Welcome to the Association of 16mm Narrow Gauge Modellers

Funny old business, garden railways – sitting right as they do, on that sometimes-uncomfortable dividing line between modelling and model engineering. When the opportunity unexpectedly arose in 2005 to dabble with something that had intrigued me ever since childhood, I really didn’t know what I was letting myself in for. Like the increasing numbers of people graduating from the indoor scales, I suppose I expected to find a larger, outdoor version of what I had been doing for years in the warm and dry.

I realised that the skills involved were going to be of a rather different order, but I will confess, I did not anticipate the dominance which the Cult of the Locomotive held in parts of the hobby. Nothing wrong with that, of course, except for a non-engineer, the whole thing was perhaps a bit daunting.

What is more, for me, railways have always been about far more than the locomotives – the permanent way and other infrastructure, the architecture, the topography and landscape of the scene have always been of great fascination, the locomotives simply the stars on a multi-faceted stage. I enjoy modelling those aspects of the Railway at least as much as the locomotives.

Finding the work of Paul Sherwood showed me, however, that while the fully-modelled approach was perhaps a minority taste, there were others out there who had similar ideas, and it is this that led us to start Narrow Gauge in the Garden, a name that Paul can take full credit for, and the only Yahoo Group (as far as we know) to have spawned two series on DVD! I should also mention the encouragement given in those uncertain early days by the ubiquitous David Halfpenny, for which many thanks.

Paul and I were convinced that, while locomotive technology was moving on apace, there was still much scope for furthering the aesthetic side of garden modelling. It was clear that the natural conditions under which we work, while imposing some pretty stiff challenges, also offered the scope for modelling that is, in some ways, more realistic than anything achievable indoors.  Simply because so much of our raw material is the real thing, we believed it possible to build a railway that really looked, functioned and ‘felt’ like the real thing. ‘Realism’ was the key word.

We expected NG Garden to appeal to just a few die-hards who were looking for total realism in their modelling; what we now have is nearly 300 members world-wide, using a variety of scales in their work. It was probably inevitable that the definition of Realism would acquire a somewhat wider interpretation in the process, but the group still retains its focus on interpreting all aspects of the railway scene, and topics range far and wide, from the cutting of scale slates for roofing buildings, through discussions of how to achieve historically-correct liveries, to aspects of scratch-built rolling stock, and even the shapes of telegraph pole insulator pots!

We have also managed to amass a large photo collection of some of the most stunningly realistic modelling you could hope to see. A more recent development from the group has been the establishment of a public wiki by a small sub-group of NGGarden members, with the express aim of providing information and assistance to those looking for accurate and realistic modelling in the garden, whatever the scale. You can visit it at http://gardenrailwayrealism.pbworks.com

 We have always known that many people get into garden railways first and foremost for the opportunity to potter with locomotives, but we hope that our group caters for those whose interests are perhaps a little different from the conventional thinking of what a garden railway can be about. We don’t aspire to a large membership, but we hope that the garden railway modeller seeking an all-round realistic railway will find much of use on our pages.