Introduction to the blog

Introduction

This blog describes ongoing progress in the development of a G gauge / 15mm scale / 1:20.32 / Fn3 scale Garden Railway from its inception to the present day.    

NEW (April 2025)

Extracts from a Southwold session - Part 1

 

Extracts from a Southwold session - Part 2

 

When I became interested in building my own garden railway I spent a considerable amount of time (and money) on books, videos, DVDs and scouring the internet for information, ideas and inspiration. When I eventually started construction, I used some of the ideas I had discovered, but also experimented with my own approaches. This blog outlines how I have gone about constructing my own garden railway. My aim is to provide the sort of information I was looking for when I was getting started, and also to share what I've learned (or 'borrowed' from others). I've tried to include a few 'How I ........' postings interspersed with occasional 'Progress Reports'. I do not profess to be any kind of expert - what I offer here is an opportunity for you to metaphorically look over my shoulder to see how I have gone (and am going) about this fascinating hobby.

As this is a blog, the various posts are presented in reverse chronological order (ie the most recent first). To see a categorised list of contents, go to the Blog Contents Page.


If you are thinking about building your own garden railway, then why not join the 16mm Association or the G Scale Society - you'll get plenty more advice and opportunities to visit other peoples' garden railways. Alternatively, browse through the G Scale Central website - there's plenty more guidance here and an opportunity to sound out the views of others through the G Scale Central discussion forum or the GardenRails.org forum

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The Blog

The advantages of blogging are that it is immediate and uncomplicated when creating and uploading information. The other, of course, is that with Blogger it is free. The major disadvantage is that I have minimal control over how the postings are presented. The blogging system adds the most recent information to the start of the blog, hence the postings appear in reverse chronological order (most recent first, oldest last). Whilst there is a list of postings on the right-hand side, it's not particularly easy to see what is there. This introduction is an attempt to provide you with a contents list of the postings organised into categories so, hopefully, you see if what you are looking for is presented in this blog. To ensure that it always appears at the start of the blog, I update its content and set its presentation date into the future each time I add a new posting.

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A few techniques for managing freight traffic

 As regular readers and viewers will know, I really enjoy shunting operations and finding ways of handling freight movements on my railway. Over the years, I have used several approaches and although, these days, I mostly use my computerised version, I still sometimes revert to the other methods as circumstances change.

All the methods I have used attempt to provide ways of deciding which wagons should be sent  to which location at the start of during running sessions.

 

Non computerised methods

 Card-based system 1

 Each wagon has a card describing the wagon and/or showing a photo of the wagon. At the start of the session, the cards are shuffled and dealt out into piles representing locations around the railway.

Advantages

• simple and effective
• piles of cards show readily which wagon goes where

 Disadvantages 

• purely random allocation
• cards could be blown away on windy days

 

 Card based system 2

 Each wagon has a card. Six holes are punched across the top of the card. Some holes are then opened up as shown here.

At the start of the session, all wagon cards are put into a single stack and a die is rolled. A knitting needle or chopstick is passed through the relevant hole in the stack of cards. Those remaining on the needle are marshalled into the train, the others remain in the yard. The operator decides on the best destination for each wagon.

So, in the cards above, the milk tanker will travel on every train, as it will always be picked up by the knitting needle, whereas the lowfit wagon will only be marshalled into the train if a one or a five are rolled on the die.

Advantages

• simple and effective
• the stack of cards provides a clear record of which wagons will be despatched 
• allows for a form of weighted randomisation. Wagons with fewer holes snipped through will be marshalled more frequently

 Disadvantages 

• destinations still determined by operator
• cards could be blown away on windy days

 

 Card and die based system

Each wagon has a card which shows or describes the wagon. The card also shows possible destinations with numbers beside, indicating the die roll.

 For example 

The cards are shuffled and the number of cards representing that day's goods train are dealt out. For each card, a die is rolled to determine where it will be sent. So, if a three is rolled the cattle wagon will go to Peckforton and if a six is rolled the 2-plank open will go to Bickerton.

Rolling a ten sided die or two dice will give you a greater range of options.

Advantages

• simple and effective
• destinations can be weighted (ie more numbers beside a destination increases the likelihood the wagon is sent there)
• cards can be sorted into destination piles once the die has been rolled

 Disadvantages 

• requires some preparation time
• cards could be blown away on windy days

 

Computerised methods

Low tech

 Using a weighted random generator app such as Rand1 allows you to create a list of destinations with a % likelihood for each destination being selected. The way I use it is to create categories of wagons (eg coal, van, timber, miscellaneous, etc) and then use the weightings to prioritise the most appropriate destination(s).

