Building a farm railroad

[bcp]

From the introduction:

"The Springfield Agricultural Railway was conceived in December 2006, when a move led to the opportunity and requirement to move horse manure away from the stables across a couple of fields that needed dividing up into paddocks. In winter the fields could get quite muddy if a tractor was regularly used. There was also a need to deliver water to water troughs which were too far to be easily served by garden hose.

The opportunity was taken to construct a 2ft gauge railway to serve the stables and paddocks. The first phase was completed by May 2008. The railway has been completely designed,built and operated by a single person. Currently it is 300-400 metres long, and lightly laid for the use of small (2 tonne axle limit) locos. There are several flat wagons, and skips at present, but more rolling stock is required to operate the line. "

Construction

Operation

 

[Pete Judd]

Great project. Had to look up Springfield WA. I have seen the cane railroads in Queensland, but I sure like the electric loco.

 

[forgeblast]

Thats really something. Those loco's are really cool.

 

[Depmandog]

Awesome! I really enjoyed the articles. You took a very mundane task and added some fun to it.

I would be curious as to the total length of track laid to date? If we may ask, how much do you have invested in your narrow gauge?

 

[radioman]

holy cow! that is a neat project!

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

I've thought it'd be cool to have one...except for the costs. You should be proud of your accomplishment. Wondering about costs too?

 

[MIKE R]

That is cool. A friend has a model engineering club that a few of the members have trains like yours. One of the members has a railroad set up through his property with a station, tressels, track junctions to take different routes... His train weighs about 650lbs. Keep up the good work.

 

[kentuckydiesel]

That is cool. A friend has a model engineering club that a few of the members have trains like yours. One of the members has a railroad set up through his property with a station, tressels, track junctions to take different routes... His train weighs about 650lbs. Keep up the good work.

Neat project but I think it might have been better if the writeup started out saying something like "I really wanted a small train at my house, so I built one."
There sure are a lot of high floatation equipment options out there which would have been much more functional and much, much cheaper.

-Phillip

 

[dmccarty]

Pretty cool. Boy and their toys. :laughing:

Seems like it would have been faster and cheap to just put down some gravel to support a small tractor during the wet periods. Most likely far less work loading the manure as well. But you have to admit, having a train is much cooler! :laughing::laughing::laughing:

He certainly has done a really good job restoring the locomotives and cars.

Later,
Dan

 

[PapaPerk]

That is very awesome!!!! :jump:

This is something I've always wanted to do.

Thank you for sharing!! :applause:

 

[techwrtr2]

I would very much like to have my own little rail road. I might even pretend to use it for real work once in a while, maybe moving firewood or coal ashes. Whatever excuse I could come up with. It'd be cool if I had my own mini steam engine rather than running on gas or electric.

 

[forgeblast]

Building a 14" wooden Backyard Railroad Train, Part 1 - YouTube
3 Classic DIY Projects to Build With Dad This Father's Day: Time Machine (1960s) - Popular Mechanics
http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/popularmechanics/pdf/Aug1965-copy.pdf (careful its 90mb)
These show some links, the youtube video is great its based on the plans that I posted and uses a motorized wheel chair motor and a fog machine to make it move and look like a steamer. It looks like fun.