A Garden Railway Pipedream: the odyssey continues

[isambardme]

Hi all,

Well, after a long winter we were invited for a GTG today when lots of sunshine was forecast. Luckily the sun obliged us so we got in lots of running. Hope you like the photos. Apologies to Brian, I must have missed shots of his Merchant Navy on a new long train as I was busy getting my loco to run properly. Steve Steve

 

[isambardme]

As you can see from the above photos there was quite an L & B flavour, with two locos in steam at one time (not easy to photograph when you're running one yourself). Richard was running his pre owned L & B 2-4-2T Lyn for the first time. I saw it on e bay and gave him the heads up a good few months ago. I suspect she hadn't had much running before. She had four runs yesterday and was running very well by the last run. Richard felt it was happiest pulling three coaches on that last run. I think she's a lovely loco.
My two best locos ran very well too, both GWR (who said 'of course'?), the Accucraft Prairie and the Tom Barratt Hall. Here's to future running as summer approaches.

Steve

 

[isambardme]

Well, time passes and another sunny day was forecast. Amid the sunshine Richard's Bowande Duchess was examined. The water pump bearings appeared to be sticking. The bottom one was easy to access and was freed. However the top one would need body removal. It was decided to leave this and probably visit Dave Hawker, the Coventry based Bowande service agent. Meanwhile Richard's unrun acquisition from e bay, an Aster Standard 5, kit built by an engineer who had successfully rebuilt a traction engine and taken advice from a knowledgeable Gauge one operator, was prepared for rolling road testing. After advice and fine tuning, the Aster ran beautifully smoothly in the garden sunshine for just over half an hour with plenty of power to spare. What a result for a first run ! I remarked to Richard that this could become a favourite loco of yours to run. I also mentioned that , should he ever get tired of it, I would be very interested in acquiring it, but I suspect this will be a firm keeper for Richard, with very good reason !

Hope you like the photos.

Steve

 

[isambardme]

Hope you like these other photos

 

[isambardme]

Hi, well, a sunny day was forecast, it turned out a real scorcher yesterday. Luckily we were prepared with suitable hats, drink and lots of trains to play with (sorry, operate in a proper manner !)
It was great to see Allan's Accucraft Adam Radial running well with his LSWR coaches to match. My Bowande A4 was able to run well with 8 coaches. We had the opportunity to eat our packed lunches in the shade while Allan's pannier and autocoach with very impressive r/c dcc sound kept us entertained. Later Richard S gave his German Aster a run and garden owner Richard L got a very impressive second run from his Aster Standard 5, also on the 8 coaches. I understand that Richard S got some video footage of the Standard 5 attempting to break a certain Mallard's speed record !! However Richard L assures us that it never happened and his Standard 5 was running in a sedate manner at all times! Anyway, a great time was had by us all. Good job we had not planned to run in today's drenching conditions. Bless the English weather!
Hope you like the latest photos.

Steve

 

[Dikitriki]

Thanks for the photos Steve.

I did manage to take a video of the Standard 5

Richard

 

[Dikitriki]

Hi,

A year to the day since the last post!

Most of last year was spent getting Heyside ready for the NEC. Since then, we have been undertaking the maintenance on the outside track that we should have done over the last 4 years. We decided that to smooth out some rough running, sections of the track would be lifted, levelled then reballasted, and we have been taking advantage of the recent good weather to do just that. We're not yet all done, so mainline live steam is not advisable, but battery powered radio control is fine. I have acquired a couple of Pullman cars that had never been run and spent some time making sure they could - adjusting the ride height, coupling length, bogie articulation - and today was a test run. They ran for about an hour on the inside track without problem, but they consistently derailed on the outer track at a point where we have not yet got round to levelling - not the coaches' fault.

I took some phone video:

and a couple of pics to mark the occasion. Yes, I shall be renaming 'James' when I work out where the original transfers came from.

 

[isambardme]

All's looking good on battery r/c. Hope for some live steam running when conditions are judged suitable. All the best,

Steve