Luscombe Valley

The Luscombe Valley Railway, a 5" gauge line in Sandbanks, Poole had their Christmas open day today (in aid of Julia's House). My sister recommended it (they visited in the summer), so we took the little ones & met up with them. Now this is very much the serious end of garden railways, real engineering rather than modelling (though I tend to think that my 16mm stuff is somewhere in-between). Very impressive though, quite a number of routes; computer signalled throughout, & a fair bit of civil engineering / earthworks to achieve a level run on a sloping site. I think it made my family realise my line is fairly 'low impact' on the garden by comparison!

They were very busy today, with half-hour queues for a ride. There were something like half-a-dozen locos running; mostly diesel-outline electric, but there were two live steam locos running. We had an enjoyable run hauled by a class 59 diesel-electric. We look forward to going back to the next summer open-day - recommended!

Cold Weather Steaming

A crisp & clear winters' day today, so finally a chance for some running after all this rain. Mortimer was chosen, as apart from anything else, with the single fill system you can just set her running & pretty much let her get on with it (and with a little one toddling around the garden, this makes life somewhat easier). After raising steam & clearing the cylinders, she set off running light at a nice steady pace. It was lovely to just stand back & watch her gently run round the circuit, and with a nice plume of steam in the cold air - magic! Although I've only run her maybe half a dozen times, I am finding her very consistent and enjoyable to run.

The bridge arrived from the eBay seller; well packaged but still a little bent, but fortunately easily bent back. It is very nicely put together so I'm looking forward to installing when I get time.

Autumn Steaming Video

Here's a YouTube video of steaming this Autumn on the garden railway...

Soggy Weather

Yet another wet weekend; no chance of running today, and the yahoo weather widget on my desktop suggests no chance tomorrow either. Some good news though; I won a small aluminium bridge on eBay yesterday, which should look good on the single track beyond the triangular junction. Here's hoping for some dryer weather so I can get it installed once it arrives.

Bath by A4

Well, no narrow guage or model live steam this weekend, but instead, the full monty! We boarded a Steam Dreams charter from London (OK, Staines) to Bath as a (slightly belated) celebration of our first wedding anniversary! The 11 coach train was hauled by A4 no. 60009, Union of South Africa (sister to record breaking Mallard), and what a fantastic sight she was too. Of course, as far as my daughter was concerned, UoSA was in fact Spencer from Thomas and Friends. We had a chance to admire her from the platform at the watering stop at Newbury, which was pretty busy. Whilst taking the photo above, the safety valve lifted,which was one the loudest sounds I have ever heard (and I'm no slouch behind a set of drums - this was CHUFFING LOUD). I only wish we could have seen her running at full tilt from the trackside; must have been an impressive sight!
Bath was characteristically soggy, and absolutely heaving with Christmas shoppers. Fortunately we had a nice meal before our return trip in the dark! The Steam Dreams stewards were great, and despite some hassles getting on & off the coaching stock with our buggy, a good time was had by all, large & small.

Jane sold this week, meeting her original reserve :-) She's been parcelled up & sent to her new owner, who I hope will have lots of fun.

Loco for sale - Take 2

Well, Jane didn't quite make here reserve first time out on eBay, so she's just been relisted with a lower reserve - let's hope she goes this time...! http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130176620417

The weather was sufficently un-foul today that we managed to get the Baguley-Drewery doing a few laps with the Hudson tippers, once the rain water was emptied out of them!

Kew

Well, I managed to escape for a couple of hours to the Kew Bridge Steam Museum Live Steam Model Railway Show on Sunday. Seemed a bit better than last year in terms of layouts & stands, although mostly pretty similar. Nice to See Brian Caton's 4mm / OO9 live steam layout again; fantastic to see live steam-hauled prototypical length main line trains and very impressive to see live steam working at this scale - especially the meths-fired OO9 saddle tanks.

