Andy's Garden Railway Guide
I'm building a railway in my garden. It's a narrow gauge railway, in 16mm/ft scale (approximately 1:19 scale), which makes a model person about as tall as your middle finger. You can read more about the construction of my own railway and about a model locomotive made of Lego.
The largest section of this website is the 16mm Guide, which contains information about building and running a Garden Railway in the scale of 16mm/ft, and 32mm gauge. (If you're unsure what 'scale' and 'gauge' mean, read this first). The site has expanded to cover railways in general and other topics which interest me.
Get the Flash Player to see this video.
News
(Last Update Thursday, July 3rd 2008)After a long period without a railway, I have finally got somewhere to run trains. The brickwork was completed in the spring, and the first loco was run on Fathers' Day. You can read more about it here.
Who are you?
I'm Andy Watkins. My hobby involves trains, which is what this website is all about. My main interests are Narrow Gauge steam railways, and I'm building a railway in my garden where I can run live steam locos. I live in the south of England.
I'm Andy Watkins. My hobby involves trains, which is what this website is all about. My main interests are Narrow Gauge steam railways, and I'm building a railway in my garden where I can run live steam locos. I live in the south of England.
Recent Changes
3 July 2008
17 June 2008
Performed major surgery, moving railway-related articles from the Insane Engineering page to the trains page. Added a photo and re-worked the introductory paragraphs on the front page, an article about Helicopters, and more photos and news to the story of my railway.
27 May 2008
Reorganised the trains page and moved details of my own railway to a new page. Added a note on the 45mm Standard Track Dimensions page about the broken links to NMRA. (Sam is trying to find the correct web addresses), added an FAQ here, a photo there, and seven more games
8 April 2008
Tidied up the Insane Engineering page a little, and added a story about a Monster Earth Mover (thanks to Justin). Fixed a typo on the Cheap Wagons page and updated Standard Track Dimensions to include Sam's latest version. (N.B. There are now 2 separate pages, one for 32mm and 45mm gauge.)
6 March 2008
Sorry, it's been a while since the last update; I've been madly busy on other projects. Corrected the link to Peter Velichkov's site on the Misc page.(Thank you Peter for pointing it out). Also added two new games (Cubrius and Funky Truck) and added some more ships, trucks and trains to the Insane Engineering page.
28 January 2008
Added a contact form (with a link in the margin), titles on a few pages where they were missing, a "credits" section on the Misc page, and an article about burning coffee in locos. Added to the links page, created a new page about Scale and Gauge, and added Sudoku to the games page.
10 January 2008
I added a new page, listing my other pages which don't fit in elsewhere, removed the broken webcounter on the 16mm page, added a Garden Railway article (Outdoor baseboards in Ply) and added a "popup" mode to the Flash games and some new games, including Sudoku (link on the games to follow.)