Garden Railway Forum

Thanks for all the great comments. We know Peter very well as he is in our area group and lives not very long away! This was one of his own personal locos!

Well, Peter was right in keeping that little loco for himself. A beauty!

To be perfectly honest, not much has been done at all on the railway since the last post. Getting Adiela back at Lakeshore had been the main priority, taking up the time before the summer running season when we would have been doing some work.
Today though, we carried away about a quarter of the spoil from the heap and also cut some of the pieces for the temporary bridge, to go round the left hand side of Thorpe.
No photo's I am afraid so here is one of Adiela fresh from overhaul. We are all very proud!

Tonight saw some work done at last at Thorpe. The road section was demolished for the 3rd time. The 4th attempt will now be in sand with PVA sprayed black which looks quite convincing as a road surface, this will be built up in layers.
Aside from that, 5 foundry tubs arrived from the Dingle Leigh Railway so a small running session was due. The tubs are still far too light (they are derailed by the smallest leaf!) so a bit of weight will be added before Elsecar.
The new bogie wagon was also brought out for a bit of air. The interior is still to be completed.

I like what you've done with the bogie open, looks very good!

Thanks! Generally its some revel paint dipped in water. Makes a nice washed streak effect plus some mixed up to make a darker rust colour.

Finally, I found some time today to do some work on the line! Having Fridays off from college often gives me some time if I dont have any homework.
Whilst I was doing the work, a big beast was watching over  :lol:  

I had decided a few weeks before Elsecar that my ballast was far too big to look anything near the real stuff and, being a line fictitiously based on limestone traffic, black ballast was not really appropriate. At Elsecar, I picked up five bags of ballast (I think) from Rob at Swift Sixteen which was far more to scale. To start, I had to sweep away the old, non fixed ballast before I put down the new ballast with a PVA and washing up liquid mix.

All the white lines are bits of the PVA that were on the jar's bottom and should just wash away.


Now onto the big beast or the Fairatt. Those on Facebook will have seen the build of it and some (I know Pauly and Ace did) will have seen it run at Elsecar. It still awaits an improved burner from ELR before it will run properly but it does run as it stands, just a bit asthmatically.



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I would be interested to hear how your ballast adhesive survives through the winter months, or even in wet weather. Please let us know its progress.
I've used SBR on some of mine and now waiting to see how well it works before completing the rest of the railway.

Well, the first thing I can tell you about the ballast is that I have just gone out this morning and the large portion of it is rock solid. Some will need a little more for the surface bits but it seems to be holding.

I spent Monday doing some work on the new signal box for Thorpe. This will be Dore Box, being one of many tributes to our late friend David Porter (Dore Lakes Railway). The signal box came from his railway when his collection was sold up. We also managed to get his goods rake in its entirety and his self braking brake van.
Anyway, it was given a clean down and, being David, a wizz with electric's, the box was actually a signal box, having a radio antenna picking up commands to change the points! This was pushed out through its hole and I made a rough chimney cap for a stove. Hopefully I will get round to detailing the interior with a frame and other bits.



As some detailing for around the box, the yard area, I lightly (so they can be separated) glued some sleepers together into stacks. These are very aged and so look very unused.

TTHLRMatt:105269 wrote:As some detailing for around the box, the yard area, I lightly (so they can be separated) glued some sleepers together into stacks. These are very aged and so look very unused.

You'd better look after those - Brandbright have stopped production so you ain't going to get any more!

MDLR:105278 wrote:You'd better look after those - Brandbright have stopped production so you ain't going to get any more!

Tenmille still do wood sleepers: AG091

I have some more left but all will be reusable if I want to!

some good photos would love to the the beast running looks very good well done .as for the sleepers if they are not being made anymore I think I could nock up several hundred in a lunch brake at work ...

Plenty of market for them! And ELR are making the burner as we speak.

ELR got back to me today and the burner should be in the post sometime soon.
Anyway, although it was nice weather, I decided to have a day or so getting on with a few different bits. The main one was my Andel D class wagon. Not many photos but I must say, the chassis is superb in the way it is made, adding far more realism. It has taken about 2 and a bit days to get to this stage and I would definitely do another one!

I seem to have had a lot of time available over the past few days to get back into 16mm. Started the day off today by giving Tarn Madoc a steam. He ran very well as normal though I dont know what the neighbors thought of the whistling! I will let the photo's do the talking.











The rest of the day was spent tinkering with Percy, my first engine and well due a proper rebuild. I decided to convert it back to meths firing and am happy to say, it will be staying as so due to it not getting as hot and the extended running time. As usual though, running it raised other issues to be addressed such as the gauge glass and a steam leak somewhere. I can see the rebuild coming very soon. On the upside, I trial fitted Percy's new smokebox dart which looks a lot better than a blank hole.



Kestrel, the DLR Geared De Winton was finally deconstructed and once the gears are sorted and the safety valve is found, it should be a runner!

TTHLRMatt:105369 wrote:

Having built the resin version, it's interesting to see this one. I built and reviewed this - see http://www.mdlr.co.uk/classd.html from which you will see that only the detailing (and presumably the bogie kits) survive from the earlier version. There was also very little painting invoved - I built mine in a morning (0730 - 1230) and it went into service the same afternoon!

Only the detail survives from the previous one Brian! The bogies are a separate laser cut kit. The planks aren't even engraved, they are cut but not right along so that they look realistic. Certainly would take you longer to do this one.