FAULCONWOOD AND SPRINGBRIDGE RAILWAY.

[cleanerg6e]

My name is Roy and I'm currently constructing a high level outdoor railway to take OO gauge. The reason I call it an outdoor railway rather than a garden railway is because except up the top end of the garden the majority of the railway is well and truly above ground. The heights go from 900mm to 1.5m above the ground.

I have lived in my house for 28 years and have longed to run my trains outside as the inside is too small to run 12 to 16 coach passenger trains or 60 wagon goods trains.

My block of land has a slope on it which in model railway terms is very steep and it would preclude running the types of trains that I like.

I have built an outdoor railway before but the weather and the wildlife got to it and progressively made it a shambles.

I should also say the I live in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales Australia, and when friends heard that I was constructing an outdoor railway they naturally assumed it was either gauge 1 or larger. They told me "you can't have OO/HO outside, its impossible!". I asked them what problems they had encountered in trying to put a OO/HO line outdoors and was told,"oh, I've never tried but I know you can't do it". That was like a red rag to a bull and I was determined to have a OO line outside.

I first bought a number of thick plant stakes to find the level for the permanent way and also bought a 2m length spirit level. I then started to dig holes in the ground to a depth of 600mm and I've dug 67 of them with nothing more sophisticated than a spade. I then concreted 450mm galvanised steel stirrups into the hole using an aggregate concrete mix obtainable in 20kg bags.

NOTE: Always wear a dust mask and thick rubber gloves. NEVER put your bare hands into wet concrete because of it's alkali nature and don't breathe in the dust as it contains silica and won't do your lungs any good at all.

Once the stirrups are set and dry in the concrete both vertically and horizontally I used treated 4x4 building timbers attached to the stirrups with galvanised nuts and bolts with spring washes.

I bought a drill bench to drill the holes in the 4x4 timber which MUST be parallel and the bolts were tightened with the spirit level held to the post by a quick grip clamp.

Below is a photo of one of the galvanised steel stirrups, which I purchased in bulk in boxes of ten from a large hardware super store.

If you wish to know more about the construction of my outdoor railway please let me know in the forum.

 

[IanR]

Sounds very interesting Roy and good luck with it. I for one am interested in following the progress of your layout construction.

Ian.

[cleanerg6e]

G'day IanR from wet and soggy Australia. So glad to read that your interested in my garden railway construction and I'll keep adding detail of the work in progress.

Naturally being on the other side of the world when I'm awake you in the UK are all asleep and vice versa.

Roy.

[mick]

...Naturally being on the other side of the world when I'm awake you in the UK are all asleep and vice versa.

Roy.

Don't be so sure about that. I'm one of those who normally comes alive after the midnight hour so I could still be around whilst you're enjoying your dinner! On the downside, it's usually dinnertime here by the time I'm ready to climb out of bed

Look forward to seeing your progress Roy.

[cleanerg6e]

G'day Mick, please forgive me for not taking everyone's lifestyle into account. So I gather you are a night owl. As this is your forum that must make you the grand master. Does that also make you the big hoot?

In the photo below is a stirrup concreted into the ground

[cleanerg6e]

I should say that my soil is a thin layer of dark brown surface soil and below that is quite dense clay. Here in Australia we have had a drought for ten years and the top layer of soil had become more or less sand. The clay part at the top was easy to dig yet 200mm down the rest was quite wet even though we had not had any good soaking rains.

After concreting in the stirrups I needed to attach the 4x4 uprights and to drill the holes for the bolts I bought a drill bench for $75.00 or In UK money 30 pounds. It was the cheapest I could find and as long it drilled perfectly straight that's all I wanted.

[cleanerg6e]

After drilling the 4x4 posts and attaching them to the galvanised stirrups I had to attached the 4x2 "T" pieces that would eventually take the boards that the track is fixed to. For my first effort I drilled (using the drill bench) two 12mm diameter holes in the 4x2 treated wood and fastened them to the 4x4 uprights. This seemed like a good idea at the time, but with the expansion and contraction of the 4x2 timber it proved to be a bad mistake. The photo below show the 4x2 timber as originally fixed to the 4x4 uprights.

[cleanerg6e]

I had to find a different way of attaching the 4x2 pieces of treated timber to the 4x4 uprights and decided to use a "no more nails" exterior type adhesive. First I decided to test the manufactures claim that the glued joint would be stronger than the original wood. So I glued a scrap piece of 4x2 to a scrap piece of 4x4 and once dry and fixed to a concreted stirrup I belted it good and hard with a sledge hammer. Low and behold their claims were correct the 4x2 timber remained strongly bonded to the 4x4 which split right down the middle. In the photo below is how the 4x2 timber is now fixed to the 4x4 uprights, and although unpainted shows no sign of expansion and contraction problems, that the previous photo shows in the area around the bolts. You can see that the 4x2 wood is splitting.

