Andrew

If you're going for telegraph poles, Mick, they would be better if glued into place. I haven't done that as there's not enough space on my track base (got to allow for double tracking in due course), but the result is that sometimes it's too much effort to get them out and plant them before a photo session, so sometimes you see them...

Here are few photos from last weekend of the N Class engine. Dorking would have been familiar territory for the Ns latterly: From Wikipedia: "The N class was used to haul services over most of the SECR network and became a familiar sight on the difficult cross-country route between Tonbridge and Reading, on which the steep gradients had taxed the company's 4-4-0 and 0-6-0 designs. The success of the 2-6-0 in traversing this route was due to their higher-capacity tapered boilers that produced an ample supply of steam, and the small 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) driving wheels that delivered considerable tractive effort when climbing gradients such as the 1 in 100 between Gomshall and Shalford."

Those are nice videos, Steve, well demonstrating the tight clearances you've managed to thread the spur through. And I'm pleased to see you've got your priorities right (after all, we wouldn't want the car to suffer!):

New engines come rarely to the Dorking Garden Railway. An Ivatt 2-6-0 tender loco has been visiting for the past year courtesy of friend Robert, and he had noted that what the layout really needed was a Southern Mogul, preferably an N Class of the sort that used to haul the North Downs passenger service in its final years of steam. Without a model of suitable period currently available, this seemed like a difficult ask, but I had reckoned without Robert's persistence. He eventually phoned to say he'd found and bought a new N Class in BR early livery, and did I want it? Originally designed by the SE&CR in 1917, it's a handsome little beast and, having spent more than a decade asleep in its box between being manufactured and delivered to the DGR, seemed glad at last to show its paces with a recently expanded rake of green coaches. It runs well and seems very much at home in Dorking. The picture here shows number 31862 posed with Robert's own Mogul, LMS-designed Ivatt number 43018 (which, as he points out, is arguably one of the ugliest engines ever to run in Britain). Unfortunately the camera has captured a dreadful breach of operating regulations in the form of a fuel tank wagon coupled directly to a steam loco. Now who let that happen?

Dear ba14eagle, That sounds like possibly a very sad end to what has been a superb and widely-acclaimed garden railway (and associated videos) of very high quality. Through that Trowbridge garden you gave inspiration to me before I started my railway - and no doubt to many others who have watched those great videos. We have to accept that nothing lasts forever, especially garden railways, but YouTube videos do seem to have a life of their own. Thanks for sharing all those great episodes which resulted from your hard work and creativity. If Hampton Field really has reached the end of the line, then that is sad, but railways are certainly secondary in importance compared to the people who build them. So I hope, ba14eagle, that you are soaring somewhere where you won't have to worry about leaves on the line.

I had a day out last week at the Great Cockcrow Railway - a 7.25 inch miniature railway in Surrey which has a complex and fully signalled layout running through wooded countryside, all very pleasant. Some fine locomotives, including this Stanier Pacific, "City of London": Details of the railway are here: http://www.cockcrow.co.uk/ and my short video is here: For those who can, it's well worth a visit

That's a helpful and fascinating account, Steve, and you almost make it possible to follow the complexity of a layout design exercise that resembles 3D chess. From the account, it seems that the project is probably completed, so we look forward to the full visual evidence emerging in due course. And I'm reassured to see from the photos so far that you seem to have abandoned OSB as a trackbase in favour of good old timber -- that should certainly help the durability (if the car doesn't rust away first). Best wishes for the road ahead!

On second thoughts, and in homage to the renowned railway photographers of the 1950s, and recalling the scarcity of colour film in those days, those photos may look better in black and white... Throstlebeck Sidings Northdown Sidings

Nice weather on a long weekend after getting back from holidays, so just the time to dust off the railway and run some trains. By the way, there's a 4 minute video of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway made on our travels during what was supposed to be a strenuous country walk but which somehow turned into a railway afternoon, at: While on that walk along Eller Beck in what we thought was the middle of nowhere, we really did stumble upon a model railway dealer situated in farm premises - The Model Centre http://www.themodelcentre.com/ - who invited us to inspect their stock and showed off some impressive results of their weathering service for models. The weathering can be customised to your requirements; well worth looking at. As for my operating session, here are a couple of the resulting pictures (the video as always takes longer). First, a scene caught on camera around 1954 at Throstlebeck Sidings in the West Riding (now called West Yorkshire for those unfamiliar with previous English county names) with a Jubilee on a London-bound train passing a BR Standard tank in the sidings. Then, much further south, passing Northdown Sidings near Dorking in fact, we see a Southern Region passenger train in the charge of a BR Standard Class 4 loco.

