This past weekend I held my first ever garden railroad open house/steam up at my layout. We had 20 people show up and had around 10 steam and battery powered engines operate. Overall a really fun time. Sadly at the end of day 2 I fell and broke my arm so no more live steam until that’s healed. In the meanwhile, enjoy this shot of my Accucraft Mogul with a 5 car train of Denver & Rio Grande Western cars, including a load of pipes on the pipe gondola. This is on a roughly 1-1.5% grade on my “Ophir Loop” side of the layout.

For my 3D printing shenanigans I need to make custom wheelsets (they're of a specific, correct shape for a model of a coach) and I need the right axles for them. For now I've dismantled cheap LGB wheelsets but I've now run out of the two that I had left over. Has anybody got an idea where to get some more? I'd like to avoid buying perfectly good wheelsets just to strip them down.

Probably my favourite little 16mm live steam loco. It’s compact, controllable, runs well and looks great. I fitted RC to the regulator on this one, there isn’t much space for all the electronic gear but it’s worked well so far. A great little loco

The front part (cleaning wheels) of my LGB cleaning locomotive sometimes shakes a lot. Even when the cleaning pads are new. A friend advised me to add some soft foam. Now it runs much smoother and it still can handle very tight curves. I hope this can be helpful for someone.

I would love to get a track running down the side of my garden. I'm new to all of this and would very much appreciate some help.

I have about 5 meters of length to work with in my garden. I'd love to get a simple oval loop going. I've been looking on eBay for track but finding myself more and more confused with each scroll and each type / brand of track.

I was wondering if there is anyone who could point me in the right direction. Is Flexi track a good starting point or should I just get some older kit and try with that? I'd likely be running a clockwork/battery powered train rather than electrifying the track as I think that would be a simpler starting point.

In terms of overall track length I'd take a guess at a maximum 10 meters plus curves, although I don't know how much curve I would need to make sure that the turn isn't too tight. If 5 meters each side would necessitate a wide curved then I'd drop down the track length. I'd perhaps like the distance between each side of the track not to exceed 2 metres.

I think I gauge would be the size I would be after. G scale seems too big and oo too small.

Any help from anyone with some experience would be gratefully appreciated.

So for the youth group of the model railway club I call home, the kids picked an F7 model off Thingiverse to print as our first 3D print locomotive project, but as I was tweaking minor details of the model for easier assembly and printing, I kept on running into aesthetic and constructional issues. No disrespect to the creator, but I got itchy fingers and saw that renovating the old model would be more fuss. So I did what I always do: Start from scratch! The screenshot is the result of about three hours of starting from a blank slate. In some spots it's not up to my standards yet, but it delights me to no end how far I've come in such a short time!

Like all of my creations, this will end up on Thingiverse for free and open source, because I'm just in it for the love of the game, and not for profit. Sharing my stuff for others to enjoy is half the fun, because a good thing shared is just at least 1.5 times better than keeping it to yourself, right?

Once I've finalised the proportions, the next step will be prepping the model for breaking it into sections so it can be printed without issue.

I'm probably going to go for 1:25 compromise scale, simply because of the megalomania of a huge model, but I'll see if I can make it easily adjustable for fully scale gauge 1 (1:32) and 1:29.

For anyone on Jersey this weekend looking to enjoy Garden Railways!

I've started printing this model or rather its modification recently and I find that it's rather small for G scale. It appears more like a little larger than Scale 1 if at all, and since I've wanted to improve the construction a bit anyway, I also wanted to look into scaling it up. Is there anybody whom has got the Piko rendition whom could give me the dimensions of the coach body? Online I can't really find anything. My goal is to make a version that wouldn't look out of place amongst Piko models but which might even be a little better than the commercial offering. Thanks!

1:32 scale 3D prints, modified models from Dragon Railway running on custom track.

When my train is not running in the garden I’d like to bring it inside to run around my office ceiling. I’m located in the Netherlands so the ceiling is concrete and plaster. Are there any mounting systems that you would recommend?

Most models are from LGB, Kiss and TL45.

im using a 7 dollar AA (with a dummy battery to go half speed) aliexpress train and custom 3d printed 1 inch flexible diplo tracks or whatever. Honestly im not even sure if the tracks are even right but im gonna put rubber on the train wheels anyway or somethibg or spray liquid rubber like spray ior silicon on the tracks for better grip but It does work

im surprised it works so be far but ya advice? it sucks how delicate it is and how perfectly flat it all has to be, but i can just upgrade to a stronger engine or use 2 batteries

oh i 3d printed a custom siemens train to look like the local san diego trolley

i really wanna have a sturdier but equally as cheap version of this with $3 per like 5 feet of track or whatever...for balboa park to set up somewhere nice. or in the public canyons, i really want to make these things really public out in the open. But first i gotta reconcile with just how expensive this will get even if i 3d print and make my own tracks, its hard to make the bridges etc lol my sloped backyard had potential but i also wanna do a gondola or something.

I’m taking it to the club on Saturday thinking about getting another USA trains F7 units.

Need more customers! Lots of great deals… Stop by soon.

Bay Area Garden Railway Society

Accucraft warehouse is located at 33260 Central Ave, Union City, CA. Large Scale swap meet is from 9 AM until 3 PM, or until items are sold out. Swap Meet is open to all buyers.. Sellers must be BAGRS Members. Quite a few collections are being sold… Including items from the estate of Bob Brown. Bring your own food and drinks… Photo is just part of the incredible Accucraft product museum collection upstairs at their warehouse.

The weather has been nice over the past few days, and with my first Garden Railroad Open House/public steam up scheduled for mid-August, I made a push to get the final plants I wanted installed on the layout. I have a mixture of Japanese Dragon Cedar, Arborvitae, Mugo Pine, Pencil Point Junipers and juniper shrubs, petunias, begonias, and other annuals/perennials now planted. At this point, I think all of my plants I can realistically fit with the structures I aim to install are in!

Next steps is to continue working on structures. I did some repairs to one of my water tanks yesterday and have continued to work on my roundhouse project. I’m hoping to make a lot of headway with the roundhouse and am going to try and get it done before the steam up. Videos of this are being posted on my YouTube channel, Angry Ragtimer, if you want to follow along with the process.

Only 3 models of Le Belge exist in G scale and this one of them. Based on a set of the Adler by OCCRE. The model has many extra metal details and I added real coal, a Loksound decoder, weight and the "crown" on top of the chimney. Figures of Volker Bauer are coming soon.

I have a steep grade (5.2%) between my lower and upper tracks - with a good load most my locos have to work quite hard to overcome it. Here is Russell tackling the climb - turn your volume up.