A daily updated blog typed by someone with painty hands, oil under his fingernails and the smell of solder in his nostrils who likes making all sort of models and miniatures. And fixing things.
There was a casualty of Gardeners' World - My Merlin Mayflower.
Normally, a very reliable locomotive, I fired it up to put on a show while the judges did their thing. It had run well earlier in the day, but now it was backfiring, there was burning happening in the cab, around the area of the burner. I turned the gas out, and tried again. After a couple of goes, all seemed well, and steam was quickly raised.
Off we went, and about 10 feet from the corner the judges were occupying, the loco stopped. I sprinted around to it, and the cab was full of fire again.
Trying not to make a fuss, I turned the gas off, a bit of a toasty job, and whipped the loco back to the yard, where I left it to cool.
Back at home, I can see that the electronics are not in the best shape. The cover has melted off the receiver, and all the servo wires are crispier than is ideal. It looks like some time will need to be spent replacing a lot of this, although there is some life in them, maybe I can save the receiver.
Of course, I'll need to investigate the cause of the backfire too. A chat with my steam loco guru beckons when I'm back home.
While I'm at it, the O-rings in the cylinders have been asking for attention on cold days for a long while. Perhaps a more comprehensive service is called for.
All this will need to be marked down to being part of the "fun" of operating a miniature live steam loco.
The area of the Gardeners' World railway that fascinated me more than anything is the planting seen in the photo above.
It's all created using a product I'd never heard of - wild flower turf.
Just like normal turf, it arrives rolled, and you simply spread it out on your soil, or even lawn, apparently, but unlike turf, there isn't any grass. Instead, it's a mass of native wildflowers.
Our turf instantly provided a nice rural look to one end of the railway. I'm told that we were possibly a couple of weeks early, as later in the season, more of the flowers would be on display, but I like the texture it gave to this end of the line.
While not cheap, the results are pretty much instant, ideal for show gardens, and probably why Alan Titchmarsh uses it on the telly, I'm told.
At the end of the weekend, the turf was due to be re-homed with a school, but I begged a couple of small pieces, which have found a home in our garden.
No idea what will happen, but I'm looking forward to the results.
Well, this is a bit different. When Andy Christie first mentioned that he was putting on a display featuring garden railways at the massive Gardeners' World show, I knew I wanted to be involved.
The setup process is a bit more protracted than that for most shows. When I built "Layout in a Day" for the NGRS, I get half a day to do the job. Andy and team had a week, pretty much standard for displays at this show it seems. That included moving a lot of railway sleepers to build a fence!
Thanks to various deadlines, my time was limited, but I did manage to get a day in on the Monday. First job, dig out a pair of milk churns that had been inadvertently buried when soil was delivered by the organisers. After that, there was a lot of painting, and more shovelling as we filled up the alpine end of the model, ready for planting.
An essential meeting in the office meant my next trip was on Wednesday - Press day and also judging. We still had quite a few bits to finish off, but by the time the judges arrived at 4:30, all was ready.
There had been a bit of train testing during the day, and so just before the judges were due, we fired up a couple of steam engines so they could enjoy the full effect. Andy and Louise talked them through the display, which covers Andy's life on the railway.
Of course, the trains decided to misbehave. Badly. My Merlin developed a backfire, basically flame in the cab. After a couple of re-lightings, it seemed to be happy, and after raising steam set off around the layout. All went well for a few minutes, until it stopped. A quick look revealed a cab full of flame, so without making a fuss, I turned off the gas, only burning myself a little in the process.
I then popped the electric railmotor on, which promptly derailed on a straight bit of track. A later examination showed that one of the nuts holding the connecting rod on had come off.
Finally, The Roundhouse Russel picked the spot right in front of the judges to run over a plant and derail!
Despite all this, later in the day, the railway was rightly awarded a Gold award.
Another day away, this time at Garden Railway Specialists' open day, and I was back for the weekend.
I decided against bringing steam, instead providing my IP Engineering railcar to fill the gaps when chuffy locos weren't available.
There followed two days of operation, on one of the hottest weekends of the year. We kept things running pretty continuously - not easy when you are running steam and have to keep gassing and watering locos. Fortunately, we were joined by someone with a cracking battery-powered LGB Stainz on the Saturday, and Sunday saw Richard with another very reliable Cheddar steamer.
Trains had to be driven too. Behind the "fiddle yard" was quite a gradient. So steep that by mid-Saturday, the steam engines were struggling despite our best efforts to wipe oil away. Eventually, Andy lightly sanded the rail tops, which solved the problem...
The public really enjoyed the display. We had to keep explaining that yes, the locos were powered by real steam. So many people had never seen a garden railway, but we worked hard to plant the seed that this would be something to enhance their garden.
And like that, it was all over. Sunday, we lifted all the plants, most of which were sold off (I have a nice bonsai tree) and removed the track. By the end, Andy and the team were left with the earth, and all those sleepers to deal with over the next couple of days.
What an amazing time. I'm happy to admit that even if I'd had the gumption to book a place in the show, my design would have been less ambitious and probably not won an award. Sometimes, the envelope has to be pushed to get the results.
A fuller write-up will appear in a future issue of Garden Rail, along with some details of the planting from Louise. There is a lot to be learned from all this, to apply on our own lines.
In their day, Beatties didn't just sell British model trains, they were a supplier of the foreign stuff too. In those days, modelling anything beyond these shores was seen as weird; it still is in a small way today.
Still, you could go to your local branch and pick up catalogues to get your fill of German goodness, which is why I've acquired a few for the collection - 1976 to 79.
Looking through, there is very little familiar to my eyes, but then I'm no expert on continental trains. Some of the models look surprisingly crude. I'd always grown up believing that Euro trains were expensive, but of superb quality. Maybe, compared to the UK version they were.
One surprise was finding out Fleischmann made their own slot car system, with some rather tasty-looking German racing cars available in miniature. Well, tasty, if you like racing Porches anyway.
Another find was my little red shunter, which appears in all of these catalogues, showing just how old the model could be!