Tony, Those are great shots of your Ind Pac set, thanks. Most impressive, and nice looking locos. If I understand correctly, you were just doing a static pose on the club layout as you weren't able to run there. But it does look like a great setup, even without stretching to the 26 cars consist. I'm wondering if that is you that we can see on the edge of one of the photos. I'll go and have a look at your other pics in your gallery/album. Good luck, A.

Thanks, Mick. Yes, trying to haul trains of 15 or more coaches was fun but fraught. The unintended trackbase undulations don't help things stay coupled together as they exacerbate the problem with those annoying differences in coupling height between different makes or vintages of coach, so that often only one of the two Tensionlock hooks is holding. And of course coaches with couplings which extend as the bogies swivel tend to misbehave when they are part of a heavier load, so one trick is to marshall them towards to back of the train, thereby minimising the tension and the sideways pull on their couplings. Altogether, what you see in the video - 15 bogies, I think - was the maximum we could manage. However, a determined effort to run a longer train would probably work, providing enough time was spent on matching couplings etc as discussed. Maybe next time...

Your new point motor looks great, Mick. A practical inspiration for the rest of us. Mind you, as a non-DCC person, I did quite like Weekender Steve's lolly-stick technology - much simpler to follow. Anyway, first I need to organise the necessary cranks and linkage for my pair of crossover points, then we can see about what might be easiest for applying some movement. Keep up the good work - while the weather holds.

Two recent visitors have brought Great Western/Western Region stock to the railway and this appears in a 5-minute video here: Ian's treasures included this super-powered Network SouthEast set with two Class 50s from the Danes Wood Railway, with "Sir Edward Elgar" piloting in its 1984 replica GWR livery:

Ian, It was good to see you and the visiting locos on the Dorking Garden Railway last week. There's a five-minute video of your and other visiting locos here: and here's a pic of your nice saddle tank "Annie Maggie May":

Instead of relying on the blades of insulfrog points to provide electrical contact, I solder two sets of wires underneath each point before installing. The first set connects each blade to its stockrail (and so needs to allow for movement) and the second set connects each rail between the blade and the frog to its adjoining 'through' rail. This means that each rail is fully connected so current flows across both roads of the point, so continuity seems good. The downside is that any current switching, for example to match the point switching, has to be provided separately.

You'd better take care if you start running flat cars with B737 fuselages on board. This was the scene recently after a derailment somewhere in Montana...

Tony, Let's not get cut up about scissors or crossovers. And there's many a slip...! However, my understanding is that single or double slips are, if you like, variants of the diamond crossing where two tracks cross one another, with the extra characteristic of being able to route trains from one of the diagonal tracks to the other. A scissors crossover is where two otherwise independent tracks are linked by pairs of points - it's like a facing crossover and a trailing crossover placed together with a diamond crossing (but not a slip!) in the centre. So with a scissors crossover, two trains can run simultaneously on the separate tracks (provided of course that the points are set correctly), whereas you can't do that on a slip. Do you get my point?! Looking forward to seeing your layout developing further. Good luck with the spiral.

Those maps are really helpful, Steve, for those of us who've been puzzling over your complex, multi-tiered layout, so that we can now see how it all hangs together. The schematic is particularly helpful in clarifying the operational aspects, and I can now see that your scissors crossover offers an elegant solution to a common problem. I had been toying with having two separate crossovers (facing and trailing) to link my (potential) two circuits but, as you so helpfully point out, a scissors arrangement provides the unique extra option of routeing one train round both circuits indefinitely. It took me a while to work out why the scissors is better than two separate crossovers - it's some property of the geometry that I still can't quite put my finger on, but your diagram shows it very clearly. Thanks for the enlightenment; I'll have to design something similar for my layout in due course.

