"Building a Railway Wonderland: Tales from an Italian Garden Railway amidst the Alps"

We recently received a lovely update from a customer, who kindly gave us permission to share it. With the recent discussions around bar rail chairs and their performance in colder climates, this particular installation felt too good not to pass on.

The railway in question is owned by our customer’s son and is located in northern Italy, near the foothills of the Alps. At present, it runs end-to-end for approximately 155 yards, with a passing loop of around 15 yards. There is ample space to extend this into a continuous loop of around 400 yards, although, as is often the case, family life has a habit of slowing progress. That said, enough bar rail chairs have already been set aside to build at least two-thirds of the eventual track.

The original track was laid on home-cast concrete sleepers. While effective, these proved extremely time-consuming to produce and suffered a small but steady failure rate over the years. Following a rethink, around half of the railway has since been relaid using locally sourced plastic “timber”, significantly simplifying the process.

The track bed itself is substantial. Beneath the sleepers, there is at least 4 inches of foundation, sometimes laid in a trench and sometimes on hardcore, with a further 1.5 inches of ballast around the sleepers. In the 10 years since the first lengths were installed, there has been no significant movement or degradation, despite regular temperature swings from minus 15°C to 35°C, and occasional extremes reaching minus 20°C and up to 40°C.

For those interested in gradients, the main straight measures around 70 yards, with the lower half at 1 in 50 and the upper half steepening to 1 in 40.

The blue locomotive seen in some of the photos is a Phoenix Locos Titan, Alpine Courier, which has travelled out to Italy on three occasions to enjoy a change of scenery. The video below was filmed along the entire length of the railway on one of those afternoons when there was nothing more pressing to do than play with trains and cameras.

We enjoy reading about installations like this Italian garden railway and seeing how our components are used in a wide range of environments. If you have photos, stories, or updates from your own railway, please do send them in to hello@pnp-railways.co.uk or share them on our Facebook page.