Moribund Tramway

[Nearholmer]

I did start a thread about my garden railway ages ago, but like the garden railway, it seems to have become lost and forgotten.

 

So, having decided to resurrect the line for the coming summer, i’ll start all over again.

 

A bit of light PWay work, as part of my spring garden tidying. Quite a lot to do in the garden, because the baking weather last year caused a lot of damage, and family commitments meant total neglect from September until now. Railway-wise, trains only ran on one day during 2018, and track had been reduced to a basic circuit, due to subsidence in the yard area, which is what I am now trying to put right.

 

To introduce the trains, here is loco No.4. It was made by a member of the local 16mm group (I will remember his name, I really will!) about twenty years ago, and was originally a very posh glossy green with brass trimmings. It is really solidly made, from thick steel sheet, and has a chunky motor designed for a battery screwdriver. I vandalised and repainted it, adding and altering bits, to make it look like a proper working ‘industrial’, rather than a showpiece, and it is a stalwart runner.

[sem34090]

Looks very similar in its outline and build to an 0-6-0 diesel in the same scale that was recently purchased by a member of my family for £50 along with three Lynton & Barnstaple coaches at £25 each and five Welsh NG wagons that were exchanged for a Hornby 'Pacer' (!)...

 

I shall be watching wit interest, Sir!

[Nearholmer]

The Moribund Tramway has two sets of rolling stock:

 

(1) two live steam locos, and a lot of hand-built wooden wagons, which are the "early years" trains; and,

 

(2) roughly two battery-diesels, and a lot of mostly converted LGB wagons, which are the "later years" trains, covering the period after the tramway was reopened as a purely industrial concern,

 

Since we started with one of the diesels, now something about the "later years" wagons.

 

The basis for most of these are LGB feldbahn wagons, which are fairly accurate representations of WW2 Heeresfeldbahn wagons. LGB have made oodles of variants based on this basic design, and they can easily be dismantled to kits of parts that can then be messed-about to make yet more variants, just like a real industrial railway does. One can even buy the separate components from 'breakers' in Germany.

 

When LGB hit major troubles c2000, I "panic bought" a stash of these in case they were never made again ........ we were in DINKY-phase, and the exchange rate was massively favourable, so such extravagance was possible back then! I've modified a lot over the years, but still have some left to do. Probably a good investment because, although LGB have made them sporadically under Maerklin ownership, prices have risen probably four-fold.

 

Basic mods are to repaint, change plastic wheels for metal, and, in most cases, change the couplers, but some have had much more work than that, typified by the 'junk and tool' wagon below.

 

The wagon type isn't really specifically German, its a typical mass-produced beast that could just as well have come from a British, French or US builder, but the fiction is that the tramway bought them in 1946, when the cargo of a German merchant vessel that had been captured during the war was eventually auctioned-off

 

 

Edited April 7, 2019 by Nearholmer

[flyingsignalman]

The loco looks very similar to my loco that I bought in about 2005; I've not made any alterations to it, yet!

Shown here on a previous garden railway of mine on 25/2/2009; not long before we moved to our present address.

[Nearholmer]

That's the one! I reckon you have changed the couplers. 

 

Mods on mine are: new couplers; turned the exhaust-pipe down and bored the top out to make a proper pipe; replacement hatches on bonnet-sides; new radiator mesh and radiator protection bars; added air-intake filters. It still needs cab steps and some sand-boxes, and a few other bits.

 

Do you recall the name of the guy who made them? I think his main business was in bodywork for cars and lorries, and he briefly branched-out into this, which was really his hobby.

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Some progress.

 

Broken concrete and bricks, then gravel, and then weak-mix. I’m using some damp-course membrane that I happen to have as a mat, the idea being that later I will use sand/cement/peat mix as ‘ballast’, and I don’t want this to bond to the brickwork. In the short-term, no ballast, because steady bombardment by my son’s football destroys anything that isn’t extremely robust.

