Preparing Woodie Greene’s article on page 30 describing his 1:35 scale 2-foot gauge railroad brought back memories. When I was publishing FINELINES, I corresponded with a British model railroader named W.A.D. (Bill) Strickland.
Bill had built an OO gauge, 4mm scale, 16.5mm gauge garden railroad that I admired, as a father and son project. In 1968, he wrote a book about their railway titled Chronicles of a Garden Railway. It’s a wonderful little book filled with ideas and techniques for small scale garden lines. I was curious to see if the book was still available, Googled the title and was amazed to see copies for sale on Amazon for $75.14, and two other sites for $44.91 and $48.00.
Chronicles of a Garden Railway is still available and worth reading.
After Bill’s son left the nest, Bill changed his railroad from standard gauge to 2-foot gauge by dividing 16.5 by 2 and modeling in 8.25mm scale, near 1:35 scale. He wanted to model 2-foot equipment from around the world including the Maine 2-footers.
Bill eventually built some 8 or 10 electric drive locomotives and a bunch of cars. He used plexiglass for the cars and heat formed the parts. They were beautiful models.
When Irene and I attended the 1971 NMRA Convention in London, we visited Bill and his wife in Brentford, a nearby suburb, and Bill stored my contest models while Irene and I toured England and Wales. Yes, we did ride the great little trains of Wales.
Several years later we went back to England. Bill and his wife had retired to Brighton where he had built a garden line in several raised brick planter boxes. After tea we visited his new layout and I photographed it. Bill wrote an article about this layout in the July/August 1982 GAZETTE. Sometime later, Bill passed away. I wonder what became of his models?
I dug back into my files and found some photos of Bill’s layout, locomotives, and cars. Sorting through them brought back memories of our wonderful trips to England.
Bill’s garden shed. It also served as a workshop and had a double level yard.A 1:35 scale passenger train crossing one of Bill’s trestles. The cars are all Plexiglas.Bill has a bunch of white metal Franklin & Megantic log cars. He gave me parts for several log cars.One of Bill’s Maine 2-footers with a caboose.Bill also built British prototype models. Here is one of them. You can see the fine modeling.The mechanism of Bill’s British locomotive.
Nov/Dec 2021
