by Cheeseminer
These are a few pages I've moved here from the original Flatland & Washes Railway website, originally written in the early days of the railway and in the vein of sharing where'd we come from as beginners in all this. I've even kept the section about gauge and scale which will taste gently of sucked eggs to many here, but maybe not to a passing newcomer. |  |
Why? - The Flatlander Mindset
What was our model railway for? For personal pleasure: but that should be the case regardless of how serious anyone takes railway modelling.My personal emphasis is on the creation of a model that "looks right" and that I can have some fun with especially in terms of automation and model building.
I draw a big, indeed huge, distinction between 'right' and 'accurate'. I have chosen a gauge that was never in common use in the UK but I'm running UK-style rolling stock. This makes it wildly inaccurate from the perspective of any UK railway precedent but I maintain that there is no intrinsic reason why this is not a reasonable gauge (indeed, so maintains most of Europe) and thus it looks "right", or at least "reasonable".
This may seem a bit lazy for more purist modellers, but I'd say that a rational-looking railway is a better model than a sub-millimetre perfect rendition of a Class 5 in spotless shiny green plastic. Each to their own, of course; and, for the avoidance of doubt, shiny green '5's are most welcome to visit!
I do get irritated with RTR (Ready-To-Run) models where the scaling is completely bizarre: models where the driver, despite being a mere [scale] 5ft, would never have fitted through the 3ft 6in door! To be clear, I've nothing against any railway running ths sort of stuff, but I do rail (sorry...) against items being sold as to a G "scale" in the same vein as "O", "OO", "N", etc. when they clearly are not.
If nothing else, it makes the specification of birthday presents more complex than it need!
Although I couldn't tell a GWR wagon from an LNWR one some consistency of stock is important to me so you won't find mainline passenger coaches on this small industrial branch, nor will you find blatently American stock running behind small British loco's. All stock needs to look like it's real, even if it isn't; so weathering is essential to hide that.
If I can take a photograph and it not be immediately obvious that the photo is of a model, then I'll be content with the achievment. Not achieved that photo yet.
Starting points were,
Existing garden beds, trees and structures need to be considered even if only to plan to [re]move them. Also consider how you are going to get the mower, or wheelbarrow, to the areas you need to in the future.
You can do a lot 'by eye', even better with a hosepipe or two marking out the approximate layout for days on end to see what effect it really has. However, you really need to get a reasonably accurate drawing down on paper - you will be surprised what your garden plan really looks like.
For this you need a long tape and either a lot of graph paper, or, in my case, a simple CAD program. I used a simple shareware one CadStd (www.cadstd.com) which is fairly basic (and it's user interface has nothing to commend it) but then the needs of this job are quite simple. The main value of the CAD package is to maintain a readable document, and maintaining multiple variants, whilst you are bouncing the design options around.
Locate and draw up the immovable objects: fences, trees etc. and make sure you have all of them!
Survey the ground levels. Our garden is remarkably flat rising only a few inches over 50 yards (but then, this is Cambridgeshire). Work out what one point is going to determine the 'zero' height reference. For us, it was that that the circuit around the shrub bed was only just above lawn level, which also happened to be the level of the concrete base of the small metal shed I'd installed as a store for the railway.
The observant will have noticed that it would probably have been best to finalise the layout before laying large concrete shed bases in it's way. Wonderful stuff, hindsight.
Beware of trees. Trunks are reasonably easy to plan around but carefully consider the consequences of running the line under the canopy. There is the obvious 'leaves on the line' problem but a quick brush can solve that. More consideration needs to be given to fruit trees (we have a number of plum and apple trees in the target area). How are you going to harvest the fruit without risking standing on the track? Chances are you'll want to mow under those trees to make finding fallen fruit easier, so allow space for that. Even if you're no fruit lover, rotten fallen plums/apples don't half make a mess of track.
As do pigeons.
Dead flat is boring. One of the garden railway owners we visited before embarking on any of this commented on his regret of not having any gradient at all, which would have made running his steam loco a more interesting challenge. That said - it's probably worth making sidings level unless you have working brakes on your wagons!
Beware of trying to cross the same line. You need a long long distance to be able to achieve this comfortably. Our original plan had such a loop, but even with an unrealistically thin bridge (i.e. thickness between the top of the lower aperture to the top of the upper track), and an 8ft radius curve, the resultant gradient was somewhat agressive. Aggressive gradients are feasible on straights with typical garden railway loco's but don't look good, but on a curve the tractive effort required is multiplied by the sideways friction on the train wheels.
This table is the result of a small spreadsheet I used to sanity-check ideas about radii and gradients.
So, for a loop of radius 60 inches, to reach 9 inches height you need a gradient of 1:42.
