how is the table? and more importantly your girlfriend's view of it? It cleaned up ok, although I incurred much eye-rolling! Think I'll pick up a better cutting mat to work on in the future though rather than using newspaper! Not sure I'll get to start the loco this weekend as I have a pretty b...

First things first, I'm a long way from having a railway of my own, living as I do in a small rented apartment in Vancouver, but I had been planning on a loco purchase for a while ahead of my visit home to the UK. Two weeks before I left Vancouver, I had the opportunity to pick up some unbuilt Brand...

Based on my experience flying with an unbuilt Roundhouse kit in my hand luggage: 1) Be prepared to unpack the loco every time your bag goes through x-ray 2) Expect to have to prove that both the boiler and gas tank are de-pressurised, empty, and not sealed. This is easy enough with the boiler, by ju...

Well, I made it back home to Vancouver last night with all the Roundhouse kits to build a Lady Anne. Roundhouse were super helpful through the whole process telling me how everything worked and providing the necessary documentation. Very quick and simple to get the customs stamp at Gatwick airport. ...

All the 7/8s stock seemed to disappear from IP Engineering's website overnight. I'm curious as to why that may be.

Who makes the preferred choice of wheels currently? Does anyone make steel wheels that look like the originals? I'm not a big fan of the disk wheels or spoked ones I've seen so far...

Were Merlin locos typically gauge adjustable?

Hi Big Ted, Chassis is abou 70mm x 160mm. The skip is from lgb and measures 93mm long and abot 98mm wide by52mm deep. The wagon stands 87 mm including the flanges so probably about 85 mm in height. Cold in Canada? We had an artic blast for two days and the whole of England was in a mad state of awa...

Very nice. I love the 'dent' in one of them! Out of interest, what are the main dimensions of each skip? Height from rail, max width, max length etc? I' trying to figure out how much I need to scale down the 7/8 tipper I recently built. I was quite surprised when I met up with some other gents runni...

laurence703:122224 wrote:Another option is to loan them to a friend to play with while you are away from the hobby and then return them when you want to play again or sell on.

[Raises hand to volunteer...]

Currently it can haul all all sixteen axels behind it inc Brake Van but it is quite long and did struggle in the wet weather today so I think maybe restricting it to 5 or 6 wagons max. Wow. You must have really weighted those wagons down. From what I read from others here Lady Annes can haul signif...

Thanks all for the input. In truth I have a number of options for shipping things. I still have family in the UK I visit fairly often, hence my thinking of carrying any large items with me, but said family members could also serve as intermediaries, or I could just get stuff shipped direct. I also h...

Hi Ted,  Top job on the little hopper. They look very interesting (unfortunately not my scale) plenty of scope for weathering, rusting and general knocking about. Grant. I'll admit, my intention had been to build one as the plans intended to figure out how best to scale to 16mm. However, there are ...

Thanks for the extra info. Definitely something I'll come back to. My local electronics store had a "Black Friday" deal on one of these guys: http://www.rpelectronics.com/fx888d-hakko-digital-soldering-station-65w.html So I treated myself. I've not tested it on brass sheet yet, but it work...

One for those outside the UK, I imagine... Has anyone any experience of claiming the VAT back on purchases of garden railway locos to be exported outside the UK? Curious as to the typical success rate, hassle involved, and documentation required as I consider making such a purchase and bringing it b...

I'm not really in a position to be buying a steam loco, so my opinion should count for very little, but I'd love to see Carrie make a come back. Even if it were based on the Katie chassis without the Hackworth valve gear, an 0-4-0 wing tank loco with outside frames would be lovely. I'd also love to ...

Thanks, Peter. Plasticard looks interesting, other threads mention it, applied in models of buildings. But I've not heard the name in Canada. What is it and do you describe your experience with it somewhere? Piotr, Living in Vancouver, I saw similar mentions of Plasticard on this forum and wondered...