SRS Blog > Garden Railway - the engine shed

Published 4th March 2007

The engine shed started life about 130 years ago as a pigsty. Admirable for that purpose no doubt, it's dry inside, ten feet long and seven feet wide. The door was the problem - 33 inches wide and about four foot high. Original plan was to have a traverser arrangement inside, allowing an engine to be run in then moved to one side to allow another in or out. This started to get complicated - the floor needed to be lowered by a foot to accomodate the traverser, I was nervous about younger drivers reversing into the shed having forgotten to position the traverser...

 
 

Dal, our ace builder, suggested widening the door instead, which was much more sensible. I went down the workshop for the afternoon and came home to find the whole front wall missing, which was mildly worrying.

 

 Should have had faith in the great man, by the next night everything had been put back together again, I now have a six foot wide opening awaiting a pair of doors.

 

The stone wall at the far end of the shed road, where the turntable is going to be, had a partial collapse last year. Dal cleared up all the stone, sorted into various sizes and then, with a mixer full of lime mortar, put it all back together again. It's now sound and should see me out