Garden Railway Forum

I have asked about starting a new thread on our Fairy Wood Light Railway line and I have been given the go ahead.

So where to start. The first thing I need to do is say thank you to Peter Butler, I got a very nice surprise off the postman this morning, well actually I had to go and get them from a not so local post office, but thats another story.

This is what I got,


Nice, hey…..

Back to the line. It’s been some time (4 months) since we had to move to our new address, and with some health problems and also some “Personal Issues” with so called friends, I won’t say or go into it here. We need to decide were the line was going to be placed, this was a fairly decision to make has Anne told me that under no circumstances was the line to go on all on the outside of the garden like our last address. Fair enough I thought, it was a bit of a pain to be honest getting the mower on the lawn and for anyone else for that matter.

So it was decided to go along the dog bone route,

There was put to the CEO, that maybe we could extend the line along the border by the patio to the path near the garage, but she was having none of it. LoL.

Next came some track laying, I didn’t want to have a chest high track on stilts, and if you look at the top of the garden it is slightly higher by about 2 feet approximately. And that would have might by the time it got to the patio, it would have well above our head height….

That’s all for now, been told by Anne not to spend too long on the laptop, I do get tired fairly quickly. So some more will be added next time.

Well done Rod, with perhaps a little help? Soon be running your trains again and getting some pleasure from you hobby after the enforced break. Don't overdo it too soon, enjoy the moment and show us the pics.

Wow Rod! Thats incredible progress. It's great to see the new line emerging. It's looks like a well thought out and well designed line too. As Peter says, take it steady - but power to your elbow! Looking forward to seeing more.

Andrew

Looking good Rod. You'll soon be up and running, but take it easy and don't try to rush at the expense of your health.

Finished the bridge…It needs a load of fettling done with it. All the top struts and the two long top rails need replacing because they were too rotten to try and fill. Did a bit of filling though on the angled struts, they seem to be ok.

The paint work before was a light coffee colour, so I used this to redo it with,

Didn’t realise though it was High Gloss Paint But I am hoping it will weather down in time…Might be a long time though I feel.

The slate underneath and at the back is Anne’s Slate Mine. It will run up to the back of the line at the top and I am going to try and do a loading stage somewhere along it.

This is what I did plan for the Station, but I have now decided against it.

I like that bridge Rod. The colour looks fine and it will weather so don't worry.

That's one of the things that I like about garden scales, at the usual viewing distance one doesn't notice how glossy or matt anything is. I think that you are concerning yourself unnecessarily about the gloss on the paint and anyway after a few weeks of our typical autumn/winter weather it will be unnoticeable even close up.

coming on nicely Rod. Don't worry about the colour. It looks fine and I doubt you'll be aware it is glossy. Especially in time as Tom and Phil have already pointed out.

A nice garden layout which is giving me plenty of ideas, I do like the bridge and it will weather in nicely.

These are some Slate Wagons that were provided by Andrew ( of this Parish )

I have put my take on what I used for the slates.

I used a wooden window blind I got from a charity shop for £5. I cut them up into 30mm x 22mm pieces, there was about 200 of them, I know, that must of been a job and a half. I did use my new bandsaw that Anne bought for my Birthday, it was the first time I had used it and boy I am glad Anne got it me.

They fitted in quite easy, but I did need to make some slightly smaller by about a 1mm. Here they are in the wagons.


I painted them with some medium grey paint. I didn’t paint them all, just the two ends and the four middle, then just painted the tops.


I think they have turned out ok. Anne thinks they are worthy of selling…I don’t know that, but I am happy to do some for members, but they would need to paint them…..

Very convincing and the easiest DIY slates I have seen!

Back for a browse (4mm bug still infecting me), good to see you modelling again Rod and agree those edģes on the slates look really good.

Rob a nice job on modelling the slate very lifelike.

bazzer42 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 14, 2018 12:29 pm Back for a browse (4mm bug still infecting me), good to see you modelling again Rod and agree those edģes on the slates look really good.

Nice to hear from you Derek, I was wondering where you had disappeared too.

