Karen's Little Railway is a private 7 1/4 inch gauge garden railway in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Our steam and diesel locomotives and rolling stock are in the 'minimal gauge' style, perhaps best described as being genuine 12" to the foot narrow gauge rather than being scaled down miniatures of something else.
Work stalled at the end of last year when the weather became too bad to work outside - our 'carriage and wagon works' is a table in the garden. The poor weather earlier this year means we're still catching up with other (non railway) jobs, so there's no more progress on the carriage to report at the moment. We'll post an update when we've done some more work on it, but that may not be until 2025. If others are looking for our previous update mentioned in the question above, here's a link ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GBDO5zVVCRo.html
Water does sometimes collect under the 'simple deck bridge', but it quickly drains away. Unfortunately the ground conditions (tons of stone dumped into boggy ground over the last 100 years or so) mean building water courses (or anything requiring grading) is difficult.
@@karenslittlerailway Understood. Best left as is then re civil engineering if it's boggy, best it drains away. Perhaps plant up with something that looks like, represents, water🤔 Just a thought ✌️👍😊 It's a wonderful line regardless 💜💜
Nice layout. Starting both trains in the same direction one needs to use the triangle and reverse to run in opposite directions. Lots of fun on such a limited space.
Yes, the layout does provide quite a few options in the limited space available, but the 'triangle' cannot be used as a reversing triangle as things stand. At present you have to use the line labelled 'balloon loop' to reverse the direction of trains. Plans are afoot for some changes (not shown) to the track plan.
@@karenslittlerailway Then You need to do some shunting, disconnecting the loco and move it to the other end of the train tp make go in the other direction, as I can see. Nothing wrong with that.
We've stuck some of those magnetic battery powered LEDs on the metal buffer beams of the red loco in the past and have a pair of bardic lamps with changeable lens colours to put on the other loco as a simple low-tech directional lighting solution as soon as we have fitted some lamp brackets
Add about 4 medium strength hinges & 1/4”x 3” plate to the leading edge of the ramp. This should lessen the bump when loading & make for a better transition between the 2….
Good idea. I did something similar idea on my earlier 'Imp' locomotive, though I used push bike brake parts with the callipers acting on the sides of a pulley that was part of the drive train.
@@karenslittlerailway yes, it’s quick and simple, we have a similar thing, but John built a scissor with four bike brake blocks onto disks for the ride on coaches. I can move my wheels between seven and five inch, the central disk makes that simple :o)
Excellent vid. I can see it would be better as a well deck low loader. Maybe so close to the ground in the middle that it can’t tip over very much. Nice build :o)
I am a big fan of Karens Little Railway. I am in particular intrigued by your minx locomotive. Can you tell me the wheelbase of this little loco and does it have any issues with your 16 foot radius curves? I have 20 foot radius curves on my 7 1/2" railway. Love to build one like it. Thanks Dale
@@hi1172 They were simply described as steel ammo boxes approx. 19x17x15inches when I bought them. A search on the net suggests they are British Army L15A1 ammo boxes. Hope that helps.
Do you think you could do a coverage on how your wagons and coach were made? I'm looking into making up some 7 1/4 stock of my own and I'm currently looking at various references
I enjoyed this new visit to your Railway vía RU-vid. I am 79 and white haired too. It's rewarding to see another old timer creating something beautiful for a richer life.
