Building a Garden Railway Part VI

Not much progress on the line recently - I am lacking a few sets of points before I can progress further with track laying so I started converting my 45mm stock over to 32mm gauge. Why do you own 45mm stock I hear you ask...well, my hand was forced by the purchase of a 45mm Cheddar Iver, leading to the purchase of a large collection of 45mm stock and locos, which now all require conversion to 32mm. I started with the basic conversion of LGB and Bachmann G scale stock.

This was a simple process of turning down the treads of the wheels to stop them bumping along the chairs of the track, then driving out the steel axle from the moulded plastic wheels, lopping a few mil of each one, then pressing back together. Although an easy task, it was very boring - especially on a big bogie wagon! So to relieve the boredom I ran a train with the converted wagons!

The loco pulling the train is a Mamod William I. These new generation Mamod locos have received bad press, I, however have found this particular locomotive to be a very powerful and long running loco once the condensate is cleared from the cylinders. As an aside, this loco was bought secondhand from Forest Classics after being used as a sales demonstrator and was the loco appearing in the How It's Made segment on Mamod shown on Discovery Channel.

The Engineer.