clive_t's Garden Line - The Fall and Rise of the Scampington Chipside Garden Railway

Thanks Ralph, much appreciated

 

Another brief shuffle forwards in the progress-o-meter. I am edging ever closer towards the point where the elevated line that goes in the corner becomes a bridge deck made from metal stud-work. This first section is courtesy of the time-honoured 'celcon' solution. This is a dry fit to see how it sits in relation to the track:



Yesterday morning I mixed up some cement and cemented in the foundations - formed from some spare bricks found in a forgotten corner of the garden:



As per the grand tradition, I made up more cement mortar than was needed, so what to do with the remainder? Well, I have had the idea in my head for a while that the diesel refuelling point should have tracks set into concrete. So with that in mind, I quickly fixed the track down with a couple of screws:



Then on with the excess mortar:



Not quite enough to do it completely but I will revisit this soon.

 

Hi Ralph, the buildings are mostly Pola kits, which are normally fairly thick plastic (the kind used to manufacture Airfix kits etc) so in themselves are usually rugged and outdoor proof. However, my experience has not been the best with my initial choice of glue used to assemble them. Polystyrene cement, it seems, is not keen on being outside. The diesel fuelling area should also have a storage tank under the canopy, that parted company with the base some time ago but thankfully I rescued it. The goods shed is back to its constituent parts almost completely! I will be making the joins more permanent when I eventually repair them - possibly with some copper wire pins and a more effective glue.

 

some more progress yesterday, in spite of the heat and a more immediate need to trim our border hedge which astoundingly has grown to become almost impenetrable jungle, not to say a menace to the public!

The pillars of the new bridge span were cemented in place:



I pitched them so that the gap is 4.5ins from the top to where the rail passes over. That should give me plenty to work with when I come to put the spanning block in place, hopefully later today.

As ever of course, there was excess cement - but this time I was ready for it! This is the diesel refuelling area, my efforts from a couple of days ago have dried out nicely:



I managed to liberate 6 ice-lolly sticks, split them lengthways and cut the rounded bits off each end. Then, with some Blu-Tack I stuck the lengths of wood to the inside of the rails. These will provide a reasonable gap for the wheel flanges once removed:



Then finally, on with the remainder of the cement:



Hopefully, later today I will be able to remove the lengths of wood without too much damage to the central cement section.

 

Hi Pete, the ally angle would certainly reinforce the joints, apart from I don't possess any Copper wire I have coming out of my ears (well, not literally), and is a technique I've used before in smaller scale model-making.

I guess the other question is, whether Gorilla glue would stand up to the wilds of the great outdoors - but I shall investigate that, thanks.

 

Good idea, duly noted for future reference thanks!

 

Well today has been a riveting day, for sure... no, really!

But first, a bit of a catch-up - the celcon bridge had its deck cemented on - well, most of it:



I then set to work with my interpretation of Ralph and Kim's most excellent idea for metal decking. The stuff I went for is narrower, though:



Because the track sections are what is known to G scalers as 'R5' I knew that the radius of a circle of this stuff was 232cm. Allowing for a deck width of 21.5cm (the width of the celcon block) I was able to work out the chord lengths for the inner and outer sections, and cut them accordingly:





... not too shabby!

Typically of me, I decided after cutting the metal that I would have a lift-out section to allow for access to the darker recesses of that particular corner of the garden. So, a hastily cobbled together plan 'B' resulted in this:



I had to relocate the supporting block that had been hidden away in the undergrowth for several years, but once that was done it started to look promising:





Then on to the riveting!

I managed to get a decent hand riveter from my local Machine Mart, as well as an extra couple of bags of rivets.

Having never used one before it took me a while to work it out, but I got there in the end:





It won't be winning any beauty contests any time soon, but I am well happy with it so far! I've not riveted the underside yet, but I will for the added strength - having said that, it's already surprisingly stable! I can't see any of my live steamers giving it too much bother, to be fair.

Thanks for the idea, Ralph and Kim, that worked a treat!

 

I have some rust inhibiting primer spray which hopefully will protect the exposed metal once all the riveting is done.

 

Sadly the spell of hot dry weather with gentle breezes (perfect for spraying outdoors) was replaced last week with something more typical for us

Consequently, progress has been somewhat limited. However, I managed to get the lift-out section of the replacement bridge sprayed with rust-proof primer, followed by some Halford's red oxide primer - which they don't seem to do any more!





I also managed to make some more progress in building the celcon bridge:



Not much, but it's some progress I suppose!

 

Thanks Paul, much appreciated. I notice there are some great 'cab view' clips of outside O-gauge lines on You Tube... just saying!

 

Cheers Kim, I'm just glad you and Ralph aren't coming after me for royalties after I'd 'borrowed' your idea!