A Sunny English Garden

I spent many years working in the UK. well remember the lovely summer evenings watching the garden railways of my fellow enthusiasts. great looking locos. are they ace models or ?. I brought back a large collection of british outline in 'oo' wish williams or lionel would make some in o scale at a reasonable price. thanks for sharing the photos.

Wow! That is a very nice and certainly very colorful collection (ACE, I presume)! If you have a layout, I imagine our magazine readers would also surely enjoy seeing it at some point.

Great collection of locos!What makes are they & where about in the UK are you?
Greeting from sunny Cornwall
James

I love the glossy finish on the trains. Smooth as glass too. I want some!

A nice way to start the day, thank you!

Very nice! I hope to get to York someday to see the museum.

Dear David, beautiful photos, on this side of the" Pond" most modellers do not know of Ace, Darstead or Bassett Lowke(Hornby). I am very fortunate to own a few rakes of passenger cars and freight vans with a variety of Ace/B-L/Darstead locos. They are a wonderful diversion from my Scale 2 Rail PRR weathered equipment. Cheers! John P.Dunn Sr. GaugeOGuild #20904

Very nice collection.
I am over in the States at the moment so it's nice to see the weather has improved at home .
Regards
Nick

Dear All,

Many thanks for the kind comments. I am glad you like them.

It was a sunny day in Worcestershire and so I took these photo's. The loco's are Ace Trains with a Darstaed Pullman coach.

At the moment I don't have a full garden layout(only the glass shelf railway)but I am working on some ideas for a 'portable' outdoor layout.




All the best

David

Those locs look really good, especially in that natural setting with the stone wall.


Rick

I would love to see this layout in OGR!

You can't run O Gauge trains outdoors! It simply cannot be done!

VERY NICE!

THANKS for sharing!

Tongue in cheek response, I hope.
It is well documented that there are quite a few outdoor O layouts in the UK and in weather like this you can see why. When it rains, I/m not so sure!

By the way, what happened to the Lionel UK forum? Appears to be dead!

quote:

Originally posted by Farmer_Bill:
You can't run O Gauge trains outdoors! It simply cannot be done!

Wow the second one looks like the olton hall is it?

Drool But the weather is a fake.

quote:

Originally posted by BRIAN:
Tongue in cheek response, I hope.
It is well documented that there are quite a few outdoor O layouts in the UK and in weather like this you can see why. When it rains, I/m not so sure!

By the way, what happened to the Lionel UK forum? Appears to be dead!

quote:

Originally posted by Farmer_Bill:
You can't run O Gauge trains outdoors! It simply cannot be done!

Good question about the UK forum. I'll email Tom when I get a chance.
Regards
Nick

VERY NICE! What a refreshing change of pace. Please shoot some more photos in 2012 on your next sunny day

Liam,

The second loco is GWR Shrewsbury Castle, a real favourite of mine.

David

quote:

Originally posted by Dave Allen:
Drool But the weather is a fake.

Yep another wet & damp in Cornwall today
James

WOW! You have a real classy collection for your English Garden railway. I have to say I do miss visiting the UK. I've always enjoyed the train trips, the countryside, London, and the theater scene.

quote:

Originally posted by Alibatwomble:

quote:

Originally posted by Dave Allen:
Drool But the weather is a fake.

Yep another wet & damp in Cornwall today
James

James! Flowers and all that green in April? You must have saved that pic from last year's sunny summer day!

quote:

At the moment I don't have a full garden layout(only the glass shelf railway)but I am working on some ideas for a 'portable' outdoor layout.

Get going on that project, David! Document it with photos as you build it, and consider submitting it to me at OGR for a magazine feature.

That's one gorgeous assortment of British steam that you have there!

Dave, No that was taken on the 10th April 2011 our summer for this year!
James

Very amusing about our weather, guys! Seem to have heard this before somewhere! Just remember that most of our weather comes from across the Atlantic! So anything we get is your fault!

Operating outdoors trains in the UK is very easy. I expect to run trains on my 270' garden circuit all this week - and now I've acquired an MTH DCS Remote Commander, my U.P. locos will clang and whistle their way round - I hope my neighbours are OK with that! The weather is at this moment warm and mild, slightly overcast - ideal for running trains in the garden.

And I'm about to add another circuit to accommodate Big Boys etc and to provide a long enough station for the ten coach OE set.

Liam - a fuller answer to your question about Olton Hall is that the Great Western Railway built their own express and other locos (in their workshops in Swindon) with a strong 'family' likeness. This is due to the work of two remarkable locomotive superintendents: George J Churchward and his successor Charles Collett. The Castles were express passenger and perishable goods locos, the Halls were mixed traffic and not quite so powerful. These 4-6-0 locos compare very favourably with U.S. locos on a tractive effort to weight ratio but of course are much smaller.

David Webb is doing a great job here in the UK - I hope he'll be doing conducted tours soon!

Regards

David

Hi David, I love the look of your European trains. They always look as if they are going to pick up the Queen.
I hope you follow Allan's lead and send in some photos of your layout when it comes together. I would love to see O-Gauge pikes from all over the world.
I'm thinking of acquiring one of the MTH beauties, with coaches for use on my MJM RR at home.
If my prototypical friends complain I'll just tell them it's part of a "Lend Lease" deal.

James - I hope you are wrong about our summer - it would be nice to have a few more sunny days before "winter" sets in next month!!

Great pictures and a good comment about the UK forum - shame its gonbe so quiet there.

MIKE

Given the impeccable maintenance lavished upon Britain's preserved steam locomotives, that glossy finish is quite accurate.

Thanks for sharing the images of your models...simply splendid!

Bob

Thanks again everbody for the great comments about my loco's and photo's.

I am off to York, England this weekend and I will be visiting the National Railway Museum (NRM) again. The wife has asked to go as well !!

I want to see the 'Duchess' streamliner again - an engine Ace are promising to make one day.

Alan Miller - Thanks for your comments, when I establish an outside layout I will keep a record with photo's and let you have them. We might have to wait a while !

All the best

David

Makes me positively homesick! Spring in Cornwall; boating on the Helford and Fal, wild weather on Bodmin Moor, Jefferies ice cream and pasties for supper!

What have I got? Cold rainy Spring, too cold on Puget Sound for anything, Baskin Robbins and Burger King!

Ah well!

quote:

Originally posted by Alibatwomble:
Dave, No that was taken on the 10th April 2011 our summer for this year!
James

quote:

Alan Miller - Thanks for your comments, when I establish an outside layout I will keep a record with photo's and let you have them. We might have to wait a while !

No problem, David! I'm a very patient man.

Happy Easter everbody.....










The Flying Scotsman is by Bassett Lowke, the others are by Ace Trains Of London

All the best

David

Wow! You really do have one heck of a nice collection of British steam, David! True beauties!

And a Happy Easter to you, as well!

Gosh, they look beautiful. Happy Easter indeed!

Allan and Doug,

Thank you.

I just love these loco's. It has taken some effort to get them but I think it was worth it.

I just like to share the images and spread the word !!

All the best

David

EXCELLENT!

A great set of pix!!

Nice pix...

Isn't "sunny English garden" an oxymoron?

I lived in London as a teenager in the late 1950s and was fortunate to see many of your locomotives still operating in mainline service on British Railways. I used to visit London's stations and watch trains along with the many English train fans. I never bothered to record engine numbers however. Thanks for sharing these photos and bringing back memories of a time long gone. Joe