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New Garden Railway


44725
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Hi all, I am actively planning a new 00 gauge garden railway in our rear garden, which is 11m long and 6.5m wide The family has been in the house for nearly 20 years and the previous owners had the graden landscaped and a wall built around the lawn to support the flower beds. On Good Friday morning whilst sitting out in the sunshine it occured to me that this would be an ideal location for a double track railway. It seems to be level which would suit model locomotives. The wall is curved throughout its length and there is a patio area at the opposite end from the house - the fence here has a gate into the school field behind.

I propose a double track circuit. There will be a 2 track through station plus 2 through roads at the far end and a 5 or 6 track terminal station at the house end. I am not sure if I will build any intermediate stations/halts. I am impressed with Mick's 12 coach trains - I am hoping that I will be able to adopt a similar approach.

I propose to use fibre glass for the trackbed with the Peco Code 100 set into fibre glass filler to mimic ballast. The two station areas will also be on fibreglass "boards". I want to design for this to allow removal at the far end for family parties in the garden. At the house end, the station will be in three sections with the centre section removable to allow access to the garden when the railway is not operational. I propose to have a double track triangle to allow trains in/out of the terminal station without reversing. Where the main line crosses the entrance to the garden I propose a viaduct which will be in two parts and hinged like a gate. the track is about 350mm above the grass at this location. The railway infrastructure will be entirely external - I do not have a shed to store equipment and rolling stock.

Noting comments here - I think that trains will be stored in "cassettes" for easy transfer to/from the railway - see "Newhaven Town" Railway Modeller May 2011 - the acrylic train-safe items on page 65a of the same edition seem attractive but oh so expensive. So much for now. I have seen all the tips and advice posted here and this going to be very useful. I have some basic questions:

1. The top of the existing wall is nominally 95/98mm wide which i could extend to around 105/110mm. Is this sufficient width for a double track bearing in mind the inside is soft (i.e. plants and soil) but the outside has vertical drop of 200 - 350mm onto the grass and lower narrow border?

2. With an overall main line length of 2 x 35m plus station areas how many DCC boosters & transformers will be needed? and

3. Has anyone had any experience of using fibreglass to construct a garden railway?

I have started planning and have drawn out some scale drawings (I am a civil engineer by profession) and "bush" clearing and moss removal has started. I have been taking some pictures. Any observations will be gratefully received.

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Hi 44725, I'm Roy from the other side of this planet of ours. I too thought my plot of land had a mild slope but it turned out to be a major slope. So check your levels. If you want to run long trains such a 12-14 coach passenger and 60 wagon coal trains, it's best to have as very few if any gradients and if you must have gradients make them extremely gentle say 1 in 200 or a 1cm rise every 2m. A Bachmann 16 ton mineral wagon on it's own may seem very light in weight, but put 50 together and it's quite a weight. In your photo of the Black 5 and DMU I guess you want a garden level line and if that's so don't build it too close to ground level as unlike the larger scales OO trains don't like even the tiniest bit of debris on the track. So build it a couple of feet above ground level. My own railway is a high level line as the slope on my block is too severe to have a ground level line.

On the DCC front I have around 650m of track and only have the booster that's in the command station. More boosters are needed if you are going to have a lot of trains running at once. The booster problem will be easily rectified as your trains will start to slow down the further you get away from the command station. If you have 20 locos on your line BUT only two are running then the 5amp booster in the command station should be ample. If you have all 20 locos operating at once then you will need extra boosters. When using bus wiring I suggest using 2.5mm stranded cable and 1mm solid copper for "droppers" from rail side to bus cable. Don't rely on the fish plates to conduct current as they'll soon get dirt in them and your trains will stutter to a halt So bond all rail joints and I use 1mm solid copper wire soldered to the outside of the rails. I always bond rail joints as I lay the track and just look at bonding as another part of track laying. But there's nothing better than making a start. Your bound to make mistakes ( we all do ) but once you've got a few feet of track down and wired up and seeing a train running on a line YOU built in the great outdoors, you'll want to press ahead with more construction.

I wish you all the best with your efforts.

Roy.

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Welcome 44725, another garden railway in the making, brilliant!

Looking forward to seeing it take shape in the coming months.

Can't really offer any advice on the questions you posted, but fibreglass... are you sure?

Sounds as though it would be very time consuming and messy to me, especially setting the track into filler. But maybe you know better being a civil engineer.

I can recommend real ballast and floor polish, it seems very durable.

Your garden looks a good shape for a railway and the cassette idea is a good one, something that I have thought of adopting on my railway. The cassettes will need to be quite long though.... still thinking about it. :)

Hope to see many more postings from you on here.

