Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Hard core railway modelling

Garden railway materialsHow about a nice break from this fiddly fine scale railway modelling ? Get out into the garden. Breath the fresh air and commune with nature. What better than making progress on the garden railway ?

Well all I can say is it is b@**%y hard work !

The materials for the raised flowerbed, or baseboard to use conventional toy train terminology, were delivered a few days ago and I'd been using the Barclay loco as an excuse not to get my hands dirty. 96 concrete blocks had to be moved to the garden. By hand as there is no wheelbarrow access through the house. Then 24 bags of cement. Plus a dozen or so bags of sharp sand. The sand and gravel bags can stay out in the front and be brought through in buckets. A pile in the back is just too tempting for the local cats.

I'm now looking at a trench with concrete (4 to 1 sand/gravel to cement) and thinking about laying blocks to hem in the earth. Quite how we lay the track I don't know yet but there is serious research going on as I speak with all the back numbers of Garden Rail Magazine that the Leamington & Warwick MRS posses. It's a lot more relaxing than mixing building materials !

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