For example:

The weightings for a van being sent out from Beeston Market (my railway's main terminus) mean that a van is most likely (25%) to be sent to Bulkeley where soft fruit is loaded on to trains, but the van could also be sent to other destinations (15% for each). It could also remain at Beeston Market (23%).

At the start of a running session, I use the app to decide whether each wagon in the yard will remain there or be sent to an outlying destination. As I follow the goods train around the garden delivering the wagons, I use the app at each station to decide whether wagons already at the station should stay or be moved elsewhere.

To set up the app:

1 - Download and install Rand1 from the PlayStore

2 - Click the Plus (+) button at the bottom right of the screen

3 - Give the wagon category a name (in this case it's for a coal wagon going out from the main terminus)

4 - Type in each possible destination and give them each a % weighting (make sure they add up to 100%)

5 - Once you have entered all the destinations and weightings, click the dice button (bottom right) to be given a destination.

 

6 - Repeat the above process for all categories of wagons out and back

Advantages

• simple and effective
• destinations are weighted to make operations more realistic
  
• portable - easily accessed from a mobile phone which can be carried with you around the garden

 Disadvantages 

• requires some preparation time
• there is no restriction to train length and so you could get excessively long trains (though you could adjust the %s to help avoid this)

 

Mid tech

Freight Manager 

This program can be downloaded from Dropbox (there are Windows and Apple versions). It is a free standalone program which I created using Livecode. For more information about the program see How I revised my freight handling program

 Your data (wagon descriptions and destinations) need to be entered into the program before it can be used. The software allows for up to 200 wagons ....

....... and between two and eight locations (see link above, or the manual provided in the download for detailed setting-up instructions).

 Once the data have been entered, the program allows you to create goods trains of lengths which you specify. 

Their locations will be remembered at the end of a session, or you can start from scratch at the start of the next session by returning all wagons to a central destination.

Print-outs of the start locations for the wagons and the manifests for each train can be printed out and taken into the garden for consultation during running sessions.

Advantages

• each wagon can be given its own destination profile
• the location of each wagon is remembered between sessions
• train length can be pre-set
• wagons can be taken out of service if not used in a session
  

 Disadvantages 

• requires initial preparation time (but only once when first running the program)
• laptop- or desktop-based, so needs printouts for use in the garden
  

 

Hi tech 

Google Sheets spreadsheet macros

I wrote this set of macros to run on Google Sheets so it would work on my phone or laptop out in the garden. It works in a similar way to Freight Manager above, but rather than setting weighted destinations for individual wagons, the destinations are set for categories of wagons.

 Once the macros have been installed, the wagons and locations need to be entered on to separate sheets before trains can be generated.

For more information (including the code for the macros), see How I created a freight management system for Google Sheets

Advantages

• train lengths can be pre-determined
• portable - easily accessed from a mobile phone which can be carried with you around the garden

 Disadvantages 

• requires some basic knowledge of running macros on Google Sheets
• wagons and locations need to be set up initially (but only once)
• the mobile version won't allow the use of on-screen buttons and relies on selecting from drop down fields, which can be difficult to see when outside

 

 Psion-based Freight Manager 

Psion pocket computers were considered high-tech in the pre-smart phone 1990s but, of course, have now been superseded. However, they can still be bought secondhand and provide a simple, portable way of running software out in the garden.

The code will just about run on a Psion Series 3A, but it may run out of memory if you have a lot of wagons. The Psion Series 5 is a more reliable option.

For more information, see How I programmed my Psion pocket computer to manage freight

Advantages

• destinations are weighted to make operations more realistic
  
• portable - can be carried with you around the garden

 Disadvantages 

• requires considerable preparation time, as the program will have to be typed in line by line (unless you can find a way of connecting your Psion to a modern computer)
• the software is limited by the LCD screen display and the computer's lack of memory

 

 Conclusion

We all have our own reasons for building and running a garden railway. For me, it provided an opportunity to create a complete light railway system which I wanted to run reasonably realistically. Your motivations may be quite different. There is no right or wrong way of running a model railway. Its main purpose is to keep us entertained, amused and occupied. For me, an essential part of that is finding ways to make freight movements interesting and sometimes challenging. Hopefully, if you are of a similar mindset then something I have described above might be of interest. 