Good luck, Ian

PS Has the proposed railway got a name yet? :)

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Looking forward to seeing this develop too. The existing wall bordering the lawn looks to be at an ideal height for the railway but like Ian, I'm not so sure about the use of fibreglass filler for setting the trackbed in to. There again I'm not so sure I understand exactly what fibreglass filler is so perhaps you can enlighten me/us further? Where the ground is close to the track level on my layout, I have found that falling rain can throw up a large amount of fine particles of soil/grit which needs clearing away before running can commence.

Roy appears to have covered the explanation behind the requirements of a booster and although I don't claim to be fully aware my first thoughts were that it would only be required if you were planning to operate more than 3-4 trains at any one time. I can run 4 trains at once without any noticeable problems. Ensuring that you have continuity between every section of track by bonding all rail joins and by adding additional feeds to distant sections or by supplying feeds from a powerbus to every track section will ensure you have no problems with voltage drop or the like.

It sounds like you've done a lot of forward planning and thinking this through. There are several ideas and plans that I'm looking forward to reading more about and although I haven't seen the RM article, the use of cassettes was something I had thought about myself. If there's a way to successfully use them for 11-12 coach trains then I'll have to take another look.

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Thank you chaps for your replies. I have noted all the advice. I was going to bond the rail joints anyway in the manner shown on Mick's pictures but now I have the size of cable - thanks.

I will try to borrow a dumpy level from the office to check the levels all the way round. I will get our youngest son to be the "chain" boy! There is no much time available in the next two weeks due to music and holiday commitments so external work will start in earnest in June - weather permitting.

The cassettes for the train sets will probably accommodate 6 carriages - this gives a length of 6 x 256mm = 1600mm (allowing for couplings etc. This length should be managable to carry and store. I have yet to make a short mock up but one thing I want to try is to install a thin rubber pipe around the interior which can be inflated to hold everything in place whilst cassette is moved. The sort of rubber pipe that we used to have in the chemistry labs at school comes to mind with a little hand held bulb to inflate and a release valve.

I will start a mock up of the track bed which can be done in the garage using a few decorative bricks from the wall. For this I will buy a few short lengths of cheap straight track; real ballast and floor wax for the exercise. I will take some pictures for your comments and observations.

Enough for now,

Once again many thanks,

Nick

44725

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The inflatable tube thing sounds very interesting, looking forward to see how that develops.

Re ballast, make sure you get real granite ballast as some makes are made from all sorts of thinks like ground up nut shells! This tends to float around when you add whatever you use as adhesive.

Ian.

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  • 1 year later...

Dear All, Thank you for all your comments to my last post back in May 2011. I am a civil engineer by profession so I had to address some basic fundamentals. Much research was carried out so nothing much tangible happened until late Summer 2012. I am posting now to update on progress.

My plans originally have been drastically amended. I wanted to use a fibre glass and resin track support but after creating a trial 300mm section I calculated that I would need several large drums of resin and acres of fibre material - this was too much like an industrial process. So a search was made for a replacement material with the inherent strength and characteristics of plywood but with the required durability. I settled on Stokbord which is made from recycled plastic. Primarily intended for livestock; farming and stables use, I ordered 2 x 12mm sheets and 2 x 6mm sheets, each 2.44m x 1.22m. These are now being cut up to form the track bed throughout the garden. Currently I have a continuous board some 53ft (15.6m) in length.

The main section is 24ft in length sitting on the patio at the far end of the garden. This will be the site of a two platform through station with two bay platforms end to end on one side. There will be a two track by-pass for through trains. The three sections will be bolted down but will be removable for major events in the garden such as a party or major gardening activities. I have provided some photographs of this board. 

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Some good work there Nick, thanks for posting the update and photos.

That 'stockboard' stuff sounds interesting. Sounds ideal in fact, the thing that worries me about plastic is expansion and contraction, have you looked into that?

Ian R

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Dear All,

Thanks for all your comments. I have made further progress in cutting out the "boards" for the track. I have uploaded two videos to You Tube, basically showing track laid out but not secured. I have been able to run a few trains on this track. The link is

I hope you find it interesting Nick 44725

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Nice work Nick and good to see something running at an early stage even if the track isn't secured in its final position yet. I take it there is still some work to do in levelling the boards? Looks like you've got one or two little dips along the way that will need easing out.

You've certainly got a decent running length if the video is anything to go by - how far will the track eventually extend along the opposite end of the garden?

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The level wrinkles are because the bricks are not yet levelled or mortared. The plan is to cut out all boards then rebuild wall. I have annual leave booked over Easter for this task. The current length is 26 yards. There are perhaps another 10 yards or so for the main line. Then there is the triangular junction and the terminal station. Cheers Nick 44725

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