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Future Updates

Posted by Rupert Connor on Thursday, January 5, 2023, In : Web site updates 
For the latest news from Karen's Little Railway visit our KLR Facebook page

We also have a Karen's Little Railway YouTube Channel at youtube.com/@karenslittlerailway

Our 32mm/45mm gauge garden railway, the Greendale & Brownhill Railway also has a You Tube channel at youtube.com/@gbrailway


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Lister Railtruck Plans

Posted by Rupert Connor on Wednesday, September 13, 2017, In : Locomotives 
Earlier in the year we acquired a non running Lister D stationary engine. After cleaning it up, adjusting the timing, tensioning the timing chain, fitting a new condensor, replacing the head gasket, de-gunging the petrol tank and making a few cardboard gaskets we got it running with a satisfying chug. The intention is to use this engine as the power unit for a roughly two thirds scale representation of a Lister Railtruck. The distinctive Lister parts are available in 7 1/4 inch gauge as Colin...
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Early 2017 news

Posted by Rupert Connor on Thursday, September 7, 2017, In : General News 
It was only on putting up the previous post that we realised how out of date this blog has become. This is because we now publish regular updates on our KLR Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/Karens-Little-Railway-525100954203658/ (which we believe you can view without signing up to Facebook) and partly because this type of blog no longer enjoys any technical support. Here is a selection things we have been up to recently.
RuarĂ­ has built a locomotive and some wagons. Bodywork for the ...
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More Plans

Posted by Rupert Connor on Wednesday, September 6, 2017, In : Web site updates 
We have updated our Trackplan page again to reflect the latest proposed changes. These have been prompted partly because the original engine shed roof started to collapse (meaning we had to quickly build an alternative storage shed, pictured below) and partly because we have given quite a lot of thought to how we use the railway and how to make it and the rest of the garden more accessible to all.

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Branching Out

Posted by Rupert Connor on Tuesday, November 22, 2016, In : Construction 
You may have noticed we updated our Trackplan page a while ago. It now shows our latest ideas for the eventual KLR track plan. We've made a start on the station area by adding a new pair of points to the main circuit and (for now) a short siding. This siding will eventually become part of the new station run round loop.

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Locomotive Competition Win

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, July 3, 2016, In : Locomotives 


Rupert's first attempt at locomotive building was for an entry into the competition run by the Facebook minimal gauge railways group. To see the 'rules' visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/MinimalGaugeRailways/permalink/1040142009371113/  His friction drive design, now named 'Imp' won the competition. A write up of the construction and parts list can be found in the files section of the Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/MinimalGaugeRailways/fesil/ and will more information b...
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The Heywood Society Journal

Posted by Rupert Connor on Tuesday, May 31, 2016, In : General News 


There is an article 'An Introduction to Karen's Little Railway' in the latest issue of The Heywood Society Journal. We were very impressed with the quality and the varied content of this publication. We will be joining the Heywood Society so that we can see more!

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Petrol-electric conversion

Posted by Rupert Connor on Monday, April 4, 2016, In : Locomotives 
Testing our petrol-electric conversion. After Helen's gearbox failed we decided to use the same general arrangement as Colin Edmondson's 'Scamp' design. Two identical electric motors are used. The petrol engine drives one motor, making it a generator. This generator motor is connected to the other (driving) motor via a reversing switch and PWM speed controller. Thus speed and direction control is provided without the need for a mechanical gearbox. Many thanks to Colin for his advice an...
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KLR on Facebook

Posted by Rupert Connor on Friday, April 1, 2016, In : General News 
Click the image below to visit the Karen's Little Railway facebook page.


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HMR in Alexandra Park

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, January 17, 2016, In : General News 
Having been involved (before moving to Scotland) in resurrecting the miniature railway in Alexandra Park, Hastings back in 2001, (see the 'Park Railway' section on the 'Our Journey' page on this web site), we are happy to see it continues to develop. The railway has recently been taken over by Hastings Miniature Railway and is due to re-open on February 13th. We wish them every success.


