Resurrection of my Large Scale Garden Railway

[Jim Wasley]

6 hours ago, clive_t said:

Ha, no snow here this time round, but there is something very spectacular about snow-ploughs, and snow-blowers in particular. There are clips on You-Tube of such beasts operating, and even in the smaller scale they look awesome!

Thanks Jim, hope all is well with you and yours sir.

Thanks, you're right it's really a fair-weather pursuit - as witnessed by today, having had some nice sunny weather already this week, and with being confined indoors for the foreseeable, today found me in a good enough mood to make a start on getting everything back in order, ready for a resumption in operations. Today was just about cutting back some over-keen vegetation that was obstructing part of the line. Some encouraging news - the girder bridge I fashioned from a plastic bridge and an off-cut of uPVC appears to have successfully weathered the ravages of the winter just passed:

 

 

Still a fair bit to do though, even in this small corner of the line:

 

 

You can see the extent to which the lower track at the back has been all but completely swamped by a combination of ground cover planting, with a liberal sprinkling of weeds.

 

Still, the Great Unfinished Railway is taking its first faltering steps to resurrection for 2020!

Thanks Clive all's well done here,staying indoors and only going out for food,it,s given me a chance to catch up on some kits that have been gathering to much dust.Hope we all get through this and life gets back to some normality.

Keep Well Jim.

[clive_t]

Well it's supposed to be a public holiday here, but of course the current lockdown measures - necessary though they are - have meant misery for many, particularly given the beautiful warm sunny weather we're now 'enjoying'. Still, at least I was able to get something done on the line today, like turning this:

 

 

... into this:

 

 

You would be forgiven, I'm sure, for asking 'what's he actually done?' Well, nothing much really, just a tidy up of that area that had become an unofficial dumping ground for the wife's old flower pots and assorted junk. I have created some 'retaining wall' features that will ultimately have the task of holding back a small mountain of Cotswold stone boulders - when I am finally able to get some!

 

As a bonus, here's a very short clip of the Schoema diesel making its way sedately past the modified area.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6Ro1Hip3UE

 

 

It turned out to be a very worthwhile exercise, as I was able to go round the whole circuit and remove any encroaching vegetation that was preventing the loco from progressing further. Result? Several uninterrupted laps round the garden

 

I am sorely tempted now to unearth one of my live steamers over the weekend and film that puffing on its merry way!

[clive_t]

Well I managed to remember the basics of firing a live steamer, and re-learned a few lessons along the way!

 

Like:

 

1. A very heavy, fast moving loco with very shallow wheel flanges does not enjoy entering a trailing point where there is any kind of detritus stopping the point blade throwing over completely.

2. You wouldn't pick up a boiling kettle in the kitchen using the spout, so why do you think the outcome of picking up a boiling kettle with wheels would be any different?

3. Watch for when there is no longer any steam coming out, as this is the point at which your loco stops being a loco and instead wants to be a fragmentation bomb.

4. A live steam loco needs to be driven, like a car - on its own it has no braking system, so it's up to the person holding the radio control transmitter to exercise some intelligence! To that end, it's a good idea to actually get new batteries for said radio controls!

5. Oh, and you either need to sprout an extra set of hands, or someone else needs to video your vain attempts at controlling the damned thing...

 

Anyway, here are the *very* brief results of my attempted return to the world of Big Lads' Toys. First, a quick warm-up on the rolling road:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKTekMQ699U

 

Then an attempt at running, controlling, and simultaneously videoing (not very successful in any one of them):

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvTbtp4pvNw

 

 

OK here's a still to try and convince everyone how wonderfully fun it all is:

 

 

Hurrah!

[albergman]

What a lovely project Clive.   Just the thing to keep you from getting bored in these trying times.

 

Frank

[clive_t]

On 4/13/2020 at 11:24 PM, albergman said:

What a lovely project Clive.   Just the thing to keep you from getting bored in these trying times.

 

Frank

Thanks Frank, yes it's bearable as long as the sun is shining and it's not blowing an absolute hoolie out there! Having said that, there are always indoor projects to be getting on with, such as restoring an old Pola station building back to usefulness after years of being battered into its component wall and roof sections by the elements, dumped in a bucket which then filled with rainwater, and left for several years .

 

Expensive though these things are, I wasn't shy in cutting the side walls in half so that I would be able to make 2 half-relief buildings from the one whole:

 

 

All well and good, but the paint job - never that spectacular even when new - is totally faded from years of neglect. So I set to repainting, and gluing the pieces together with Gorilla, which I have already found to be far more robust in countering the effects of being constantly outside in all weathers:

 

 

The other problem was really one of aesthetics - Pola, being a German company, are wont to produce buildings with a pronounced 'European' look to them - nowhere was this more evident than with the roof tiling. Not a bad thing per se, but I wanted something more 'British' - i.e. a slate tiled roof. So I cut a piece of expanded polystyrene sheet to fill the gap:

 

 

On top of that I stuck a piece of 0.75mm styrene sheet with yet more Gorilla glue, and set to work cutting out and sticking pieces of thinner styrene sheet to represent Welsh slates:

 

 

The individual tiles were each cut to a size 25mm x 14mm, which in this scale (1:22.5) represents what is known in the trade as a 'small duchess'.

