Innehållsförteckning för September 2024 från Garden Rail

This month’s issue of Garden Rail features no less than four articles on locomotives in various forms. We’ve vintage ones from David Pinniger, an electric loco that should have been nitro powered by Mick Pagram, ‘Flying Scotsman’ in Gauge 1 by Friso Booij, and something ugly from my own workbench. Even Product News is loco-heavy. All of this is just a coincidence, but it does highlight that we modellers are terrors for focusing on the front of the train, and being less interested in the rolling stock. Looking at the folder full of future articles, I am a bit light on wagon and coach builds, so if you have a project under construction, or are about to start one, please take some photos and send them to me. We pay…

As you would expect, when reviewing kits for Garden Rail, my staples are usually railway-related items - lineside buildings, carriages and wagons. Very rarely do I get the opportunity to make items like the two kits that Modeltown sent me recently, and they both made a refreshing change. In my goody box was a Bond MK A Minicar and an Austin J Forty pedal car. Props to Modeltown for mixing things up so well. Assembly of both the Bond three-wheeler and pedal car is pretty simple, but the history of these vehicles is fascinating. Bond MK A Minicar The Minicar was born as a concept in 1948 after its designer, Lawrence ‘Lawrie’ Bond, unveiled plans to create a cheap three-wheeler, initially called a shopping car. Lawrie started production from a…

The AVR will be familiar to the more senior readers of Garden Rail, as it has featured in a number of issues starting with No. 1 way back in 1995, ‘The Silver Jubilee’ in November 2006, and ‘40 years of steam’ in 2016. One of the key enjoyments over the years has been the number of visiting steam engines and their owners and, prompted by the late Marc Horovitz in Colorado, I have kept a log of all the steam locomotives that have run on my line. The only qualification for entry is that the loco must complete at least two full circuits of the main line unaided. The order and dates of the early entries in 1980 and 1981 are a bit hazy, but after I was presented with…

Write in and share your ideas with other enthusiasts Letters are welcomed on any aspect of largescale 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. Corporate wagon loads I’ve just picked up the July issue from the newsagents. Interesting to see how your ‘Layout in a Day’ layout evolved. Adapt and overcome seemed to be the order of the day. I liked your ‘corporate’ wagon loads. Even to my untrained eye a bit underscale, but I’m sure the 10-foot rule would apply? Are the Garden Rail decals available to buy anywhere? I like the idea of adding a corporate wagon or wagon load to my ‘to do’ bodge pile at some point. David Crum…

I’ve nearly always had a model railway layout, and when I was able to from the 1980’s, exhibited them at shows local to me. Sometimes it was a layout purely for exhibitions, housed in a caravan, sometimes it was my ‘home’ layout. Mostly OO, sometimes Dublo three rail and sometimes scenic two rail. Then, around 1998, I was bitten by the garden railway bug, and started out with an LGB railway with analogue track power, later converting to digital operation, initially with LGB’s MTS, but I’m currently using Massoth. I now have a permanent near-groundlevel line that is a convoluted figure of eight spread over much of my small back garden. It, as some may say, comes fully stocked, including through stations, terminal stations, platforms, signal boxes, bridges, goods yards,…

Garden Rail: You will be a new name to many of our readers, perhaps you could give us a brief introduction? Sinisa Stanisic: My name is Sinisa Stanisic. I am 32 years old, and have been Export Sales Manager at Märklin since July 2022. In this position, I am responsible for most markets or countries outside Germany. In fact, it would probably be quicker to list the countries I am not responsible for – Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France and Italy. GR: But this leaves quite a lot, including the USA. SS: The USA is actually LGB’s biggest export market. We have a company there, Marklin Inc. run by the General Manager, Gale Cousins, since 2016 in Jefferson City, Missouri. GR: Do you have a background with model railways, or is…

I love ugly and unusual locomotives, which is handy as I’m also drawn to industrial prototypes such as the brickworks that the real Wittenberg Schafer locomotive operated on. Some of the creations running around these sites could be a stuff of nightmares if you are a fan of the clean, flowing lines of a mainline steam loco. Available for both 32 and 45mm gauges, I’ve gone for the narrower one so it can run on the ‘Layout in a Day’ among all those pretty flowers at the NGRS. With that in mind, I’ve kept the electrics simple with a double-pole double-throw switch rather than speed control using something like a Loco Remote controller. At the show, I want to flip the switch and let it run, but if you plan…

BOOT LANE WORKS A trio of Quarry Hunslets 16mm scale To celebrate its third anniversary, Boot Lane Works has released a triumvirate of Quarry Hunslets. ‘Cariad’, mentioned in July’s Product News, is joined by ‘William” and ‘Beatrice’. ‘William’ is Boot Lane’s interpretation of the later Dinorwic Port Class, and ‘Beatrice’ represents the classic Dinorwic Alice class. ‘Beatrice’ is modelled on the B type frame, making it suitable for not only the Dinorwic Alice’s, ‘Holy War’, ‘Irish Mail’, etc., but also the Pen-yr-Orsedd Hunslets ‘Britomart’, ‘Una’ and ‘Sybil’. Both kits come with cab variants included in the kit, allowing the modeller to build the locomotive of their choice, with or without cab, tall or short chimney, etc. While all three kits are built upon the tried and tested Boot Lane Works construction…

Spencer’ started out as a follow-up project to ‘Foxie’, ‘Royal my RC nitromethane (nitro) powered loco featured in Garden Rail May 2019, which got me thinking about the possibilities of a nitro-powered diesel-electric loco. It would need to be a fairly large loco to house the engine, generator control gear and two motors, one in each power truck. What I came up with is very loosely based on the WHR ‘Castle Caernarfon’. Two four-wheel motorised chassis were bought, these had vertical motors, and my thinking was to put thrust bearings around these for the bogie pivots. These were mounted on a piece of plywood with a battery and simple controller to see if it would work. It did sort of, but not very well, the problem being not enough flexibility…

I’m trying, my wife Jenny says I’m really trying, to remember what I did, last summer. You tend to forget what you’ve done, and how far you’ve come, instead, worrying about what needs doing next. I don’t understand folks who say they are bored, there simply isn’t enough time to get everything done, run, and tested! After winning at G Rail, best in class for a scenic item, best overall, and the Mike Longden cup with my mill, I started to install it, and this meant connecting up the smoke machine. It’s a domestic disco fogging machine from eBay, and I used plumbing waste pipe to run from the machine, situated safely under the station, to the mill chimney, and up it. After that, I wired in the LEDs for…

During the day, I am Game Designer and Teacher, but outside work, I have a soft spot for building scale models, and an obsession with steam locomotives. As a child, it was my dream to drive a real steam locomotive, which at the time seemed very out of reach. Now that I’m older, I still have that same dream. Building 3D-printed steam locomotives in Gauge 1, and controlling them with my control application is the closest I have come to fulfilling this dream thus far. In this article, I will take you through the build process of my fully 3D-printed Gauge 1 model of ‘Flying Scotsman’, and I’ll tell you a bit about the software that I have developed to control her in a life-like manner. Design phase Our journey…