Building a Garden Railway

For a while now it has been the ambition for a few of our members to build a 'Garden Railway', although this has only recently become a possibility with one of our members having just enough land to build one. The garden was measured and plotted and with a rough design of layout work began, the idea was to have 3 1/2" & 5" gauge ground level and the track was to skim the perimiter of the garden to maximise length. The construction would be welded black iron screwed to sleepers, layed onto about 4 inches of 'hard stone' this would be in a trench sided with wood and weed control layed in the bottom, a simple but effective method of construction. The track has been in place now since New Years Day, overall the construstion of the railway worked out perfectly with a day re-tamping in late May the heat of the summer hasn't really effected the layout considering there are no expansion gaps the push out on the bends is around 1/2". The coming projects over the next year or so will be a turntable and a loop over a small bridge.

This photo shows the jig we made to weld up the 30ft Radius curves

We started off by laying out the first bend and marking where to cut for the trench

The long straight is cut ready for the shuttering and ballast

The bend is starting to settle in well with a nice new fence to divide a small section of garden

The other side of the garden is also progressing well once more track is made it's laid in and levelled

The track can be seen here in place now rounding the top of the hill reaching the summit of the 1 in 30

This is a close up photo of the 5 inch rails and spacer in place located in the jig ready for welding

With the trench cut, wooden sides, weed control, hard stone and track all in place, starting to look like a railway

Heading up the hill away from the curve, its a steady climb so far

The steady climb up from the corner you can see the rise by the wooden shuttering

A view down the track of the other side of the garden now almost complete

The summit is reached and the driveway straight can be seen heading back round to the steep decent

62 years of model engineering in Sussex

The East Grinstead Model Engineers