Model Railway

Most accomplished modellers will be accustomed to the large price differences sometimes experienced between seemingly similar locomotives or rolling stock, and they'll likely have a fair understanding of which features contribute to such...

Most modellers are aware of the benefits of using a smaller gauge such as N gauge, but the dilemma most face is whether it's the right gauge for them.On the surface of it, the decision to model in N gauge is a no-brainer for any modeller who...

A good many real-life platforms have some sort of curve incorporated into them to accommodate either the topography of the land or to make use of diverging tracks at the earliest opportunity. So it stands to reason that many modellers will want to...

T gauge is the smallest commercially available model railway gauge. It has a scale of either 1:450 or 1:480 and a track gauge of 3 mm between the rails, making it just a third of the size of N gauge!T gauge was first introduced in 2006 at the...

Whether or not to use slightly off-scale models on a layout is a subject that's traditionally both subjective and divisive. Modellers of a purist nature would rarely tolerate such a crime while the owners of layouts intended to casually entertain...

There are a couple of gauges smaller than N gauge, the most recognised being Z and T gauges.To give you an idea of the difference between gauges, N gauge track has a distance of 9 mm between the rails while Z gauge has a distance of just 6.5...

Modelling in Z gauge is not for the faint-hearted and certainly presents a challenge or two, but surely that's the whole point!Z gauge has a scale of 1:220, meaning it's significantly smaller than the more familiar N gauge which has a scale of...

The name InterCity first appeared as a brand name in 1966 and was used by British Rail to brand their long-distance expresses. The name originally appeared with a hyphen (Inter-City) and could be seen on services operating the East and West Coast...

As a modeller, but not necessarily an electrician, you may have read many 'how to' articles advising the use of a reed switch, but also wondered what they are and what they do.The quickest way to understand a reed switch is to forget about the...

To model a freight train prototypically, one must first know how long the prototype is, but that information is difficult to come by as there is no set length.That statement may not be helpful for modellers looking for a definitive answer, but...

Based on the principle of a closed-loop, the smallest effective baseboard size for N Gauge is a baseboard of 20 inches (508mm) square. This measurement is based on track components of No.1 Radius (228 mm or 9") which is the tightest curve...

The word 'dummy' appears often in the descriptions of model railway products, but what does it mean?When 'dummy' is used to describe a model railway product, it means the item looks like a prototype, but is a non-working model. That doesn't...