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Paul Scrivens 06th November 2011

Hello ‘Everyone’

My Garden Railway.

Due to my posting ebay auction model railway related stuff that has been posed on my garden railway, some ‘buyers’ or not, have requested further information on the layout with one gentleman suggesting I post some material on this site. Well here goes.

The usual ‘rules’ apply in that I am not the worlds best at this technology thing so hopefully I can get it to work okay. This therefore is the introduction I put together for interested parties, which I figured would do for you all.

I have been looking into ways of providing interested parties with a sophisticated book like presentation chronicling the years I have been putting the layout together. In the end I found that this was going to end up as one of those promise all but deliver nothing, ‘armchair’ presentations if I didn’t sit down and make a start – much like that one big railway project eh?

I therefore decided to direct my energies to this simple, ‘serialised’ approach. I say serialised on account of the fact that experience has taught me that whilst I am able to ‘send’ many photo’s, the receiving ability of same at t’other end often gets defeated by the volume so I keep it down to around a dozen or so pictures at a time.

I hope all of this is satisfactory for you and the following narrative and pictures help you with your own plans or developments. There is still much more to be done as far as the outside work is concerned but now that trains can be run the last three to four years work has been worthwhile.

I say three to four years and this relates to the actual focus on the railway build programme, there were many more years along the way that plans had been formulated, jobs to go to, children growing up and house moves to be accommodated, etc, etc. Whilst I have been collecting and storing model railway items for many a year, this is the first actual layout I have been able to put together. My preference has always been to watch the trains go by as opposed to small shunting operations although I can get loads of enjoyment from all manner of layouts. Trains in, as close as possible, scale length proportions being the best but with some track laid out on the bedroom floor the front of the train sits very close to the rear of the train……………….

Having looked at, read about and admired many of the pioneer garden railway layouts from Jack Rays ‘Crewchester’ to Trevor Jones lovely layout, visited Bryan Burchills, in Daventry, (when it was ‘oo’ gauge), more recently, the Selby Garden Railway on YouTube, I felt the only way to go was outdoors. In 1997 we moved to our present house which although not too big, has a 48’ x 30’ garden.

Over the years as we got more and more settled, ideas of preparing the loft for use as a railway room and or using the garden developed. It was ultimately decided to use the garden and I was ‘gifted the garage as my railway room, henceforth known as, the train shed.

Normal development ensued as far as the garden was concerned as ‘the domestic authorities have very much a large say in what was required, well ahead of any idea of railways. It wasn’t until we acquired the waterfall feature that the first consideration of a railway came into play. Installing this I had to ensure that the railway passed beneath this one way or another. The plan I had in mind swung the tracks around the pond, that was already there, and over same – I hadn’t quite figured out how and where at that point but the waterfall needed to go in and accommodations needed to be made.

It wasn’t until around the middle of 2007, when again good fortune struck as a load of rockery boulders became available, necessary to face off the proposed structure(s), around the garden, that the build began.

The plan is a figure of eight laid over itself which gives the impression of a 4 track main line until, over on the train shed side it separates and crosses itself for the return. It is about a 140 yard circuit and scales out at just over 6 miles per full circuit. On one face of the garage I have a small 2 track terminus which, via the main line accesses a branch across the other side of the garden which eventually brings it under the main line, across the pond and up to a terminus station below the level of the main loop around the pond – this is great and necessary, for the point to point alternative operational interest.

The layout is wired primarily for DCC with every piece of track connected to the main ‘bus’ but 12v analogue operation is possible and is used but when one loco runs, so do any others on the track as I have not built in any isolated sections. It will interest you to know that despite the length, the 12v train(s) run very well, hauling some good trains, with little or no power drop to have to deal with. The long gradient does require that I ease the regulator up a bit when eight or more bogies are hooked onto the drawbar.

Gradients on the main line are no more than 1 in 85, the branch is down to 1in 65 at it steepest but the biggest train allowed on that line is a 4, maybe 5 coach special, 4-6-0 hauled.

