Railway History (Real)

The new Merrytwit Railway will be the third garden railway that I have built and the second to have that name.

The first was a dog bone continuous run built on wooden legs made of fence post fixed into the ground using Metaspikes supporting a roofing felt covered baseboard.

The original Merrytwit Light Railway freshly completed

This was a quick method of construction and the first part went up easily and survived a snowy winter before being completed in the Summer of 1998.

I had purchased a loco and some coach kits from Fendyke at an exhibition early in 1997 and then got track and points during a visit to Pecorama in 1998. A few sessions running my limited stock around happened before the winter set in.

A short freight leaves Twitington Station

The railway lasted roughly till 2001 before a lack of use and maintenance saw it being dismantled and the track and stock stored for future use.

The garden stayed railway free for some time as we joined a caravan club and spent most free weekends away with our friends leaving no time for railways.

Circumstances change and we left the caravan club and found ourselves with more time on our hands and so, in 2007, the garden was cleared, the last remains of the old railway were removed and a new line called the Sitton Watchet Railway was built.

This was a double track OO gauge line which was built on the same principals as the old railway except I used plastic drainage pipe concreted into the ground and filled with cement instead of wooden posts although part of it was built on a concrete wall.

A train on the new railway, note borrowed controller as I
did not have one of my own at the time

The railway was completed late in 2008 in time for a friend to visit with some of his loco's for a running session.

This line has lasted well and runs very nicely however it takes over an hour to get it ready for a session due to cleaning the track, making any adjustments and repairs as well as getting rolling stock out. This has limited the amount of running I have done on it.

Apart from an all day running session at my daughters birthday in 2010 running has been limited to when I had the time to spare to get everything out.

OO gauge in the garden works well but really needs a shed for the railway to run into and needs you to devote an entire day to it, something that as a bus driver my shift work seldom allows.

And so we come to 2013 when I made the decision to build a 16mm/ft scale 32mm gauge line to replace the OO which will be re-born as a portable layout or possibly as one in a purpose built shed.

The Sitton Watchet Railway was dismantled in Spring 2013, the track going to a friend for use on his garden line, and construction started on the new 32mm gauge 16mm scale line.

The new line is being built using thermolite blocks as they are easy to cut and drill into.

The latest news is that the trackbed is complete, the final section has been built using the sort of construction as the Sitton Watchet Railway only this time I used a beam created with plywood and supported on plastic pipe legs. The base board is wooden planks from paper pallets obtained from my Wife's workplace. The wood is good and strong and has proved to be long lived if treated against the weather.