009 garden railway

[danny]

Has there ever been an 009 garden railway? I know there was an N gauge one, built by Bert Groves and featured in Cyril Freezer's Garden Railway Manual.

[Frank]

I find myself thinking it might be possible.    With radio control and battery power in the locos, keeping the track clean would not be an issue, and so the main obstacles I expect would be debris on the track and wind blowing the rolling stock about. 

I wonder ....

Frank

[B.Meldon]

Keeping a 00 gauge garden railway in good condition is a never ending task and if you leave it for a month or two it takes days to get it all working again.
I would think that conventional 009 with small four wheel locos electrically powered from the track with points would be virtually imposable outside.

However a long run with out points may be possible. The worse of the problems would be the expansion with the weather and the way the soldered joints would corrode. The choice of track bed would be critical, wood would rot away and distort so I would think some form of plastic would be best, but again with long term exposure this could warp.

Applying ballast would be a problem as PVA is not good outside so visually it may not be the best thing to do either.

I would also test the Peco points to see how they last. Back in the 1980

[Hobby]

Continuous run with the stations (and points) in a shed(s) would seem to be the obvious way. Only plain track exposed... Seems far too much hassle for very little benefit in my eyes, though, I suppose I'm old fashioned, but I feel the larger scales work far better outdoors than OO (or N) scales...