Miniature Trains - 3 1/2" to 7 1/4"

[weevil]

I am in the process of putting a 5" gauge line in the garden. Motive power is currently two battery electrics and a steamer. Now that I have given up on Trainz I have more time and money to pursue this. All the activity is reported on my website:

http://bellariaalpinenorthern.org

I wouldn't say it's a cheap hobby, but I wouldn't rate it any more expensive than golf and probably quite a bit cheaper than live steam in gauge 1. I bought my steam loco secondhand for about the cost of a really cutting edge gaming PC. To build each wagon costs me about the same as a newly released game, and the track costs about the same per meter as a payware loco. What I really like about it is that my garden never gets corrupted causing me to lose the railway, I never have to edit any config files to get my locomotives to work properly and the physics is guaranteed 100% realistic.

Stuart

 

[daveinblock4]

I don't actually own any miniature railway stuff, but I am a member at the Great Cockcrow Railway, a 7 1/4" railway of about 2 miles length based near Chertsey, Surrey. http://www.cockcrow.co.uk . Our locos represent the "big four" pre-nationalisation railways and locos are to standard gauge profile, so no narrow gauge here !
I am also a member of the Acton Miniature Railway, a 7 1/4" railway based at the London Transport Museum Depot in Acton, West London, http://www.actonminiaturerailway.co.uk . Most of the stuff we run there will either be London Transport based (for example we have a 38 stock underground train & a couple of metro vicks) or, failing that, will be stuff that would have run into London (so no Caledonian or North British etc).
Please pop along to either of these if you are in the area, but check the website first for opening times etc.

As Weevil so correctly pointed out in the previous post, it is not a cheap hobby. But as we charge a (small) fare for riding our railways, this pays for our hobby