Innehållsförteckning för December 2025 från Garden Rail

December. That can only mean two things. Easter Eggs are in the shops, and we allow a hint of Christmas on our pages. As it happens, while visiting the excellent Buckingham Railway Centre earlier this year, I found out that they built a suitably festive layout for visitors, and persuaded Steve Cook to write it up for us to enjoy. Christmas and large-scale modelling are excellent companions. LGB has always produced special festive models, including its classic Stainz with a tree attached to the bufferbeam, and Bachmann has made Thomas the Tank trains with a seasonal flavour. Mind you, as this involves Thomas with a red pointed hat covering his chimney, it’s not for the serious enthusiast… I’m very pleased to have pinned our two layouts down for features this…

I never quite understand folk who have a large, but more often than not, unseen collection. I like to sit my models on bases, as I think the base elevates the model, and the scale rail provides a visual context too. Scenic bases are not difficult to make and, during this article, I’ll take a peek at what is out there in the market to help us. I think I must have knocked out around half a dozen bases and turntables when putting this article together. They are not difficult to do, and much of the material you may choose to use, you probably have lying around anyway. The Lazy Susans themselves are not expensive either, and if you have a short piece of track looking for a home, then…

Way back in 2013, I saved a few pennies, put in some overtime at work, and got myself a Roundhouse Little John diesel locomotive from Glendale Junction, a very much missed garden railway shop. Little John was the go-to locomotive for my first garden railway, The Lavender Line, and now it’s a regular, reliable performer on my latest railway, The Fenberry Light Railway. Despite its hobbit size, the mighty little diesel certainly pulls its weight and never ceases to impress. I think every time someone who sees it for the very first time, never expects it to pull very much and later are quite amazed by its capabilities. I even persuaded my good friend Mark Thatcher to get himself a Bulldog, basically a newer, slightly altered in appearance, version of…

Is there such a thing as a cheap hobby? I have been looking for one for 50 modelling years and still have not found it. A few years ago, I dabbled with scrapbooking and card making, a hobby that started in the United States. While on the surface it was fun, by the time I had bought a Grand Calibre card embossing machine, a Cricut cutting machine and various paper stock, bows, ribbons and embellishments, I had spent £400. I probably ended up making 20 or so cards, so at £20 per card, I would have been better off going to my local card shop! Still, it was a lot of fun and later on down the page, you will see how I dredged my memory bank to apply techniques…

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. Pick’n’Mix I’ve attached some photos of my PS Models diesel box cab conversion. The door and axle box laser etching was removed and centre window covered. The entire exterior of the model has been papered, painted and weathered. Rivets on corners and roof were done with tailors tracing wheel on various lengths of paper. Inside, we have a Boot Lane upright boiler, coal bunker, and water tank. The on/off switch is in easy reach of the finger round doorway. Canvas door covers are made from an old hankie,…

The Butterley Garden Railway Association (BGRA) is more than just a garden railway club; we often describe ourselves as a ‘garden with a railway running through it’ and the word garden and association are important and at the heart of everything we have done in our association, right from our humble beginnings. Our railway started back in 1986 with Mamod locomotives on a portable track on the platform at Butterley station, Moving to our current home in 1990 with a simple loop, we have extended the line several times. We are both proud and mindful of those people who created the railway in all that we do. They were keen to have a permanent site, but also a garden that would change with the seasons and mature in a way…

Regular readers will know that I’m never happier than when assembling a kit of some sort. A few years ago, I had the chance to build Accucraft’s Peckett, which was serialised on these pages. Several readers have told me they enjoyed following the build, not least watching me make mistakes, so no one else has to. Well, we have another blue locomotive, generously provided by Accucraft, now owned by Maxitrak, to put together. Hopefully, this will be less of a learning experience, as it’s a battery-powered, diesel-outline loco. The sort of model you pop on the track for quick power while steaming up, or just because it looks good at the head of a train and can be left to its own devices while you enjoy some refreshment. The model…