If you have devised an approach to running freight operations on your railway, I'd be very interested to hear about it by leaving a comment below.

How to Build Battery Locos for your Garden Railway - Part 5 - 3D Printing

 In this final part of the series on building battery locos, I have decided to focus on 3D printing. If you have ploughed your way through any of the previous four sections, you will have seen that 3D printing keeps cropping up in each of them. It has now become an accepted part of railway modelling - another skillset in our armoury.

1. Part 1 - Kits
2. Part 2 - Modifications and conversions
3. Part 3 - Semi-scratchbuilds
4. Part 4 - Scratchbuilds (pending)

In this section we will explore

• An overview of 3D printing and printers
• Downloading, printing and constructing other people's models
• Designing, printing and constructing your own models

An overview of 3D printing and printers

I'm not entirely sure why, but there are some modellers who regard 3D printers with disdain, arguing that they are undermining more traditional modelling skills. To my mind, 3D printers are just another tool in a modeller's armoury. Over the years, various innovations have been embraced by railway modellers - airbrushes, laser cutters, computer aided design software, the internet, digital photography, colour printing, photo etching, resin casting, white metal casting, transistorised controllers, digital command control, radio control, butane burners, ...... do I need to continue? 3D printers are simply another form of assistive technology. To get the best out of them requires modellers to equip themselves with quite specific knowledge and a new skillset. Whilst it is true to say this knowledge and the skills required are quite different to more traditional construction techniques, they are no less challenging.

For the hobbyist, there are two types of 3D printer - filament or FDM (Fused Deposition Modelling) printers and resin or SLA (Stereolithography) printers. 

Filament printers

Filament printers carefully position a stream of melted plastic on to a build plate. The heated print head can move in three directions in relation to the print bed; left/right (x), forwards/backwards(y) and up/down(z).

The model is created by depositing a series of layers of plastic. Once the first layer has been laid down on the print bed, the next layer is printed on top of it, and so on until the model has reached its designated height.

For more detailed information see - A beginners' guide to 3D printing

Resin printers

The print bed on a resin printer just moves up and down. Below it is a vat of photo sensitive resin with a clear plastic base. Below the base of a vat is a digital screen which sits on top of an ultra-violet light source. The print bed is lowered into the vat so it is a fraction of a millimetre above the base. The shape of the first layer of the object to be printed is shown on the digital screen allowing the UV light to shine through. This solidifies the resin but only where the shape i bys shown. The print bed is raised by a fraction of a millimetre and the next layer is projected on the screen and the resin solidified. And so on.

For more information about resin printing see - A beginners' guide to resin 3D printing

Summary

As can be seen, both types of 3D printer create their objects as a series of layers. 

Resin printers have the advantage of precision (dependent on the resolution of the digital screen) but have the disadvantage that they are more expensive and the user has to deal with mildly toxic resins which need to be cleaned and cured after printing.

A resin printed 16mm scale figure 

Filament printers are generally cheaper and larger but the models they produce tend to have more prominent layered striations. Filament printed objects therefore need more smoothing and maybe some filling to improve their finish.

A filament printed 16mm scale figure

As can be seen, there isn't a dramatic difference when large parts are printed (though the striations on the filament printed figure are more prominent). However, with smaller detailed parts, the difference becomes a lot more apparent, as in the maker's plate below.

A maker's plate resin printed (left) and filament printed (right)

Making models using files downloaded from the internet

There is a growing wealth of files deposited on sites such as Thingiverse which can be downloaded free of charge, imported into your printer's slicing software (which creates code needed for the printer to create the layers) and then printed out. The main advantage is that they are completely free (provided you don't try selling them as your own creations). The disadvantages are that you are limited to what is available which might not quite suit your particular needs and you are dependent on the skills of the person who uploaded the models - some models are better than others!

However, they are a great way of using your newly acquired printer and can provide you with items at a fraction of the cost of buying them readymade.

For example, the first item I 3D printed for my railway was a pigeon basket - something which was often seen on railway platforms in the inter-war years but, to my knowledge, is not commercially available in 16mm or 15mm scale.

A couple of them. suitably painted, ended-up on the roof of my Clogher Valley Railcar

In essence, the process for downloading and printing items from the internet is:

1. Locate the item(s) you need
2. Download the files on to your computer
3. Import the files into your printer's slicing software
4. Upload the sliced files to your printer
5. Make sure the printer is properly set-up for printing
6. Print the object(s)

If you are resin printing there are another couple of steps in the process

7. Wash the excess resin off your object with alcohol
8. Cure the object by subjecting it to UV light

If the object is more complex than the pigeon basket, then you may have to download several parts and glue them together (I use thick Superglue from Tool Station for both filament and resin printed parts), such as the parts needed to create this working beam engine.

