The Blatchington branch garden railway - All about the railway 

A quick but big thanks to all visitors who take the time to use the feedback
facilities on these pages either just to say hello or to point out bits
I have overlooked.

The Blatchington branch on TV! Yes, we've made it to the box! well actually
it was for about 3 seconds & it showed my guide dog Trent at the controls 
trundling along but it still counts...  If you missed it the first time watch 
out for repeats of "Animals do the strangest things" on ITV.

We now find ourselves more than half way through April & the planned track 
improvement work in the drive area still goes on so there will be a further
little delay before the first openday of the year, the weather is stopping play!

A remote control signalling system is also progressing, still in its very
early stages but it is looking good so far, basically using an infra red 
control the signal can be changed to green & a solenoid moves the point
holding it for around 20 seconds before returning the signal to red & releasing
the point to its home position.  More details soon.

Meanwhile there are 2 new arrivals on the line, a complete class 58 & a class 
47 body shell both in EWS livery - see the locomotive pages for more details.

With the arrival of the new locomotive I've been looking round for some new 
batteries, the current pair in the class 37 were not performing as I would
hope so I tried charging them right up & then flattening them 3 or 4 times to 
see if that would make a difference - this pair are now in the new class 58 &
a new pair of 55Ahr are installed in the class 37.  See the locomotive pages 
for more details.

Still researching the sound unit for my loco, there's the Supersound unit
from Phoenix at £450 or the FX4U from Brian Jones at around £130 - not
physically come across either yet but still very interested - I suspect
price will be the thing here!

Whilst spending money the Deltic from Bexhill model engineering & the mini 
deltic (class 23) from Compass house still catch my eye & a class 37 body in 
another livery with the 4 hedcode box option crossed my mind just to ring the
changes.

Please do take a minute to look & join in the new 5 inch gauge forum if you 
can:-
5 gauge forum 
If you are in the Hailsham area of East Sussex & think you might like to help
with constructing a large 5 gauge layout find out more by giving Ian a call on 
(07897) 355 434 - they are a really friendly bunch so do give Ian a call!

2008 started well! the first train on the Blatchington branch departing at 
the stroke of midnight on 1 January taking several friends for their first ride 
of the year on the 2 new sit astride coaches!

If you are reading these pages with just the hint of an inkling to build
a railway of your own just the one word of caution - these trains are heavy & 
can move at quite a speed, around 300Kg at up to 8MPh has beensseen on the 
line, so they are not for unattended small children even if fitted with speed 
limiters.

Now read on & get tempted!!!

The garden railway project has always been a dream of mine since I was a child
& like many others interested in trains I could not tell you a good reason 
for this, my earliest memories of train travel were not usually linked with the 
most happy events as I was most often  heading towards hospital for 1 of many
eye operations or checkups.  However the interest is there & due to the twist 
of life & an evening drinking wine with a friend who just mentioned as a
throw away comment 'your gardens so big you could run a train round it!'
the seed of an idea was sown & things started to happen.
Anyway in 2002 another event pushed me over the edge of reason when my sister 
& her husband found a couple of part built locos in their local paper - more 
about these later.

Now before we go any further I would like to say here and now that I just
like playing trains, I'm not worried about numbers or timetables just so long 
as the engines look right, are made nicely and that the overal effect will be 
FUN! then I'm happy.

Before any work was done I trawled the internet for any bits of information
I could find, for my money the most understandable guide I could read is to be 
found at
Ride on Railways 
Paul's & David's articles about planning & building are nicely brief and fact 
filled giving a good start point for any further research although I think
they cover nearly everything as it is.

The basic figures that I had to take into consideration for my plans were:-

Now I had to consider another 2 restrictions that would be imposed on any 
system:-

Balancing up all the figures I had to hand I decided that 5 inch gauge was 
going to be for me mainly because of price and the physical restrictions of
the land.

My house sits on a corner plot so has gardens on 3 sides and a side passage
on the fourth, which if you exclude trees and other obstacles allows enough 
space for a single loop right round the house and a spur into the garage to 
allow easy parking of engines and rolling stock.  The passing loop in the front 
garden was the only part of the land where twin lines were possible without 
being to over the top.

With all this in mind and allowing that I wanted to run standard gauge models I
made the design very simple and pushed the track work to the very edge of the 
garden which gave me room for 30 foot radius curves, sadly I could not get
quite to the front wall as the land drops away just that fraction too much and
there are 2 very large trees which I did not want to remove.

I would say here that if your ground is flat then the planning process is
really not that difficult but once you start hitting a slope then it gets a
little tricky - embankments take a LOT of soil! remember that a tone of soil is
only 1 cubic yard.  Now on my land I have a slope which is more or less even
from front to back, I had to make a decision here on how high I was
prepared to build an earth embankment and where in the loop the physical 
barriers were that just could not be altered - walls, trees etc

Once you have thought these points over I would suggest that you mark the 
route of your track completely with string and posts so that the elevation of 
the actual track bed is obvious - what appears flat or close to flat can give a
very nasty surprise.  

The initial survey of my ground once the basic route was outlined was done
using planks, a spirit level and string - turned out to be amazingly good
as when later, when a friend of a friend appeared with all the posh gear
did it all carefully & produced a professional report which give or take
an inch confirms what we already new - bloody nice to have that confirmation
before you start digging though!

