Old garden railway photos

Digging through old photos last week, I found a few of one of my earliest garden railway efforts.

First, we have Ben, a scratchbuilt Barclay-alike. I always liked the Backwoods Miniatures Barclay but had neither the money nor skill to build one. I did have some suitable large scale wheels and a few sheets of plasticard, so I built my own. 

The train is made up of the superb Coopercraft plastic kit wagons which are still lovely detailed models - if you can track any down.

Next there is my unnamed steam tram. I think this runs on a toy car converted to rail wheels. These "Stomper" conversions were all the range years ago but the resulting models ran rather fast. 

As I recall, the tram was originally a coach but once I had started work, I changed tack. The wooden coach is at the back of this train however. It sits on finescale O gauge wheels - available for pocket money prices from my local model shop - so wasn't the best runner in the world. I think the wheelbase is articulated in an effort to get it around corners on those tiny flanges. 

I'm definitely more of a builder than an operator!