To be honest, it is slightly more complex in that the slicing software needs to be tailored to your printer and the filament or resin you are using. You might need to rescale the parts if they are not quite to the right scale for your railway. Your printer needs to be carefully levelled and set-up, though this is becoming easier with each new generation of printers. Sometimes, things go wrong - the object doesn't adhere to the print bed properly, there are blobs or gaps in the object, the finish isn't as smooth as you have hoped, the print nozzle becomes blocked,, etc.. These setbacks can be frustrating but, with help from fellow 3D printers on forums they can usually be overcome and the with each problem your knowledge and ability to overcome obstacles improves. 

Getting back to the subject of locomotives, there are a few 3D printable locos available for 16mm and 15mm scales on the internet and, hopefully, this number will increase over time.

For example, I have downloaded and constructed a small diesel loco which I found on Thingiverse.

For more information on this build, see How I 3D printed and constructed a pair of diesel locomotives

 

Designing, printing and constructing your own locos

I have created several files for my own 3D printed locos and made them available as downloads on Thingiverse and the Garden Rails forum. For example, see:

 

• How I designed, 3D printed and constructed a Schull & Skibbereen loco
• How I designed, 3D printed and constructed a MWB Kerr Stuart loco
• How I designed, 3D printed and constructed a GVT Beyer Peacock tram loco
• How I designed, 3D printed and constructed a de Winton vertical boilered loco
• How I designed, 3D printed and constructed a Rustonish loco
• How I converted a HGLW steeple cab loco into a Gmeinder centre cab diesel using 3D parts

In summary my approach to designing, 3D printing and constructing a loco is:

1 - Identify a loco you want to build

When I first started constructiing my own 3D printed locos, I used commercial motor blocks as my starting point. The diameter of the motor block's wheels and the spacing of the wheelbase would largely dictate what sort of locos I could choose to construct. 

However, now I have started making my own power units, the only limitation is tracking down suitable wheels. I could design and 3D print my own wheels; I know fellow modellers who do this very successfully; but I prefer my locos to have metal wheels and so this restricts the models I can construct.

 

2 - Find plans for the loco or find or take photos from which measurements can be made

 If you can track down scale drawings of your intended loco, then this saves a lot of time and effort. 

However, sometimes, it is either difficult or impossible to find any. In this case, you can work from photos. For example, when I constructed my three foot gauge de Winton vertical boilered loco, I visited the Welsh Highland Railway station at Caernarfon and looks a range of photos and kept measurements. Using these, I could extrapolate the dimensions of other components.

3 - Break down the loco into a series of parts

Whilst it is possible to 3D print whole loco bodies, I prefer to create a kit of parts for my locos. I usually start with the running plate. If I have a pre-existing motor block, I will have to work out how the body will sit upon it. This will inevitably mean a hole needs to be created in the running plate matched to the size and position of the block. 

Although I try to carefully measure where the block will fit, it usually takes a couple of tries before I produce a running plate which fits perfectly. This is one of the great virtues of 3D printing and designing, it is easy to go back to the 3D drawing and make slight amendments.

I then usually tackle the cab, breaking it down into ends, sides and roof. Again, the beauty of 3D CAD is that the sides tend to be mirrors of each other and the ends are usually the same shape and size with slight variations on the position of the windows or spectacles.

 In general, next comes the boiler or, in the case of a diesel loco, the bonnet. I usually make the firebox, boiler and smokebox  as a single unit, unless the firebox is an awkward shape. The firebox tends to slot into a firebox shaped hole in the front of the cab. With Tinkercad, I generally turn a copy of the firebox into a 'hole' to cut a perfectly shaped and proportioned hole into the cab front. 

I will usually cut some sort of cavity into the base of the boiler to allow access for the battery pack and electronics. Its shape and size is dependent on the position of the tanks for a tank loco. 

Most of my locos are tank locos, and so the tanks come next.  Side tanks are a lot easier to draw, tough some have rounded ends which can add an extra complication. As with the boiler, I will work out how I can gain access to them from beneath the loco. 