[cleanerg6e]

Now we move onto baseboards. On my first attempt I used treated pine "railway sleepers" as they're called over here, which are 200mm wide and 50mm thick and came in lengths of 3m long. I thought they would be fine but once again they were a bad mistake and I couldn't have painted them as many still had sap oozing out of them even after the copper chrome arsenate treatment. I decided to make a frame similar to an inside layout but a lot more sturdier. I used treated pine 4x2 to make the frames and 15mm exterior plywood for the tops to fix the track to. In the photo below you can see the frame with polystyrene in the spaces to hopefully cut down on the booming effect. Polystyrene is very hard to obtain here but I managed to find a local person only 30 miles away who manufactures the product. The photo shows a completed baseboard with polystyrene and although painted on the surfaces exposed to the weather has received a wood treatment in between the frames. All paint used is Wattle Solar Guard acrylic, and is applied with a roller, (it's quicker).

[cleanerg6e]

All baseboards are glued and screwed together using the "no more nails" adhesive and special treat pine screws which are prepainted so they don't rust and contaminate the inside of the wood. The exterior plywood is painted "Scandinavian Grey".The two long thin pieces of timber painted grey are spaces to allow the white painted 4mm exterior plywood top to close on the board with track work in place. Both the spaces and the white tops are hinged to the boards using stainless steel hinges with stainless steel screws.In our summer it's usually far hotter than in the UK and days of above 40 degrees celsius are not uncommon. Putting your hand on the board without a top in 35 degree heat is a painful experience.

[IanR]

It would be nice if there was an affordable material which was stable in all weathers and temperatures. I can't think of one so we're usually stuck with timber products.

Good work so far Roy.

[cleanerg6e]

G'day Ian, thanks for the compliment your too kind. My carpentry skills have only slightly improved over time although I try my best. It may seem that I'm building a proverbial aircraft carrier to only land tiny airfix planes on it. But at the moment it's the only way I can think of making a solid structure out of timber.

I have mentioned safety once but can tell you I had an accident with an electric planer. I don't why but I touched the blade before it had stopped rotating and got a deep cut in one of my fingers. I soaked the finger in a bucket of cold water to get any little bits of wood out of the wound and then put my finger in some diluted Dettol antiseptic. God I don't know which was worse cutting the finger or the Dettol. A few days later my boss at work noticed my finger and asked why I didn't go to A&E at Nepean Hospital at Penrith. I told him I had no intentions of sitting in A&E for 12 hours only to have a nurse say to me "oh you've cut your finger". My reply would have been "how wonderful to have you here to tell us these things, if you hadn't I would never have known".

Another reason the layout is so high off the ground is because I have a bad back due to my service on the railways over here and also not helped by recent events that I won't bore you with. I read before I started construction on my first attempt a book by Chris Hatton (nothing to do with Hatton's of Liverpool) and he said that a garden level railway, though very nice depends on the owners ability to "get down to it" not just for construction, but for operation and maintenance. As my length of run is around the 650m mark, all that way on my hands and knees, no thanks. But if you want your railway to blend into the garden your knees will just have to bare the sacrifice. I intend to plant large dense foliage shrubs so that the trains will disappear round a corner and out of site although not sound.

I'll have no grass so nothing to mow and paths will be garden mulch as it more comfortable to stand on.

Edited January 15, 2012 by Guest

[cleanerg6e]

I have mentioned how hot it can get here in Australia. Do you have Hydrangea plants in the UK. If you do I have two photos of one that I have. It's more of a tree than a small plant even though I prune it hard every winter.

 

[cleanerg6e]

On the previous post another reason for the covers on the boards is the heat of summer and why I don't run trains in the heat of summer. Another reason is the Sulpher Crested Cockatoos. These large wild parrot birds stood on the last railway on the rail joints and tried to pull the bonded wires off the rail joints with their beaks. The bonds wouldn't part company with the rails but they managed to rip the nickel silver rails from the plastic sleepers and I got fed up with putting in more sections of rail to replace the damaged pieces. You can look up Sulpher Crested Cockatoos on Wiki and see the damage they do. They also delight in pecking off flowers on plants. There is nothing I can do about it as they're a protected species.

cleanerg6e.

[cleanerg6e]

Well enough rabbiting on about droopy plants and cockatoos time to get back to railway construction,(were you all thinking "I wondered when he was going to get on with it).

