TCS member Fred van der Lubbe clearly gets lots of pleasure from his garden. In his words “My track is used a lot for Gauge 1 and Gauge 0, running clockwork, steam and electric trains.
A selection of the running can be seen on my YouTube channel SNCF231E .
I have some older tinplate 3-rail electric Gauge 1 locomotives which I tried to run using one of the 0 gauge rails as centre rail by fiddling with the pick-ups of these locomotives. This did not really go well. I also do have some S gauge (22.5 mm between the tracks) trains, most of it American Flyer, and then the idea came to kill 2 birds with one stone by adding a middle rail to my outer loop positioned such that S Gauge and Gauge 1 3-rail electric could be run (not at the same time, of course). I ordered at Tenmille 30 meter of nickel silver bullhead rail and some 1200 chairs.
While waiting for the order to arrive I started to test a bit with small pieces of rail and sleepers and some leftover chairs. This resulted in making a drill jig. I looked at the NEM and NMRA standards and since I do not use any switches I just kept the gauge to (approximately) 22.5 mm. During the construction I checked with an American Flyer bogie whether the gauge was right and when the track was finished I pushed some cars around to further check. I found that BUB Spur S did not fit. I looked around the internet and found somewhere a German forum post mentioning that BUB Spur S is 24 mm since BUB made an error when translating from Inches. So S Gauge and Spur S are not compatible to my surprise. But I can run 3-rail electric and Gauge S as can be seen in the videos below.
Both photos by Fred, the heading shows S and 1 Gauge on the same track while the in photo immediately above are the multi gauge rails.
