In the beginning

So, why have a Garden Railway ?
Mid life crisis?  


I've always liked model railways although they were something I enjoyed watching or looking at, rather than modelling myself.  Because of the interest in miniatures gaming (model soldiers) then I'd look at the scenery at shows and buy the occasional railway magazine if it had lots on scenery articles in it.  The concept of building a static layout, aside from the space implications, was something that was always a bit intimidating because of the electrics.  Relays, isolating tracks, current polarity etc was a language that was alien to me. 


Several things came together at the same moment in time to cause me to take the plunge and have a Garden railway. 
Doctor's advice following Diabetes diagnosis to lose weight and therefore severely curtailing the pleasure of a good book or movie at home accompanied by red wine, mature cheddar and crackers.  Each bottle of wine not bought could be money into the train fund and provide an incentive to keep to the diet. 
The availability of DCC.  I'd been aware of digital train sets for some time and whilst I knew it meant sounds and lights and other bits, my actual knowledge of it was a bit fuzzy. The discovery that it meant lots of fiddly electrical bits would be dealt with by the system for me, providing I had locos with a computer chip in caused to look at options on the internet.    Digital Command Control (DCC) is a scheme for controlling locomotives on a model railroad layout that allows more than one locomotive to occupy the same electrical section of track. Each of the locomotives has a decoder between the track and the motor, an electronic circuit that reads messages sent over the track and controls the amount of electricity delivered to the motor. A command station/booster places both the power and the messages on the track using a scheme where the actual power modulation encodes the digital bits of the messages. Devices that are fixed in one spot, such as switches and lights, can also be controlled by DCC.  
An article in Model Railroader magazine.
An imminent birthday.