Using DCC I have had no trouble with a Duchess, Princess or Britannia loco, straight out of the box as it were, hauling a 21 coach train at a scale 55/60 mph – one likes to experiment eh?

At that speed a full circuit can take 6 minutes or so but I can leave a slow freight to take 20 minutes to complete the circuit.

Construction of the baseboards is as follows.

I was fortunate again along the way as my neighbour had 8 x 8’ long x 4” x 4” recycled solid polythene/plastic extruded fence posts that he never got around to using, which he let me have, these being stored as neatly as possible (again with the authorities in mind!), for a few years before use. These have formed the main support posts as can be seen in the pictures. They are not concreted in but just rest on a, (broken), paving slab laid flat in the bottom of a hole backfilled with sand, stones and soil. These will just lift out should I ever need to move them. The longitudinal timber ties hold them together but they are also spaced in accordance with the gradient requirements allowing the top of the post to provide me with the datum line. Small lengths of 1” x ¾” are then spaced out along the length and screwed down before the baseboard is laid on top. I have used OSB board ¾” thick which was left over after some temporary platforms were built over the conservatory to allow window fitters access. Whilst these have proved acceptable I wouldn’t buy them on purpose to do this job, the favourite choice would be ¾” plywood. These were cut to shape accordingly with no curve being smaller radius than 42”, (behind the shed), covered in roofing felt self adhesive underlay and topped off with fine grade roofing felt, all stuck down with the cold adhesive. Retaining walls are good old Slaters and or whatever, as are the platform surfaces. The latter have not weathered too well though, not sticking to the plywood bases and I shall resort to cement platforms as the pictures show, on the main terminus but use cut down plastic sectional pieces for the train shed terminus.

Much remains to be done on the outside with signalling, point operation and facing structures etc. For the former I shall use Mercontrol wire in tube keeping the electrics outside down to a minimum. The main control plug in, is below the track where the ebay items were presented but I have 4 more satellite sockets for digital operation spread around the pond side of the garden for different/closer operational as favoured, the last of these is over the prescribed distance away from the main controller and is powered. This is possible as I also ran a 13a ring main around the track circuit – fully protected of course.

The second build phase will be to take the tracks into the train shed, which from the level they are at in the garden, there will be eight or ten holding loops/stock storage lines, (4 each way), and it will run twice around on a gradient, bringing the line up to a more comfortable operating level which will complete the plan by entering a representation of Stafford station during the 50’s, my train spotting days. The north end approaches can be pretty much on target as far as some kind of authenticity is concerned but the south end will have to curve out of the train shed in a 180 degree loop to bring it back around into the train shed, hence the revised name of ‘Stafford (Birch Avenue)’, the street where I live. I shall ensure this has a continuous loop which will allow bad weather operation to go ahead without the trains travelling outside.

I hope the following pictures are of interest to you and that it helps develop your own ideas. Any comments are welcome as are questions you may have on specifics – if I can answer them, I will.

Enjoy the pictures, (if I can get them uploaded) – oh and tell me to stop if you’ve had enough!!

Kind regards, Paul Scrivens.

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Hi Paul,

A warm welcome! Shame you have not been able to get any pictures posted yet, I had a few problems when I joined the forum but Mick soon sorted things out. I'd love to help, but not being that technical when it comes to PCs I'll leave that to Mick :)

From your description your railway sounds superb, do you have any clips on youtube? I like many dreamed of having somewhere to run my trains, this year a combination of my eldest son being old enough to enjoy them and finally making an effort saw the Hazelnut Railway born. Around 25 years in the planning but worth the wait.

Not much progress on mine due to the weather, if we get some more dry days I will be out having a play though!

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Hi Paul and welcome to the forum.

That's some introduction to your layout and like everyone else I'm now eager to see the accompanying (or perhaps not) photographs.

Let's go back to the forum help thread and see if we can get you sorted!

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