Valid to UK only - excludes oversized items
Stripping enamel paint from a model can seem like a delicate process, but with the right tools and techniques, it's...
Servicing your model railway locomotive is an essential part of maintaining its performance and longevity. Regular...
Fixing warped plastic parts on a model can be a bit tricky, but it's a manageable task with some patience and the...
The UK railway scale is called 00 gauge (pronounced "double-O") due to its origins as a smaller alternative to the...
For decades, British Rail (BR) was a symbol of national unity in transport, linking cities, towns and villages across...
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Slow action point motors are an alternative to the more commonly used solenoid motors. Their name pretty much suggests what they do (they change your points slowly) and if you are considering using point motors for the first time on your layout...
Facing point locks are commonly used throughout the world's rail systems, their function is to physically lock points in position therefore protecting trains from the points accidentally changing as a train passes over them. In the UK it is not...
A CDU is a Capacitor Discharge Unit. It is an electrical component that can be included into a circuit and stores up an electrical charge, it releases the current in a powerful short sharp burst on the demand of an operator (you) by pressing a...
Tail lamps on trains have been around since the 1800s, originally powered by oil and later by batteries, they consist of a red lamp or flashing light attached to the very rear of a train to warn other trains of their presence. The first rules...
Mechanical signal boxes contain many levers that control among other things signals, points, crossing gates and facing-point-locks. Even the smallest of signal boxes can contain numerous levers, but the largest box in the UK at Shrewsbury's Severn...
The era system is a way in which model manufacturers describe specific periods in railway history. This is to help modellers identify from which period a particular model belongs. The era system is updated from time to time to allow for new eras...
Track gauges of this type don't look like much when you take them out of the box and it's often hard to see how to use them as they don't come with any instructions, but appearances can deceive and this little tool is actually quite brilliant! A...
Cross lock tweezers are for all intense purposes regular tweezers, they are roughly the same size and are used for pretty much the same kind of jobs as standard tweezers, however, they have been engineered in such a way that the two metal pincers...
A bus-wire is a single cable that carries power around a layout with numerous wires splicing off it along the way (known as dropper wires) to supply various components or sections of track with the power.There are two main reasons why you...
Deciding which wire to use when wiring a model railway can sometimes be a little overwhelming, there are so many choices between different colours, thicknesses and also whether to use stranded or solid core wire.The good news is that a lot of...
There are many reasons why model trains derail, sometimes it's a track fault, sometimes it's because the train isn't designed for a particular radius, sometimes there's a fault with the model and sometimes our expectations are simply too high for...
When deciding what height to build your baseboard, there is no ultimate correct answer, only considerations that you should be thinking about whilst planning the build.The height that your baseboard should be will invariably be a mixture of...