Garden Railway Forum

PS: Tom - you've probably discovered how your engine behaves already, but I have found that turning the gas up a fraction to produce somewhat more than my ideal small feather at the safety valve makes for more even running, including at slow speed. I presume this is because the boiler steam pressure...

ge_rik: yes - a form of regenerative braking, in fact. Tom: I get the same with a Roundhouse Basic Series, probably down to the vagaries of my track laying/aligning - it's lovely when it works well (especially as occasionally it actually pauses at the station and then moves off!) but can be rather a...

Well, in my case the only loco name at present is the one carried by my ancient SL3 and it's that of a childhood hamster... The loco stable is currently two and I am vaguely envisaging it growing to four. I guess pets' names could be a theme And since the railway's policy on anything is down to my w...

Yup, I enjoyed it to the end. And my wife did too! But a few questions do come to mind... 1. At one point in the first episode, the scale distance was described as "half the Trans-Siberian railway" and I haven't worked out that calculation (even taking into account the apparent late change...

That's good to know. No need to panic-buy my hoped-for but as-yet-not-saved-for Brunel then! But I hope I can be forgiven for hearing alarm bells on learning simultaneously of the sudden indefinite postponement of a long-term development project that was already delayed but supposedly near commercia...

Chris Cairns - that's interesting, and suggests cash flow problems could be a possibility.

Much as I hate to ask the question, is there any hint that we might lose the Mamod company altogether? (Although I'm not sure that would be the first time...)

Thanks everyone. Tips passed on.

ax1709cjm - the offer of the scanned manual is greatly appreciated but it may be that the original has in fact survived so I'll hold fire for now.

Hi all, I'm asking this on behalf of a friend who has inherited a Maxwell Hemmens "Ogwen" but has never operated it (hoping that I'll see it running round my little circuit one day!). I am inexperienced in all this, having obtained a Roundhouse Bertie last year and previously only had Mamo...

Well, I'm enjoying it.

(Genuine but embarrassingly basic question alert.) If soldering wires end-to-end, is a heatsink required to prevent heat damaging the LED at the end of the wire to the light? I have dim and distant memories of a school electronics project to make a rudimentary bridge rectifier when I got through abo...

Many thanks for the responses. Having thought about it a bit more, I'm wondering whether the best solution might be to have the signals individually powered so they are simple "plonk down/pick up" with batteries concealed in the undergrowth (or platform furniture of some kind). Long-ish pe...

Peter - I love it! Possibly not applicable to my garden, but great to read and see your ideas. As you say, we all have our own particular situations, but I do like to see what others have devised and done.

Not quite sure I like it myself. Am rather keen on getting a Brunel (once I feel it's not going to blow a hole in the family budget!) but suspect that when/if it happens it'll be without the canopy.

Great, thanks for the solutions and ideas. Obviously I should have thought of this before casting a solid concrete platform! (Which I did after I had the platform lamps - oops!)

Thanks Big Jim and Rik. Can batteries be left out under a basic cover or are we basically saying that everything might as well be taken inside after every operating session anyway? Also, the Modeltown cables, despite being incredibly small, straggle untidily across the platform surfaces between the ...

Hi all. I have a couple of Modeltown platform lights (so far only put out in the garden once in a very temporary way) and several North Pilton signals with LEDs (as yet unbuilt). All have pre-fixed cables (*very* flimsy in the case of the Modeltown lights, although these are long enough to reach int...

Correction: the clip is shown in one of the very first photos, but apparently not the other.

Thank you for sharing more photos. Were the latest set actually taken before the first photos you posted, since they seem to show an experimental clip arrangement holding the condensate tank in place, whereas the first set appears to show (?) the tank bolted down? Out of interest, what is the brass ...

Thanks for the responses. I'm pretty new to this too, but I do have my eye on a Brunel and am interested in how it might be modified. So you don't reckon you can put the exhaust near the chimney even with the condensate tank? I'm sure I'd read that the reason for the Brunel's steam exhaust being rem...

I fancy getting a Brunel one day! I'm interested by your condenser mod. What route does the piping take? It's not quite clear in the pictures (there seem to be at least three ports, including the chimney exhaust, in the condenser) - and is the exhaust pipe from the cylinder missing in the close-up p...