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This time of year I often begin
to wish I had an indoor railway. The summer bedding is wilting,
the weeds are spreading and there is a definite chill in the
air. The track really seems to get mucky during the wet autumn
days.
As I looked at my railway I am
ashamed to admit that since my open day in the summer it is
looking a bit rundown and past its sell by date. Perhaps this
winter I should make a few minor changes to spice things up. I
have to admit I really enjoy the challenge of constructing the
railway in my small sloping garden.
Though when I start to think of
the problems I have encountered in the past I sometimes wonder
if it is all worthwhile. Then a covering of snow comes down and
I cannot get the engines out quick enough to take photos and see
them running in a winter’s scene.
It is a voyage of discovery
setting up and running a garden railway. First problem is
getting planning permission from the Chief Planning Officer to
remove her colourful dahlias and move her favourite shrubs with
the promise that they will not notice. Then you watch the leaves
shrivel and turn brown, all the time trying to convince the CPO,
and yourself, that they will recover. I have found, from
experience that upsetting the CPO severely affects the supply of
tea and cakes and usually ends up with you having to sponsor a
shopping trip.
Once over the first hurdle you
have to face moving earth. As engines do not like inclines of
one in five unless they are rack ones or cable cars. Even a
small change to the terrain seems to generate a mountain of
earth and this seems to become a magnet for the local cat
population. During the course of the digging you embark on an
archaeological dig finding allsorts of hidden treasures like
bricks, lumps of concrete, old garden tools that you lost years
ago, the odd gnome you cannot remember even buying and rock
hard clay (unless it is rained then it becomes a sticky
quagmire). Once this task is completed you are bound to be left
with tons of earth you have no idea what to do with or face the
prospect of a large hole and having to buy some in. In my
experience it never seem to quite balance up.
Undaunted you carry on thinking
of the pleasure to come and you start to get the track down and
finally comes the day you can run a train. Then disaster
strikes. Overnight the snail population of Reading decides to
cross the line causing a major derailment. The blackbirds have
been foraging for food and your track ballast is spread far and
wide. A hedgehog has taken up residence in your tunnel and mice
have squatted in your model lighthouse.
The cat has taken to sleeping in
the sun on the track and the dog has left something
unmentionable right in the middle of the track. My plants seem
to have fought back and now have become an unimaginable jungle
across the lines.
Roger Palmer 2005.
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