Garden railways

[alexnick]

Hi,

I was just wondering who else in the forum has a garden railway, and what sort of railways people have.

We have a IIm/45mm gauge layout in the garden based on European narrow gauge, running mainly, but not exclusively, LGB stock.

What do others have?

Nick

[BR7MT]

3 1/2 inch guage

Regards,

Dan

[saddletank]

Hi Nick

I'm just starting to build a 1:22.5 45mm gauge line using mostly LGB stock but set in Britain and using British buildings. If you're into G Scale have you seen the G Scale Mad forum? Great place, people there are very friendly.

http://www.gscalemad.co.uk/

Martin
(also saddletank on the GSM forum)

[ahardy]

IM running 16mm scale on 32mm track in a very small space in my garden. Second loco should arrive tomorrow. Im into the rolling stock and scenery more than the locos. I may post some pictures if there is interest.

Also into 5 inch aswell.

Andy

[alexnick]

Hi Nick

I'm just starting to build a 1:22.5 45mm gauge line using mostly LGB stock but set in Britain and using British buildings. If you're into G Scale have you seen the G Scale Mad forum? Great place, people there are very friendly.

http://www.gscalemad.co.uk/

Martin
(also saddletank on the GSM forum)

Thanks for that - I always thought that G Scale wasn't that popular in the UK

[saddletank]

Considering LGB introduced it in 1968 it did take a long time to become widely used here. The G Scale Society only started up in the mid-80s I believe and probably G Scale garden railways have really only taken off big time (if 2000 members in the G Scale Society can be classed as 'big time') in the last 5 years or so.

I think the 16mm scale garden railway fans have been around longer but their scale too is seeing something of a boom now as well.

Traditional Gauge 1 and Gauge 3 have remained fairly static at quite a low level of numbers for decades.

What has caused the boom in the last few years is more and better 16mm manufacturers with very reliable products and with G Scale also a large community of ancilliary companies making buildings, figures etc plus the LGB products now are the cheapest they have ever been in absolute terms and very reliable. The US/Canadian market is also helping drive the hobby as garden railways were a late discovery over there but they now have taken off in a huge way.

I suppose if you wanted to draw comparisons then G Scale / LGB is the Hornby and Bachmann side of the garden railway world while 16mm is more EM Gauge with more being expected of the modeller in terms of technical skill.