Ian, Many thanks for inviting me over this afternoon to run trains on the Danes Wood Railway. You've made fine progress on the line, and the new viaduct looks stunning as it leaps across the middle of your garden. Although I didn't get round to counting the arches, it must be in the same league as Ribblehead. Completing a continuous run is surely one of the defining milestones of a garden railway. It was good to be able to run my only chipped loco, the 9F, on a DCC layout for once – it hasn't enjoyed such slow speed running before. Perhaps this is an avenue I need to explore, although chipping all my heritage locos would be a challenge, so perhaps there's scope for having two control systems available. Your remote control by iPhone and tablet is definitely an attractive proposition. Your wood ants climbing frantically along the moving trains were reminiscent of a Keystone Cops film. All part of the rich tapestry of garden railways – as I suppose was running your Class 20 off a scale 100ft sheer drop when we hadn't noticed the linking section of track wasn't in place. Very slapstick. Hope those buffers cement back alright and there's no worse damage. It's a pity I didn't bring a proper camera with me, but I've had a go at stringing together the video clips shot on my mobile phone. May not be quite my usual standard, but at least you and others can see the result: BTW, at one point on one of the reverse curve shots the train wallows in and out of an interesting dip in the track - presumably a result of your falling tree episode.

Another sunny Sunday afternoon, and Colin arrived with a bagful of locos rescued from decades in his loft. We set them out and got them going. The two minute video is at: And here are a few photos, although the "Rocket" only appears in the video: [image]2585[/image] [image]2583[/image]

Today's 'action' sees an up express on the East Coast Main Line, probably a bit north of Peterborough and bound for King's Cross, being hauled by Deltic (later Class 55) No. D9002 "The King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry". As so often on the DGR, the period is some time in the early 1960s before the locos turned blue and the coaches went blue and grey. D9002 has been bought from the "Great British Locomotives Collection" and as such arrived stuffed and mounted on a plinth. Despite not being able to turn a moulded-solid wheel, she looks passable - as long as you don't look too closely at the detailing and the paint job. Just imagine the roar of those Napiers!

Good work, Griff. I'm envious of your 'ballast', which makes the track look great. And those platforms effectively convey an impression of slight decay and disrepair which can be all too prevalent on some real railway systems. With that station building you'll certainly capture a continental European atmosphere to match your Italian(?) stock. Hope you enjoy your running - and give us some more photos.

Yesterday was my first running session with phase two of the layout in operation, i.e. the sidings and headshunt. A friend came over with some coaches and goods wagons to augment my fleet. The new layout enabled us to operate with several locos on the track and to rediscover the joys of shunting (which weren't available with the previous single track circuit layout). The sidings and headshunt are each long enough for a loco and nine coaches. Although each siding can be electrically isolated to hold a train (sorry, no DCC here yet), yesterday's session made clear that what's also needed is a push button operated loco isolating section at the end of each siding, so that a train can be drawn in by one engine and then taken out by another. Still, the sun shone as the photos below show, and the birds sang as may become apparent once the video emerges... [image]2524[/image]

It's all looking great, Ian - videos and photos. And the disappearing engine could influence a whole new genre of garden railway videos. But are there any pictures to complement the one on 29 April to show the complete viaduct in place please?

Just managed to complete phase two of the railway - a headshunt and two sidings off the continuous circuit. Eventually one siding and the headshunt can be expanded into full double tracking of the main line with the other siding becoming a loop, but, as we all know, talk is cheap. Visually, Bamboo Curtain Straight will never be the same again. I quite liked its previous uncluttered appearance, which could represent anything from the West Coast main line to the Australian outback. Now it may have more of an emphatically railway character. The dead frog points, as expected, don't seem that great for some locos at slow speeds, but live frogs are a step too far for me at present. After 18 months of relatively trouble-free running on the phase one, no-points layout, it will be interesting to see how different maintenance will be with three points to consider - and to polish carefully. Before that, I should try to install some manual point control systems. Here are the photos. First an aerial view of the new layout looking towards the sidings. Note how the decking boards have shrunk to create a daylight gap that wasn't there when the line was built. This is a view towards the headshunt, with a tank loco pausing between shunting moves, safely isolated from the main line. Finally we see the buffers at the ends of what, today, look like carriage sidings, as a light engine, an AL6 electric, glides mysteriously past on the main line. BTW, as it's an old Tri-ang Hornby, its wheels are too coarse to pass happily through my new points - one downside to the new order.