In any case, I didn't really have the space to keep to both the desire to have a bridge crossing and maintain large minimum radii. At it happens, this was a stroke of good fortune as, when I did eventually run a scale 1:20 loco around the track, albeit a large one, it didn't fit under the 'tunnel' I'd mocked up and would never have fitted under the planned rail bridge! The tunnel was easily removed - the bridge and gradient track based around it would have been a very different matter.
Bridges make an attractive feature but you do have to plan carefully for them, especially if, like us, you have a flat garden. With a gradient of 1 in 60 you do need 20 yards to get a mere 12 inches into the air. Don't forget to take into account the vertical thickness of the bridge itself. Ironically, the location where we wanted a bridge for visual reasons was at the slightly higher end of the garden, so I was fighting the gradient all the way. I'd recommend do it the other way round if you can!
Look for operating interest. A single loop is 'OK' but that's about all. Plan in a passing loop so that running more than one train is fairly easy. Points/Turnouts are expensive so you may hesitate to have many sidings - even so, allow for them in the plan so that you're not stymied by the horse chestnut when you come to want more later. It's even worth at least considering what large scale expansions might be possible and, at least, try not to exclude them with your layout.
Although I couldn't tell a GWR wagon from an LNWR one some consistency of stock is important to me so you won't find mainline passenger coaches on this small industrial branch, nor will you find blatently American stock running behind small British loco's. All stock needs to look like it's real, even if it isn't; so weathering is essential to hide that.
If I can take a photograph and it not be immediately obvious that the photo is of a model, then I'll be content with the achievment. Not achieved that photo yet.
My Requirements
It's most unlikely my aims and desires are the same as anyone else's, but my list might be a reasonable example list of things to consider before embarking on the Great Cost. So what was I looking for?
- Permanent outdoor installation, sufficiently tolerant of all that implies to allow for fairly trouble-free running.
- Size to allow battery power and radio- or automated- control circuitry.
- Possibility for steam loco's, which in turn implies a continuous circuit
- Non-intrusive integration into the garden
- More than an utterly ridiculously short scale length
- Cost, preferably, less than an average car
- British outline with an industrial feel
- Bridges
Choice of Scale & Gauge
Scale. Gauge. Arrrgh. My head hurts.
Before I go on it would be good to clarify "Gauge" and "Scale". The gauge is the distance between the rails. The scale is size multiplier. The latter is, bizarrely, typically given in pan-dimensional units, 7 millimeters to 1 foot, for example. It doesn't help that the "letter" description: e.g. OO, HO, O, G, N etc. attempts to roll up gauge and scale - but in garden railways that really falls apart.Gauge
It's simpler to start with gauge if only because there are fewer of them and a mm is a mm. The gauge is the distance between the rails. Nothing more, nothing less. The familiar indoor "OO/HO" train set runs on rails 16mm apart. The bigger "O" models run on rails 32mm apart.
"G Scale" railways, designed for gardens, typically run on rails 45mm apart.
Real-world, normal, rail tracks are 4ft 8inches apart. This is called "Standard Gauge". Anything narrower than this is called "Narrow Gauge". There is one Standard Gauge; there are many and various Narrow Gauges.
"G Scale" railways, designed for gardens, typically run on rails 45mm apart.
Real-world, normal, rail tracks are 4ft 8inches apart. This is called "Standard Gauge". Anything narrower than this is called "Narrow Gauge". There is one Standard Gauge; there are many and various Narrow Gauges.
Scale
Scale is the mathematical relationship between the 'full size' object and its model counterpart. For a scale of 7mm:1ft, the standard 4ft 8inches becomes 32mm. Voila! - O Gauge. However, this is the one and only "high street" scale/gauge where this actually works!
HO ought to be "Half O" i.e. 3.5mm:ft and thus 16mm gauge, but, for messy historical reasons, the fudge that is OO/HO is "OO" trains (at 4mm:ft) on HO track (at 3.5mm:ft). So actually, your Hornby set is narrow gauge (herein lies many years of argument and debate which I shall quickly ignore and move on...)
G is a mess. Originally designed to be 13.5mm/ft practically all compliance to a scale has been abandoned by different manufacturers. The net effect is that all "G" rolling stock is roughly of "a certain size" regardless of what size the original model was. The scale is fudged to suit. Grrr.
Gauge 1 is the accurate scaling of Standard Gauge to the 45mm model gauge. These trains are gorgeous accurate models and big enough to sensibly power with live steam. They are also expensive. Heart-attack-inducingly expensive.
16mm - yes a naming lurch but that's because here the scale is important but the gauge not - just like real life narrow gauge railways. This normally is run on 32 or 45 mm rail. For 32mm rail, this is akin to Welsh mountain railways (e.g. Festiniog) that run on 2ft gauge track.