 I have been known to tweak the dimensions of tanks to ensure battery packs or individual cells can be fitted in. Saddle tanks are a bit of a pain. I would strongly urge you to make a loco without a saddle tank before tackling one. 

 Finally, I turn to the fiddly bits such as the chimney, dome, safety valves, backhead, etc, etc. Now I have created a few locos, I can often modify the parts I have drawn for other locos.

 If I am using one of my own powered chassis, I generally create a 3D outline shape for it, so I can check it will fit OK.

 

Also, I tend to assemble some or all of the parts of the loco on screen before printing them, to check I haven't made any major mistakes.

Once this has been done, I print out all the parts and after doing a dry run, start gluing the parts together. Inevitably, some of the parts require a bit of tweaking to ensure what worked on screen actually works in practice. But, as mentioned above, this is a relatively easy process with 3D CAD.

Here's a selection of the locos I've designed, CADed, printed and constructed so far. I find the process equally as satisfying and as challenging as making a loco from scratch using plasticard, metal castings and brass strip.

 

They say that every journey starts with a first step. I can honestly say that, if you do decided to start designing, 3D printing and constructing your own locos, you won't regret it.

Progress Report 100

 Wow! It's hard to believe that this is now my 100th Progress Report. When I first started this blog back in 2006, I honestly thought it would be something I might add posts to every six months or so, this will be my 369th post about my railway which means on average, I've posted in the region of 19 posts a year or between two and three posts per month! Over that time my blog pages have had around 1.25 million views, and I've received over 900 comments - which doesn't include spam messages which I have to delete on a daily basis. I've also posted over 230 YouTube videos about Peckforton Light Railway which to date have had over 830 000 views. Who'd have thought so many people interested in my little garden railway set up in a modest back garden in Cheshire?

Anyway, what has happened on the railway since my last update in August?

The most significant event has been the complete refurbishment of Beeston Market station and the Copper Mine, after I discovered some of the baseboard timbers had rotted away. In addition, there has been the general maintenance of locos and stock, motorising my semaphore signals, the continued painting of 3D printed figures, a newly acquired app for helping with freight management, hosting a visit from Zach Bond - who really enjoys the challenge of running his live steam locos on my track and, of course, a few running sessions.

 

 Permanent Way

 For a couple of years, I've noticed that the trackwork at Beeston Market and the Copper Mine had dipped in a couple of places - to the extent that I was having to prop up the underlying wooden baseboards with additional supports. The hump and dip in the track on the approach to Beeston Market can be seen at 14:40 in this video I recorded in September last year:

 

 

After crawling underneath, I realised that there were several places where wet rot had attacked the treated timbers and so I had little alternative but to lift the track and investigate further.

 

 What was revealed presented me with a dilemma - should I just patch up the worst affected areas, or rip out all the baseboards and start again from scratch?

The same problem was found at the Copper Mine.

The baseboards had been in place for 17 years and so, I figured that if I replaced them, I'd be at least 90 years old before they would need to be done again. And so, with a spell of decent weather forecast, I decided to rip all the boards up and start again.

 A quick calculation and a trip to my local fencing supplier (one advantage of living in a rural farming area), and a few days later sufficient boards were delivered for the revamp.

I discovered some of the legs supporting the baseboards had also rotted and so these were replaced and a few additional legs added where I thought they might be needed.

Cross-members were then screwed into place .....

 ..... so the new boards could be fixed into place.

 I had worked out, together with comments from some of my fellow forumites on the GardenRails.org forum, that the rot on the previous boards had mostly occurred where I had cut the treated boards. And so, I made sure that every cut end of the new 6" x 1" pressure treated timbers was given a liberal soaking with wood preservative.

 At the Copper Mine, I decided to raise the sidings slightly above the adjacent main line, to help differentiate the two.

 Once all the boards had been levelled and fixed into place, they were covered in good quality (15 year guaranteed) roofing felt (aka tar paper), making sure that all joints were sealed with bitumen based felt adhesive - again following suggestions from fellow forumites.

 Tracklaying, then followed. I spent a couple of days, trying various combinations of pointwork until I was satisfied that the new layout would make shunting operations easier and/or more interesting.

 At present, the track is unballasted and the platform is just a plank until I am completely sure that the new layout works well and there are no snags.

Something I was keen to install was a double slip - partly because I thought it might add a couple of options for shunting, and also because I find them fascinating.

 So far, I've run a few test trains over the new set-up and had a couple of full operating sessions - so far, so good.

