I'm looking to build a Garden Railway, with the intention of running scale length trains, some neigh on 20feet long
It looks like people are using decking wood to lay track on, does anyone know if hardwood is worth the premium of paying the extra for?
I'm looking to run (eventually) a 250ft dog bone layout with runs into my garage. The track will be laid around the perimeter of my long (100 ft x 60 ft) "L" shaped garden.
The track will be placed on staggered railway sleepers laid on their sides hopefully showing the rail chair indents to create a "brick effect". The sleepers will be laid 2 high creating a low wall to keep the track out of harms way and creating a boundary round the garden.
This will give the wall of sleepers a height of around 20 inches, I then plan to top the sleepers with decking board (not sure if hardwood is worth the premium or softwood will suffice) Then overlay the deck board with roofing felt to weatherproof it.
This seems to be how its generally done , but i'm all ears for advice from people who have built Garden Railways.
One problem i'm getting stuck with is I'm building a fiddle yard in the garage, its going to be built to one side against the wall to keep its footprint low, 3ft is the maximum reach for comfort, this allows for 15/16 running lines and a table top height of about 1m works well.
The problem this gives me is a differential in height between the garage and the running track in the garden, of about 50% or 500mm/20"
My only solution is to build a helix in the corner or the garden to get the levels corresponding, this would still be quite a project in itself dropping 500mm on a 5foot radius Helix.
I know the layout is Big but even so the difference is too big to make up the difference in levels.