Gauge 3 is the natural doubling of O Gauge to a model gauge of 64mm. Remember that doubling in one dimension results in a model that's 8 times the size of it's O equivalent, so these are something like G in size, but scaled for Standard Gauge. No idea whatever happenned to "Gauge 2".
The typical consideration for garden railways is either 32 or 45 mm gauge and thus one of popular-but-random G stock on 45mm; O gauge on 32mm; or a scaled 16mm:ft Narrow Gauge railway on either 32 (2ft) or 45 (metre) gauge track.
We did briefly consider a 5" gauge sit-on-able railway as the garden is just big enough, but it would have been very limited in scope for the expense, and quite intrusive.
My desire for a consistent scale hadn't really materialised by the time we started. A bit of a mistake perhaps but it wasn't really until the various bits of eBay-acquired stock came together that the inconsistencies really became visible.
The choice between 45mm and 32mm gauge was a very close one. We'd seem both in action on very different garden railways. Using 32mm would have saved about 10% on the track cost. In the end 45mm won on the basis of ease of availability, physical tolerance of 'leaves on the line', the non-exclusion of Gauge 1, and the gut feeling that, while historically accurate, 32mm gauge track just looked too narrow in model form.
HO ought to be "Half O" i.e. 3.5mm:ft and thus 16mm gauge, but, for messy historical reasons, the fudge that is OO/HO is "OO" trains (at 4mm:ft) on HO track (at 3.5mm:ft). So actually, your Hornby set is narrow gauge (herein lies many years of argument and debate which I shall quickly ignore and move on...)
G is a mess. Originally designed to be 13.5mm/ft practically all compliance to a scale has been abandoned by different manufacturers. The net effect is that all "G" rolling stock is roughly of "a certain size" regardless of what size the original model was. The scale is fudged to suit. Grrr.
Gauge 1 is the accurate scaling of Standard Gauge to the 45mm model gauge. These trains are gorgeous accurate models and big enough to sensibly power with live steam. They are also expensive. Heart-attack-inducingly expensive.
16mm - yes a naming lurch but that's because here the scale is important but the gauge not - just like real life narrow gauge railways. This normally is run on 32 or 45 mm rail. For 32mm rail, this is akin to Welsh mountain railways (e.g. Festiniog) that run on 2ft gauge track.
Gauge 3 is the natural doubling of O Gauge to a model gauge of 64mm. Remember that doubling in one dimension results in a model that's 8 times the size of it's O equivalent, so these are something like G in size, but scaled for Standard Gauge. No idea whatever happenned to "Gauge 2".
The typical consideration for garden railways is either 32 or 45 mm gauge and thus one of popular-but-random G stock on 45mm; O gauge on 32mm; or a scaled 16mm:ft Narrow Gauge railway on either 32 (2ft) or 45 (metre) gauge track.
Deciding factors
My various desires point to one of the middle-of-the-range scales. Gauge 1 was out on budget, sadly. The erratic scaling of G is just infuriating (but is most of what I'm running now - just to have something to run). O Gauge (7mm:1ft) wasn't really physically big enough, very expensive and not enough of a step change from our indoor 4mm and 2mm layouts.We did briefly consider a 5" gauge sit-on-able railway as the garden is just big enough, but it would have been very limited in scope for the expense, and quite intrusive.
My desire for a consistent scale hadn't really materialised by the time we started. A bit of a mistake perhaps but it wasn't really until the various bits of eBay-acquired stock came together that the inconsistencies really became visible.
The choice between 45mm and 32mm gauge was a very close one. We'd seem both in action on very different garden railways. Using 32mm would have saved about 10% on the track cost. In the end 45mm won on the basis of ease of availability, physical tolerance of 'leaves on the line', the non-exclusion of Gauge 1, and the gut feeling that, while historically accurate, 32mm gauge track just looked too narrow in model form.
Designing the Route
Plan
We have a long thin garden, depressingly huge by modern standards, but a bonus when it comes to hobbies like garden railways. However, having such a large canvas brings it's own dilemmas.Starting points were,
- to have a continuous circuit, thereby enabling uncontrolled / lazy runnings - especially relevant to any future steam deployment
- to have a reasonable minimum radius to curves. In the final layout, the tightest curves are on an 11ft radius.
Existing garden beds, trees and structures need to be considered even if only to plan to [re]move them. Also consider how you are going to get the mower, or wheelbarrow, to the areas you need to in the future.
You can do a lot 'by eye', even better with a hosepipe or two marking out the approximate layout for days on end to see what effect it really has. However, you really need to get a reasonably accurate drawing down on paper - you will be surprised what your garden plan really looks like.
