Garden Railway Forum

I know it's a minority interest, but running my line as close to reality as I can get has always interested me. I want to follow (on a much smaller scale) the example of the magnificent Gainsborough MRC ... http://www.gainsmodelrailway.ik.com/ ... just a few miles down the road. Having also been an occasional operator on an O gauge loft layout that uses full signalling (including staff-and-ticket on single line sections), block working, timetable operation and purposeful goods wagon forwarding by destination label I think these add a certain 'life' to a railway and have designed my track-plan (on target for completion by the end of August) to allow this. I was wondering if anyone else here had any interest or experience of doing so in the great outdoors and could be persuaded to compare notes.

I know of somebody in the north of Cumbria who does this, the NWAG have had a couple of visits but I've been busy both times. SLRmidge and LMSjools managed to go though.

token operating on my single line section. Just to avoid expensive crashes!

I am planning and have experimented with the use of door bells (the ring type not "ding dong") for sending signals up and down the line from signal box to signal box. I'll get that back up and running again for the new railway. tokens obviously would be used if I were to have more than one train running ever!

I ran a 009 layout fiddle yard to terminus layout (Monyash) using a pair of genuine block bells - they used to LOVE it when we opened up at an exhibition - 2 X 5-5-5 followed by 2 X 16!

We also had "other" meanings for some of the codes:
6-2 Train an Unusually Long Time in Section = "Is it off the line AGAIN??"

3-5-5 Line Clear, Station Blocked (usually when the fiddle yard operator had been playing "stitch the station up") "Give me chance to get rid of this lot!!"

We used a Spectrum to tell the punters what was happening, so you can guess how long ago THAT was!

The LMS is known to operate with radio controlled Signals at times all operated by a single main control box.

Have also used Token working in the past.

The D&FGR doesn't need any signalling or anything at all, just one stretch of track, no points, to loops, just one train running up and down with the odd failures, simples

(addmitting i did use to use 00 gauge signals AGES ago!)