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.
All this was in support of the Greenfingers Charity.
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.
