Garden Railway Forum

I have been building 16mm stock for over 35 years now, firstly for indoor exhibition layouts but more recently for outdoors.   I have never had a garden railway of my own and thought I never would.
However, with time on my hands and the opportunity to go for it I thought I should make a start.
BUT..... where to put it?
I live in Wales, and as everyone knows, Wales was Mother Natures practice site for the Himalayas!
My 'garden' lies on a fairly steady 30(ish) degree slope, is always wet underfoot and has water running through it.  There are trees and other natural obstacles everywhere.
But I have bought boxes of track and a few points to make a start and I am determined.  I will succeed.....
This is probably the wrong time of year to put shovel to earth but I should not use it as an excuse not to plan the line.   All I want is a circuit with storage sidings and an area to put some buildings and backscene to give a sense of scale and realism.   Not too much to ask, it's been done before.

Items removed.

Looks like a classic case for using the slope of the ground to have a raised area at the main station/sidings for ease of handling. Other than that, would it be a case for a dog-bone type line (or an end-to-end line with reversing loops at either end) running across the hillside?

What would you plan to run - battery or live steam, manual or RC. And would this be for yourself, for large-scale meet-ups, or somewhere in between?

Your garden (and dogs) look great

Why are you not building in a larger scale!?!

Because of my location I have discovered an almost complete lack of 16mm modellers. I know there are several in the North of Wales (That's where the real thing is!) but in the South West, nothing!!!
I have only one colleague who does 16mm in the garden and he is a great supporter of my madness. He is unfortunately about 35 miles distant.
Also, due to my earlier excursions into exhibition modelling, I have to change all of my experiences from 12v track power to battery power. My preference would be to have radio control which my colleague has already achieved. I could then have more variety in railway planning.
Steam does not appeal to me, again having no experience in the past and no local support to offer advice.
I am a founder member of our local model club where we encourage modelmakers of all descriptions to enjoy the hobby. I would hope to have open days for them to enjoy the community aspect of a garden railway which I fear is lacking in many other forms of modelmaking.
Time will tell!!
By the way, I am originally from the West Midlands and still a member of Warley MRC, who also have little interest in this subject amongst their membership!

Your garden is crying for a large scale railway.

Check out http://www.maxitrak.co.uk/ to change your mind

Hi tom_tom_go, thanks for the comment, the dogs are just the best English Springers. (not Welsh!) As for building in a larger scale, I would have to start all over again and life is just too short.
If you have seen my previous posts you know I work to 16mm as well as my Emett items, but all on 32mm gauge.
If I was 20 years younger I would consider it maybe?

Sorry Peter I had not seen your previous posts so I understand now.

Well, you have a great piece of land to work on.

Have you tried the railway design software www.anyrail.com as this would help with your planning.

It's free providing you limit your design to 50 pieces of track, however, I bought a licence for the software years ago and it is great for all scales.

You'll have to use cuttings and raised sections. I don't know how big you want the railway, but that little brook and pond sure make me think about bridges and scenery!

What are you talking about? That site is PERFECT! Obviously you're not going to use every inch of space because that would be far too much track to maintain, but what you have will be wonderful. Don't fight the natural slope, USE IT! If you follow the contours like a real full-size railway engineer would you'll have a line that looks just like a real narrow gauge railway from any angle, for the very good reason that it will be a real narrow gauge railway. I would suggest you pick a level, and lay a plain single line at that level for as far as it will go, only coming off the contour for return loops and/or termini at each end.

As T.D. says, you have a magnificent blank canvas there (and to not use the "water features" would be plain sinful!).
The only area to stay away from is where those apples fall!!

Coor, to have a meandering single line wandering lonely through a vast landscape, a slow train of mixed goods potters along, rattles over a large cast iron bridge over an impressive river and disappears around the next contour out of sight. YES! Please make good use of the ideas and comments above, so MUCH scope for that plot of land! The forum will be behind you all the way!
Good luck

One can think, draw think draw, but in the end you have to just do it! My garden is sloped too. So I started flush one end with concrete blocks sunk below the soil on a small foundation, laying track, to give me a result quick. Then these blocks became a small wall which rose to 5ft one end. It took 3 months and was hard but worth it. KEEP IT LEVEL in case you have an open day or go to live steam (it is easy don't be put off) and avoid tight bends, my one regret. It will all be worth it..Incorperate a shed for shelter on showery days..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Mfg-kaSmc8

Mr Bond, you are so poetic.... your dscription of a 'meandering single line wandering lonely through a vast landscape' is impossible to resist.
I am so impressed with the supportive nature of all the comments and have tried to visualise them in practise.
One of my first ideas was to have the line in the orchard area underneath the trees. This location would give a raised area for train preparation, wind throught he trees in a loop and continue along to the ground coming up to meet it before looping back again. Advantages... 1/ Raised for easy accesss, 2/ Close to shed for shelter and storage, 3/ Near to main house for coffee.
Disadvantages...1/ Apples falling,2/ Not a great length of line to run on. (70ft approx)
So..... I have just returned from my walk with the dogs and looked at the potential elsewhere. It would be nice to incorporate a water feature but not risk anything falling in. There is a site which is suitable, again near to the shed (see photograph 9th down) and which would span one of the waterfalls (photograph 7th down) on a huge metal arch bridge, a great engineering project but may look out of place on a narrow gauge line?
Still early days and plenty of thinking time yet.
All the ground is so wet after the persistent rain we have had. We are also on heavy clay which traps the wet and the ground stays soft and sticky.
If they can do it on Snowdon, I can do it here!!!

I don't know how well I can do with this (or any other) project when I have just discovered I am unable to count correctly.
The photographs mentioned above have been incorrectly numbered, so to understand the proposal they should read:
Shed for shelter etc... Photograph 10 down.
Waterfall for arch bridge and potential disaster...Photograph 8 down

Wow so much potential, narrow gauge is meant to meander with the topography and take the easiest route. a bridge over such wonderful water featurse is a must for photography slight gradients are acceptable but level is ideal. If I was nearer you'd have a volunteer to assist in building it. Go for it.

To make it easy to start lay some track out roughly and use straight bits laying across other bits to paint in curves then plan it in managable stages with plenty of photos to keep us all informed and to help you with motivation.

Plenty of bridges to choose from!






Plenty of welsh ones but for one closer to my heart...

Southwold railway bridge!

Besides its your railway, if you have to take your railway across a river it will have needed a big bridge! There doesn't have to be a prototype for everything.

A superb location for a garden railway. Strangely though, I reckon careful planning is even more important with such a large site with open aspects than is the case with the normal suburban garden which imposes its own discipline.
The trick would be to get the railway looking like its meant to be there, not lost in a big landscape.
As the others have said though, you've got it all, space, natural slopes,water.

Bet you a tenner you fall victim to the live steam bug!

And narrow gauge railway bridges could get pretty big, even on 2' gauge. This beauty is the biggest of them all, across the Van Stadens gorge on the Avontuur line in South Africa



A 16mm scale model would be about 11' high...

You're all trying very hard to convince me and I must admit it's working!
My concern of high level track over water is the possibility of the train diving into the depths, in my case about 3 feet deep.
Any experience of that?
Any advice on how to prevent it?