Garden Railway Forum

I spotted a site on the interweb which advertised garden railway stock to be made from cardboard. http://www.rail-roadmodels.co.uk/. The Corris Hughes loco at £25 looked like a good on to have a start on and so same was duly bought.
Its taken me several weeks to assemble the body (no chassis included) and I'm quite pleased with the result. The loco looks good and is quite solid. It is varnished but I won't be running it in damp conditions. As seems to be the way, the instructions contained errors and vagaries, but these were sorted fairly easily. I certainly had my money's worth of fun.
Next up will be a scratch made chassis. The main problem here is finding 40mm -ish diameter 32mm gauge driving wheels that don't bankrupt me. The R/C gear is all ready and tested. (Planet R7M, micro Viper ESC and 9.6V Ni-Cd).
Anyway, here is a photo of the beastie:
OBP

I always under rate card but that looks really good. I was reading a thread on the 7/8th this morning and there were some beautiful card railbuses. The builder actually used cereal packets laminated with pva. I would never leave models outside anyway so makes you wonder whether a bit of card here and there could be useful. Good luck with the chassis.

Looks a cheap way of adding to the stock.

I have used card a fair bit in the past, usually for passenger vehicles. Somewhere I have a IMR 'A' coach that I laminated up in card to 5.5mm scale 25 years ago, and it was still looking pretty good the last time I saw it. The main thing to remember with card is that it needs to be waterproofed. Shellac was the favourite in times past, with us I think plenty of glue and then paint and varnish the finished product would be sufficient, especially if we are quite clear that we are not going to run them in the pelting rain.

Cheers,
+Peter in VA

Is Shellac available still.

Is Shellac available still.

Available on eBay in liquid or flake form
look in household goods/DIY

Thanks Graham.