Addlestone Parkway - Phase 1 is now complete

[Howard]

Hello everyone,

Back in 2012 I said I would build a garden railway and set about things at quite a pace. The idea was awfully simple, a ground level OO gauge garden railway set in the diesel era using DC power and Hornby/Lima locomotives.

The circuit around the garden was to be around 200 metres with a branch line of about 60 metres or so.

Well, what a difference two years can make.

The main circuit is half built. In fact, about 120 metres of double track was laid and has trains on it regularly. It has tunnel underneath the fish pond filters and runs west on the south fence to a three lane fiddle yard that lives in one of my stone outbuildings. In the other direction it heads for the corner shed and then back out to 'tropics'. The run at a scale speed of 80 mph takes three minutes or so.

However, I decided to build a shorter circuit to get trains running in a loop sooner which would also help keep the track clean. The short circuit is around 70 metres and uses about 40 metres of the main circuit. This circuit is now complete and trains are running...well they were until the rain came. Building of the main circuit will continue through the winter. The building of the branch line will start in the spring of next year.

I realised that to have full length trains my motive power plan needed a review. Only the really good Hornby and Lima loco's survived the resulting cull and more Bachmann stock was introduced. This also began a serious addiction to Class 55's...would drugs have been cheaper. One of the 55's arrived with a fitted DCC decoder which opened up the next challenge. To DCC or not to DC...that is the question. The answer was easy. One bus not four, slow speed control, lights and all sort of stuff. Dead easy! Er...but the locos are not DCC ready somebody advised. So, Addlestone Model Centre converted all of them and fitted chips. The entire fleet is now DCC.

I hope to hold an open day in September as part of MacMillan's wonderful coffee mornings initiative and will invite anyone to come along and run their DCC trains...in return for a small donation of course. My wife is eight months pregnant and the weather is bot being nice so there is some risk here.

I will post photos shortly but please look at the web site http://www.addlestoneparkway.co.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and you will see what has been keeping me out of the house...and the pub

Thanks for reading.

Howard

[traingeekboy]

I did not see a garden railway in that site. How about posting some garden pics here?