Building a railway on a sloping site does have its problems; but the
necessity to run track on different levels has the advantage of allowing
trains to cross each other on bridges
Before the construction of our first G-scale railway
was properly complete,
we moved house. I therefore had to undertake the heartbreaking task of
tearing up the railway and packing what could be salvaged.
Happily, the pain was slightly
lessened by the prospect that we would soon have a somewhat bigger garden to
work in. Most of what I said in my first G-scale railway pages, about
my approach to building a garden railway, remains true, I think.
I've learned a lot
from our early G-scale efforts, but
I will be using the same basic construction techniques, and working
to the same design considerations; briefly these considerations
are as follows.
It has to look nice, but it doesn't necessarily have to look realistic
It has to be child-proof or, at least, easy to repair
It has to be more-or-less maintenance free. This means that
the buildings, rolling stock, etc., will be exposed to the elements
24 hours a day, 365 days a year
This is not our retirement home. Most likely we will be moving again
in a couple of years. This has a number of consequences. First,
we have to have something basically functional in a few weeks, Second,
things that take longer than a few weeks to construct
have to be capable of being
packed up and taken with us when we move house. Third, we can't do
anything to the garden that will prevent us selling the house to anyone
other than a garden railway enthusiast.
As in my previous garden railway project I wanted, despite the size,
to pack in all the features that are popular on much larger railways.
So there are multiple tracks on different levels, bridges, buildings,
a pond, and (after a certain amount of gritted teeth and bad language)
a waterfall made out of real rocks.
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