Innehållsförteckning för June 2024 från Garden Rail

This month, I take a look at Accucraft’s 13 ton Shay, and one of the first things I realise is how little I really know about running steam locomotives. OK, I can manage a simple 0-4-0, and to be fair, I am getting better - I’ve steamed at our club on days when no one else dares, and generally, it’s gone well, with locos puffing around the track. But, would I be able to diagnose and fix a blocked gas jet? Well, yes. But only because I spent some time with someone who showed me how to do it as part of the review. It’s not difficult, or at least isn’t on the Shay, but we all have to learn this stuff. It doesn’t matter what the topic, everyone has…

I am lucky to live within striking distance of Denver Sluice, where the Great River Ouse turns tidal and makes its way out to The Wash; a trip I have done on my own boat many years ago. In fact, the sluice is a confluence of five watercourses, and in the summer, boat-spotting is one of my favourite activities. In 1651, the first sluice was built across the river at Denver, by Dutch engineer, Cornelius Vermuyden. Had it not been for his labours, most of North and East Norfolk would still be underwater to this day, as a good part of this county is below sea level. Thanks to my love of all things nautical, when my friend John Candy presented me with all the files to 3D print a…

1 I felt the leg sections would benefit from a bit of surface detail. Fake joints between the pieces of wood are lightly cut with a fine saw. The cut is only a millimetre deep, but will show up after painting. Nail or bolt holes are added by poking the wood with a scriber. 2 The legs are clamped together with PVA glue, and then assembled onto the 4mm thick plywood platform surface. At 295mm by 112mm, it is a large area, and benefits from a bit of weight being placed on it while the glue dries. The platform top is 45mm high. 3 Moving on to the steps, these are 4mm plywood, so you need a fairly heavy craft knife to remove them from the fret. Working from the…

This Roundhouse Vale of Rheidol loco named ‘Owain Glyndwr’ is the most complex model I have, complete with working drain cocks and whistle. These are both controlled by the right stick on the transmitter. The left stick controls the speed and direction of the loco, so there is a lot going on here, and also a lot to go wrong. The drain cocks worked, but the whistle did not. I hear from Roundhouse this is a common problem for this loco, as if when laid up, the steam oil solidifies in the whistle pipe and blocks it. So, it needed to be unblocked. The first thing to do was to lubricate this whole assembly to try to free it up. That didn’t work, so next, I added more lube, and…

Trade information on new products for the garden railway modeller. If you are a trader with any new product, contact phil.parker@warnersgroup.co.uk. Please mention Garden Rail when contacting suppliers. AMAZING LITTLE TRAINS mXion MZSPro DCC Central Station Amazing Little Trains Ltd has announced that it is the sole UK importers of the mXion range of garden railway-designed products, including DCC control systems, upgrade/detailing/electronic devices and rolling stock. All mXion products are specifically designed for use with G and other large scale model railways. This means that its products can cope with the greater demands of running large railways both indoors and outside. The mXion MZSpro is a very powerful, and at the same time compact and easy-to-use, digital command station with an 8A performance spectrum. The MZSpro multi-train control speaks the…

The Cleobury Castle Light Railway (CCLR) is my second proper garden railway. The first was started in the 1990s and lasted until 2010, when a house move saw services withdrawn and the infrastructure removed, although much of it was saved and later recycled. I learned a lot from this first foray – how to do things well, and how not to do things in certain ways, and this has definitely helped with the creation of this, my current garden line, which started in early 2022, with trains first running in the summer of that year. It will be useful to first give an idea of the challenges presented by the new garden location, which will help explain the construction methods I deployed. As the name of the line implies, the…

Write in and share your ideas with other enthusiasts Letters are welcomed on any aspect of large-scale railway modelling. Please email the Editor: phil.parker@warnersgroup.co.uk or post to The Editor, Garden Rail Magazine, Warners Group Publications, West Street, Bourne, Lincolnshire, PE10 9PH. Bole Lasercraft Living Van Following on from the Jan 2024 article regarding the above, and subsequent discussions considering suitable traction engines, I found this one in a vintage/antique warehouse. It’s brand new, so there must be a number available. It’s one of those mass-produced tinplate models and has reasonable detail. I paid around £30. It’s posed here with a 16mm driver and appears to be reasonable scale. It’s weathered too. Worth looking out for on travels, especially at that price. Paul Abbott CDR Drewry Railcar Nice article in the…

Before building my second portable layout, I looked carefully at my first effort to consider those things that worked well, and those which didn’t. The layout needed to be set up and taken down quickly, and fit into my car easily, while providing interest for those who ran on it, or viewed it. I would keep the overall construction as before, using 5mm ply with strengthening pieces, and 7cm x 2cm timber for the ends, but needed to reconsider how to join the boards as using coach bolts and rail joiners proved quite awkward and time consuming. Also, the small sidings I put on the layout proved to just be parking spaces for unused stock and made some of the boards quite unwieldy. After some time investigating ways of joining…

This review really needs to start by reminding readers that your Editor is not that well versed in running small steam locomotives. Yes, I can get a simple 0-4-0 to head off around the track, and the more I do this, the better I become at operating the models, and adjusting to the conditions. However, Accucraft’s Shay is a bit different, so I’ve been learning as I go. The Prototype The 13-2 Class A straight boiler Shay locomotive was one of Lima’s industrial success stories, with virtually identical examples built for US and international industry and plantations lines. Orders were built for New York, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Alabama, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Washington State, Minnesota and Hawaii. In addition, exports were built for Queensland Australia, Japan, Puerto Rico and more. Despite…

The famous Willow Pattern plates, much loved by our grandparents, can nowadays be bought for a song in any junk shop. The pattern apparently depicts star-stuck Chinese lovers who are escaping from the girl’s aristocratic father by running over a stylised bridge. The father catches up with them, and the lovers choose to die together rather than be separated. Their spirits are depicted as two birds ascending to heaven. I had always wondered about this rather unlikely story, until at a boot sale, I came upon a rare Majolica willow pattern plate made by the famous and much-collected craft potter Doris Cliff. I handed over my 50 pence in anticipation of a considerable profit. Little is known of Doris except that she was the long-lost cousin of Claris Cliff. Doris’…

Incline planes and ropeways intrigued me when I was a child in the nineteen fifties. We lived in Gateshead and passed many pit villages, railways, and overhead ropeways, all doomed it turned out. But how did they work? Inclines also existed but were only glimpsed through car windows. In December ’21, I was in isolation for 10 days. In my office, I put a tabletop workspace together. Bernard Rockett’s Talyllyn drawings were to hand. The most interesting drawing at that moment was the incline wagon. I have built many square wagons, mostly from kits, but this provided a new challenge. I have seen a few examples built using resin bodies, but the thickness of the sides seemed too heavy. Brass bodies and wooden frames were to be the basis of…

Over the years, I have assembled an attractive rake of 16mm four-wheeled Ashbury coaches, the prototypes for which were originally built for the early Festiniog Railway in the 1860s. Four are painted dark red and lettered for my Ambledown Valley Railway. I made three of these from Brandbright kits, a First Class and two Third Class coaches which have fewer windows. The fourth, given to me by a friend, is of unknown provenance and has recently been refurbished with new Brandbright wheels and wheel trunnions. The fifth coach, a First Class in an unusual white and purple scheme, was also given to me from the late Alan Walker’s collection. This is numbered as coach 10, which duplicates the number on my Brandbright First Class coach. However, I will have to…