Garden Railway Forum

Hello, my name is Peter, I am a retired teacher (having taught Physics and IT) in secondary education and live in the Rhineland-Palatinate, sw Germany. Due to a major redesign of our garden I suddenly got the necessary space to do what I have dreamed of for decades: Setting up a garden railway. Taking out two big trees last fall gave me the space to build a circle line round the garden shed this spring. So I went for it.

First steps included building a dry wall and perform terraforming to cope with the slightly slopy terrain. About 2 tons of material had to be brought in to have the ground for the station and the rear part of the track.
Since 2 tons of material were not really enough to build the station right on ground level, I had to "level up" track by building a wooden structure to place the tracks on. To camouflage this I planted different kinds of perennial herb around it and so improved optical impression (hopefully) a little bit.

These plants, by the way, are also the reason why the railroad line is prefixed "Bumblebee": Hundreds of these insects populate the inner section of the railway during summer having breakfast, lunch and dinner.

A removable bridge is also there to be taken out if I want to bring the lawn mower or garden shredder to the lower end of the garden. Also a railroad crossing near the rear fence of the garden.
Track

The line is in 32mm gauge, 16mm per inch scale, so it represents a 600mm (something) narrow gauge line.

All track is homemade. I have been using Code-200 rails made from aluminum, wooden sleepers (1 by 1 cm cross section, 7 centimeters long) cut from oak wooden strips and drilled using a brass made pattern to make drilling more easy and more precise.

Rails are fixed on the sleepers using bolts (brand name "Spax") 2mm in diameter and about 1 cm long. Each 2.5 centimeters of track the rail is fixed by 4 bolts. I have built about about 40 meters of these tracks which took me about 1 months. That was hard work. :-) For the switches I have used the very useful information on https://www.16mm.org.uk/resources/ A great resource for a beginner in garden railroading like me!

Sleepers have been treated with timber preservative to avoid rottening in the moist weather we sometimes have here. All track is accessible easily for maintenance and repair.

BTW: Track is not powered because I only run either live steam locos or a Diesel engine that is battery powered.
Rolling stock

I own two live steam locos made by Accucraft: A Decauville 0-6-0 and a Talgarth 0-4-0.

The Diesel is made by IP engineering (Cabbed lister loco):
and has been a little bit "pimped" up. I built a drive unit made from aluminum with both axles are driven:
Besides I have built a tiny radio control unit (another hobby of mine is amateur radio and electronics). I'm now really happy with my rolling stock but another Diesel engine is to be projected in coming winter.

Cars are made by LGB and have been re-gauged to 32mm. They will get better couplings but I'm still thinking of what exactly I will be doing to solve this problem. Original LGB couplers are far too large for my point of view.

Buildings and other stuff

The loco shed is home made from a material that is available in hardware stores and used for thermal insulation of buildings. It's brand is "Styrodur". Fitting the walls together is easy and durable with hot glue.

The station building is an old "Playmobil" "Kindergarten" that has been re-painted, equipped with real windows and lighted with 2 bulbs inside.

The lamp posts outside are made from wooden sticks and equipped with small 6V bulbs and reflectors. All in all I have about 10 light bulbs paralleled. Currently I am projecting a microcontroller equipped solar power charger to charge the 6 V lead acid battery automatically to its maximum and then switch on the lights in the evening and switch them off when battery voltage drops under the critical border of 6V so that the battery will not be damaged by excessive discharge. This will be accomplished hopefully before fall. Let's see. :-)

In my next post I will attach some more pics of the railroad, so stay tuned! And, above all, thanks for reading this article! :-)

Peter

Welcome, Peter.
What an excellent start you have made to the hobby. Everything about your railway is impressive, from the track to your radio control system.

Really looking forward to seeing what happens next.

Rik

Welcome Peter.
As Rik says, that is an impressive start and a great foundation for the future.
Please feel free to ask questions if you need to, somebody is bound to have an answer!

By the way, well done also for encouraging the bees.

Hi Peter,
You have built a beautiful garden and railway.
I went down a similar path to you, building my own track so I know how much hard work is involved but worth the result. And I build radio control and sound too.
Keep posting your great pictures.