[Nearholmer]

And now, looking a lot less moribund than it did a few days ago.

 

I need to tidy-up the alignments, find the rest of the DPC mat that I stashed somewhere,  and replace a lot of the rail-joiners, some of which disappeared or got damaged when I lifted the yard, which was possibly as long as two years ago.

[Metropolitan H]

Very impressive. Perhaps after the school holidays we will find time to allow a visit from one of my trains - battery or steam.

 

Do you want any more gardening work?

 

Regards

Chris H

[Nearholmer]

Yes please. Could definitely do with a good few hardy perennials delivered and planted out, since you’re offering. :-)

[Nearholmer]

A small test train.

 

The ‘other diesel’ is this pristine Roundhouse one, which I’ve managed not to attack with the weathering kit, yet .....

[Nearholmer]

Steam testing this afternoon. Not very good pictures, because I can’t do two things at once.

 

everything went well, except the loco pressure gauge, which isn’t registering properly - need to check for oil gunge in the pipe.

[Martin S-C]

I have a soft spot for garden railways having indulged in them during my 20+ years hiatus from 4mm scale. I still have my collection of LGB rolling stock, all the freight being Anglicized with my own light railway livery and some fictional PO markings. I have 4 LGB locos as well, the rest having been sold off.

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Well, if your wagons are pining for the rails, you’re always welcome.

 

Today’s coffee break trains are below.

 

The bright green one (modified LGB) can’t really run, because there is no track power, but it’s a nice colour.

[Northroader]

Can’t you stick some EverReady batteries in it?

[Nearholmer]

You're just winding me up, aren't you?

 

Actually, yes. I have another one that has been under conversion to become a particular loco that I had a drive of on the Bord na Mona system since ..... er, um..... er ...... 2001 (that's eighteen years to not finish a relatively modelling project, isn't it?), and that is intended to accept one a 9V battery. The conversion is dead simple, involving chopping away a bit of the large ballast-weight inside it, to make room, and adding three wires and switch; it doesn't really even need speed control, because 9V falling to c7.5V is about right anyway.

 

It might not be apparent in the photo, but the main thing to do in this conversion was raise the cab height by about half a scale foot.

 

BnM is, by the way, the only railway that I've ever seen that actually uses the full-sized version of the standard 16mm NGA centre buffer coupling, and they use three-link chains with a swivel-hitch on the centre link, so that wagons can be turned upside down to empty them, without detaching from the rake.

 

I must unearth the photos from which I was working, and get on with this!

 

 

Edited April 18, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

While looking for something else, I found the previous thread about the moribund tramway, which reminded me of two things:

 

1) The line was already largely moribund in 2016 ....... time passes too quickly!

 

2) The history is as follows:

 

The fiction is ever-evolving, but the core of it is a set of sprawling, straggling and struggling narrow gauge tramways, with a history that is linked both to the never-completed Newport Pagnell to Olney roadside steam tramway (that bit is true) and various schemes to extract coprolites in the Brickhill area (there's a bit of truth in there too). The Beds & Bucks Soil Amendment Company was the shadowy conglomerate behind these schemes, with ideas of turning the countryside roundabout into a second garden of England, by use of various forms of soil improver. In the main, B&BSACo actually functioned as a means of taking money from gullible shareholders, and turning it into champagne, oysters and visits to the Folie Bergere for the promoters.

 

The tramways are assumed to have had two existences, with a period of abandonment between: c1880-1926, as public carriers, using steam traction; and, c1946-65, as purely industrial concerns, using diesel traction. Some parts of the routes were used during both periods; others were unique to one period or the other.

 

Which saves me having to make up any new fake news!

 

 

Edited April 18, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

I found this morning that my small daughter had left her “holiday train” out overnight.

 

the nearest wagon contains the luggage and pets (a reindeer and two sharks), while the family travel in the carriage - very civilised.

[Northroader]

Younger granddaughters favourite trick is to “post” people inside the diesel to give them a ride, where they become entangled with the drive mechanism.