A house move and a bare garden were all the inspiration MIKE WILD needed to begin building one of his lifetime ambitions – a garden railway in ‘O’ gauge. In this whistle-stop introduction, he takes us behind closed doors to reveal the early stages of the project over the past 12 months.
Above: Heljan ‘Western’ D1013 Western Ranger leads a seven-coach rake of Mk 1s down the 1-in-100 gradient towards the decking. Ultimately greenery will hide the trackbed, blending it into the garden.
I HAVE always been fascinated by garden railways and as a youngster I remember being hooked on places like Beckonscot Model Village in Buckinghamshire and Babbacombe in Torquay. Then there was Legoland in Denmark which has a tremendous railway system running through its Miniland model towns and villages.
More recently Trevor Jones’ ‘OO’ gauge garden railway, as well as several that I follow through social media, have all helped to shape the direction of my own project – something that until last year was very much a pipe dream.
A recent house move offered the perfect blank canvas to develop both a garden railway and the landscape around it. On arriving it was turf from corner to corner but after a few months, ideas started …