Welcome to the forum! Your railway oozes atmosphere, I must say. Quite like the sweeping curves of the track, too. Your plan for powering the lighting sounds great - might have to borrow that idea.

Welcome Peter!
Looking very good. The planting compliments the railway nicely.
More pictures please!

Phil.P

Hello Peter, and welcome to the forum. Your line is most inspiring, and it's nice to see another Decauville (I have the 0-4-0 version). I'm sure many would be interested in detailed descriptions of how you've built pretty well everything - track, switches(points?), engine shed, lighting etc. It's always good to see othercpeoples approcah to these things.

Peter, welcome, new members come asking for advice, though it looks like we will be coming to you

Good evening and thank you very much for your nice compliments concerning my layout! Very much appreciated!

The last days were pretty chilly here and the weather has not been that fine. But yesterday we had a relatively warm and sunny day where I got the opportunity to take some more pictures.

The rear part of our garden is the place where I could put the rails right into the ground because its the highest part of the terrain. The ballast for my track is made from basalt that I had purchased for the foundation of the dry wall and since I had left about 1 ton redundant I decided to use it for track laying even if it seems a little bit overscaled as you can see from the pictures. With still having about 900 kg "on stock" I don't fear the usual vanishing of ballast for the next few years.
Let's turn back to the "front part" of the layout...

Behind the station after the curve the track is still on the elevated section but I tried to camouflage it with herbs and a flower box close to the track to disguise the construction. For next spring it is planned to place some rocks close to the construction and have something like a railway dam. OK, I think I have to cut herbs a little bit by now, it obviously looks more like a "jungle railroad". ;-)
A final word concerning the railroad crossing at the rear end of the garden. It crosses a small path leading to the rear entrance where we leave and return with our bicycles. Thus a rugged pathway had to be built. The tracks for this section are made from Maerklin Gauge 1 material (Code 200 as the rest of the track) which is made from nickel silver which can easily be soldered (in contrast to aluminum). I had cut sleepers made from copper covered PCB material for electronic circuits and soldered the rails directly onto these sleepers. The sleepers have been fixed with bolts into plastic screw anchors to the stones of the pathway.

Since I don't use track power I did not isolate the rails from each other.

After the track has been found OK and 100% correctly gauged I used rapid-hardening cement, filled the center between the rails and the outside, cut out the space for the wheel flanges with a screwdriver's tip as long as the cement had not become dry. That worked fine.
So, that's all for today. And, by the way, thanks for this interesting forum. I have come here because I found the link (iirc) on one of the "Mark Found Garden Railway" videos in the comment section on YouTube. These great videos gave me a lot of inspiration to set up my railroad.

Bye, Peter

Welcome Peter. What a start you have made with you BumbleBee line. It's very impressive indeed and yes hard work too, it's the norm with any line, but when you sit back and enjoy live steam and battery powered locos running on it, you do get a great deal of satisfaction from it and some comfort in knowing "I did that".

Enjoy your adventure Peter. Please keep on showing more of your line.

FWLR wrote: ↑Fri Aug 27, 2021 8:52 am ... but when you sit back and enjoy live steam and battery powered locos running on it, you do get a great deal of satisfaction from it and some comfort in knowing "I did that".

Absolutely. 100% Agreement to your words! Thank you! :-)

Peter

Really interesting and useful information, Peter. The forum is a great place to share ideas and to have a chat with other modellers who share the same interests. Really glad you followed the link and joined us.

Rik

Hi Peter. Welcome to the forum. What a charming garden railway. I like your plantings and well done for helping our friends the bees. Your miniature passengers will need to be careful of the giant killer bees !

Good evening to every one,

thank you very much for your kind words, as fall comes I have some plans for next spring. In the meanwhile I will be watching this forum to pick up more inspiration. Just to please my wife and daughter with a well designed garden.
Peter

A belated welcome from me too - what a lovely railway! 32mm must be quite rare in Germany?

The garden's beautiful, the home-made track most impressive, and I really like that Decauville loco...

Looking forward to hearing more soon,

Andrew,

Well done indeed Peter , just the inspiration I need to progress from my rather small patio railway to one around our modest back garden .