This Blog describes the ongoing development of a 16mm scale 45mm gauge garden railway situated in the North West of England, UK from 2004 to the present day.
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 (October 2025)
The Fruit Special Train (featuring containerisation)
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 theG 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
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.
The DF Player Mini sound module has been around for quite a few years. It is modestly priced (c£3.50GBP on eBay or less than £2.00GBP on AliExpress), and is very versatile.
Basically, it is a compact MP3 player which can access tracks stored on a Micro SD card. What makes it particularly useful for use as a soundcard is that it has a built-in audio amplifier which will power a 3W speaker. Its operational voltage range is 3.2v - 5v and so will need to be connected to a voltage regulator if used with locos with a higher voltage battery pack (or track power).
VCC is the positive (+ve) input and either of the GND pins are the negative (-ve) input. The speaker is connected to SPK_1 and SPK_2.
Tracks stored on the SD card are played in the order in which they were uploaded to the card and need to be numbered 001, 002, 003, etc. They can be in .MP3 or .WAV format. .WAV files are better for our purposes as they can be accessed or looped with a hardly noticeable gap between them. The module can accept cards up to 32Gb and so can potentially access thousands of sound files. However, I only needed a couple of files and so used a 521Mb card.
It has been designed to interface with microprocessors such as Arduino but, for my purposes, sound files on the SD card can be triggered by connecting various pins to Ground (ie 0v or the negative side of the battery used to power it).
For simple soundcard purposes, the most useful pins are:
IO1 - Short press = Play previous track - Long press = Decrease volume
IO2 - Short press = Play next track - Long press = Increase volume
ADKEY_1 = Play first track (and loop if held down)
ADKEY_2 = Play fifth track (and loop it)
However, by connecting resistors to the ADKEYs particular tracks can be played or functions selected.
Armed with this knowledge, I was now in a position to create a simple soundcard for my IP Engineering Simplex loco.
Creating the sound files
Firstly, I needed to track down some suitable sound files. I would need the sound of a Simplex loco running at a fairly constant speed, and also the sound of a Simplex loco's fairly distinctive horn.
Browsing through dozens of videos on YouTube, I eventually located a couple of clips with segments which would suit my purposes. I captured the relevant sounds using Audacity, a free, open-source sound editing package.
By changing Arduino's Audio Set-up, I could record the sound while the video played on my browser.
NOTE: I amplify the output from my laptop computer through the headphone jack. If you use only your computer's speakers, then select that option as the source for your recording.
I then highlighted a section of the recording which I felt was most appropriate for my needs, .......
.... and exported that Current Selection as a Mono WAV file.
I could now store this file on an SD Card (as 001) and then loop it using ADKEY_1 connected to ground to provide continuous sound for my loco.
Adding a horn sound
However, I also wanted to add a hooter or horn sound, triggered by pressing the Bind button on any of my Deltang or Micron transmitters.
After tracking down a section of video which featured a typical Simplex loco horn sound, I exported the short segment from Audacity (as above) and then re-opened the file of the steady Simplex engine sound which I had saved earlier.
I then imported .......
..... the short segment of horn sound which appeared on a new track below the steady engine sound track.
I moved the horn sound track slightly to the right and then trimmed the steady engine sound so it was slightly longer than the horn sound track. As you can see, the combined tracks last slightly under one second in total.
The new combined sounds were then exported as a WAV file.
The reason for overlaying the horn sound on to the steady engine note is so that when the horn sounds, the engine sound continues in the background.
To allow the two files to be played and triggered, I had to make use of the ADKEYs ability to trigger separate tracks using resistor inputs. This also required the tracks on the SD card to be arranged accordingly.
I found that, not only did I need to delete the original WAV file, I also had to reformat the SD card otherwise the sound files wouldn't play properly. The horn sound was loaded first on to the card and renamed 001.wav . The steady engine sound was uploaded second and renamed 002.wav .
The link from GND to ADKEY_1 was replaced with a 3k resistor (so Track 2 on the card would be played continuosly) and a link from ADKEY_1 to pad C on the Deltang Rx65b receiver was made. Pad C gives 0v output when the bind button is pressed on the transmitter (ie Channel 5)
So, when the loco is first turned on, the 3k resistor from ground to ADKEY_1 makes DF Player loop Track 2 (the steady engine sound) but when the bind button is pressed on the transmitter, the receiver connects ADKEY_1 to ground directly and so, while the bind button is being held down, track 1 (ie the horn sound) is looped.
Introduction
