Once Upon a Time (Mostly) in the Garden

[PatB]

Prompted by some of the posts here, I thought I'd post some photos, that I recently scanned, showing some of the models from my past.

 

First up are a couple of shots of the 00 garden railway that my father built c1968-9, ostensibly to amuse my brother and I. IIRC it was a very simple double track oval, passing through the back of the garage at one end and running around a rockery, with a basic through station and crossing a waterfall/small pond on a plastic arched stone bridge (Triang or Airfix probably).

 

Seen in these two shots is the entire motive power of the line, comprising a Triang Jinty (although, at this remove of time, I suppose it could have been a Dublo R1), a Trix (probably, given that I don't think anyone else made one at the time) Western in BR blue, and something English Electric in BR green. I assume it's a Triang EE Type 3 but it looks a bit long in the pic and I didn't think Triang had yet introduced it at the time, but the lack of likely alternatives makes me adopt the Sherllock Holmes adage. I simply knew them as The Tank Engine, The Blue Diesel and The Green Diesel, seeing as I was about 3 at the time.

 

The line was dismantled when we moved house in early 1972 and Dad traded the equipment in for N gauge stuff, of which no photos exist.

 

Photos taken with a 1967 Polaroid Land Camera.

 

 

Moving on to 1975, Dad turned up one evening with a mysterious package which turned out to be a black, 0 gauge Lima 4F and announced his intention to build a garden railway. In addition to the 4F, Christmas that year brought a Triang Blue Flyer, matching coaches, a couple of mineral wagons, some PCB points and a box of Peco track, which went towards the layout, a small part of which is shown below.

 

It was a fairly substantial BLT with an out and back main line and a proposed (but never completed) continuous run. An initially single main line was subsequently doubled and nominal point radii gradually increased from 4'6" to 9', with improvements in the trackbed over time too. We learned a great deal in the 6 years or so that the line was in commission.

 

Photo taken with Kodak Instamatic with 126 cartridge film.

 

 

One of my first major building projects (jointly but, more or less, equally with Dad) was a freelance DMU, made by modifying some Triang coaches and sticking a Lima power bogie in the guard's compartment of the "DMBS". Whilst rather crude by modern standards it had a detailed interior, automatic directional lighting, switchable Ni-Cad and 2-rail power supply and extendable close coupling. We were both very proud of it and it stood up well against typical budget garden railway models of the era (1980). I keep expecting to see it in the Ebay Madness thread .

 

Photos taken with a Zenit E SLR (Moscow Olympics commemorative edition no less ), my 14th birthday present in January 1981. Not that it's resulted in me being anything other than a bad photographer.

 

 

In 1981 the Somerset 0 Gauge Group, of which Dad and I were founder members, inherited some sturdy (sorta) portable baseboards and, inspired by Allied Marine and John Allison's Porth y Waen Dad and I were tasked with building a small, industrial layout for exhibition. Primary motive power was a freelance diesel shunter which was basically a shaped block of lead with styrene sheet cosmetics sitting on the ubiquitous Lima motor bogie. Stock was a motley assortment of Triang, 3H and Highfield kits and various odds and ends picked up secondhand. Never properly finished, the layout did appear at a number of local exhibitions between 1981 and 1983, including Minehead, Edington and Taunton. We were quite pleased with some of the buildings though.

 

Photos taken with the Zenit again.

 

 

Hope this is of interest as a glimpse into nostalgic and not too serious modelling from the past.

 

 

[Ian Smeeton]

I LOVED Allied Marine.

 

It ticked all my boxes at the time.

 

Regards

 

Ian