We didn’t want our new garden railway to be particularly urban, or heavy on buildings, not least because it means lots to bring indoors in bad weather or winter. That said, a few structures would be in order, and we were thinking of working along a fairly ‘light railway’ level of design. That’s to say, smaller, simple, lightly-constructed buildings of wood or corrugated metal. These would better fit the atmosphere of the type of railway we were planning on constructing-a vaguely slate-orientated light railway, somewhere in North-West Wales, in the dying days of British Rail ownership in the 1980s or early 1990s. Wooden structures would be fairly easy, but ever up for a challenge, we thought a corrugated metal station building (in the style of the old Welsh Highland Railway)…

I have always liked ‘Taliesin’, ever since I reviewed two 16mm live steam Archangel locos for Garden Rail magazine, way back in 1996. When Roundhouse introduced its version of Taliesin in 2008, I was very tempted, but finances did not allow it at that time. Some years later at the Exeter Show, I found a very nice second-hand example in Victorian maroon, which had hardly ever been run. I succumbed to temptation and passed the loco over to Matt Acton for lining at the show, and when the loco came back from Berry Hill works, it had been transformed by the beautiful ornate lining. ‘Taliesin’ was fitted with FlySky RC gear and has always been a sweet runner and has run many miles without fault, except for a defective reversing…

LGB Saxon-Upper Lusatian Railway Company Diesel Locomotive 199 018 G scale The Romanian locomotive factory FAUR produced 334 of these locomotives, mainly for Polish and Romanian narrow-gauge railways. 199 018 served in Transylvania as locomotive 87-0029 until the turn of the millennium, when it was in poor condition and plagued by technical problems. In 2010, it was moved to Upper Lusatia, where the Zittau railway workers refurbished it, fitted a more powerful engine, and gave it the number 199 018.] LGB’s model shows 199 018 of the SOEG in the current Era VI livery. It is a finely detailed model with many separately applied parts. The cab doors can be opened. Both trucks are powered. The minimum radius for operation is R1/600mm. The locomotive has an mfx/DCC decoder with many…

Over the last two years, we have provided a Winter Wonderland G-scale layout at Buckinghamshire Railway Centre for its Santa Special’ Christmas weekends. These start at the end of November and run up to Christmas. The layout is situated indoors on the platform at Rewley Road Station, meaning we have a constant stream of spectators, as everyone has to walk past the layout to watch the pantomime before heading out for their steam train ride to meet Santa. Building the layout starts with 11 sheets of plywood, with battens around each section on the underside. The battens were drilled with four holes: two for a location dowel and the other two for bolting the sections together. Each board is sat on its own adjustable metal trestle, which all collapse when…

Autumn is the time for collecting leaves on the line and admiring the tints on any miniature cherry trees you may have planted alongside it. Many people talk about ‘putting the garden to bed’ at this time of year, but there is still plenty to keep you out in the fresh air and creating an interesting miniature scene. Among these is planting bulbs. If you want to enjoy familiar flowers such as crocus, daffodils and tulips in the spring, you have to plan and plant bulbs the previous autumn. They can provide a welcome splash of colour as we emerge from the dull days of winter and cheer up the miniature scene. However, it is more important than ever to read the label on bulbs that you buy, or you…

It is a lucky enthusiast who still owns the family vintage model railway collection. All too often, these fabled treasures have been lost without trace. Notable culprits one - the nation’s mothers: A dear old boy I knew who served under Monty in the Western Desert recalled: ‘I returned from six years of making the world safe for Hornby trains to find that my mother had given away my beloved No1 Set.’ A colleague came home from abroad to find that a similar fate had befallen his collection of mint Matchbox Yesteryear models, all in original boxes. It makes you want to weep. Bear with me, this does eventually have a happy ending… To be fair to the nation’s mothers, my own hated dolls as a child and instead had…

Merry Christmas to all Garden Rail Readers Rik Bennett came up with the most expensive suggestion: ‘With my unlimited budget, my first thought was to buy a house with a large garden, but would I then also have the funds and the time to build the garden railway of my dreams?’ A fair point, and anyway, if you have a tree big enough to fit a house under, decorations will take up all the garden railway money. Calming down a bit, he continued, ‘So, being a bit of a penny-pincher, and more of a rod than a fish person (give a man a fish, etc.), I’d opt for the largest and most sophisticated combined 3D printer/laser cutter/CNC router, I could find such as the Snapmaker Artisan 3-in-1 plus the software…