Jones - Practical Garden Railways

All photographs are by the author unless otherwise credited. Many people and organizations were extremely supportive of the writing of this book, and I thank them all. But I would like to single out Dave Rowlands: a very long-standing friend who has been such a force for good to garden railways, and who has also had to suffer many years of being a sounding-board for the fruits of my fevered brain. I should like to thank Eric Lloyd, Terry Collins, Alan Craney, Brian Spring, Dave Lomas, Don Jones, Ron Brown, Marty Cozad, Alan Millichamp and Phil Beckey for their garden railways, illustrations of which appear in this book. Phil, in particular, provided some excellent photographs of the sort of railway I would like to build if I were not devoted to my narrow gauge. I am grateful too for the kind assistance of Marc Horovitz, Bill Basey, Tag Gorton and Gareth Jones. Further thanks are due to Andrew Pullen of Aster UK for generous permission to use official drawings and photographs. The various scale societies were most helpful and, in this regard, I thank Geoff Calver, Paul Cooper, Ian Turner and John Evans. Special thanks must go to Manfred Meliset for generously allowing me to use photographs from Die Gartenbahn magazine. Judy Jones should be warmly thanked for her lovely traditional draughtsmanship and also for putting up with being Mrs Jones all these years. Denys Bassett-Jones produced the diagrams in the book, and I offer my grateful thanks. Any omissions from this list are my fault entirely and I apologize for them. The way that everyone rallied round to help me was a testament to the camaraderie of this hobby.

It may be useful to acknowledge some of the influences from the past that shaped my thinking.The book Railway Adventure by L.T.C. Rolt inspired in me a lifetime of enthusiasm; and Curly Lawrence, who, under his pen name of LBSC, wrote in such a friendly and encouraging way about model engineering that he made people, myself included, believe that they could accomplish much. I hope he would have approved of the unstuffy tone of this book. Whilst I was brought up on a diet of the old model-railway writers like Beal, Wickham and Carter, it was John Ahern who really shaped the way I interpreted railways in model form. His Madder Valley railway, part of which holds a special place of honour at Pendon Museum in Oxfordshire, was the indoor equivalent of what I always wanted my garden railway to be.