Just wanted to share these very interesting Youtube movies of an outdoor railway. Rolling stock is inventive home made as well as the track work that is made from PVC guttering. The railway was originally made by the builder in his early teens but now modernized strongly.
Quote from description: 1 in 24 scale. everything scratch built on a very low budget, track made from strips of pvc stuck in slots made in polystyrene or polyfoam glued with hot glue gun, simple joints allowing track to expand in summer heat, the vans are made from wood and plastic.The axles have ball races and springs, the loco is roughly based on a baby deltic, has 4 motors with belt drive to reduce noise and controlled by rc and a 12 volt lead acid battery. Most of the track has been out in the weather for years now. I am currently building a turning loop at the station end. This railway is a rebuild of the first one, which i built in 1995 when i was a kid, as i grew up it all got forgotten about and overgrown. I decided to rebuild it and dug up all the old rails and re used many of them, i used polystyrene and poly foam as a base for the rails as its more rigid and weeds cant grow through it altho it doesnt look as authentic
Present railway:
History (very charming):
Tacbob
Location : Harz, Germany
Subject: Re: Nice all-home-made outdoor railway Wed Mar 20, 2013 9:41 am
Nice sound on the 1st video. Are both vids the same layout? I like the trackwork and tracklaying on the 2nd one. Looks like fieldrailway tracks .
Subject: Re: Nice all-home-made outdoor railway Sat Oct 26, 2013 12:37 pm
hey this is my layout! The new layout follows a different path apart from along the embankment retaining brick wall.I have lifted all the track now as cows escaped from the farm and stood on some of it, i will relay it all once i have built a good fence to keep the buggers out!
the points work well as the upvc is quite bendy so the rails are fixed until clearance for the wheels. i use a simple spring loaded lever to operate the switch. To stop the rail deforming vertically it sits on 2 plastic greased plates, one near the points tie and the other near where it becomes a fixed rail.To stop the rail becoming out of alignment it has a plate that runs behind when its in the (in use ) position but it stops a couple of mm before the wheel flange height. You cant really see it once its all put together. At the end of the points a slot is cut on the underside of the rail and i use the heat gun to bend it in to an angle and a hole drilled for the tie. I sand the end into a point, sanding on the outside of the rail only also to help remove the slight outward curve of the now angled plastic. The points on the loop are simply operated by a single spring that holds the points in one position. A careful balance between the spring being strong enough to always return the blade fully across and the rollingstock being heavy enough to be able to move the point blade out of the way when coming back round the loop. Also check out my other videos on you tube now i have finished the other loop.