Welcome to the BZB

Welcome to my blog about my Gartenbahn or Garden Railway.  At present it doesnt really exist in the garden (moved here in 2020) but does exist in a collection of boxs of items that I hope eventually will be a garden railway in G Scale or Garden scale  ! 

Q&A

HOW DID IT START: 

My father is at fault here ! My father always had a some sort of garden railway, We moved a lot and this went from an outdoor OO set (it never worked) to a Mamod 45mm "live steam" set (it never really worked, as raw Mamod engines hardly ever work) and probably purchased at a great model shop called Beatties in the Palisades shopping centre in Birmingham. For a few years in smaller houses my dad didnt do much, but then in the late 90s he discovered LGB ! I watched and enjoyed him create a railway while I was off at Uni and on the dayz of my 20s and it slowly took over the garden to my mums joy. His muse being the HSB Hartz railway.   During one of his moves I acquired a surplus set (Hamburg tram) that he had and I soon along with an MSS (Mamod sister loco) was operating my own little railway in the Garden. Just a circle of track landscaped around a small section of my garden but a start.

I moved to Shropshire in 2020 and to a garden that was on the side of a hill, My imagination was buzzing as the whole garden was overgrown and needed re landscaping and would also when allowed by the boz to put in a gartenbahn ! My father at this time also decided to give up on his railway so I inherited some more track and the odd station. He sold (for nearly the same price he had paid for them) his locos and coaches but was keen to start a smaller indoor set but i had the bug.....  I must also shout out a chap called Rik who runs a blog called Riks railway (Peckforton light railway) as his detailed explanations of all things garden railway have really been a gem. 

Peckforton Light Railway

2020 The Beginning

The BZB stands for Bradyeische Zigspitzbahn. I visited the German/Austrian Alps back in 2017 and enjoyed a week around the Bavarian railway called the Zugspitzbahn.  

I learned after I returned that there was an LGB loco set based on this rack railway but never saw one come up forsale ( I check regularly) and the price it had gone for in the past was silly money, Then one day I found via a websearch that an Auction was taking place in Nantwich and one of these sets (LGB 70246) was available, I took a punt and won my first ever auction lot. Bargain hunt ! for a price I was quite happy with. 

by the time I have collected this item and got it back home and the excitement had not died off, I discovered that I now owned a 20 Plus year old train set, that was brand new ! it had been cared for very well since it was originally sold in 1999 and was like a dream, It even still had the original postcrd that LGB would put in with the sets as a lovely little detail...all I needed now was a railway.

Why the BZB

Well put simply its a mixmash of my dogs name and germanified.... Meet Brady (Carvalier) and Ziggy (Stabyhoun)..