Colwyn Garden Railway

G Scale Arrives in Colwyn Bay

OPEN DAY 2008

This years open day will be on Saturday 20th September

It will run from 2:00pm till 5:00pm

There will be a £1.00 entrance fee in aid of the Kampala Children's Centre.

FOR SALE
COLWYN GARDEN RAILWAY £299,950

COMPLETE WITH A SPACIOUS DETACHED 3 BEDROOM FAMILY CHALET HOME
Situated in a popular residential area near the West End Shops and access onto the North Wales A55 Expressway. It is within a mile of Rhos village with it's local shops harbour and promenade.
email me at mail@ghpowell.co.uk. for more information.

NOVEMBER 2007

With the new station area and branch line almost complete the railway has almost reached its intended size.
The larger the railway the bigger the problems with maintenance, therefore I have decided that my 180mtrs length of track work is enough.
I will now concentrate on the completion of the control room ,I also intend to build a church and signal box over the winter months.

ELECTRICS

Although being used at much less than the 5amp rating my two Gaugemaster controllers have failed during the past few months, I have now replaced them with a 10amp Aristo-Craft power pack with controllers which have much improved the all round performance, also the smoke units are producing much more smoke.
I have fitted change - over switches so that I can use the conventional controllers in the control room or walk around with the radio controlled train engineer system.

LOCOMOTIVES

The Aristocraft Pacific 4-6-2 loco I purchased last year has been excellent, it has great pulling power even on the gradients and it must have covered many real miles, it has been completely trouble free and I haven't even had to clean the wheels!
The U25-B Diesel continues to be trouble free apart from the occasional wheel clean.
Due to an unfortunate collision I need a new part for the tender on my 0-4-0 Switcher, Unfortunately I am told that the spare part could take up to 12 months to arrive from America so I intend to attempt a temporary repair.

OPEN DAYS

Our Open Day this year on 16th June 2007 raised £120.00 for the R.N.L.I Lifeboat fund. Our charity next year will be for a project in Uganda. Date to be announced.

The railway is run regularly between Easter and October so if you would like to visit then please email me at mail@ghpowell.co.uk. to make arrangements.

Videos

Take a tour around Colwyn Garden Railway and see the latest developments

Take a ride on the Colwyn Garden Railway!

G Scale Arrives in Colwyn Bay

Living in North Wales is not a good place for garden railways (according to the G Scale Society membership list) as I seem to be the only person in the district with any interest in G-Scale. However this has not prevented me from building my own garden railway in a not very level garden. One of my problems is that I tend to rush into things, I am the type of person who builds a kit model and then reads the instructions afterwards. This was the same with my garden railway, not enough research resulting in some jobs having to be done twice. The first problem was to get the track from the storage area (my garage) to a reasonable level part of the garden some 40ft away. This resulted in a high level section of over 5ft above ground level in places. The bridges took some time to build but well worth the effort.

Included in the high level section is a suspension bridge built with concrete towers both 8ft high covering a double track span of 25feet suspended by strands of fencing wire. The whole weight of the wooden track bed and track is held by the suspension wires, it has not needed any repairs or adjustment since built some six years ago.

Equipment

My engines and rolling stock are limited at the moment as the 400ft of aristo-craft track purchased over the past years has been the main priority. My motive power at the moment is the Aristo-Craft 0-4-0 switcher with sound tender and the U25-B Diesel. Just recently I purchased a Lil Critter switcher loco which will be used for moving rolling stock in my proposed new goods yard. All three locos have proved to be excellent runners. The Aristo-Craft track and the train engineer have been trouble free, however I was disappointed with the auto switch motors so I have now purchased some LGB points which seem to have a stronger motor action. Some confusion did arise when I found they were DC operated despite the box indicating that they were AC.

Buildings

I do enjoy making the buildings for the railway and found this quite an easy job because of the large scale, a visit to Bekonscot gave me some good ideas.

JAPERS | 2006 | Copyright © Jeff Japers | Design by brampamp