For this you need a long tape and either a lot of graph paper, or, in my case, a simple CAD program. I used a simple shareware one CadStd (www.cadstd.com) which is fairly basic (and it's user interface has nothing to commend it) but then the needs of this job are quite simple. The main value of the CAD package is to maintain a readable document, and maintaining multiple variants, whilst you are bouncing the design options around.
Locate and draw up the immovable objects: fences, trees etc. and make sure you have all of them!
Survey the ground levels. Our garden is remarkably flat rising only a few inches over 50 yards (but then, this is Cambridgeshire). Work out what one point is going to determine the 'zero' height reference. For us, it was that that the circuit around the shrub bed was only just above lawn level, which also happened to be the level of the concrete base of the small metal shed I'd installed as a store for the railway.
The observant will have noticed that it would probably have been best to finalise the layout before laying large concrete shed bases in it's way. Wonderful stuff, hindsight.
Beware of trees. Trunks are reasonably easy to plan around but carefully consider the consequences of running the line under the canopy. There is the obvious 'leaves on the line' problem but a quick brush can solve that. More consideration needs to be given to fruit trees (we have a number of plum and apple trees in the target area). How are you going to harvest the fruit without risking standing on the track? Chances are you'll want to mow under those trees to make finding fallen fruit easier, so allow space for that. Even if you're no fruit lover, rotten fallen plums/apples don't half make a mess of track.
As do pigeons.
Gradients
There are three basic options. 1. dead flat, 2. gradient for the sake of having a gradient, 3. gradient for a purpose - e.g. you want to have the route turn and cross itself.Dead flat is boring. One of the garden railway owners we visited before embarking on any of this commented on his regret of not having any gradient at all, which would have made running his steam loco a more interesting challenge. That said - it's probably worth making sidings level unless you have working brakes on your wagons!
Beware of trying to cross the same line. You need a long long distance to be able to achieve this comfortably. Our original plan had such a loop, but even with an unrealistically thin bridge (i.e. thickness between the top of the lower aperture to the top of the upper track), and an 8ft radius curve, the resultant gradient was somewhat agressive. Aggressive gradients are feasible on straights with typical garden railway loco's but don't look good, but on a curve the tractive effort required is multiplied by the sideways friction on the train wheels.
This table is the result of a small spreadsheet I used to sanity-check ideas about radii and gradients.
Gradient (1 in N) for a circle of radius R requiring to reach a height H.
| Height | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | |
| Radius | 48 | 60 | 50 | 43 | 38 | 34 | 30 | 27 | 25 |
| 51 | 64 | 53 | 46 | 40 | 36 | 32 | 29 | 27 | |
| 54 | 68 | 57 | 48 | 42 | 38 | 34 | 31 | 28 | |
| 57 | 72 | 60 | 51 | 45 | 40 | 36 | 33 | 30 | |
| 60 | 75 | 63 | 54 | 47 | 42 | 38 | 34 | 31 | |
| 63 | 79 | 66 | 57 | 49 | 44 | 40 | 36 | 33 | |
| 66 | 83 | 69 | 59 | 52 | 46 | 41 | 38 | 35 | |
| 69 | 87 | 72 | 62 | 54 | 48 | 43 | 39 | 36 | |
| 72 | 90 | 75 | 65 | 57 | 50 | 45 | 41 | 38 |
So, for a loop of radius 60 inches, to reach 9 inches height you need a gradient of 1:42.
In any case, I didn't really have the space to keep to both the desire to have a bridge crossing and maintain large minimum radii. At it happens, this was a stroke of good fortune as, when I did eventually run a scale 1:20 loco around the track, albeit a large one, it didn't fit under the 'tunnel' I'd mocked up and would never have fitted under the planned rail bridge! The tunnel was easily removed - the bridge and gradient track based around it would have been a very different matter.
Bridges make an attractive feature but you do have to plan carefully for them, especially if, like us, you have a flat garden. With a gradient of 1 in 60 you do need 20 yards to get a mere 12 inches into the air. Don't forget to take into account the vertical thickness of the bridge itself. Ironically, the location where we wanted a bridge for visual reasons was at the slightly higher end of the garden, so I was fighting the gradient all the way. I'd recommend do it the other way round if you can!
Look for operating interest. A single loop is 'OK' but that's about all. Plan in a passing loop so that running more than one train is fairly easy. Points/Turnouts are expensive so you may hesitate to have many sidings - even so, allow for them in the plan so that you're not stymied by the horse chestnut when you come to want more later. It's even worth at least considering what large scale expansions might be possible and, at least, try not to exclude them with your layout.
Next.... Trackbed & Ballast