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I've been e-mailed
over the past few years with questions on construction,
so I thought it was time I put a little something
together to give you an overall view on how construction
has progressed over the passed 2 years, and also a
little as to why I decided to build 00 gauge in the
garden!
A good friend of mine invited me over to his place to
have a running session on his 00 gauge loft layout "Upton
Scudamore", after which, he took me out into the
garden to show me the garden railway. Of course straight
away I fell in love with the idea of 00 gauge in the
garden. At this time I was living in Tunbridge Wells and
our garden was far from suitable, plus I was around the
age of 10 & wasn't really able, or shell I say even
trusted to start digging up the garden and turning it
into a 1:76 scale version of the Great Western mainline!
In 1996 we moved to Maidstone and the garden was
equally as unsuitable in that it was about 15 x 15 feet,
and mostly slabs! Maidstone for us being a slight
stepping stone for house moves, the decision came to
move once more in 1997 to the town of Tonbridge. |
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And so it was, we had a wonderful
garden, and could get started right away... Well
actually it was far from wonderful, the previous owner
had a dog, and when we got there the grass was wrecked
in every way. The garden is by no means a low
maintenance garden, as you can see from the picture to
the left, we have a wood at the back of us, In the
autumn the garden is showered with leaves, the previous
owner obviously did not maintain it. |
So the railways route
was planned, and work started in July 2000, but this
work was not railway trackbase construction. The garden
sloped towards the house, and would have been to steep
for any locomotive to climb, so soil was dug from the
top of the garden and transferred to the bottom end,
this in turn started to level out the lawn to what it is
today. A new brick wall had to be built at the bottom
end of the garden, this would hold back the earth, and
separate the patio from the lawn.
A new set of steps where built in the
center of the wall, leading to the lawn (layout), our
viaduct now crosses these steps. With the wall built and
the soil as level as we could get it, the railway was
under construction. The first sections went in from the
viaduct round to Taw Vale. Holding my hands up and
admitting to the fact that when I started out building
the Garden Railway, I could have thought it through a
little more than I did. The basic construction of the
layout was built with Exterior Ply wood. (Marine Ply)
this was soaked in creosote, and then screwed to wooden
stakes in the ground along the railways route. This
worked quite well, but not for long. Two years down the
line, things started to warp. It was a matter of time,
and I was not experienced enough to realize it!. But I
guess that's one of the best things about this hobby,
learning by your mistakes and making it better the next
time you build.
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.:The
layout was complete! But in need of repair in 2005:. |
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| In June 2005 the
trackbase was in need of repair, the somewhat tired
wooden trackbase had its final days. They say where
theres mushrooms theres rotting wood - we named the
cutting Mushroom cutting..... I'll say no more. In fact
when I took up the wooden trackbase it wasn't that bad,
most of the wooden sections held out quite well, when
others where just not worth keeping. A couple of
problems arose when we had to take up the cutting
section of the railway, these two problems where
concrete bridge's! Unfortunately the two bridges broke
while I was taking up the track base. Work on the new
trackbase started on the cutting sections from Ferndale
onwards, with the old trackbase up, I had to dig an
extra 2 inches or so down, in order to get the right
thickness on the new concrete base, and at the right
level. Pea shingle was laid down first as seen in the
picture below. In doing this I hope that it will improve
drainage. On the subject of drainage, I'd just like to
go back a step to another mistake that we made. When we
moved all of the soil from the top end of the garden
down to the bottom to get it level - we took with it a
very important part of the lawn - "The Top Soil."
Now every year we have a soggy clay lawn! the bottom end
of the lawn grows & grows, but the top end is not so
fast! and drainage in the cutting has never been great,
plus it hardly ever gets any sun light to dry out
because we have the trees blocking the sun in the
morning, & by the evening the sun only just peeps
over the shed. Shame really! Luck has it, the top end of
the lawn is now starting to grow back, probably because
we have not touched the lawn since the rebuild in June -
September! The new trackbase is looking quite good so
far. We started from the Ferndale end of the cutting,
and worked our way round. Shuttering was built to form
the mould of the base, and concrete was poured into it.
Before this is done I cut strip wood to size and bedded
it into the concrete, this would enable us to pin the
track down. |
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