I have given up on my N gauge stuff, far too small for me now, although I do have some Locos and rolling stock still, which are brand new most of them. Anne says I need to get rid, I do I know, but I don’t want to sell them to traders, the guy who bought most of my layout ( which was in excess ) of £2500 spent. I sold to him for £800, he told me he was a private buyer, next thing I see he is selling the stuff on FaceBook…..Oh well you live and learn.

The slates on the wagons are easy enough to do Derek, and if members want some just PM me and I will sort some out for free.

I have done a kit from HGLW, a Wittenberg Schafer Loco, it’s not a bad build as ge_rik has said. If you follow his thread and Blog he will show you how he did his building of it. So I won’t bore you with my account of it, although I have put a few extras on mine, like the rivet heads on the buffer beams, also I have put working light in with a separate power supply. There are a couple more like a handle on the driver controls, it was the first time I had done any brass soldering, it was easy enough to do, it was just two pieces of brass rod soldered to make the handle. It has given me some confidence to try a bit more on maybe a loco.

You can see the handle in the photos.

This is it, it doesn’t yet have any glazing in, I have run out of the glue I use for it and there are a few little things still do on it. I did do the outer frames like Peter Butler did on his coaches and although you can’t see the effect that good in the photo’s, they really do make them stand out.


You will have noticed that the roof is not laying properly, thats because I just put it on for the photo, it does need to be removable anyway for access to the batteries. I did the roof with some stain I got from the Yorkshire Show, I think it looks ok.

I did run my Roundhouse “Patricia Anne” yesterday with having the really nice weather, sunshine all day and no sign of any wind. Unfortunately I can’t run her and video at the same time, otherwise you will have seen her come off the tracks. She did run for about 15 minutes with no sign of any problems, even though she hasn’t run for nearly 8 months. She even lighted 1st time with no “ Blowing Out”…. but she did take some time to steam up. On first start of her running though, she did seem a bit skittish, she was very hard to control, with the Tx having a heck of a job controlling her speed……She hasn’t been right since I had her looked at earlier this year, in February I think, it could have been earlier then that, this memory……

Anyway, it got to the point where she decided she had enough, and fell off on slight bend going on to the back straight by Anne’s Fairy Garden. No damage was done, except for the left side cylinder cover come off…. I really do think I need to have her looked at properly, because the track is a lot smaller then the previous one and she can’t get a good regular steady speed, I think she needs a Slo Mo fitted also. The setting for the regulator are wrong differently from when I bought her off Peter.

Any offers to give her a service and fit a Slo-Mo. It’s a crying shame that such a great little engine is having all this trouble. She also needs her paint work looking at. I know she will cost, but I don’t want to leave her like that and she is so much a part of our railway, there is no way we would part with her.

Hi Rod

If your track is level then you should be able to run slowly without the use of a slomo. I have a very tight and relatively short track - my maximum radius is 39" and there's quite a lot of 30" in there too. I run both a Roundhouse 'Jack" and a 'Lady Anne'. I actually bought the 'Lady Anne' with the intention of fitting a Slomo but I have found that with careful adjustment of the radio linkage to the regulator, good slow speed control can be achieved. It helps of course to have a train behind the locomotive to give it some 'work' to do. If you require a Slomo to build up a reserve via the inertia device then that is a different matter. But for slow running on a flat track then explore the linkage first. There is plenty of debate to be had as to just how much load a Slomo places on the valve gear. I can see that theoretically it probably does but at what point in time this is noticeable is anyone's guess. The available evidence suggests that people don't really notice it (or only the people that don't notice it add to the debate). I decided that I could manage the risk out by not fitting one.

FWLR wrote: ↑Fri Oct 19, 2018 9:26 am The setting for the regulator are wrong differently from when I bought her off Peter.

When you say the settings for the regulator are wrong, what do you mean by that?

The regulator can normally be adjusted using the trim controls on the TX. The servo throw can also be played with by moving the clevis clip along the holes in the servo arm.

I am not sure what your set up is but on some of my RH engines the screw clamp that connects the servo rod to the regulator can become slightly loose, this will mean that the servo rod will move but it slides in the clamp and the regulator does not operate on full travel.

Hi Jim,

I think I will have to put some photos up to show what I mean. Just give me a minute or two to get some.

These are the setting for the speed regulator,

At rest,
at Full Throttle,