St Albans’ new track

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

St Albans MES has been building a 45mm and 32mm track for G1 and 16mm modellers. It sort of started planning some time back around lockdown and this year has quickly taken shape with a small team putting it together.

The track was officially opened on Sunday 14th August by our ex chairman Guy Ellerby cutting a ribbon during the club 'BBQ' (actually fire free for safety). A 16mm scale Lady Anne being gas fired was allowed to raise steam and set off, driven by a retired BR member, round the 45mm track with a couple of coaches while an electric chassis pulled a mixed freight around the 32mm track. Later a Jubilee was rostered to a few mixed wagons as we don't have any standard gauge coaches or a station for the passengers.

Hopefully we will see a few more trains as we add passing loops and sidings to the layout.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

45mm and 32mm track for G1 and 16mm

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Good to see things getting back to normal after the past couple of years. And even a bit of sunshine to boot! Looks like a good time being had by all, and quite a bit of time gone into building that track set up.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

There are now loads of better pictures on out website under latest news 'picnic ….'
It also shows how dry everything is.

There is also a link to a video there.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Good to see!

Interesting that your G1 / 16mm people seem to focus on Standard Gauge models. A lot of people in this aspect of model-engineering – including in my club (Weymouth) – apparently go for NG outline. Both choices are of equal merit, of course.

As far as I know all our members' locos in these scales are gas-fired.

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Our equivalent carries its 32 and 45mm g. lines and steaming-bays on benching of very similar construction to yours; although its builders used large-diameter plastic drain-pipe for the columns, standing in concrete, fence-post style.

Be careful anyone else following suit: the brown PVC pipes as we used may not be ultra-violet resistant as they are intended for buried services. Realising this, we painted ours black to give them some weather protection.

We suffer from Geology. The ground is a very deep Oxford Clay deposit very susceptible to contracting and expanding according to water conditions. This affects the ground-level 5" and 7.25" line as well as the raised one; although fortunately not to the extent of replacement bus services… An eighth-scale Plasser & Theurer ballast-tamper, anyone? Though its movements have given the "garden-gauge" locos many gradients to tackle on lines that had all been built accurately level!

The rails are all linked electrically, to allow externally-powered electric locos, though I am not sure if this has happened. The electric models I have seen on it, carry their own batteries.
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Fire-free BBQ…. Novel. I've visions of that being the opposite – all cold food straight from fridge and freezer! Or was it gas-fired?

Another club to which I belong decided against a barbeque last weekend partly on the possibility of rain that didn't happen; but anyway a BBQ even on our properly-built hearth would have been very risky, and also very undiplomatic, in a farming area during a drought. We had an indoor buffet instead.

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