My Garden Railway Build - 1/1 Scale :-)

[armyairforce]

I haven't build a model railway for myself since 2007, though I did build one for a customer between 2010 and 2016. In early 2021, we moved house from Washington in the North East of England, about 10 miles south to Durham. There were several reasons for the move, but it resulted in a house with a much bigger plot of land than we previously had. Behind the garage, I found a partly rotten wooden gate, that had previously been a driveway gate. It immediately struck me how much it looked like a level crossing gate! In years gone by, going back to the early 1800s, there used to be a wooden wagonway that ran past the end of the garden. By the mid 1800s, the North Eastern railway had replaced the wooden railed wagonway.

A big garden, railway history on the doorstep and a gate that looked like a level crossing gate.......I knew straight away what I was going to do with it. I was going to build a 1/1 scale railway as a garden feature!

Over the winter of 2022/23, I stripped the gate down, cut out the rotten wood and replaced it with new. It was repainted in white, all the metalwork cleaned up and repainted and a galvanised steel disc cut for the centre red warning circle. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out.

In March this year, I'd arranged to buy some track parts from a local heritage railway and on March 25th, set off with my empty trailer to collect everything. I came back with 7 sleepers, 14 rail chairs and screws and enough rail to make about 16 feet of track. It weighed a ton and was hard work loading it into the trailer and removing it again once home. My big toe can testify as to how heavy the rail chair castings are!!

For much of last year, we were landscaping the upper area of this patch of ground, formerly a woodland and extending the hardstand next to the garage to allow us to move the garden shed and create a place to store my trailer. Next to the garden shed were some raised bed vegetable planters and next to that, I built my new astronomical observatory ( the light green shed ).

That dictated the space and ground height for the remainder of the former woodland which will become another lawn around 25 feet square and the railway. The railway will run left to right across the area in the foreground of the picture below. The dark brown sleeper marks its approximate position. The new level crossing gate will form a division between the lawn and railway with a raised embankment on the near side of the track, planted with wild flowers - well, that's the plan.

On the warm summer evenings to come, with a cool drink in my hand, I can lean on my crossing gate, looking over my railway at the wild flowers, imagining trains going by!! I'll post some more pictures when we've made a bit more progress.

 

[Rico]

Love it!
I did something similar in our old yard, minus the cool gate.

 

[Smudge617]

I haven't build a model railway for myself since 2007, though I did build one for a customer between 2010 and 2016. In early 2021, we moved house from Washington in the North East of England, about 10 miles south to Durham. There were several reasons for the move, but it resulted in a house with a much bigger plot of land than we previously had. Behind the garage, I found a partly rotten wooden gate, that had previously been a driveway gate. It immediately struck me how much it looked like a level crossing gate! In years gone by, going back to the early 1800s, there used to be a wooden wagonway that ran past the end of the garden. By the mid 1800s, the North Eastern railway had replaced the wooden railed wagonway.

A big garden, railway history on the doorstep and a gate that looked like a level crossing gate.......I knew straight away what I was going to do with it. I was going to build a 1/1 scale railway as a garden feature!

Over the winter of 2022/23, I stripped the gate down, cut out the rotten wood and replaced it with new. It was repainted in white, all the metalwork cleaned up and repainted and a galvanised steel disc cut for the centre red warning circle. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out.

In March this year, I'd arranged to buy some track parts from a local heritage railway and on March 25th, set off with my empty trailer to collect everything. I came back with 7 sleepers, 14 rail chairs and screws and enough rail to make about 16 feet of track. It weighed a ton and was hard work loading it into the trailer and removing it again once home. My big toe can testify as to how heavy the rail chair castings are!!

For much of last year, we were landscaping the upper area of this patch of ground, formerly a woodland and extending the hardstand next to the garage to allow us to move the garden shed and create a place to store my trailer. Next to the garden shed were some raised bed vegetable planters and next to that, I built my new astronomical observatory ( the light green shed ).

