The Scampington & Chipside Garden Railway

Welcome!

Greetings, friend! You find yourself at the web site of the Scampington & Chipside Garden Railway, a small outpost of 45mm 'G' Scale tucked away in the South-Eastern corner of the county of Hampshire, on the South Coast of England. Whether you landed by design or accident, perhaps I will never know. But at least you're here! Indeed, now that you are here, why not stick around a while? Whether you're an old hand at this garden railway thing, or just starting out, or maybe just thinking about taking the plunge, there should be at least something of interest for you.

A few notes on settings, operating systems, browsers and the like: First off, I've tested this site on a number of browsers; principally IE7, but also Firefox and Opera. I will admit I probably don't have the most recent versions in those latter two cases. Thanks to Mr Carl Hibbs, and his kind assistance in testing the prototype site, we know it works with the 'AOL' browser. Where Operating Systems are concerned, sadly I can only speak of Windows XP (SP2). If you use something else besides that and have any kind of difficulty (always assuming you can at least read this of course!) then please let me know. These pages have been designed on a 17-inch monitor with a screen resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels. They do sort of work with 800 x 600, but some of the picture expansions will require the use of scrolling bars. A decent compromise would probably be 1024 x 768.

The S&CGR has enjoyed a modest web presence for a number of years, since the first faltering steps along the path of its development. Fortunately (and certainly not by virtue of any sound planning on my part) progress has been captured via a number of photos and video clips, and these are made available here for your enjoyment/bewilderment/outright astonishment! Indeed, so many pictures are there, I have more than once fallen foul of that most cursed of all web developer constraints - the limit on web space. Therefore I have had to resort to third-party repositories for my still and video collections. Not ideal, but at least I get to share as many of my photos/videos as I can without having to remember the combination of my wallet!

Site Last Updated: 28-Dec-2007
Recent Change History
28/12/2007	Added "Oct-Dec" to "Stills Gallery" -> "2007" Updated video in "Video of the Month"
01/12/2007	Added "Jul-Sep" to "Stills Gallery" -> "2007" Added new map pin for Rolvenden, Kent in "Open Day Visits"
16/11/2007	Added new menu option "Video of the Month"
05/11/2007	Added "Phase 3" to "History" -> "Build Journal"
01/08/2007	Added "2007" -> "Apr-Jun" to "Stills Gallery"
29/06/2007	Added new link in map pin for Bognor Regis (2007) in "Open Day Visits" Added "Withy Grove Junction" to "Links" -> "Other Garden Railways" Added link to S&CGR's Build Blog in "History"
13/05/2007	Added new map pin for Merrow (near Guildford) in "Open Day Visits"
05/05/2007	Added new item of stock to "Rolling Stock -> Freight/Other Stock"

Assuming all is well with your system configuration, you should see a menu to the left hand side of the screen. This will be present whichever of my internal pages you visit, thus to aid navigation around the site. Using the menu is simplicity itself: Just move your mouse cursor over it, and all will become clear. Please feel free to take a look round. I would love to read your comments, whether about the site, or the line it describes, or anything really.

Over the coming weeks/months (or dare I say it, years?) I hope to add more content to the site. Please bear with me though, while more mundane tasks, such as earning a living, vie for my time with the far more interesting railway/website-related activities.

Acknowledgements:

In no particular order, these are some very pleasant people who between them have managed to encourage/inspire/threaten me to continue my efforts in the garden when conventional wisdom would have seen me give the whole thing up and be led away, sobbing and gibbering, to end my days in a monastery:

• My wife Maria. OK, she is the number 1 reason why I still have a garden railway after all these years. All the others below are in no particular order!
• The G Scale Society. Through its membership I have been introduced to some remarkable people, every last one of whom would "talk the hind leg off a donkey" when it comes to explaining their own lines.
• Mr Jason Palmer, proprietor/boss/chief webmaster at G-Scale Mad. For without this site, I would actually have to do some proper work during the day.
• The inmates of said G-Scale Mad forum. I suppose I should refer to them as 'my fellow inmates' - if you fancy taking a look, you may find me posting my particular brand of inane drivel under the username "clive_t"). Some very strange individuals infest that place, but very wise in their craft on all manner of garden railway-related matters.
• The brewers/bottlers of Real Ale. Mmmmmmmm.... 'Thanks' just doesn't seem enough somehow.
• Mr Peter Hayward, proprietor of the Haggerleases Light Railway. He very kindly allowed me to pick over his website, and thereby gain an insight into the mysteries of Cascading Style Sheets, JavaScript and similar spells and incantations - the beneficial results of which you see before you on this new site. For a 16mmNG'er, he's not a bad sort!
• DynamicDrive.com - home of some very wizzy bits of code for all occasions. Some of them have been used here. I only wish I knew how they worked...
• The Engine Shed/Gaugemaster at Ford, West Sussex. It was very kind of them to sell me the LGB starter set in the first instance; for some considerable time thereafter they continued to ensure my bank manager and a bottle of Valium were never very far apart. Unfortunately they thwarted my plan to cut out the middle man, declining as they did my request to have my salary paid directly to them.
• The production team that between them delivered the wonderful TV series 'The Garden Railway'. This is now available on DVD. By the way I have no commercial connection with any of this, I merely include the link for completeness.

Finally, I present you with an opportunity to ask a question, make a comment or suggestion, or perhaps report any problems accessing any part of the site. Also, I'd be interested to hear of your own efforts and experiences with your own line if you have one.

Clicking the link above should automatically launch your e-mail client. If it doesn't, then just open it yourself and copy the address into the 'To' field. I would appreciate it, if you do so using this manual method, that you include the words "Scampington and Chipside Garden Railway" in the title, thus to aid in spam-filtering. By the way, as if it needed saying: your details will not be shared with anyone. I hate spam as much as you do - probably more so.

Thanks for your time, and please come back soon - why not press (Ctrl+D) now, and bookmark the page!

Clive

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