End of running season ....

Well with the weather closing in its the end of the outdoor running season for me. I've been enjoying the weather and running my little trains around when I fancy.

---oXo---

During August I went round to a friend's for his garden railway open evening; had great time. My little train pottering round ...

 One of my friends trains ....

 I had to leave before seeing this rather long train running,

apparently 2 more wagons were added and two diesel locos to pull it.

---oXo---

All the final pruning and tidying of the garden is now done,  the grass/wild meadow centre did well giving us a lot of wild flowers. I managed to get the grass cut during last week, there are few small bald areas which can be sorted out next spring.

There are a few jobs to sort out on the railway. The main ones are positioning of the feeds for powering the track and levelling of the track.

Grass area maturing nicely ....

The grass area in the centre has come along nicely

 although the bottom part is a bit bare, some more soil/seed required here

 The wild flower mix has started to come through as well ...

Adding some wagon loads and a guard ...

 For my cattle van I put a couple of old Schleich cows onto a base and then put that in the cattle van; can only just see the cows through the gaps in the van.

 Next up were some removable wagon loads, I made up some bases from plasticard and scribed them,

 then painted them a light grey and glued on various items barrels, boxes etc to give me some loads I can now swap out of my wagons ...

 

Lastly I made up a narrow base of card painted it as close as possible to the guards van grey and stuck on a guard (Bachmann figure), the guard on his base can removed if desired

New platform surfaces...

For  my in-door garage layout, the platforms surfaces done using Metcalfe OO scale paving  had deteriorated over the damp winter so I've replaced them with some vinyl self-adhesive tiles from Wilkinsons.

 They look much better now and are more robust to cope with the environment of the garage.

The grass is growing .....

A couple of weeks ago finally decided on what to do with the centre of the garden - have a sort of wild flower 'meadow' instead of just grass.

I put in plenty of grass seed and two boxes of wild meadow mixture as well, now we have some grass coming through in patches - obviously didn't quite get the depth of seed uniform - still it's a start

Checking running of rolling stock ....

Had some nice weather yesterday, so popped out and ran a small train of representative rolling stock to check clearances and negotiation of curves etc. Everything went Ok much to my delight.

Some photos of the train in various parts of garden layout.....

Station !

A final push yesterday got the station area ballasted, track laid and the station with associated buildings in place. Nice to have the garden railway back in place.

 View of station, showing siding ...

 Gangers check the newly laid track ....

 View showing the lineside hut and water tower...

Diesel (battery powered) approaches the station area...

I had the battery diesel running round for a while - picked up some areas of uneven track, which required a jiggle of the ballast to correct. Plenty left to to do......

Buildings for the station area....

The main station, this will sit on some offcuts of decking, needs a clean and a few repairs but ready for use.

I'll use a small building as a line-side hut, need to stick on one of the side panels which has come loose and give the roof a re-paint.

a few checks .....

Took advantage of the sunny weather yesterday to do a few bits and bobs

firstly engineers check the clearances in the station approach from the signal box ...

 engineers find the track somewhat off-centre of in rockery cutting...

 a quick visit by the track gang (me) gets the track sitting centrally

 ---oXo---

After a rummage in the garage I got the the necessary bits of track out for the station area and laid them out to check alignment etc ...

not too bad - only about 3" out of alignment at the top end

Station approaches completed .....

Added the edging and laid the track for the station approach from the signal box

 put down the track down for the station approach from the top (in the trackbed section which I prepared previously)

 Now in full swing I got started on the station section - had a massive 'dig-o-mania' puting in the edging to the middle of the garden and dug half of the trackbed

a few more sessions should see the station section in place - more gravel to buy, the station layout to plan .....

Next section of trackbed prepared ....

A rather damp day yesterday but but I managed to get further by getting the next section of the trackbed completed.

On my next session will put the weed fabric down and get some more track in place; after this section is done I will be ready to get to work on the station section.

Half way round ....

 Nice to have some dry weather at the weekends, so yesterday laid out the next section of the track up from rockery cutting and round the corner at the top - talking me past the half way point.

On the garden front, the azaleas in the top border have been moved to fill in the bottom part of the garden and a new lavender border planted. The area in front of the next section of the trackbed has been dug over.

Loco gets a makeover .....

The battery operated multi-coloured loco (mostly yellow) has been re-painted a nice mid-blue to match the wheel colour; not much other detailing apart from some coal in the coal bunker...

Engine crews...

After some more testing on my battery locos today, have been selecting some of my old 'little people' that were out in the garden to use as engine crew. Here they are at first fit....

 They are on bases so they can be removed for access etc; I'll re-paint them as required then they can be put to use. The 'multi-coloured' steam loco needs painting, so that will be the next job.

too darn wet !

Not the best of weather over the Xmas/New Year period - lots of rain and storms. I had hoped to maybe do some work on the garden railway - but the ground was too soft and waterlogged. After a good couple of days rain, had a nice puddle about an inch or more deep over the path at the bottom of the garden and filling up the garden railway trench at the top of the garden.....