Best practices

Over the years, signals have been at the mercy of numerous legislative introductions to improve safety on our railways, that together with regional variation means that you would have to pretty much be an actual signalman to get signalling...

Gradient, is often displayed using a height measurement followed a distance measurement. For example, a 1 in 100 gradient means that for every 100cm of railway track there will be a rise of 1 cm, or inches, metres, feet, yards or even finger...

Whether to use the term HO (letter O) or H0 (zero) is not something that causes many modellers a sleepless night. We are accustomed to both being understood and accepted when written or typed. The fact is that usually when we use the term it is...

We all know that paint fumes shouldn't be inhaled and that the best practice when using paint is to wear a face mask, but how bad could it really be if you chance it every now and then to squeeze in that modelling job that needs ticking off the...

When building a plastic kit model it is normal for the parts to come out of the box arranged on a plastic frame. This frame is created by plastic flowing through a channel called a sprue. The model parts are attached to the sprues with little...

NEM stands for Normal-European-Modelling standards. NEM standards are decided and maintained by an organisation called MOROP which was formed in the mid-1950s and is made up of numerous model railway associations and enthusiasts throughout Europe....

Baseboards are made up of three elements. Starting at the bottom and working up, there arethe supports (legs), on top of the supports sits the framing (baseboard frame) on the very top of all that is the top surface (board on which you...

NMRA stands for the National Model Railroad Association which is an organisation in North America that was set up to regulate and monitor standards within the model railroad industry.Founded in 1935, the NMRA's main function is to introduce...

A headcode box (also known as a route indicator or train reporting box) is a display unit mounted on the front of early British Rail diesel or electric locomotives and multiple-units. Its purpose was to display a four-digit code that told signal...

Twenty years ago it would have been easy to write an instruction leaflet on how to service an engine because model locomotives were all built pretty much the same way, with a motor, a few cogs, two wires and some wheels, and removing the body...

Safety warning Soldering irons get very hot and can reach temperatures in excess of 400 degrees centigrade, so always take great care when using a soldering iron. Give consideration to the workspace where you will be soldering as hot soldering...

The white discs that were displayed on the front of steam trains and early types of diesel were a way of communicating to the signal box what type of train it was and sometimes the route that it should take.The white disc system is also known as...