South Don and Flingel Railway
  Basic Construction
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 Construction of the railway started with about 4 months of reading, investigating, planning and tearing up of plans.  Eventually a basic idea emerged to incorporate most of my requirements.

Live steam at a practical scale in a limited space.

A multi-level railway to provide length of run and interesting driving.

Trackwork sufficiently robust to stand being walked on.

Plenty of opportunities to indulge my interest in building structure such as bridges

The space available excluded standard gauge and as I prefer the more substantial look of the 3 foot gauge rather than 2 foot, I opted for 45 mm gauge track.  The need for a robust permanent way pointed me towards LGB track. 

 
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 		 The first phase track, at ground level, was laid on light-weight building blocks on concrete and hard core foundations.  The track is screwed down and ballasted with fine stone bought from a local garden centre.  In 11  years I have not seen any track displacement due to weather conditions or ground movement and I am pleased that I chose a relatively heavy civil engineering solution.

The most significant error that I made in the initial stages was to lay the LGB flexible track by pulling it to the required curves and screwing it down.  The forces present at rail joints tends to push the track back to straight resulting in kinked joints and broken sleepers.  I now pre-bend the rails before assembling and laying the track and this solves both problems.

The standards adopted from the start were a minimum of  6 feet radius curves and gradients 1 in 50 (2%), but as with the best laid plans changes have been made to the original design and new sections have been added.  In some cases I have had to come down to 5 feet radius and gradients of about 1 in 40 (2.5%).  In my experience there is no need to keep track level for successful operation of narrow gauge live steam. 

 

A visiting Roundhouse Fowler at our first open day in 1998
  Raised sections of track are built on walls of concrete blocks on concrete and hardcore foundations and act as retaining walls for raised garden plots.  These walls are topped with a row of light-weight building blocks as it is easier to profile them to the gradients and to fix the track down.  The walls are all hidden behind raised garden areas of a cladding of stone.

All points (switches) are operated by pneumatic cylinders from a control box at Flingel Bunt terminus (also the steaming up area).  Air for this is provided by a compressor kept in the house.  The system has proved to be very reliable, more so now that I have ducted most of the air pipes to stop local wildlife nibbling at them.

 
  One example of major changes was to remove a shed to give more open space for the garden railway.  Included in this was the construction of a tunnel about 12 feet long, curved and in an incline.  Now, how many rules did I break with that one?

  As the trackwork developed, a friend suggested I have a go at building my own.  The plan started out as a requirement for a pair of points (switches), but as I worked up the design it evolved into this.  The sleepers (ties) are teak and the rail is LGB brass.  It is fitted with four air cylinders controlled from a single switch so that all blades throw together.
  The railway has continued to develop as new ideas have come from experience in running the railway and in a continuing interest in building structures, particularly bridges.  A visit to what I consider to be the greatest bridge in the World, the Forth Bridge, prompted me to attempt a bridge of my own design but in tribute to the Forth Bridge.  A scale model at 1:20.3 scale would have been impossible in the space available, and so I used the design and rescaled it to fit in the space available, and in doing so incorporated a slope of 1 in 50 (2%).  The deck is aluminium and the superstructure is PVC.

 

More pictures can be found on the Open Days page.
  Further bridge development is in progress, and opposite are two pictures of the new bridge under construction. Once again this is not a scale model, but the design is based on the Tyne Bridge.  The structure has a relatively light-weight look, but is very strong.  The deck is aluminium plate on aluminium angles, the superstructure is PVC and the hangers are stainless steel bicycle spokes.  The plated lower ends of the main tubes will be set into masonry support towers when the bridge is set in place in the garden.

 
   
  Bridge 10 went into service 31 March 2009.  As rain was threatening, the first run across the bridge fell to a battery powered Bachmann Consolidation
  A need for a new crossover junction was identified and having lifted 4 points in a simplification of another part of the railway, it was decided that the crossover could be made from these by cutting the outer rails.
  I had intended making the centre of the crossover from rail sections, but a friend suggested milling it from solid and this looked a good idea.
  The crossover installed in place of a pair of facing points
  Autumn 2011was chosen to start a series of significant changes to lift and re-lay the last of the original track, provide more clearance under one of the bridges to allow a curve to be opened to 6 feet radius, to put in two new routes, and to rework the terminus station and steam-up area.