 

Fun fact: The system of naming slate sizes after female rank of nobility was devised by General Hugh Warburton at Penrhyn Quarry way back in 1738.  It quickly became the industry standard and lasted for over two centuries. Those sufficiently curious persons can take a look at the full list here.

 

Here's how it looked once fully tiled (with a couple of loose ones into the bargain!) and sprayed with Halford's car body primer - which bears more than a passing resemblance to the colour of Welsh slate:

 

 

Finally for now, here's the end result in situ:

 

 

The great news is, I have what amounts to an identical set of walls for another half-relief station building to place at my little spur branch. That's for another time though.

 

Thanks for stopping by folks!

 

 

[albergman]

You've done a fine job there Clive.   Agree that it looked out of place and maybe Spanish? ...  as a Canadian (now) I'm not really qualified to judge its origins.  A bit of moss maybe and Mother Nature to weather it and it will look right at home.

 

I've put 60009 aside for a while and decided to do some upgrades to 4472 and might even finish it this time.

Frank

[clive_t]

5 minutes ago, albergman said:

You've done a fine job there Clive.   Agree that it looked out of place and maybe Spanish? ...  as a Canadian (now) I'm not really qualified to judge its origins.  A bit of moss maybe and Mother Nature to weather it and it will look right at home.

 

I've put 60009 aside for a while and decided to do some upgrades to 4472 and might even finish it this time.

Frank

Thanks Frank, yes I think it still retains a little of the European look, however I can live with it. I think too that the stark, rather overbearing backdrop that is a 1:1 scale brick wall doesn't help. I am quite tempted to look into some sort of weather-proof back-scene, in the way that smaller-scale indoor layouts often do.

[Boman]

Hi Clive 

Any updates now that summer is here? Always love to see what you've done next in this saga 🤩

[clive_t]

Nothing to show, really. Apart from the constant fending off of encroaching undergrowth in places, the lockdown situation here has, until very recently at least, meant that no garden centres were open so I've not been able to get hold of the required lumps of stone that will eventually form the rocky outcrop alluded to back in April. The only other thing I've done, in anticipation of tidying up the soon-to-be-abandoned private siding, is to modify the main factory entrance so that it looks boarded up:

 

 

The boards are ice-lolly sticks ('popsicle' sticks, for our trans-Atlantic brethren) which have been coated with a thinned panel liner wash to make it look more weather-beaten. I probably needn't have bothered, given the real beating the weather will undoubtedly be dishing out once the panel is in its place. The kit doors are just painted a plain deck tan, and followed up with a burnt sienna oil paint rubbed in to bring out the moulded grain effect, which to be fair to the makers Pola, is very good.

 

Hopefully one day soon I will get the perfect combination of shop accessibility, financial fluidity, and time availability that will enable me to get moving further forward on this venture!

[clive_t]

Morning folks, long time no update so to speak, but today I managed to make a start on that little quiet corner I last looked at in April. Mindful of the distinct possibility of another lockdown being imposed, I ventured to a local garden centre last week and bought a few items:

 

 

The water feature is a solar powered one which unfortunately doesn't have a battery supply, so it only operates when the solar panel is in direct sunlight. No matter, I can live with that. It's quite amusing to watch the birds trying to judge the right time to nick a cheeky drink whilst avoiding getting hit by cascading water!

 

The rocks are 'cotswold stone' in keeping with the rest of the natural stone used in this area, and it's interesting to see the degree to which the older stuff has toned down over the years. Hopefully it won't be too long before it starts to blend in with the rest of the surroundings.

 

Of greater concern is the colour of the water feature, which in truth is meant to represent wood - I suspect a rattle-can of Tamiya 'Deck Tan' or similar might be appropriated in order to make that blend in better!

 

I do need to go back to that garden centre and get some smaller lumps of rock to fill in some of the more obvious gaps. The rest will be in-filled with soil/compost, at which point I should be able to drop in some appropriate vegetation, maybe alpines or some other ground cover types.

 

 

[clive_t]

A brief 'update' - which suggests some progress, but in truth is not really anything of the kind:

 

 

The only real progress has been on the part of Mrs Nature, who has decided that 'green' is very much in, this year. Her rapidly expanding carpet of green algae is in stark contrast to the pathetic collection of moth-eaten alpines etc that I have plonked in various crevices! But the waterfall is a hit with the local birds, so I got that going for me which is nice...

[Boman]

Natural weathering - nice

[Pete in Lincs]

The algae under the tracks will make for a softer ride though! Nice to see it's all okay.