Practical Garden Railways E-Book

Peter Jones

• Herausgeber: Crowood
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Have you always wanted to run your own railway? Does your indoor model railway leave you with a desire to fill your nostrils with the smell of steam and hot oil on a winter's morning? If the answer to any of these questions is 'yes' then you probably need to build yourself a garden railway, and you certainly need to read this book! Peter Jones is one of the best-known names in the world of garden railways. In this highly illustrated book he guides you through the exciting world of model trains in your garden, from small-scale electric-powered locomotives to live-steam engines capable of carrying passengers, helping the reader to decide on what type of railway would be right, and passing on countless tips for the successful execution of the grand project.The only book you will need to guide you through the exciting world of model trains in your garden.Superbly illustrated with 365 colour photographs and illustrations.Peter Jones is one of the best-known names in the world of garden railways.

Leseprobe

A comparison of the bulk of different scales. From top to bottom we see 16mm, G-scale, 7mm and 4mm.

First published in 2006 by

The Crowood Press Ltd

Ramsbury, Marlborough

Wiltshire SN8 2HR

www.crowood.com

This e-book first published in 2013

This impression 2010

© Peter Jones 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84797 670 3

Cover illustration by Michael O’Hara.

Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgements

  1 Introduction

  2 Planning

  3 Foundations

  4 Track

  5 Railway Structures and Details

  6 Locomotives

  7 Rolling Stock

  8 Buildings

  9 Painting

10 Tools

11 Gardening

12 Operation

13 Options

14 Passenger-Carrying Railways

15 A Garden Railway Year

16 Gallery

Appendices

I     Principal Manufacturers and Suppliers

II    Groups and Associations

III   Further Study

IV   Garden Railway Photography

V     Lollipops

Index

Foreword

The pastime of garden railways is one of the most engaging and rewarding activities one can pursue, combining the immensely popular hobbies of gardening and model railways in all their various aspects. It knows no national boundaries and is enjoyed by people around the globe. It is practised by men, women and children of all ages, and is the perfect family activity. This is an exceptionally broad and deep endeavour, one in which you will never hit bottom, and it offers something for everyone.

There is nothing new about garden railways. They have been around in one form or another for well over a century. The first commercial model trains were on the largish side, better suited for outdoor spaces. That applied doubly for those that actually ran on steam, where the danger of setting the carpet alight was both real and present. The earliest trains also tended to be expensive, so many of the first outdoor model railways were owned by the wealthy and operated by the gardener.

As model trains became cheaper and more accessible, they began to appeal more to the masses, and a great hobby came into being. Garden railways declined in popularity at the end of the Second World War, but experienced the beginnings of a steady renaissance in the late 1960s.Today, the hobby is alive and vibrant. We are living in a golden age of garden railways, supported by a vast number of commercial products, many clubs and associations, and several fine periodicals, published in different countries.

Peter Jones, the author of the book you are now holding, has been a garden railwayman for the better part of half a century, and he and I have been friends and associates for close on twenty-five years. Peter is the ideal person to have written this book. His vast experience in, and undying devotion to, garden railways puts him well ahead of almost everyone else out there. His own garden line, the well-known and widely published Compton Down railway, has been around in one form or another for some forty years. Peter’s unorthodox and creative approach to the hobby, as well as his willingness – almost to extremes – to help ‘spread the word’, as it were, by expounding on his techniques and methods in print and in person, has been a boon to countless other adherents of all ages and levels of experience. So there you are. Read this book, enjoy it, learn from it, and become involved. You’ll be pleased that you did and I’m sure you’ll never look back.

Marc Horovitz

Founding Editor, Garden Railways Magazine

March 2005

Acknowledgements

All photographs are by the author unless otherwise credited. Many people and organizations were extremely supportive of the writing of this book, and I thank them all. But I would like to single out Dave Rowlands: a very long-standing friend who has been such a force for good to garden railways, and who has also had to suffer many years of being a sounding-board for the fruits of my fevered brain. I should like to thank Eric Lloyd, Terry Collins, Alan Craney, Brian Spring, Dave Lomas, Don Jones, Ron Brown, Marty Cozad, Alan Millichamp and Phil Beckey for their garden railways, illustrations of which appear in this book. Phil, in particular, provided some excellent photographs of the sort of railway I would like to build if I were not devoted to my narrow gauge. I am grateful too for the kind assistance of Marc Horovitz, Bill Basey, Tag Gorton and Gareth Jones. Further thanks are due to Andrew Pullen of Aster UK for generous permission to use official drawings and photographs. The various scale societies were most helpful and, in this regard, I thank Geoff Calver, Paul Cooper, Ian Turner and John Evans. Special thanks must go to Manfred Meliset for generously allowing me to use photographs from Die Gartenbahn magazine. Judy Jones should be warmly thanked for her lovely traditional draughtsmanship – and also for putting up with being Mrs Jones all these years. Denys Bassett-Jones produced the diagrams in the book, and I offer my grateful thanks. Any omissions from this list are my fault entirely and I apologize for them. The way that everyone rallied round to help me was a testament to the camaraderie of this hobby.

It may be useful to acknowledge some of the influences from the past that shaped my thinking.The book Railway Adventure by L.T.C. Rolt inspired in me a lifetime of enthusiasm; and ‘Curly’ Lawrence, who, under his pen name of ‘LBSC’, wrote in such a friendly and encouraging way about model engineering that he made people, myself included, believe that they could accomplish much. I hope he would have approved of the unstuffy tone of this book. Whilst I was brought up on a diet of the old model-railway writers like Beal, Wickham and Carter, it was John Ahern who really shaped the way I interpreted railways in model form. His Madder Valley railway, part of which holds a special place of honour at Pendon Museum in Oxfordshire, was the indoor equivalent of what I always wanted my garden railway to be.