If you have an incline on your land it might be worth considering digging a 
shallow valley at the summit of your line which then will save you mountains of 
work on embankments at the other end - I wish I had just dug down 3 or 4 inches
at the head of my ground - oh well next time! (god what am I saying...)

I keep coming back to this point but I along with several friends was amazed to 
find how much of a gradiant I actually had on my lawn (only 1 smart ass spotted 
it & I'm still buying him beer to keep him quiet) so do spend plenty of time 
with those planks & spirit levels to double check what appears bloody obvious.

Setting up those peers at suitable intervals can make this process quicker & 
will give you a better visual effect of the amount of work you could be setting
yourself up for.

That all said the obstacle that caused the biggest problem & amount of
work was crossing the concrete drive, as this is at the corner of my ground
the track curves across the drive and is also at a sloap.  I ended up having to
dig up & rebuild most of this, the end result was a trench running across the 
drive filled with ballast, it was the only way I could figure out that would 
allow access to the track for repairs & adjustments - I have had various 
cars & lorrys cross the track and so far without damage - just a bit of 
ballast prodding to put things right.

The basic physical construction as an 8 inch deep trench 14 inches wide, this
trench has a curb stone at each side sat in concrete and contains a membrain
to restrict plant growth, a layer of hardcore finished off with granit 
chippings as ballast.  As I added to the line we used stone bricks rather
than curb stones as the rough finish looked nicer & the shorter length made it
easier laying round bends, also I used MOT (crushed brick and stone)
rather than hardcore for the passing loop foundations, MOT comes in tone
bags from builders suppliers such as Travis Perkins, it's easy to handle &
settles to a very compact base for your track.

When laying the edging stones remember to raise the outer line of blocks on 
curves by a fraction, say about an 8th of an inch to allow for the camber.

Digging the trench was hard but straightforward however embankments
required a very surprising amount of soil which had to be compressed
firstly by driving a car over it and secondly with a wacker which was
hired from the local builders centre.

The only structural alterations that I had to make was knocking a gateway
through from my back to side garden after that it was a case of just digging!

Embankment building  I would suggest be done in stages, putting down
say 6 inches of soil at a time, compressing this and then adding more on 
top - the final stage being to lay your edging stones and then infilling round
them to finish.

Finally before you start to lay track remember to put in any water pipes or 
power lines at this stage before putting down hardcore or any ballast.


When laying your track consider:-
  1. Track spread 5 1/16 inch on curves;
  2. Camber 1/8 inch;
  3. Inclines at 1 foot in 60 - steeper is possible but reduces halling capacity;
  4. gaps between rail end and next rail, hot and cold days will shift things, take care to leave a little play within the bolts of the fishplates to allow some lateral movement during temperature changes;
  5. Radius on bends of 30 foot, much tighter bend can be done but this will restrict the size of the loco's you can run; 
Physically laying the track is a case of preparing the track bed between
your retaining blocks with hardcore, leveling the surface with ballast
to about a sleeper depth below the top of the blocks, placing the track
on this level surface and then ballasting to the top adjusting camber
etc as you go.

A bagless vacume cleaner can be very handy at this stage for pulling ballast
out from under the track when you have got it wrong, lifting complete
track panels can get very annoying!

Just a few things you will require apart from the usual garden stuff, I got my 
power tools from Argos, credit where credit is due, their own brand products
have held up amazingly well:-

Needless to say as soon as the first length of track was down out came the
engine and trials began - don't expect it to work first time!

Although the track was completely ballasted, set to correct camber & track 
spread as I thought we had many teething problems, consider the following:-

After the initial completion of the line many test trips would work perfectly,
then with a change of direction some part of the train would come off
somewhere, after minor adjustments it would go round several times & then once 
again for no good reason would derail - actually the reason was usually one of 
the ones listed above & only took a few seconds to put right.

Once the solo testing has been completed its time to find some friends
preferably large friends for a bit of stress testing, the maximum load
so far on my line is around 57 stone plus engine and rolling stock -  the
train did manage a circuit but it was at the limit of reasonable operation.
The largest individual passenger successfully carried by the Blatchington
branch weighed in around 18 stone, quite impressive I think!

A big thing to keep in mind is the sheer volume of building materials, the 
recipe so far for 1 smallish layout is:-

And as for mistakes! there has been lots of small ones but I think
the areas that I should have done differently are:-

the laying of the track into my garage, I had the floor drilled out  and the 
line set into new concrete at the same level as the original floor - I should
have had it set around 2 inches under the level of the existing floor so
the rail as it left the garage would have been flush with the existing drive 
concrete - we are getting round this by cutting the first three feet of
concrete of the garage floor out and making a short sloap between the levels.
Whilst at it I've included making an ash pit (pictures to follow).

I should have dug in at the summit of the line by a few inches to save work on 
the large embankment in the front garden, this in turn may have allowed a few 
extra inches of track length as I could have gone further towards the front
wall although this was limited by the two large trees.

My thanks go to all those people I have nattered to on the phone over the last
few years who have given me so much information and support even if they did
think I was totally mad & two fingers to those who said it would never be
completed. 

In some of the photos you might notice name plates on the stock, each
coach has been named after those who have helped with construction, I
think this could turn out to be a bit tricky to continue as just so many
people have been involved along the way.

Lastly a really special thanks to Eric Meeds for the hours & hours he has
spent on building the rollingstock, he's managed to cope with all my bright
ideas & apart from loads of bad language he seems to have survived the
experience!


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Site last amended - 8 May 2008 at 12:30