HO garden railways ?

On 17/04/2005 15:45, DS wrote,

That bit's easy - use nickel-silver rail!

No, HO stuff being foreign isn't used to the rain and dismal weather in these isles. OO however is practical! :-))

If you look back in the newsgroup a bit, you will see posts by Jane Sullivan.

Use nickel-silver track instead of steel.

Mark Thornton

Thanks for the plug, Mark.

Very occasionally I run some HO stock on the layout, after all, having bought that Milwaukee Road Boxcab I ought to do something with it instead of leaving it hidden in the box it came in. I need to convert it to DCC somehow. Does anyone do a sound chip for it? I wonder what it would like on the head of a 250-wagon train :-)

Nickel silver gets a kind of deposit on it, that is not conducive to electrical conductivity. However, I bought a stock of those wonderful track cleaners from the Double-O gauge association (shameless plug! - website at

which seem to do the trick very nicely. Also, an occasional trip round the layout with the Center-Line rail cleaner seems to work wonders.

In message , DS writes

Very much so, I'm involved with a large Swedish-outline garden railway in HO scale (more info at

It takes a bit of work and ingenuity to overcome some of the practical problems, and the rain can be a pain, but it does allow decent-length trains and platforms.

As others have said, nickel-silver rail. In fact, the rails will acquire an authentic appearance very quickly, as the sides will become dirtied up whilst going over the rail tops with a track rubber will keep them nice and clean. What you do have to watch for is plastic sleepers that are damaged by sunlight. PECO wood-effect sleepers seem to be fine, but we've had problems with the concrete-effect ones becoming brittle before.