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Gaugemaster G Scale Day

28th May 2017

PAT PETTETT and MATT LOVELL report back from our G Scale show.

PAT - In late May, we held our annual garden railway day here at our premises in Ford. This was earlier than we have run it in the past, but recent weather suggested this might be a good idea...

The build up in the preceding week saw massive amounts of locomotives, rolling stock, building kits, spares and figures brought down from the warehouse and arranged in the shop – any available space was quickly filled! With this in place, we awaited an early start on the Sunday. The day was due to open for business at 10am, but staff had been working away since a quarter to eight in the morning preparing for the day ahead.

With a question mark now hanging over the weather, two gazebos were placed on our front lawn to give sufficient shade for staff and guests, and to keep the electrics dry in the event of a shower.

Lawn Layout

We laid our usual station pointwork. These are left wired together with their point decoders, this means less time messing around with settings – we simply lay a curve alongside the fence, lay the station points, then lay sufficient straights directly onto the lawn (no civil engineering here).

This is the only part of the layout that stays the same each year – we always lay two ovals to keep something moving in the event that staff are busy answering questions. There is no plan for where the rest of the oval goes, staff are handed enough track sections and allowed to meander the track wherever they like!

With this done, our buildings were dotted around the lawn, power from our Roco Z21 connected to the track, and off we go! The morning saw a hot and humid start, and the lawn was soon packed with people – as usual the passing public stopped what they were doing to have a look – cars waiting at the level crossing wound windows down to have a look, cyclists dismounted and started taking videos on mobile phones...

Fentilly Railroad

At the far end of the lawn, Kevin Kerchner had brought along his Fentilly Railroad – he promptly set about setting this up – this was quite a marvel to watch, we were quite surprised at just how much he manages to fit in his van!

This eccentric US Outline layout has a lot going on, with many different talking points and plenty of animals!

The gargantuan Big Boy locomotive was running around Fentilly, hauling a goods train.

Brian Taylor's Dockside Scene

As in previous years, Brian Taylor brought his compact Southern Dockside Scene, showing that you don't need a large space to make an interesting layout in a larger scale!

The Great British Summer...

As the afternoon approached, the sky darkened and it wasn’t long before we had a torrential downpour – soon everyone was huddled under the gazebos. Of course this didn’t stop the trains! The entire layout ran faultlessly all day (apart from the occasional driver error).

We even had the odd non-paying passenger...

Camera Wagon

MATT - In the last issue of RIGHT LINES I showed you how I built my G Scale Video Wagon on an LGB base. I brought it along to the G Scale Day to show it off and hopefully inspire some customers.

We ran the wagon around several times to make sure it wasn't too top-heavy on the slighty unstable ground. Luckily it was fine and I was able to put my phone in and take some videos.

The video shows it running round at the head of the train, and then behind the locomotive and tender, giving you a 'driver's eye-view' of our lawn layout.

We then moved the wagon to the kids 'have a go' layout, where it caught the eye of some adults who wanted to know if their phones would fit...

As four o’clock approached, we began packing our toys away – everyone had thoroughly enjoyed themselves, and we look forward to doing it all over again next year.

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