NESS GARDEN RAILWAY - PRESS RELEASE - 17th May 2007

We are delighted to announce that after months of effort and hard work, the Ness Garden Railway will shortly be declared operational.































The Ness Garden Railway (NGR) is named for our famous near-neighbour Ness Gardens and is located in the Cheshire village of Little Neston. A continuous run of some 70 yards has been achieved, with about 1/3 of the running track at knee hight and the remainder on the level, although there is a gradient of approx 1 in 35 to contend with at ground level. A steaming and stabling area is shortly to be completed and will be connected to the running line via an extant junction. The Railway is entirely 32mm gauge at present.

The Railway is very much a Railway around the garden rather than any attempt at modelling a prototype, and as such almost anything goes so far as locomotives, rolling stock and scale are concerned, although the current vogue is 16mm/ft scale, there are no buildings etc to give the games away, so we could also run 7/8" scale etc. We have also adopted Ness Gardens' own Gentiana as our signature plant, and many of these delightful blue flowered plants can be
found around the garden, alongside other blue blooms such as "Forget-me-not", bluebells and lihodora. The reds are not forgotten either with a fine Pireus - Forest Flame, flowering cherry, peony and others. Flanked by beech hedges, the line is prone to those dreaded leaves on the line, but we celebrate every year when the pink snow of cherry blossom falls and smoothers the line for a few days.





























Our stable of locomotives is growing and is listed below:
#1 0-4-0 Side-tank "Jesty" - an Accucraft "Caradoc" - gas fired and the mainstay of the line.
#2 0-4-0 Vertical boiler de Winton "Mitchell" - based on Dave Watkins' drawings - under construction in our Talbot workshops.
#3 18 hp Ruston IC "Palmer" - a battery loco from IP Engineering - mainly used for works trains.
#4 0-4-0 logging engine "Jack Tawes" - a gas fired loco from Regner - delivery expected mid-Summer 2007.

Rolling stock is provided by a small number of Perfect World opens and van, plus a few scratchbuilt clones for the works trains, and a ragbag assortment of scratchbuilt stock including a bogie brake based on an Irish NG prototype but reduced to 2' gauge.

Future plans inlude more rolling stock, rebuilding the older part of the track to ease the curves and stabalise the foundations(!), a running water feature and more lighting. It is hoped that we can host an open day in the not too distant future.

Having fun in the garden is the main aim of this outfit and we look forward to lots of that!


John Sharp & Gilly Farrie
"The Staff"
Ness Garden Railway
Little Neston
Cheshire
















Something lurking....