As anybody who has read my other blogs will know, I already have two model railway projects ongoing at present. My permanent home based layout, Skaleby, is a 00 gauge shelf layout currently undergoing a protracted construction in our spare room. Its little brother, Skaleby West, is a micro layout, built for my Weston-on-Trent exhibition last year. This has an extension in the advanced planning stage.

So the last thing I really need is another model railway project!

The fact is, I had never really considered starting another project. My main aim was to make progress on the Skaleby West extension - but one innocent comment changed all of that.

A recent trip out saw my eyes fall upon a Bachmann G gauge "Thomas" set. This contained Percy, two troublesome trucks and an oval of track + controller at a much reduced price. Now I am quite fond of those original characters from the Island of Sodor. I was brought up on a diet of Rev Awdry stories. It is what got me interested in steam and model railways. My 20 month old daughter is developing a similar interest (perhaps aided by a few preserved railway and model railway visits with daddy!!). She can already control my father in law's "track mat" layout, asks for the "choo-choos" everytime she visits there and can name a number of the Thomas characters - including shouting out "That's right" everytime she sees Ferdinand - one of the awful new characters added by the vandals that currently own the franchise. Her favourite character is Percy.

Upon arrival home I happened to mention this "bargain" set to my wife, expecting her to produce the sort of usual stock wife answer we hear all the time eg "that's nice" / eyes roll upwards etc. Did she? No! What she said was - "why don't you buy it for the garden?". Even an excuse of lack of funds from me did not produce the sensible response from her. Instead I got "why not use your credit card!".

Up until that point a G gauge garden layout had only been a distant dream - something that would be nice to have but never likely. Up until that point I have never really liked the SWMBO tag that many RMWeb users give their spouses. But on this occasion I am happy to adopt it.

And so I have my third model railway project.

Since that fateful day I managed to dig out an old Hornby magazine "Garden Railway" supplement. This gave guidance as to how to build a semi-permanent G gauge layout. This is what I am planning at present. For the time being the track plan will make use of the basic oval from a, soon to be purchased, set. It will give my daughter the chance to control a train on a continous run - something that is not possible on Skaleby or Skaleby West. There will be scope to expand the set some time in the future if and when funds permit as I have to be honest money is not readily available at present!

Getting started

During the last year I have gradually been extending the flower bed which runs down one side of our back lawn. The plan had been to extend this to the rear of the garden and further widen it at the far corner so that we got rid of some of the poorly laid areas of lawn around our bird table. This area we planned to cover in plastic sheeting, before adding a layer of decorative stones / gravel. Work commitments had rather halted progress during the last 12 months. But after identifying this decorative area as a perfect place for the initial starter oval of track I had renewed motivation. I dug the whole thing out this afternoon! The accompanying picture shows the progress made so far - amazing what the promise of a layout can do!!!