Garden Rail July 2025

There’s a lot of technology in this issue. We see laser cutting in both Ben and Amy Buki’s WHR coach build and Alistair Snook’s steam tram. Then, I’m building a 3D-printed W&LR van, followed by Mark Thatcher taking on a Ruston build that includes a lot of parts made the same way. All this is lovely, but is it real modelling? What happened to whittling a piece of rolling stock from a bit of wood? Noodling around with bits of Plastikard to create a loco from scratch, or doing the same thing with repurposed motor oil cans, chosen because of the lovely flat metal sides? On the face of it, I can see how those (including me) who have spent years building up the skills and equipment to build things…

From an early age, I was surrounded by toy trains, which, wherever possible, I then tried to play with in the garden. Even back then, somehow in my mind, they looked better outside. Objectively, wooden toy train track doesn’t work better, or even at all, on a very lumpy lawn, however many times I tried to level the track with twigs and leaves. Neither did my mother’s O gauge Hornby tinplate clockwork trains, prone as they were to flying off at the corners even on a reasonably flat bedroom floor. What did look ‘right’ in my eyes was a 7 ¼” railway locally, trundling through an orchard and round the field, as did the Ffestiniog and Talyllyn railways on family holidays to Wales. And the Severn Valley Railway, where I…

This was the last of the ‘test’ items of rolling stock acquired for our 32mm project. We’d acquired slate wagons, flats, skips, a rather nice, if slightly pointless for our intended diesel-hauled, preservation-era layout, horse dandy, and a quarryman’s carriage. However, our little future passengers would perhaps need something a bit more luxurious than a mobile shed with no windows. There was also the issue that we needed something a bit bigger as a test-piece to future-proof the layout. Working out clearances, heights for a planned bridge or tunnel, where platform edges needed to sit, and distances between passing tracks meant we’d need a reasonably large piece of stock. Everything we’d bought so far was on the small side, and there was no sense in restricting ourselves if, at some…

According to Woodleigh’s website, when I assembled their open wagon kit, I said, “First impressions of Woodleigh Engineering’s Welshpool and Llanfair wagon kit is ‘Wow!’’. Will the follow-up match up to this? Again, first impressions are good. The kit is 3D printed in several different colours, which negates the need for painting, especially if you plan to run the model with RTR Accucraft rolling stock. The finished model feels like something plastic RTR for a fraction of the price. The doors slide, I’m not sure how useful a feature this is, but it’s fun, and the van is very well detailed. A total of 37 pages of instructions, downloaded from the website, lead the builder through the assembly process with both photos and exploded diagrams. A nice touch is an…

Garden Railway Specialists Open Day Date: 20/21 June, 2025 Venue: 6 Summerleys Rd, Princes Risborough, HP27 9DT Times: 10am to 4pm Web: www.grsuk.com HSBA Garden Railway Open Day Date: 9 August, 2025 Venue: St. Mary, Jersey, JE3 3DS Times: 10am to 5:00pm Web: www.hsbagardenrailway.com Yorkshire Garden Railway Show Date: 27 September, 2025 Venue: Barrow Hill Roundhouse Railway Centre, Campbell Drive, Barrow Hill, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, S43 2PR Times: 10am to 4:00pm Web: www.yorkshire.16mm.org.uk Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway Gala with 16mm Garden Railway Show Date: 30 September, 2025 Venue: Llanfair Leisure Centre, Llanfair Caereinion, Welshpool, SY21 0HW Times: 10am to 4:00pm Web: www.wllr.org.uk/events/steam-gala/ Midlands Model Engineering Exhibition Date: 16-19 October, 2025 Venue: Warwickshire Event Centre, A425, Southam Road, Leamington Spa, CV31 1FE Times: Thurs-Sat 10am to 4:30pm. Sun 10am to 4pm…

Recent plans to extend my outdoor railway to make a circuit of the garden meant that it now needed an inclined single-track viaduct to join the main, near-ground level, section to the shed, with a sizeable removable bridge midway to allow access to the rear of the plot. This required, for an overall length of 8m and height gain of 0.5m, a significant incline of 3.5 degrees in order to arrive at a level marshalling and maintenance area in the shed at around waist height. At first, this gradient seemed excessive but is actually realistic for prototype Swiss (adhesion) narrow-gauge, and is easily tackled by a Roundhouse live steamer. The removable aluminium bridge I describe here is highly simplified and could have been much more substantial and, for that matter,…