Work stalled at the end of last year when the weather became too bad to work outside - our 'carriage and wagon works' is a table in the garden. The poor weather earlier this year means we're still catching up with other (non railway) jobs, so there's no more progress on the carriage to report at the moment. We'll post an update when we've done some more work on it, but that may not be until 2025. If others are looking for our previous update mentioned in the question above, here's a link kzbin.info/www/bejne/fXOngGiwi7t2iNE

Water does sometimes collect under the 'simple deck bridge', but it quickly drains away. Unfortunately the ground conditions (tons of stone dumped into boggy ground over the last 100 years or so) mean building water courses (or anything requiring grading) is difficult.

@@karenslittlerailway Understood. Best left as is then re civil engineering if it's boggy, best it drains away. Perhaps plant up with something that looks like, represents, water🤔 Just a thought ✌️👍😊 It's a wonderful line regardless 💜💜

@@musoseven8218 Thank you for your kind comments and thoughts to be pondered upon

Yes, the layout does provide quite a few options in the limited space available, but the 'triangle' cannot be used as a reversing triangle as things stand. At present you have to use the line labelled 'balloon loop' to reverse the direction of trains. Plans are afoot for some changes (not shown) to the track plan.

@@karenslittlerailway Then You need to do some shunting, disconnecting the loco and move it to the other end of the train tp make go in the other direction, as I can see. Nothing wrong with that.

We've stuck some of those magnetic battery powered LEDs on the metal buffer beams of the red loco in the past and have a pair of bardic lamps with changeable lens colours to put on the other loco as a simple low-tech directional lighting solution as soon as we have fitted some lamp brackets

Some sort of signalling may be installed sometime in the future

Good idea. I did something similar idea on my earlier 'Imp' locomotive, though I used push bike brake parts with the callipers acting on the sides of a pulley that was part of the drive train.

@@karenslittlerailway yes, it’s quick and simple, we have a similar thing, but John built a scissor with four bike brake blocks onto disks for the ride on coaches. I can move my wheels between seven and five inch, the central disk makes that simple :o)

Thank you, that's a good idea to try. We are still working on a solution for making less of a bump

Thank you

I would estimate track length is less than 200 yards, but I'm not sure without measuring it (it's dark now). I'm not sure what you mean by investments in the track layout, but if you want to know what it is made of and how much that would cost, the best I can answer is with a description of the materials needed and you can find out how much that would be from local suppliers. I have no idea how much it has cost me in total, but steel is now approaching 10 times more expensive than when I started. The track is made out of 20 foot lengths of 30 x 12mm flat steel bar with wooden 3" X 2" (or near metric equivalent) 18" long sleepers at 1 foot spacing and the rail is held onto the sleepers using suitable chairs from www.pnp-railways.co.uk/ plus suitable screws to hold the chairs to the sleepers. I put 1 metre wide weed suppressant under the ballast and the ballast itself is 20 mm down (meaning mixed size pieces that fit through a 20mm sieve) crushed local stone (granite would be good) from a quarry a few miles up the road. I hope that answers your question!

Thanks for your kind comments. Minx has a 21 inch wheelbase and has no issues with tight radius curves, but we do have generous gauge widening and wide treads on the wheels. The wheels are 6 inch diameter at the flange and 1 1/8 inch thick I just checked the 16 ft radius curve and was surprised to find I widened the gauge by 1/4 inch around that curve. I suspect it probably doesn't need to be quite that dramatic and judging by what others have done 1/8 inch (3mm) gauge widening might be sufficient (see kzbin.info/www/bejne/gmrYlXpvarido6s for a good illustration and useful comments). Experimentation is the only way we find out what works for us. I hope this helps.

Thanks for the information. Unfortunately, my track is already in place with self-gauging ties. So, there are no economical means of widening the gauge on curves. Perhaps I can go to 18-20" wheelbase on my 20' radius curved track. I suspect the best is to field test a mock-up with different length wheelbases. I custom built my first locomotive as a 1:5 scale model of a gas-hydraulic plymouth narrow gauge switcher. Though a nice model, it is not rideable. One must sit on a trailing car. I like your vision of a real railroad that just happens to be extreme narrow gauge (7 1/4"). The engineer actually pilots his locomotive. Bravo! Thanks again, Dale I

@@bustinboilers Yes, a field mock up sounds like the best way of finding out what wheelbase will go around your curves. Small (sub 15" gauge) extreme narrow gauge but real working railways have been coined 'minimal gauge' in recent times. There is a Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/MinimalGaugeRailways which might interest you or provide some inspiration. Here in the UK there is a commercially available sit on locomotive that has a 12" wheelbase called Scamp. Designed by 7 1/4" gauge Society member Colin Edmondson this (and several even more 'minimal' designs of his) are available as a set of parts or ready to run from CMD Engineering www.miniature-trains.co.uk/shop/ . There is another Facebook group which has information about 'Scamp' and derivatives at facebook.com/groups/449895411876067 . I have no connection with either Colin Edmondson or CMD Engineering other than being someone who has been inspired by them and used their parts in my own variations on a theme.

Yes all the track is made by ourselves. It is 30 x 12mm flat bar fixed to wooden sleepers using PNP Railways chairs for bar rail. You can read more about how we built the railway on our website at www.karenslittlerailway.co.uk/ including making points. The PNP chairs are designed to pinch onto the rail to hold it in place. In our experience they work well if the ballast is kept well packed around the sleepers, and it's a good idea to avoid walking on the sleepers. The PNP website can be found at www.pnp-railways.co.uk/

@@karenslittlerailway oh that's a fantastic reply. I'll have a look at all that later. Thanks ever so much for sharing the info !

You're very welcome @@gs425

Overall length is 4 feet, wheelbase 21 inches from (possibly faulty) memory. It's cold and dark outside so I haven't checked

Do you know what the caliber on the ammo boxes is? I love the way they look as the body

@@hi1172 They were simply described as steel ammo boxes approx. 19x17x15inches when I bought them. A search on the net suggests they are British Army L15A1 ammo boxes. Hope that helps.

I'll try to think of something. They are very simple - the wagons have no suspension at all, and the carriage is built around some bogies obtained from e-bay

Yes, I am fortunate to have the space I have got, but others have fitted 7 1/4 inch gauge railways into smaller spaces

Thank you

I've thought of trying sails - it's quite a windy spot here.

Yes, I will be adding more. Some track and turnout building details are on our web site at www.karenslittlerailway.co.uk/construction.php

@@karenslittlerailway Dziękuję za odpowiedź 🤝