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Night Train

Posted by Rupert Connor on Thursday, November 5, 2015, In : Locomotives 
Our first bit of running after dark. Putting a magnetic backed LED light on the metal radiator grille gave enough light to see where we were going on a Halloween night that was a lot darker than it appears in this picture



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Bridge Sides

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, October 18, 2015, In : Bridge 


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A Golden Spike

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, October 11, 2015, In : Construction 
We have at last completed the basic oval of track and marked the point where 'East meets West' with golden track spikes in the final sleeper laid. Now we can have journeys of up to infinite length!



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Bridge Deck Completed

Posted by Rupert Connor on Wednesday, September 30, 2015, In : Bridge 


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Deck Ironwork

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, September 20, 2015, In : Bridge 
We still haven't really got the hang of regular progress reports. A month or so of dodging the weather and measuring, marking, cutting, drilling, cleaning, painting and welding means the ironwork for the bridge deck is now in place.



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A complete abutment

Posted by Rupert Connor on Friday, August 7, 2015, In : Bridge 
A few days ago we completed one abutment at last. Final stage was to fix in place the plate to which the main beams will be attached. Decided it would be a good idea to drill and tap some small holes in the plate and use bolts in these holes to allow precise adjustment and get it perfectly level. The bolts were removed and holes filled after the grout it rests on had set, leaving a perfectly flat steel plate to fix the main beams to. The plastic bags in the background of the second pict...
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Sad News

Posted by Rupert Connor on Thursday, June 18, 2015, In : General News 
Sad news reached us today when we discovered that Eric Walker (builder of our steam engine No. 10) passed away last Christmas. We had a lovely time and were warmly welcomed by Eric and his wife Gloria when we enjoyed an inspirational visit to his Kirton Light Railway. Since then we have received much help and encouragement from Eric with building our KLR. We've appreciated Eric's help over the years and he will be sadly missed by us.
There was much more to Eric's life than the building o...
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Jigging the jig

Posted by Rupert Connor on Saturday, June 13, 2015, In : Bridge 
A few days of bright sunshine earlier this week meant we could make a jig to hold the holding down bolts in position and add the last half ton or so concrete into the abutments. The polystyrene cones around the bolts (to be removed once the concrete has set) allow for final adjustments to the positions of the bolts to make sure they fit into the base plates that the main beams will be fitted to. The voids left by the cones will be filled with construction grout to hold the bolts firmly...
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Gearing up for work

Posted by Rupert Connor on Monday, June 8, 2015, In : Bridge 
We've just come inside after baling out the water that had collected in the top sections of the bridge abutments not yet filled with concrete. We were being bitten by midges so it must be warming up. Hopefully we can now move on from how we left things at the end of last year (as shown in the picture below) and get the holding down bolts that will hold the bridge deck onto the abutments concreted into place.



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Bridge Design

Posted by Rupert Connor on Tuesday, May 19, 2015, In : Bridge 

Here are a couple of screenshots of our bridge design taken from our Solidworks drawing. To give a sense of scale, the main beams (shown in grey) are about 10 feet (3metres) long and 6 inches (150 millimetres) deep. We're waiting for the weather to get warmer and drier before concreting the holding down bolts into the abutments. We're still hearing the phrase 'risk of frost' on the weather forecast in this part of the world.


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Oh Snow

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, April 26, 2015, In : Construction 
Having had a couple of weeks of Spring/Summer like weather our thoughts had been turning towards bridge building. It was quite a surprise to look up from typing the previous post and see that it was snowing. It's still piling up now, so no chance of concreting in our newly acquired holding down bolts for a while.


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New buffer beams for Helen

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, April 26, 2015, In : Locomotives 
Recently we decided it was time to replace Helen's banana shaped buffer beams and wonky buffers. Previously the buffer beams were made of poor quality knotty softwood, and one of the front buffers was particularly squint because we had failed to notice that the bolts that hold them in place (not positioned by us!) were not in line. We hope you will agree the new steel buffer beams are an improvement.

Before


After


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A Lucky Coin

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, November 2, 2014, In : Bridge 


As the bridge abutments near completion, we decided there would be no harm in a little superstition to help ensure their success. A little research showed that bridge builders often placed a coin near the top of abutments for good luck, so we're placing a 2014 coin in each abutment.

