My (Currently Unnamed) Garden Layout

[biggsy1984]

I started my layout about a year ago and thought I'd share my progress. It's an FN3 scale narrow gauge layout shaped in a folded dogbone with a large space in the centre to operate it.

Here is an early plan I drew up, It's located on a slope so the top 1/3 is dug into the side of the hill with the spoil to be used to raise the track further down the slope. I divided the plan into 3 phases.
Firstly the loop on the left side will be constructed with a temporary track to join the tracks forming a circle.
Second is to create the double track line mainline towards the other loop
The third phase will be to create a large raised area for the return loop at the bottom of the picture.


The next few pictures are of the initial construction















Once the initial raised section was built up and compacted down I laid down some track directly onto ballast on a membrane





By Autumn 2025 trains were running in a simple loop with a 15-16' diameter, I should point out that this is a dead track layout with battery operated locomotives. I'll add the next updates in another post

 

[biggsy1984]

After an extremely wet January and February I noticed that the track had become uneven in a few places so I decided to re-lay all the track onto blocks laid on compacted sand.

Here is the track laid out roughly before the work began



And here it is after building it back up and re-ballasting it.





Next I started building up the centre to create a series of hills for a miniature forest





and here are the trees ready to be planted, a mixture of Alberta Dwarf Spruce and a variety of Dwarf Blue Spruce



Planted






Here's a shot of my Bachmann Climax running on the mainline with the Consolidation in the siding.



And here's a shot of the Climax steaming through the trees in the sunshine

 

[biggsy1984]

Here is a video of the Consolidation, this video was made before many of the trees were planted

This video is the most recent and shows the Climax running on the up to date layout

 

[Paul M]

That looks brilliant! Yes whatever way you lay your track, it will need a firm base

 

[dunnyrail]

Very nice and all that garden to go at, do I sence some more land grabbing in the future. Zig zags and loops will take care of the slope to say nothing of adding to the fun of operations.

 

[maxi-model]

Really nice work on your line's construction. Yes, good track bed preparation is esential. I very much like your choice of motive power. And trees........I learnt the hard way. You know those pretty little bright green ones. I forgot to read the lable when I bought 3. Got round to it 10 years later. It said - Average growth over 10 years.......18 feet ! "That's about right", I thought, as I looked out of my 1st floor bedroom window watching their tops gently sway in a stiff breeze. Things grow, even the dwarf species. Good thing is as at 1.20.3 a 20ft tree scales out at around 400 ft, which is about the height of the tallest Redwoods can attain. They make great features, with whole communities sheltering under them. Max