Alignment of boards and attachment to 4x2 timbers is undertaken with a small quick grip clamp (one each side where the boards meet) and when level two small right angle brackets are used to attach the boards to the 4x2 "T" pieces and yes I use the prepainted treated pine screws. In the photo below it shows a quick grip clamp posing as to how I did the above. You can also clearly see the brackets and the stainless steel hinges. The grey painted spacer was a cock up as it didn't fit the normal way with the cream paint to the outside and had to be turned around.

Roy.

[cleanerg6e]

Now we move onto track work. I have used Peco Streamline code 100 and have salvaged nearly all the track from the previous effort. Mother nature can do wonderful things and she weathered the sides of the rails beautifully. Unlike paint it won't flake off and being outdoors it's exactly the right colour.

I have found that when putting the Peco rail joiners on that I they often dig into my thumbs and cut them, although not enough to make them bleed.

I thought to myself that there has to be an easier way and using pointed nose pliers there's a danger of them slipping. Using your fingers and avoiding cuts to your thumbs, I've found means using rubber thimbles with little dimples on them. I believe that postal workers use them on the fingers, but I used them on my thumbs and now call them thumbles. They do cut off the circulation slightly to your thumbs but as I only use them for a few short minutes just to put the rail joiners on I can put up with it and I know longer have cut thumbs. The photo below shows track in place and the large pieces of wood on top of the white hinged covers act as weight to stop the covers blowing open in high winds. There actually cut up pieces of track board from the first effort. I didn't want to throw them away and I can't burn them due to the arsenate treatment which if burnt releases highly toxic fumes.

 

[cleanerg6e]

When it came to curves I want to try to recreate the cant on curves as seen on the full size railway. If you read modeling magazines they'll often tell you how to create the most realistic models and landscape to run them through but all on the flat. Just like a toy train on the floor. Our trains over here and I expect yours over there all lean into curves. I even saw on you tube a Chinese narrow gauge colliery line with little 0-8-0 tender locos running on very badly maintained track and on the curves although the loco bounced it's way along it and it's train did lean into the curve. So why not on models? I have used sleepers from redundant pieces of Peco streamline and cutting off the chairs have put them at 90 degrees to the sleepers under the rails on the outer edge or the curve. This is an experiment I'll just have to see if it lasts. I have used Atlas track pins as Peco N gauge ones are too small and their OO ones too big, also with the Atlas pins you get 500 to a packet.

 

[mick]

Blimey Roy, that's some construction you got going on there mate! If that don't keep the pesky cockatoos out them I'm not sure anything will.

Great series of 'how-to' images - keep em coming.

[Dave]

It great and rather inspiring to read about your stirling work on your railway so far!

I like the superelevation on the curves. I'm planning to do a little of that myself to counteract my tighter-than-ideal curves, but I'm having to wait for slightly more clemant weather before I can begin construction. Oh well.

[cleanerg6e]

G'day fellers, yes Mick we've had great flocks of cockatoos again this year and because I now have covers on the railway that I've constructed so far it's kept them off. Even they can't lift the covers to get at the bonded joints. On the inside of the covers I have sprayed an outdoor insecticide as they are a haven for Red Back and Funnel Web spiders. Two spiders you want as little to do with as possible. The Red Back will give you a nasty bite that hurts like hell, and if it bites a small child will kill them. The Funnel Web spider is deadly especially the female. If bitten by her you have about 45 minutes to get to a hospital to receive a shot of anti venom and if you don't your dead simple as that. When her mate "gives her one" he has to get away quick smart because she turns round and bites him which kills him and she then eats him. Hardly seems all the trouble of courting her in the first place.

In the photo of the canted curves you can see on the spacer wood what looks like black tape. It's actually a rubber strip that comes in various widths and is used to put on the walls of brick garages so you don't chip the paint off your car doors when you open them. I has a paper like backing on one side and I found if I removed that backing it glued itself to the grey painted tops. So I now leave the back on and the backing that I did remove I had to brush with baby powder to counteract the gluing tendencies of the rubber. I use baby powder on my 16 ton mineral wagons which I mix with various shades of Humbrol matt enamels to give a crusty look to the under frame.

It was a beautiful day yesterday and I got some more track laid and wired up. Today it's overcast although I can now work in 40+ degree heat as I bought a 3m X 3m gazebo, what an odd name. I always thought that gazebo was a sound produced by hay fever sufferers. The gazebo is also big enough to park my highly polished pride and joy under when I'm making board frames in the garage.

Roy.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Guest