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Bridge Foundations

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, June 15, 2014, In : Bridge 

It seems (and is) a long time since work first started on the bridge site. At last some progress has been made by digging the foundations for the bridge abutments, filling with well compacted hardcore and getting the shuttering in place for casting the bases. We hope to cast the concrete soon and then we will feel that at least we are out of the ground.
At the risk of sounding more like a weather report than a railway building blog, we experienced some interesting weather whilst doing this wor...
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A Competition Win

Posted by Rupert Connor on Saturday, January 4, 2014, In : General News 
We were pleased to win the PNP Railways Christmas competition with Karen's picture of KLR rails in the snow.

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Season's Greetings

Posted by Rupert Connor on Friday, December 20, 2013, In : Web site updates 


Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 

Thanks for visiting our web site, more coming soon!!!

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A Really Useful Engine

Posted by Rupert Connor on Tuesday, July 2, 2013, In : Locomotives 
'Helen' has proved to be a 'Really Useful Engine' with her built in walking stick holder. Imagine how annoying it is when you need to use a walking stick, only to find you have left it somewhere back down the line. No such problems with this engine!


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Bridge design

Posted by Rupert Connor on Friday, June 28, 2013, In : Bridge 
The basic oval (phase 1 on the Track Plan page) is now more or less complete except for construction of the bridge. As usual a surprising amount of time has been used moving piles of stones and stripping/relaying turfs. At least today's rain is welcome as it should give the newly laid turfs a good watering.

The idea for the bridge is to keep it structurally simple, but add some decorative ironwork to make the design appear more complex. Structurally we intend using two 'universal' steel beams ...
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Embankment Building

Posted by Rupert Connor on Wednesday, May 22, 2013, In : Construction 
We've been dodging the rain and hail showers to build the embankment along towards the bridge site. This has involved moving a fair amount of hardcore and using some of the rock collection we have amassed to build a scenic retaining wall. Much easier said than done! Thoughts are now turning towards how to build the bridge............


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A bit of progress and a day out

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, April 28, 2013, In : Construction 
We managed to lay another length of track during the last week. Originally we were going to build in the pair of points leading to the proposed station branch somewhere along this section. Instead we decided to lay plain track for now, in order to get the basic oval of track laid and give us a long (up to infinite!) length of run as soon as possible. We will be working out exactly where the points are going to be so that we can incorperate rail joins at the right places to allow us to simply ...
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Two Road Engine Shed

Posted by Rupert Connor on Tuesday, April 23, 2013, In : Construction 
After the snow came the wind. Dust storms formed where there are newly ploughed fields, creating what seemed like a thick brown fog. At last there were a few nice days at the end of last week.

Karen had got fed up with tripping over a pair of points that had been lying around in the workshop pending a little tweaking to make them more reliable, and lifting some of our rolling stock on and off the track each time we used it was less than ideal. We therefore decided to get the points out of the ...
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Helen's Facelift

Posted by Rupert Connor on Wednesday, April 10, 2013, In : Locomotives 
Read about and see how Karen re-designed and (with Ruari's help) rebuilt the bodywork of our diesel engine No.5 'Helen' in the newly added cosmetic changes section on the locomotives page.

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Still waiting for Spring

Posted by Karen Connor on Sunday, April 7, 2013, In : Construction 
6th of April and there's still snow on the ground. The 'to do' list is growing. Anyone want to donate a snowplough?


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Web Site Updates

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, March 24, 2013, In : Web site updates 
Added to the Construction page, describing the ground works needed, the building of the first couple of track panels and using them to manoeuvre our steam engine No 10 up our entrance track to the house.

Also added a 'Getting Helen Working' section to the Locomotives page.
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Construction Page added

Posted by Rupert Connor on Friday, December 21, 2012, In : Web site updates 
The short dark days of winter mean not much is happening outside, so we've found time to start adding to the website.

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News Section coming soon!!!!

Posted by Rupert Connor on Sunday, June 17, 2012, In : General News 
Karen will be keeping you up to date with news as soon as RuarĂ­ has taught her how to post a blog

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