That dictated the space and ground height for the remainder of the former woodland which will become another lawn around 25 feet square and the railway. The railway will run left to right across the area in the foreground of the picture below. The dark brown sleeper marks its approximate position. The new level crossing gate will form a division between the lawn and railway with a raised embankment on the near side of the track, planted with wild flowers - well, that's the plan.

On the warm summer evenings to come, with a cool drink in my hand, I can lean on my crossing gate, looking over my railway at the wild flowers, imagining trains going by!! I'll post some more pictures when we've made a bit more progress.

WOW! I love your vision, so I look forward to watching this progress.

 

[migalyto]

Thats really cool that your able to have the space to do this.

Be sure to keep us posted as you move along.

 

[armyairforce]

April 18th

Today was a hard day's work digging out high spots for the track bed and filling in low areas with a combination of earth and gravel. This area is now looking pretty good as far as surface preparation is concerned. I now need to work on levelling the sleeper edging between the lawn and track bed ( shown laid in place ). There will be a slight gravel slope down from the sleepers to the trackbed to account for the different heights of the track and lawn.

The first picture is a view from the hawthorn hedge, looking back towards the current lawn. The two non-original sleepers on the right are 8 feet long each and will be about the same length as the track. The crossing gate will mount just to the left of those with the new lawn to the right.

This is the other view, from the current lawn. From the end of the new lawn edging sleepers to the hedge is about another 5 feet. Around three feet of that space will be taken up with edging sleepers and a pathway running parallel to the hedge. This is so I have a firm area to place ladders for when I need to cut the hedge, which is around 6 feet tall and 3 feet deep. The sleepers will hopefully minimise the spread of hedge cuttings and they should be easier to clean up from the path, rather than on the lawn or track ballast.

Today

 

[Smudge617]

April 18th

Today was a hard day's work digging out high spots for the track bed and filling in low areas with a combination of earth and gravel. This area is now looking pretty good as far as surface preparation is concerned. I now need to work on levelling the sleeper edging between the lawn and track bed ( shown laid in place ). There will be a slight gravel slope down from the sleepers to the trackbed to account for the different heights of the track and lawn.

The first picture is a view from the hawthorn hedge, looking back towards the current lawn. The two non-original sleepers on the right are 8 feet long each and will be about the same length as the track. The crossing gate will mount just to the left of those with the new lawn to the right.

This is the other view, from the current lawn. From the end of the new lawn edging sleepers to the hedge is about another 5 feet. Around three feet of that space will be taken up with edging sleepers and a pathway running parallel to the hedge. This is so I have a firm area to place ladders for when I need to cut the hedge, which is around 6 feet tall and 3 feet deep. The sleepers will hopefully minimise the spread of hedge cuttings and they should be easier to clean up from the path, rather than on the lawn or track ballast.

Today

You've got a lot done in a short amount of time.

 

[armyairforce]

April 19th

The 19th saw more weed clearing and earth moving. The earth for the first two sleepers, separating the new lawn and railway, was levelled and the sleepers laid in place. They are not staked down yet, as I want a weed membrane laid below the sleepers and across the railway trackbed. So until all the earth moving is complete, I don't want enything permanently fixed in place.

April 20th & 21st

The 20th was spent working along the hedge; clearing weeds, loose earth and plant matter left over from the woodland, to get down to solid earth. On the 21st, I began excavating parallel to the hedge for the lawn edging sleepers. They still need further lowering to match up with the railway/lawn dividing sleepers. It is heavy clay soil and was slow going, having to cut through tree roots and stones ranging from pebbles to half bricks left over from the old air raid shelters.

Towards the end of the day, I brought the additional edging sleepers down from the workshop patio to the bottom of the garden ready for use. I laid them out along the track bed to get a feel for the look of the railway and the space around the track for the crossing gate. The proper sleepers need jetwashing to get moss and other plant growth off them and then could do with painting in creosote or similar to help protect them.

 

[armyairforce]

April 25th

More digging! This time it was the foundations for the level crossing gate. The first one wasn't too bad, just a mix of gravel and clay soil. This will support the single post that the gate locks into when closed. Since the earth here is more loose backfill, though packed down, I wanted something to give it some additional support.

