Garden Railway Forum

Pleased to see you are back in action, Rod

Rik

That looks to be much more user friendly, and very substantial too!

Thanks guys, it is much better and now it hopefully won't hinder Anne too much with her garden and most importantly Anne likes it too.
Now it has to stop for a bit, all thoughts and any spare money is going on are holiday to Carnarvon at the end of June. Hoping to get to see a few heritage lines while we are there. Would like to visit a garden line also, there is one in Llanwrst I think, my mums home town, the persons name is David Mees, he has invited us a few times and it would be nice to see, but he does tend to get a few people there and I don't think I could cope with too many people at the moment. We will have to see...

Tends not to be too crowded (perhaps half a dozen?) but there is plenty of room, and seating away from the main area..

You can't beat a garden railway on the side of a Welsh hill!
Phil.P

Thanks Phil, that's good to know.

It's been a couple of months since I last posted on my thread, i'am not too sure if I have posted on a thread about building the new line, I will have a look later.

Anyway our Billy ran great, though there are a couple of sticky curves on the bottom end of the line by Anne's Fairy Garden that I will need to sort out, which should be no problem hopefully. Not used to the line yet but it shouldn't take long when I have been able to finish the top end of the line.

Sorry about the kids next door, one of them can get a little bit loud.. But he is a smashing lad and he makes my day every time I see him and talk to him, he's only 5 and he has that cheeky way about him. He even makes anne laugh, which by the way isn't that hard, she does find things funny a lot.......

Hope you like the video, Anne took it..

Just looked at my thread, it's in this one were I have posted the building of the line...Sorry guys..

That's looking great Rod!

I know construction's (literally) been a pain, but it looks very solid, and attractive too, so well worth it, I reckon?

Your Billy's looking and sounding great too. And the sun's finally come out, perfect for some summer steaming!

Andrew.

Good to see something up and running, Rod. It's been a while, hasn't it? All set for a rosy future, I'd say.

Rik

Smooth runner, too.

ge_rik wrote: ↑Thu Aug 10, 2023 8:42 am Good to see something up and running, Rod. It's been a while, hasn't it? All set for a rosy future, I'd say.

Rik

Thank you Rik, Yes it has been a bit of a long time and there is still a lot to do. The top of the line needs the scaffolding plank replacing with sleepers, but that's maybe a few more weeks yet.

Old Man Aaron wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 4:30 pm Smooth runner, too.


She is running very well Aaron, after her leak, but I think it could of been my fault for not running her, I should have just run her of track on the two bits of off cut wooden blocks I use for steaming her up. Lesson learnt there .

Andrew wrote: ↑Thu Aug 10, 2023 8:34 am That's looking great Rod!

I know construction's (literally) been a pain, but it looks very solid, and attractive too, so well worth it, I reckon?

Your Billy's looking and sounding great too. And the sun's finally come out, perfect for some summer steaming!

Andrew.

It has been very hard work Andrew, but I so did enjoy running her. Anne was pleased also that we had got this far, she did help me so much, between the two of us we hopefully have got something that resembles a garden railway line.

It certainly resembles a pretty nice one! The bridge is a nice touch.

drewzero1 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 16, 2023 6:37 am It certainly resembles a pretty nice one! The bridge is a nice touch.

Thanks Drew, there is still a long way to go before we can get a full loop around the line, but that's the joy of building a line, at the end the pleasure we get from seeing our locos running around it.

Hi all,

Back to building again, although not too full strength yet, but I am getting there.

This is a little kit that Peter Butler sent me to help me to start building again. It's a small van, no idea where it came from, but it's taken me some time to build mainly because it comes with plastic wheels, I am not a fan of them because they are really light and the van is light enough anyway. I have had to do something with the Slater's wheels though, because the axle bearings are ver very thin anyway, so I couldn't drill them out and that left me with thinking of something else to reduce the diameter of the axle. I had to go back to my toolroom days when I first got into engineering, when I had to emery paper some high speed punches to get rid of any blemishes. It was dam hard work I can tell you..

Anyway after many hours and sheets of emery paper, mainly because Anne was keeping an eye on me making sure I don't do too much. I eventually got them to fit reasonably well.

This is the little van.


It's not a bad little van, which is great to add to a rake of industrial wagons. Thank you Peter for sending me the kit, it has been very therapeutic...

In the meantime I have been doing some more builds, you know me, I start one then another and another, you know the drill, I think most of us do that... One of them is a half relief house that Anne bought me last Christmas, I know a bit late building it but other things were on my bench The other one is my very first attempt at doing something with Foamboard....that's a build that isn't turning out just right, but I believe we should show our failures too. They are for another day though, been on here too long now.

PS. I forgot to take more photos of the build, sorry....

That is a tiny van, Rod. Nicely finished.

Rik

Well done Rod. It was intended to encourage you to concentrate your mind on something and aid your recovery, I'm delighted to see it has worked and you have managed to return to unfinished projects. Nice tidy paintwork and detailing too!

ge_rik wrote: ↑Sat Dec 16, 2023 10:26 am That is a tiny van, Rod. Nicely finished.

Rik

I want one!
I kind of have a thing for stubby little items of rolling stock...

dudeface wrote: ↑Sat Dec 16, 2023 11:15 pm

ge_rik wrote: ↑Sat Dec 16, 2023 10:26 am That is a tiny van, Rod. Nicely finished.

Rik

I want one!
I kind of have a thing for stubby little items of rolling stock...

IP engineering do loads of them, so does a guy on eBay, Phil Sharples, HGW are another.

https://www.hglw.co.uk/

There are loads if you put a search in, also visit Andrew's Thread on here with most Garden Rail Suppliers, it's very good.

I am really sorry though Miles, I didn't buy this van so I can't tell who made the kit.

I'm building a couple inspired by the "Little Van for FWLR" discussed here: https://gardenrails.org/forum/viewtopic ... 39&t=14334

When I've got the patterns figured out I'll see if I can digitize and post them. (Right now they're just shapes cut out of a cereal box for tracing onto plywood.) My current status is that I have something resembling the second photo in that thread, and enough plywood pieces cut to make another one.