Also nice to see Wrightscale's prototypes on display - the open cab Kerr-Stuart Tattoo looked great, as did the Bagnall wing tanks. Other than those I didn't see much that had me reaching for the credit card, though it's been a good year (having acquired a Baguley-Drewery & a Mortimer), so I should be quite content! Perhaps I should be saving for the rumoured Accucraft Countess, which according to Brandbright will be announced next month, though if memory serves, at over a grand...

The only other thing I realised is that it's impossible to get decent shots of indoor railway layouts, or moving quarry Hunslets in foul weather with my somewhat ancient digital camera! The traditional ride behind Cloister was a delight though, even in truly grim weather. The rest of the museum as ever forms a great backdrop to the event - well worth a visit by itself.

Weekend Steam Up

Decided to steam Cackler this weekend, as she's not been steamed again since her re-build over the summer. She ran OK, but of all the locos on the line, seems to be the most challenging to get running at a pleasingly slow speed! She spent a good deal of the time in steam with the safety valve lifting or on the verge of doing so and would frequently stall on the gradient at the back of the loop. Although often self starting she would then continue at high speed; cornering almost on two wheels! Although slow speed running on a circuit with tight curves is challenging, it would be great to get this loco (and her driver) running better. By comparison, the recently acquired Mortimer seems a good deal more controllable. Top priority will be relaying the rear of the loop to take out the gradient, which should allow more measured running. I also wonder whether adding a smaller bore chuff pipe may help tame Cackler?!?

Railway Progress and Plans

The garden railway at present consists of a basic circuit, with a long siding. Track is Peco SM32, some flexible, some 'set-track' curves giving a minimum radius of 2'6" - no Garrett's here I'm afraid. Track is laid onto paving blocks which are laid on ballast into the soil. At the moment the track isn't fixed firmly onto the blocks, although I may end up doing this to encourage the flexitrack to stay in the desired shape.
The circuit is fairly level, though there is a slight rise at the back, which I need to sort out, as the steam locos tend to slow and then speed up as they go over it. The circuit isn't huge, but large shrubs in the bed conceal some of the track at the rear, which helps to disguise this. Most trains run are fairly short, which also helps maintain some sense of illusion.
The current plan (subject to a policy of continuous 'improvement'!) is to develop the siding onto a triangular junction, leading round to the back of the garden to a simple terminus with a run-around loop, allowing extended out and back running. I hope to get the remainder of the track laid this winter, but we'll see how it goes - life with little ones means it's hard to find much un-interrupted time. Stay tuned for further developments...

Loco for sale!!!

Well, my recent acquisition (an Accucraft Mortimer), means that I have to move a loco on, so I have put my IP Engineering Jane up for sale on e-Bay. Although she was my first loco (sniff!), I have two oscillators, so one has to go & it's Jane. It'll be interesting to see what she fetches at auction (& whether she makes her reserve!)...
Follow the action here: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130170678265

Garden Railways on TV

I've added a section for Garden Railway related programmes on TV - although these programmes are on fairly infrequently, if they are on, then the widgets in this section should tell you when & where (disclaimer: I am one of the team behind the site that provides the widgets; www.locatetv.com).
So far I have the Garden Railway series that originally aired on Discovery, plus an episode of Model Magic where the presenter builds a Roundhouse Lady Anne kit. Let me know if there are others I should add!

The Garden Railway Blog is born!

Well, here we are; my first venture into the Web 2.0 world of blogging! I'm not really sure how it will work out, how often I'll blog, and I have a hunch it may well end up being 'write only' (no Google Ads fortune here!). But I am interested to see what kind of content I can stitch together using UGC sites (this blog, youtube et al.) without having to directly host it.

And topic of this adventure in self-expression?! My garden railway! We moved into our current house nearly 6 months ago, and in that time I've laid a simple circuit of track, so at least I've been able to steam up my locos, and have have a few running sessions. My main interest is in live steam, but I have a couple of battery locos for instant running when necessary.

Anyway, that's all for now...