Like my observatory, I'll use two concrete building blocks, bedded on wet concrete, with concrete surrounding them as the footing ( the blocks are cheaper per volume than just pouring in concrete ). The hole is larger than the concrete blocks, allowing a border of concrete around them. I plan on hammering four 10mm rebars, a little way in from the corners of the hole which will extend half a metre into the ground. These will be embedded in the concrete surround.

The second was a nightmare. I don't think there's anywhere else in the garden with as many roots as in that two feet square hole. Everything ranging from a fraction of an inch to three inches diameter.

I ended up with a wood chisel, hammering it into the ground to cut through the roots in order to get a small trowel into the ground to start digging. It was very slow going and took most of the day to dig the two holes.

I finished the day with a little more work on bedding in the sleepers along the hedge. Here's the two completed holes.

 

[armyairforce]

April 27th

Yet more digging, but today, I got three of the rear edging sleepers in place and two and a half sleepers of the second layer screwed on top.

The offcut from the half sleeper was cut a little further to fit in the centre stretch of the lawn/railway sleeper divide. These aren't yet pinned down. I want to put a weed membrane under the railway and the edge will also go under the lawn/railway divide sleepers.

Before I can do that, I have to also get the last sleeper and a half fitted along the hedge. This is where I finished the day, digging dirt again to prepare the bed for the last section of sleepers.

All the digging spoils are currently being dumped along what will become the wild flower embankment, just to get it out of the way. Once I remove the weed membrane from the lawn, I'll take the tree trunk sections that are currently holding it down, and bury them under the embankment to give it more height.

 

[armyairforce]

May 10th

Nothing happened from the end of April to May 10th. Heavy rain has been frequent and when the rain did stop, the clay soil was too wet and sticky to dig easily. I've also been away for a 1940s event over the 5/6/7th weekend, with my World War 2 Jeep, which turned 80 years old on May 6th.

Finally between showers on the 10th, I got some concrete and high density concrete blocks and got the first gatepost foundation mixed and laid. Four 10mm diameter, 500mm length re-bars, are concreted into the corners of the foundation to help anchor the footing into the earth.

If it's dry tomorrow, I'll check the height of the other foundation hole, as it may need a little more digging out and and try to get the second one done. I also need to order some steel sheet to weld up a mounting plate for the single latch gatepost. I probably need to wait until I have the other foundation done first, that way I can always increase the height of the mounting plate, should I need to raise the latch gatepost in relation to the hinge gatepost.

 

[armyairforce]

May 16th & 17th

Over the last few days, I finished digging out the soil for the edging sleepers. I've also done some tree surgery on the conifer bush at the bottom of the garden. When we moved here, there was another, quite bald looking conifer in front of this one. As a result, the remaining conifer didn't get any sun light on its front face and so was also deviod of greenery. Conifers don't grow back well, so I started knitting branches from the sides of the bush to fill in the bare area in the front. Branches were pulled around and tied in place with nylon garden twine. It looks a load better now and once those branches fill out a bit more, with a little future trimming, it should become quite respectable again.

 

[armyairforce]

May 18th

On the 18th, I did some more work on the gate footings. I've had to make some compromises with the gate, for the reasons of practicality. I needed to remember that this is a garden feature, not a working railway. The gate will be too low to open and clear the tracks. If I wanted to be able to open it, the gate foundations would need to be raised by around 12 inches, or the whole trackbed dug out and lowered by 12 inches.

Raising the gate was going to make it look rather odd and digging out the trackbed through roots, concrete and bricks left over from the air raid shelter, was far more work than I was prepared to do. As a result, the gate height is set for a practical and aesthetic appearance in relation to the rest of the garden.

The main footing, nearest the hedge, was raised by the addition of a 2 inch thick paving slab being cemented on top of the concrete blocks. This lifted it by around two and a half to three inches.

The other footing was quite a bit lower, due to the slope of the garden. I added two more concrete blocks on top, bringing it to a very similar height to the main gatepost footing. Once the mortar is set, I need to back fill around them with earth to level the area, ready for the weed membrane that will cover the whole area.

