Patio Rails: My Garden Railway: Looking forwards and backwards... but I can have everything out at once

OK, so no posts for a while. Real life and all that a bit and I've diverted into reading magazines and books. I look forward to the Garden railways magazine from the States which is only bi-monthly, less so to the UK's Garden Rail which often a substantial element of live steam about it which is not of much interest to me. Christmas time bought even more though with a couple of issues of Narrow Guage world that had lots of eye candy pictures and articles to interest me. And this is all topped off by the traditional smaller scale model railway magazines such as Continental Modeller (UK) and Model Railroader (US), all of which have had lots in recent weeks to interest me.

More on these in subsequent blogs as I cover what I'm being inspired to do.

I've also been doing a bit of a stock take as the purchasing habit was getting out of hand and it was time to consider what was I actually doing. I'd bought a couple of things via Ebay that were cheap, that whilst fitting in with mythical Iscatalbahn land, may not have been the most sensible. For example the mountainous rural existence, that produces timber, sheep/cows, cheese, beer and I was thinking I could have a quarry with quality marble as well. So, when a couple of stock wagons come up I make a realtively low bid and end up with them. It's not that I don't want them, but are 450mm+ long wagons the best thing in my limited space garden ? Likewise, a Sion Kolsch (Cologne Beer) reefer came up at a very reasonable price second hand from one of the dealers, and I've got a soft spot for Cologne and its beer but again it's another long reefer. Have I bought too much rolling stock, too many locomotives, because they were cheap ? I could probably get away with much less, although each item has its own charm and place in my vision and I certainly don't think I've paid over the odds for anything or got any bad bargains, although my understanding of 'bargain' is much better.

Pictures of the locomotive and wagon mountain... (which looks unsightly because unboxed stuff is cheaper on ebay and secondhand, but lacking a shed to store it in on shelves, then I'm scrounging what boxes I can).