Garden scale live steam locomotives
The “Wednesday Night Water Boilers”
Garden Scale Live Steam!
In addition to the ride-on ground level and raised tracks outside behind the Museum, GHLS also operates two loops of garden scale track in the 1913 building – a large raised loop of dual gauge, dual tracks for live steam locomotives, and a smaller loop of dual tracks for electrics.
During the past thirty years, there has been a major expansion of interest in smaller scale realistic locomotives in what are called the live-steam garden scales. These trains typically operate on “O” gauge (32 mm) or “G” gauge (45 mm) track and are generally powered by steam (butane, alcohol or coal) or on-board batteries. The locomotives and rolling stock are quite portable and while the locomotives operate very much like full-sized ones, they are not capable of pulling passengers. Fans of miniature railways and garden scale live steam often share in interest in realistic working model locomotives and many “live-steamers” have miniature and garden scale trains.
Whilst garden scale trains don’t carry full-sized people, they are fascinating to watch. You can see a wide range of technically accurate models of many diverse kinds of locomotives pulling trains of all types. Locomotives range from tiny estate, quarry and industrial types to end of steam mainline freight and passenger behemoths. Every era and country is modelled along with a wide variety of drive systems. Garratts, Shays, Climaxes, Heislers and DeWintons operate alongside more traditional Pacifics, Moguls and Hudsons. Like the Hamilton Museum of Science and Technology, they provide an opportunity to learn about bygone technology and historical engineering challenges and solutions.
Every live steam model shares one thing in common with the others. They all burn some type of fuel (alcohol, butane or coal) to boil water to power the drive mechanism.
