The Moel Rhos Light Railway Co. has placed an order for the first steam locomotive for the line. She will be a ‘Millie’ class, manufactured in Doncaster by Roundhouse. Continue reading Choosing Millie
The Candidates in Steam
Some readers have been a bit reticent to give their opinions on my shortlist of live steam locos! I realised my rather dry summary of the specs might not be enough – I needed to see the locos in action and so do you. Fortunately, there are some rather good videos out there. Please, watch them, and give me your thoughts! Continue reading The Candidates in Steam
The Steam Dream
After a summer of trains pottering round my little circuit of track, and tinkering with rolling stock kits, the prognosis is fairly clear: I have the garden railway bug, and it does not appear to be curable.
I need a live steam loco. Continue reading The Steam Dream
Exeter Garden Railway Show
This was my first Garden Railway Show, prompting me to break my blogging silence (to be honest, I have made little progress on the railway over the summer, but I do have a few rolling stock updates to record…) Continue reading Exeter Garden Railway Show
Video: Driver’s Eye View
So here it is, filmed on test run day (25 May), a complete circuit of the line in 2’39” shot from a train hurtling along at a scale 4 to 5 mph. I’ve found it’s an excellent way to view all the flaws in your track laying. Continue reading Video: Driver’s Eye View
Closing the Loop
With half the track laid, and one tunnel built, phase one was almost exactly half completed. But I hadn’t yet dug the second (more ambitious) tunnel or cut the turf for the line down the western side of the wall.
The Northern Tunnel
I used the ‘cut and cover’ method for tunnel building. It’s advisable for tunnels on garden railways to be less than two arm-lengths long, if you want to be able to recover your derailed train. That’s fine, my tunnels are mostly to hide the tight radius curves, as well as punch through the hedgerow.
Motive Power
With a wagon already, and even some track to run it on, I now needed some motive power.
I’ve already revealed my aspiration to run live steam… So I didn’t want any steam ‘outline’ locos that weren’t actually steam powered (I feel weirdly fundamentalist about this, not sure why). But I’d like to run a diesel too – and I was happy for that to be electrically powered. Continue reading Motive Power
Laying Track
With the Eastern ledge completed, I was ready to lay the first pieces of track. Continue reading Laying Track
The Eastern Ledge
The track will run in front of a dry wall made of old red sandstone – but at this point it is about 200mm above lawn level. I needed to build up a base for it – and, because I like the look of this rough and crumbling wall, I decided to build a low wall between track and lawn in the same manner – creating a ledge along which the railway would run.