Colin,
Garden railways are like Pensions - very much to be looked forward to - yet getting the right product depends on precisely how long you're going to live
None of us want to put our heart, soul, time and cash into a wonderful hobby that crashes to an unexpected end because of a maintenance issue we've become too old to tackle.
I've bookmarked that Rik's method lasted an impressive 17 years before refurbishment, because that's longer than any timber-based garden railway I've ever seen.
Kudos Rik!
My experience (in Middle England) is that timber railways typically need significant remedial work after 10 years.
Then again, I've also seen felted OSB in Sheffield crumble in less than 2 years !
But what really counts isn't the number of years - it's how fit you'll be when unexpected work is needed.
Notice that some of the tracks photographed in this thread are already falling apart.
And that some (like my own track) adjoin garden fences with shorter life expectancy than the railway.
My first garden railway is still running after 35 years, but not one shred of original timber remains.
(Fortunately the baseboards are masonry and the fencing is steel.)
My second was made entirely from interchangeable wooden modules that I swapped out as they rotted.
All now gone.
Therefore my current garden railway is being built on two non-negotiable fundamentals.
No Timber Products in any Form (beyond decorative trim)
Readily Demountable Track so that Landscapers can maintain my wooden fence (which paid off the first time a fence-post snapped)
plus a third, dictated by the ever-heaving clay on this particular site:
One-Hand Height Adjustment
I've fabricated bolt-together stainless baseboards from 3' to 14' long, each of which I can lift with one hand, rails and all.
They perch on scaffolders' screw-jacks, which level the whole track in minutes (at twilight, so I can see the cheap DIY laser-level clearly).
My temporary PVC piles are irrelevant to you, Colin, as they're only 2' high, but I galvanised scaffold poles ready to replace them.
To be clear, I've no wish to be doctrinaire - horses for courses.
When a local farmer contacted me out of the blue about his first garden railway, he said,
"I have cancer. I need a track that I can get running within weeks, and that'll last me for one or two summers."
I advised him to use timber-fence technology.
David, age 76 and counting . . .