Once the back fill is done, I can drill the mounting points for the gate in the top of the footings. The whole area can then have the weed membrane laid out and its edges can be tucked under the edging sleepers, which in turn can then be pinned down.

Once the membrane is fitted, the gate can be bolted in place on top. I haven't yet made the metal mounting bracket for the latch gatepost. I plan to get the gate fitted first and I can then see if the second post needs any additional height. If it does, I can make the bracket taller to suit. It shouldn't be too long until I can start laying the track.

 

[armyairforce]

May 23rd

I got my angle grinder out and with a stone cutting disc, rounded off the edges of the concrete footings so that they wouldn't cut through the weed membrane that would be laid over the top. I then packed earth around the concrete, wetted down to help me pack it in firmly, levelling it off with the top of the concrete. This further helped to smooth out the transition for the membrane lying over the concrete. The mud was left to set a few days while I had other jobs to do.

May 25th

Now for the exciting bit. On the evening of May 25th, when wifey was home from work and free to help, we carried the gate from the rear corridor, around 150 feet down the garden to the railway location. The footing for the hinge end of the gate was drilled for the rawle bolts and they were installed. The lawn/railway dividing sleepers were then lifted and a 5 metre square weed membrane spread out over the trackbed area. The edging sleepers were replaced and can now be drilled and pinned down properly.

The membrane was cut around the rawle bolts and the gate lifted and lowered into place. It took a bit of jiggling to get all the bolts through the metal post mount, without pushing them back down the holes, but eventually all eight nuts were in place and tightened down. The other end of the gate is just supported on a block of wood for now. I need to order some steel plate to make the mounting bracket for the other gate post, which will then support the end of the gate with its locking bolt.

Feeling very happy this evening.

 

[PMW]

I'm looking forward to following this. Quite antithetical to my 12' x 12' apartment layout

 

[armyairforce]

.....Quite antithetical to my 12' x 12' apartment layout

Some days while I've been digging through roots, I wish I was working in wood and plaster on a much smaller size. However, I get these bonkers ideas now and again and they usually turn out ok, but always seem to cause me lots of hard work!

 

[armyairforce]

May 30th

On the 30th, I got all the proper railway sleepers jetwashed, to get rid of plant growth, dirt, oil and soot. This was to allow them to be treated with an oil based preservative.

May 31st

This morning, I managed to get each sleeper loaded onto the wheelbarrow and trundled down the garden to the trackbed. While loading and unloading, I almost gave birth to several of my internal organs. I'm guessing the sleepers are oak, as they are incredibly dense and weigh a ton!

 

[armyairforce]

The sleepers were still a bit damp from washing, so I left them to dry. This is their approximate position, but they need to be spread out a bit more, extending the row further towards the hawthorn hedge. The closest one will also probably move towards the sleeper wall a bit.

I salvaged some of the old weed membrane that we pulled up and got the decorative sleepers along the hawthorn finished, both layers.

 

[armyairforce]

The three sleepers across the front of the gate were also pinned down and screwed together. I had to redrill one of the pinning holes, as it fell directly in line with the air raid shelter bricks underground. To hide the odd spacing of the pins, the sleepers will be capped by some three quarter inch planking, which will help to tie them together, since they are only a single layer.

With that done, the railway sleepers were now dry enough to start treating. Several of them have some quite rotten areas; after all, they were removed as they were no longer servicable. I picked the best side to be the upper face. The underside was given two coats of black bitumen, to help to water proof the surface touching the ground.

 

[armyairforce]

Once fully dry, the top, sides and ends will be treated with dark brown "Creocote"; an oil based, environmentally friendly version of Creosote. Let's hope they haven't taken all the stuff that works out of it. Once they are painted and dry, I'll be in a position to start laying rail!

My neighbour, also a railfan, donated some old 3 inch fenceposts and some planking to the project. These will form an old looking fence to fill the gap to the left of the crossing gate. The fence will stop at the hawthorn sleepers, leaving a gap where the paving will go, to allow trimming the hawthorn.

 

[Hutch]

This is exciting, where's the popcorn.