Innehållsförteckning för February 2024 från Garden Rail

BRING ON THE NEWBIES I recently found myself in conversation with someone senior at Hornby. He was explaining how he sees the challenges of bringing people into the hobby, and then retaining them. Yes, you can hand over a train set, but what happens next? How do you explain the wonderful range of possibilities from building scenery to electronics, making buildings, learning to operate realistically – the list goes on? In the larger scale, we have things a little easier. You can start with an easy-to-assemble laser-cut kit, such as the contractors loco on page 12 of this issue. £60 isn’t chicken feed, but it’s a lot less than buying ready-to-run in OO gauge, and the finished model comes with a good dose of ‘I built that’ feeling. This might…

Last year, when looking for a project, I bought a Box Cab Loco kit from Houston Gate Loco Works. This turned out to be a nice, small, and easy-to-build kit. This year, looking for something new to build, I returned to the HGLW website and this time selected David’s contractors loco kit. This kit is a bit more complicated than the other, and has required more thought into its build, but was nonetheless, an enjoyable project. The kit comes as four sheets of MDF, plus a bag of motor, wheels, battery holder, bearings, etc. The downloadable instruction sheets, there are nine pages, which I thought were a little sparse on words, relying mainly on photos of an actual kit under construction. I started off by building the basic inner and…

It was my aunt’s Standard Eight that let us down, somewhere along Edgeware Road, North London. The car had broken down. This was not an uncommon occurrence in those days, some 70 years ago. I would have been about five years old. For some reason, on this dark rainy night, the family took to a tram. It would have been in the early 1950s, so towards the end of the tram era. It was, I recall, the violent swaying and the noise that made an impression on me. Since then, I have only taken a passing interest in trams and have, since retirement, concentrated on model railways. However, about three months ago, at a fellow railway modeller’s house, I was inspired to have a go at building a tram. He…

Write in and share your ideas with other enthusiasts Letters are welcomed on any aspect of large scale railway modelling. Please e-mail the Editor: phil.parker@warnersgroup.co.uk or post to The Editor, Garden Rail Magazine, Warners Group NPublications, West Street, Bourne, Lincolnshire, PE10 9PH Galloping Geese The article ‘A rail-mounted wooden truck’ in the December 2023 issue prompted me to write to you. This is my kit-bash of a ‘galloping Goose’ in G scale. My project started out with a Lindberg plastic kit for a Mac dump truck, I believe in G scale, I can’t remember for sure. As you can see in the photo, I used a freight truck at the front of the truck and a powered two-axle truck from another source. The truck is towing an unpowered hand car…

GARDEN Rail NEXT MONTH On sale February 8th Garden railways are good for you? When a doctor told Michael Duffy to get a hobby, the result was his amazing layout, Lazy Grange Bay 3. Also, in our BUMBER MARCH issue: • Midlands Garden Rail exhibition show guide • Alan Bird builds a working diesel electric shunter • plus, much more……

I suppose my interest in having a model railway outdoors stems from the fact that, for many years, my family lived with my Granddad, who had a very large garden, without a model railway. Despite some subtle hints, my youthful aspirations were never realised. Nevertheless, railway modelling indoors was encouraged and supported, and many layouts have followed over the years in 4mm scale, three of which reached the covers of national magazines. The desire to have a garden railway, however, never went away. The opportunity to fulfil my dreams came with retirement and the purchase of an Accucraft ‘Caledonia’ from Carnforth Models. Not only was this a beautiful model in its own right, but it gave impetus to the idea of having a garden railway based on one of my…

A vailable for some time, the Locobox range of locomotive cases are well-known. I have ended up with at least half a dozen, mostly having bought them with another second-hand loco. Many suppliers now offer a Locobox box as part of their package deal when you buy your shiny new loco. In a quirky reverse moment of fate, when I bought my new Roundhouse Bulldog 16mm loco at the 16mm Peterborough show in 2021, it came directly from Locobox stand, and, you guessed it, included one of its boxes to perfectly suit the loco. Adding things up, solid boxes are no-brainers. After all, we spend anywhere from £500 to several thousands of pounds on our shiny new locos, so it makes perfect sense to cocoon them in protective cases for…

Garden railways look so good when engines are run in the evenings at the height of summer. Long lazy evenings are very enjoyable, but at some point, everything has to be put away for the evening. I would not dare leave anything fragile out overnight. There are lots of cats in our neighbourhood, and the seagulls would have a wonderful time dive-bombing all the rolling stock. As the night falls, the tiny little LEDs in any rolling stock do not give enough illumination to safely walk up and down the garden path, so I have placed lamp posts to shine across them. I am more worried about dropping a loco than scraping my knees if I fall! These lamp posts were assembled from random lengths of copper tube and plumbing…

It’s no good I fell madly in love with ‘Rosie’, that is John Rogers’ rather different model of ‘Excelsior’, the famous Bagnall 0-4-2 wing tank locomotive. ‘Excelsior’ is famous for its role as the contractor’s engine on the Lynton and Barnstable railway. John’s model was bought on eBay and even the seller was not sure of its origin, but it seems to have all the hallmarks of Brian Clarke of Saltford Models. ‘Excelsior’ is like that; always a mystery. ‘Rosie’’s simple, if rather inaccurate charm includes a bright green and white colour scheme and simple slab structure, but this inaccurate simplicity appealed to me. Alas, John too is devoted to ‘Rosie’ but fortunately for me, I realised that I already had a model of ‘Excelsior’. It had been built in…

I’ve always had a liking for trams, and steam trams in particular. I own two, and when Mamod announced its Kitson a few months ago, I was tempted to purchase a third. Unfortunately, I found the Kitson’s 140mm width was too wide for parts of my garden layout. I still fancied having a third tram, which prompted me to consider having a go at building my own. Designing it myself would ensure it has the necessary dimensions to run on my railway, which also has steep gradients and tight curves. This meant the tram would have to be either geared, radio-controlled, or both. I opted for gears. Then, there was the question of what it should look like. After lengthy internet searches, I was no further forward, so decided to…

Let’s all be honest, how many of us have boxes full of UFOs (UnFinished Objects) taking up space in our chosen modelling room? I know I have my fair share awaiting their turn on the modelling bench. The subject for this article fell foul to this twice as far as I know. A good friend of mine offered me some bits and pieces recently as he was sure he would not get round to doing anything with them. Thinking the large bag just contained incomplete carriage body parts, I stored it away in my UFO box to be completed some other day sometime. That’s at least twice now the carriage has avoided the modelling bench. What I hadn’t realised was that hidden in the bag was an ideal carriage for…

ROUNDHOUSE ENGINEERING Linda Mk2 16mm scale By public demand, 2024 sees Roundhouse reintroduce one of the Penhyn ladies back to its locomotive range. ‘Linda’ was designed and built in 1893 by the Hunslet Engine Company for use on the Penrhyn Quarry Railway. She worked at the quarry until 1962 and then entered service on the Ffestiniog Railway very shortly after. A part of the Ffestiniog Railway has actually been named ‘Linda’s Leap’ where Linda jumped the tracks later in 1962. Despite this early setback, she has been a staple of the FR loco roster and has been through several conversions, alterations and rebuilds over the intervening decades. In 2021, her boiler certificate expired and she has once again been stripped down for another restorative overhaul. Roundhouse’s version of Linda represents…