Wrack and Ruin

A mid-life crisis in narrow gauge

How to Build a Railway

After carefully rejecting all but one of the possible construction methods out of hand, I’ve settled on the most basic option of floating the track on a bed of gravel.

However, along the way I looked at the iGRS Fleximounts, which let you sacrifice most of the gravel at the expense of fixing the track to intermittent anchor points using a clever sprung base that still lets it move a little (for expansion, etc.). When I say “expense”, I mean that you convince yourself this is the easy answer right up until the point you calculate the cost of the number of Fleximounts required, at which point you beat a hasty retreat. (Clue: almost double the cost of a length of track.)

That said, I still like the idea of fixing the track down at certain points to help keep it in place. I reckon I could get most of the benefit at a much lower cost by screwing it loosely to bricks using various washers. It wouldn’t be a sprung mount, but it would give a little play for expansion.

There again, Richard simply laid his track on the grass initially. And James of gardenrailway blog fame laid his unfixed on top of paving blocks (you can see the track lift and drop as trains pass on his videos, but it does work). So clearly the trench idea, as a degree beyond those constructions, should work adequately.

Given this direction, I’ve knocked up a small spreadsheet to get some idea of the cost, which is currently coming in at under two hundred pounds. (That doesn’t include a few arguably non-critical items like um, trains. No sense scaring the horses yet.) The largest cost - more than half - is track and, as it’s cheapest when bought in packs of twelve yards and half-circles of curves, I’ll need to purchase it all in one go - that will be the point of no-return. In the meantime, I have a daily eBay saved search for second hand track.

Incidentally, the track will be Peco Streamline flexible track for the straights and Set-track curves for the corners; the latter because it’s guaranteed to be in gauge on a tight corner, unlike the flexible stuff which tends to narrow slightly when bent. I’m not ecstatic about the 2’6” radius corners, but I can’t see how to avoid them without some serious garden remodelling. In that case, better to avoid further trouble. See, I’m already an expert. <sob>