First I would like to say thanks for all the welcome mesages. Ok here we go and apoligies to those who are also from the TVGR forum. The heatherburn railway is my 00 gauge garden railway and is an out and back design. Trains start their journey from Heatherburn St Davids station. This is located in the garage and is based on all the best bits from London termini. The platforms have brick archways running the length of them with glass sided walkways along the top. The archways kind of give the platforms a Kings Cross look about them. Blue LEDs have been fitted under the walkways to give a bit of accent lighting.







 





The overall roof is based on St Pancres while the hotel and walkways are from Liverpool Street. Moving on then… over the entrance to the station is the bus station. This will form part of a shopping centre and will be of a 1980's design when completed…









After passing under the road bridge we pass the carrage washing plant. This is built from balsa, card and some brushes that were in a box of track I got off ebay! On the opisit side of the track from the washing plant will be the signal box based loosley on the one at Manchester Picadilly.






After the washing plant the line splits, straight on to the garden or left to the TMD before passing under another road bridge. When designing the railway I thought it would be a good idea to incorparate a loop indoors for testing. This also gives access to the TMD and 'works' This loop also enables trains to efectively 'bypass' the terminus and return to the garden when the railway is in continius run mode(sit outdoors with a cold drink and watch the trains go by mode!) Returning to our journey the other side of the bridge is the parcels depot…





Now we move on to the canal section. Here a transport museum is being devloped around the old canal area….








After crossing the canal we pass the old signal box then we are joined by the branch line and the return loop line to the garden….





I have already mentioned the TMD so heres some pics before we move on to the outdoor section.







The TMD has two parts. First is the inspection shed that is mainly for the branch DMU's while the other half is the main works. This will eventualy have a working crane installed sometime in the future! :roll:

And that concludes the inside section more to follow later…… :wink:

I take my hat off to you. You've got that urban feel looking just right. I love the station and the way you have done the arches along the platforms. Might just pinch that idea myself!

What a really great looking layout i can see an immense amount of work has gone into creating it.

it certainly has the full urban feel to it i presume you have been developing it over a very long time.

i look forward to more updates

cheers Bran.W

87101,a beautiful setup,you really have been busy,i take my hat off to you.
 :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  8)

Blimey!!! What an amazing layout…and that station is something else!!
I'm not a modern image fan myself,but I've never seen it done as well as this.And all those blue diesels……….Chris Trerise will love you!!! :lol:  :lol:  :lol:
  looking forward to seeing more from you.Great Stuff!!!

Cheers,John.B.

Wow, what an amazing terminus - it's got that London feel to it, Waterloo comes to mind.  It would be good to see a track plan to get an idea of the overall layout, if this is possible and of course the transition from garage to garden.  It looks really good though.

Bob(K)

As they say in Lancashire (I think) …. I'll go to the foot of our stairs as the Scots expression is not printable.  Should point out that as I live i a bungalow going to the foot of the stairs is a trifle difficult but I am sure you get my drift.

What an amazing layout  ….  sorry cannot say much else as I am speechless

Matt

He is only playing with you guys thats only half of it, wait till you see the other side of the garage wall !!!!!!!

Great pictures Dave put them out of their misery and let them see the garden !

John
RJR

Nice smilie Lawrence.  :lol: Just had to add it to our list. Hope you don't mind.

Ok John….. Well here we go then part two. :wink:

The orignal plan for the garden railway was a single track oval around the lawn and rockery. However why go to all the hassell of building a track base for one line when not much more effort is required for a two track set up. So an idea was born that kind of grew a bit!! :lol:

The devlopment of the railway went hand in hand with the remodeling of the back garden. The first section to be built was the loop around the rockery. Work on this started back in Oct 2006. First a trench was dug about a foot deep. Then concrete was poured in and old block pavers were set into the concrete whilst it was still wet. To secure the track I was going to use rubbercrete as mentioned in model rail however two things happened. One I found getting the ingrediants difficult and two whilst on a trip to B&Q for some more building materials I found some rubber paving slabs! These are designed for use on kids play areas and looked like they would take track pins ok. Two were bought for the grand total of £7 each and taken home for experimentation purposes! :lol:
The rubber pavers were sawn up into smaler strips then cemented to the track base. The gaps were then filled in with mortar then the track was pinned to the rubber strips using long panel pins. For balast the track had a sloppy mortar mix poured over it and then brushed into place. When dry the rails were sawn into 12" sections. This was for two reasons the first to allow for expansion as there is no give in the sleepers and secondly the noise of rolling stock over the joints is mint! Link wires were then soldered across the joints and the completed track section was sprayed with red car primer. The final thing was to seal the whole lot with thompsons water seal. I now had a track base that could be walked on and washed down using a hose pipe. Pictures of this early construction can be found in the gallerys on the heatherburn website. :wink:
Moving on… Once the track bed was finished the rockery was built. One thing I wanted was a tunnel through the rockery so a branch line was conceved to allow this. The tunnel itself was constructed from some 6" dia drain pipe. The track is carried through the tunnel on a base made from some electrical trunking lid supported on 'contiblocks'. Skaledale portals were used at each end. As the track is supported about an inch from the base drainage is no problem. The tunnel slopes towards the pond at one end and any excess water simply runs under the raised trackbed and out into the pond. The branch crosses the pond on a bridge made from drain pipe and runs into the terminus at Cobblers Hall more of which later. The second section to be built outdoors was the section around the lawn. By the time I had come to this section I had been made redundent so it was done 'on the cheep'. Origanaly the line(a three track formation at this point)dropped down towards the front of the garden. Burnhill Bank as it came to be known proved to be a disaster as the gradent was too steep! About this time the railway had evolved to include the garage in the design mainly due to me moving the greenhouse out of the way. Origanaly the garage was to provide storage of stock and somewhere to build some automated storage sidings. Work started indoors using some old doors as baseboards but I was never realy happy with the design. I would like to bring mr RJR in at this point! As most will remember last summer was a bit WET to say the least. Watching John move his modeling indoors to the shed gave me the answer I was looking for. So the layout in its present form was born. As the origanal section was practialy bomb proof it was kept along with the branch line however the troublesome burnhill bank would go along with the work started in the garage. This was easer said than done however as it left me with a double track main line with one end 9" above the other! The answer was found in a peco track plans book. I found a layout that was an out and back design with the return loop under the terminus. So my double track line became a very large single line dogbone with the terminus, TMD, etc on the top section and the return loop incorparating the storage sidings underneath.
The garage is linked to the garden section via a breeze block wall. The wall is actualy two walls one higher than the other and will eventualy be painted dark blue once I've finished rendering it. The track on the top of the wall is fastened to 9mm plywood sheet whilst the lower lines are fixed to rubber blocks as per the origanal build. The rest of the track base is made from treated deck board. This blends in quite well with the decking and handrails. At this point I would like to thank my wife Rachel for alowing me to rebuild the garden. Even she addmitted the other week how the railway has blended in quite well. :wink:

Truly, totally, absolutely awesome :!:  :!:

If there's anything to beat this, I've never seen it :!:

Ps. 87xx, can you post the link to the layout's wbsite for all our members to see :?:

Ok let our journey around the railway continue….
The railway enters and exits the garage on two levels. These are positioned one in front of the other. As we move outdoors the railway is a three track formation up/down main and branch.

The first station down the line from St Davids is Byerley Parkway. This has two island platforms and will eventualy have the station buildings built over possably based on Birmingham international.



Note the last picture there of the express on the lower level returning to the lower level of the garage. :wink: Parkway station has four platform one for the branch one for the down line and two for up trains. This will allow trains to be held before moving to the indoor section.
OK after parkway station we move onto what was proberly one of the hardest sections to build. I have already mentioned burnhill bank. Heres some pics taken after the track was removed for reuse in the garage before the base was broken up….

This was replaced with this…….


The viaducts were built from concrete with polycarb sheeting for the sides. The construction of these is well documented on the TVGR forum so heres a link for those intrested….
http://www.railwayz.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1983&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
Trains leaving parkway first pass the signal box before moving out onto the viaduct section. This section is still being worked on along with the new rockery behind. After crossing the second three arch viaduct we pass Woodham station.

This was the first station to be devloped and features LED lighting of the station area and signal box…

At Woodham the branch line enters the station before crossing a short viaduct that leads into the tunnel through the rockery. After crossing the pond the branch terminus at Cobblers Hall is reached….



The main lines leave the branch line at Woodham and run behind the station on an embankment before passing under a bridge cast in mortar. This is the most scenic section of line mainly due to it also being the origanal first section and the garden has had a year to grow back!
 



After running behind the rockery the main line runs under the approch to Cobblers Hall and into Lakeside station…..

At this point I would like to mention the CCTV! That's right CCTV. In a previous life I was a CCTV engineer and aquired a few bits and pieces that have found their way on to the railway. As you can see in the next two pics miniture cameras have been installed at both parkway and lakeside stations…….

These cameras feed live pictures back to monitors situated above the control position in the garage…

Eventualy the railway will be run like the real thing with trains departing and arriving at St Davids. From St Davids to Parkway control is from the garage hence the camera at parkway. Trains will then be driven by either a second opperator or the automated system to Lakeside where an automatic control system will take over control to the automated storage storage sidings on the lower level. Trains will then return by running back up the garden to the upper level area. I have calcuated that the actual scale mileage of this run is about 4.7 miles! 8)
From lakeside the track crosses the path on a wooden bridge before curving onto the lower wall and the run back to the garage. Hopefully this will give a rough idea of the layout and its eventual opperation. Test trains have only been running the full length of the railway for a few weeks now and a few modifications have had to be made to make it more reliable. It would be nice to get it to a point of having an open day sometime maybe in September. Watch this space…. :wink:

As moderator of this section, I feel compelled to delete this thread because the depicted layout is too good   :shock:  :shock:  :shock:
 Great stuff, Dave. Extraordinary :!:

 Mike

After reading some of the replies I relised that I hav'nt given the web address so I have amended my signiture. Also included are the links to the two videos taken last year before the rebuild and the link to my fotopic site where the early pics are. Dave. :wink:

As moderator of this section, I feel compelled to delete this thread because the depicted layout is too good

Thanks Mike although you had me worried for a minute there as its taken most of the evening to post! :wink:

:D  :D  :D  No danger of it happening, Dave.

This is one hell of a railway :!:  :!:
In the first part (the indoor section) I was highly impressed, but now having added the outdoor section I'm blown away :!:  :!:

45 years in the hobby and I've seen some wonderful layouts, but this is up there with the best.

Whatever you do, keep us updated on your activities, we look foward to your future posts.

OK, I'm GREEN with envy.
 :shock:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:
Many thanks for going to the trouble of posting the details of your railway 87xxx.
I'll be spending way too much time reading about the development and techniques used.
Looking forward to developments.
cheers