5" Gauge Garden Railway: Part 3, Finishing the Ballast and laying the track 

Thank you very much!

Thank you.

Many thanks

Thank you very much.

Thank you! Cheers!

Billy, that would be a lovey, but unfortunately my garden is mostly at a 7 degree angle (or more) which makes water features a little difficult. Love the idea though.

Its been rewarding. But i think i need a new back and knees!.

I like your time lapse building too, Keep it up!

Absolutely!

compasshouse , several years ago at a steam fair in Guildford. I have a 14OO steam engine and a Class08 shunter also, but they are not yet serviceable, which I may feature in a later update. Thanks for your interest.

I've visited the club at Guildford a few times! I'm a member of SSME (Leatherhead)

Mr F, I bought mine from these guys. www.rideonrailways.co.uk/accessories/page02.html www.pnp-railways.co.uk/product-category/track-work/ Ali-rail comes in 2.5m sections. £160ish for 10meters. Although, I bought in bulk (80m) and got a discount some years back. The rail profile seems standard, but may be specific to these guys. They seem to share stock between them. They do chairs for steel bar as well. It might be cheaper if you are patient and wait for an ebay sale of second had stuff that comes up from time to time, but horses for courses as they say. I know there are many other sources you could go to, so shop around. Kind regards Rob.

@@RanmoreCommonRailway thanks rob, appreciated regards mr f

I do!

@@RanmoreCommonRailway Thanks

Voles - Holly molely! :)

@@RanmoreCommonRailway cost nearly €3,000 and about 10 days work to re-build the wall!

yesss. Its being planned. :)

I know what you mean! I'm planning on a loco shed that will house the few locos & a carriage i have, mainly to save my back!

immediate plans to extend to a siding and loco shed for storage.

@@RanmoreCommonRailway cool mate if only I had the room

Thanks for your interest. I'll follow up with more once I have enough interesting material.

Diameter of 10.8meters (35ft 6in) (Radius of 5.9m). Maximum i could fit into the area. The radius has some unevenness, so i guess at its tightest points may be down to a 5m radius. Incline(grade) on average is currently 1%, diagonally across the oval. But there are peaks and troughs that mean there are short 2.5% grades, which i should be able to sort out given some more time over the coming months of use. I'm currently mapping the layout to estimate the additional ballast requirements. Happy to share if you have an interest.

@@RanmoreCommonRailway Great video! Could I ask therefore, does one need a garden with a minimum 10.8m width to enable a loop to be run in this gauge?

@@mrjcfpants minimum radius is a bit of a dark art. There are generally accepted guides quoted of the minimum radius greater than 20 times the loco fixed wheel base, but down to 12 times is also possible. See this useful article - www.rideonrailways.co.uk/paul/building/page16.html. In this case my GWR tank is an 0-4-2 where the rear wheel set '2' floats/trails, and so the '4' wheel set is taken as the 'fixed' wheel set of 20cm (giving a minimum working radius of 4m), and the little shunter in this video has a 25cm wheel spacing, so it would seem to require a radius of at least 5m. But i know each will go around 3m & 4m short curves respectively. Point work tends to be more useful in garden setting on tighter configurations anyway. There are also a few tricks to note: you can over gauge your tightest curves a little. using 5 & 1/16" rather than 5" will help a lot, but there may be issues if you run locos that are dissimilar wheel arrangements. I've chosen to set my min radius over 5m, and also over gauge to 5 & 1/16 on the curves. I would STRONGLY recommend to always dig the largest radius you can fit in your garden, don't be tempted to "cut corners" cos you will probably live to deeply regret it, but if a tight curve is needed then it can probably can be made to work, (as long as you are happy running a 0-4-0, and don't expect to run a 9F!)

@@RanmoreCommonRailway Thank you a very detailed reply. I think I might be able to squeeze a loop at the widest part of my garden.

Seriously, I'd start with Google. There are just too many options for you to consider to make my help useful. I'd suggest deciding on your gauge first, and if you want it to pull passengers. But there will be plenty of options locally to you.

@@RanmoreCommonRailway thank you for your reply I'm going to do studying I think it will be fun experience for the grandbabies

Try n-gauge, i'm sure that will fit. Thanks for your interest.

@@RanmoreCommonRailway Ummm do I detect a bit of sarcasm?

@@angelsone-five7912 not at all. Just your comment made me smile.

@@RanmoreCommonRailway OK I take that back. It`s just that I see all these massive gardens, look at mine and .........

I have two electric engines; both shunters. The one on this video is a 12v single motor, reasonably low powered loco made by Compasshouse Engineering. It's fine to pull a few children around, or one average size adult. My second electric shunter is a 3 motor (12v) "08 Class" with mixed origins which is at least three times the tractive effort of the smaller loco. I will be running this on a 24v controller. which is in the process of conversion. Its not been shown on this video, as I'm upgrading the controller systems at the moment. Finally, I have a 14XX GWR tank coal fired steam engine. Its does not have a current boiler certificate, so it will be sometime before I'm able to run this on the layout. All will be my new time bandits!

and elbow grease, and a bit of determination too!

It did both. The difference between 1 ton dumpy bag and 1 ton prebagged into 25kg bags was about £30. But the extra time in loading and reloading into wheel barrows and spreading by spade was painful!

@@RanmoreCommonRailway Fair enough, not much savings there, but plenty saved in effort. 👍🏼

Difficult to be precise, as much of the material had been bought many years ago (Rail kit and points). But roughly the 50m of track laid to YT video part 4 required: - 1.8tn of ballast costing £350. (Green Granite, graded to 20mm max). - 164 Edging stones(60cm long) £447. - Ready mix concrete 20kg bags x 46 @ 4.50 per bag = £207. The PNP rail I used currently costs around £185 per 10m of track, and the point will cost around £140/£150, so all-in sums to a costly £2k. (so works out at £40 per meter of track laid). But there are undoubtedly cheaper/quicker track laying methods than those I used. The trains and carriages I have had for many years, and I can’t even recall what they might have cost at the time, but to replace them would be a similar cost again. A loco could be very expensive, cheapest ebay price you will find is around £600 for the small loco in the video, brown carriage would be the same again, ride on truck with brake I think is now going for arround £240. But if you want a 5” gauge steam engine, then you are talking anywhere between £2,500 and £7,500 depending on the quality and model type. I have since purchased a further 1 tn of ballast to even out the extremes, but not yet committed it to use. It's the costs of keeping me sane during COVID lockdown! Oh and not to forget : 1 knackered back, and tennis elbow in my right arm due to all that digging! :) If you are thinking about this as a project, then I might suggest you join your local miniature railway club first. At least then you will find out if you are really committed before spending! Best of luck.

@@RanmoreCommonRailway thank you for the quick response