Andy's Garden Railway Guide

Did you ever dream of building a model railway in the garden? Well, you can build one! It's not that hard, and the aim of this website is to show you how it can be done.

The railway I'm building is roughly 1:19 scale. It's a "narrow gauge" railway. That is to say, it models a real railway where the tracks are 2 feet (60cm) apart. The scale is called "16mm/ft". In this scale model person is about as tall as your middle finger. A large part of this site is information about modelling in this scale; a section called the 16mm Guide, which has been going since 2001.

If you're unsure what 'scale' and 'gauge' mean, read this first. There are a number of other scales in which you can model too, if you don't fancy 16mm/ft, some of which are models you can ride on.

You can find more about the construction of my own railway about a model locomotive made of Lego, as well as other topics which interest me.

The site has expanded to cover railways in general and other topics which interest me. Please use the links on the left to find your way around.

Get the Flash Player to see this video.

This video shows one of my trains in action.

Who is this guy?
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.

News

(Last Update Tuesday, June 30th 2009)
Now the weather is getting better, I'm out in the garden, landscaping and getting ready to build the next section of railway.

16mm Garden Railway Webring
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Recent Changes

30 June 2009

Major changes to the games page to make better use of DHTML. Not only does this improve the page, it also makes it fit into my content management system better, making it easier to edit. In addition to putting the newer games at the top, I've added a few great new ones (including the Adventures of Fancy Pants Man). Keep the suggestions coming. Updated the Javascript String library page with more info on String.match()

13 May 2009

Update to the trains page with a photo of a Big Boy loco being moved by road. Improved my Javascript String Reference Library.

7 May 2009

Added a couple of links to the Other Scales page: ABC Gears, a supplier of gearbox units, and Denbury, a Gauge One layout in a garden and indoors.

30 March 2009

Added a note about the minimum curve radius that the Byers geared logging locomotive can handle, and a note about how my fix for 40 MHz Radio Gitching is getting on. Corrected some wording the credits page. Added Kent Garden Railways to the Suppliers page, and Technobots to the building a live steam locomotive page.

25 February 2009

Reorganised the order of the items in the left-hand margin so they read better grammatically (by putting "Other" at the end of the sentence, after Ride-On Trains). Added a photograph of trains in different scales to the Scale and Gauge article to help explain, and wrote a new article about building a live steam locomotive.
Created a new section for software-related matters for some Javascript and OO reference material. There's a link to it on the Misc page.

31 January 2009

I found a photo of a station being transported on the river, and added it as a curiosity on the trains page, and added a feedback section to the "misc." page with some of the kind remarks I've received.
After I started to get confused about which links page was which, I've completely re-organised them and added some more rows to the margin. There are separate pages now for 16mm Suppliers, Other Scales and Ride-On Trains as well as a general Garden Railway Links page.

15 December 2008

Added the '16mm Garden Railway Webring' to my homepage, an article about building your own points and three new games. I also adjusted the home page, and tidied up a few loose ends.

11 November 2008

Reduced the font size on the games page, so they fit in better (sorry to anyone with poor eye-sight), and added 3 great new games. Added a link to Garden Rail magazine on the 16mm Links page, and to the margin, wrote about Water-Jet cutting, and modelling in G scale on N gauge track. Added a few more notes to the minimum curve radius page. Thanks also to Justin for spotting some spelling mistakes in the Scale and Gauge article.

12 October 2008

There was a lot of positive feedback about my Radio Control interference article, so I added a note at the end about some of the other suggestions. I also created a new page of unusual 16mm locos and added a quick note about Gn15.

10 September 2008

I've been too busy in the garden over the summer to keep the website up to date (which is a good problem to have). Added a photo to the Scale and Gauge page, thanks to Andy Rutter, a new article about Radio Control interference, and a web address for Marcway. Made a quick change to Insane Engineering with a reference to the LHC, which was in the news today, and made some corrections to the games page.

3 July 2008

Added a sidebar about me, and a video to the home page, a link to the FAQ in the margin, a Suppliers page, an article about Industrial Archaeology using Google Maps, and a link to the Sudoku game on the misc. page. Thanks to Jeroen Wijering for the Video Player software.