See - How I refurbished Beeston Market Station - pending

 Rolling stock

 No major developments here since the last update, though I have now given the de Winton loco a decent paint job and had an opportunity to run it in.

 I must admit to being very pleased with this loco. Not only because I feel it looks good, but also because I made its mechanism from scratch, something which, over the years, I've tended to avoid as my modelling skills are insufficiently adept - until I acquired a 3D printer which, of course, can produce models down to 0.1mm accuracy.

For more information see - How I constructed a three foot gauge de Winton locomotive

 Lineside

 The dozens of 3D figures which I received from Dean at DesignScanPrint3D after a scanning session with my fellow thespians at our local amateur dramatic society are still in the process of being painted.

I have to admit that progress is painfully slow. It takes me ages to paint each figure as, rather than slapping on a single layer of paint to each piece of flesh and each item of clothing, I go over each element several times to try and get the shading and the facial features looking reasonably realistic. With some figure, this process takes ages, as I find I have to redo them several times until I am satisfied. 

The added complication is that I have two of each figure to paint - one for me and one for each volunteer, as a reward for being scanned.

Hopefully, by the next progress report, they will be finished.

 

 Operation

 Motorised semaphore signals

The most significant development here has been the motorisation of my semaphore signals, which I constructed in 2014 - See How I constructed 19 semaphore signals. After an initial attempt at motorising some of them using a Picaxe micro-controller (see - How I radio control my semaphore signals), I was reluctant to extend the process for the remaining fifteen signals as it was a bit cumbersome and would have required a fair amount of additional wiring together with devising a robust, weatherproof system of electrical connection for each signal.

When I spotted some tiny linear servos, together with a compact Arduino based processor and a tiny keyfob actuated receiver, all of which could be powered with a single li-ion cell, I experimented with producing a self-contained mechanism and control unit which would sit neatly beneath each signal.

 It took a couple of months, but I now have all nineteen signals motorised without the need for any additional wiring.

 The next stage will be to provide solid bases for each signal around the garden so they can be quickly and reliably installed at the start of an operating session. In the meantime, I have deployed a few of them during a running session to test their reliability and effectiveness.

 For more information, see - How I radio control my semaphore signals - Part 2

 

A new app to support freight handling

 As regular readers will know, I have used various versions of my computerised freight management program over the years to help me decide what wagons will be used in each goods or mixed train and where they will be sent. For example see, How I created a Psion version of my freight management program

 However sometimes, if I am in a hurry or if I want to run some special goods trains, I turn to a different method to determine which wagons will go where. For example, in a recent Southwold-focused running session, I used a simple die-rolling technique to decide where to send the few items of Southwold Railway goods stock I had at my disposal.

 In addition, from time to time, I have used a simple app on my phone to carry out a similar process. In the past, I used an app called Weighted Random Generator but when I accidentally deleted it from my phone I discovered it was no longer available. Fortunately, I discovered a similar app called Rand1 which is equivalent and so now use that from time to time.

 

 For more information see Issue 353 (January 2024) issue of the Garden Rail magazine pp18-22 or - Various teachniques for generating freight movements - pending

 

Running session

 In addition to the test runs for the new layout at Beeston Market (see above), I also took the opportunity, during the spell of sunny weather at the start of April, to run a full session which I decided would have a Southwold Railway focus.

Over the years, I have slowly and steadily been adding items of Southwold stock to the railway, ranging from a couple of locos.....

 .... to a rake of Cleminson six-wheeled coaches.....

 .... and a few items of goods stock.

 So I decided it was time to showcase these items in a Southwold-focused running session. As indicated above, I needed to change my approach to managing the destinations for the goods stock, but I found it an interesting change from my normal running sessions.

 

 And finally, I hosted another visit from Zach Bond who brought with him his latest acquisition - a rather beautiful Accucraft Caledonia model which he had had repainted in Southwold Railway livery as it reminds him of a Southwold Sharpie.

 We spent a very pleasant afternoon running the loco up and down the line alongside some of my own stock and catching up with the latest news on garden railway developments.

 

[Awaiting video - currently in the editing shop]

 

 Conclusion

 There are still several jobs on the todo list:

• finishing the painting of the 3D figures,
• ballasting the track at Beeston Market and the Copper Mine,
• providing bases for the signals at each station;

 ... and I have got a few ideas for additional locos, particularly now I have developed the confidence and the skills to make my own powered chassis. But, for now, I am quite pleased with how the railway has progressed over the years.

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