Garden Railway Forum

With my recent tinkerings with repairing my little diesel for my kids to use, they have identified a need for rolling stock that they can play with. This has had me thinking as to what to provide for them... A conversation with SWMBO and she suggested returning the original carriages I scratch built to a running order. The results are below with original paintwork

What really stood out to me though was the progression in my models. I was therefore wondering who still has the first piece of rolling stock they built?

Interesting colour, looks very royal

My first piece of rolling stock has been rebuilt three times and still is not finished!

It is very purple... No idea what I was thinking but the kids like it! Lol

My first attempts are only on ancient photographs (before digital) and well faded now! These were 7mm/ft narrow gauge for use on our club layout at the time. As we progressed on to 16mm the early stock was sold on and nothing now remains.
As far as I can recall, my first attempt at scratch-building a 16mm loco resulted in 'George' the crane loco. This was built using plasticard and a Lima power bogie for 12v track power. Again, from memory, I think this would have been sometime before 1980 and 'George' has been with me unaltered and still working to the present.
Unfortunately, I am unable to post my stored image due to size, so tomorrow, when it is daylight, I will take a picture and introduce you to 'George'.

I look forward to seeing George

My first wagon was this:



but unfortunately it got stolen - scratch built on Coopercraft wheels/axles/axleboxes........................

Nice little wagon Brian! Shame it was stolen

I lost a lot of memories in that robbery........................

As promised, here are a couple of shots of 'George' the crane loco.
I started by making a crane jib for some other purpose but decided to go the whole way and build a locomotive to carry it!
It has been such a while that I can't remember the build date but it must have been late 70's as we were working on the exhibition layout, 'Umbridge' at the time.
As you can see from the pics, not much in the way of bought castings etc were used as supply was somewhat limited then. However, the chopper couplings were made by Alan Kidner, of Kidner Kits, who was a Club member at the time.




'George' remains 12v track power for the time being but will be converted to battery RC during the winter months (with luck!)

MDLR:89336 wrote:My first wagon was this:



but unfortunately it got stolen - scratch built on Coopercraft wheels/axles/axleboxes........................

In a way that's a huge compliment, that thieves found your first wagon valuable enough to make it worth stealing.

They cleared out a complete large box of small items of rolling stck - that happened to be among them!

Here is my first:

Strip-wood chassis with Ron Grant axleboxes and wheels, reclaimed wood from fruit-boxes for the bed of the waggon. This picure from June 1999.

For the kids we made these...Persil box, wood, fence clip, bamboo place mat and Binnie wheels.....well I didn't know how to make those!

Look very darjeeling! The gangees will be rather foamy me thinks

They look awesome! Bet kids love them!