Traditionally gravel ballast has been the forerunner for track beds in railway modelling and gives your layout an authentic look, and is still used as the main form of ballasting today. Ground cork ballast is relatively new in comparison but...

The smallest commercial scale in railway modelling is T Gauge.  It runs on 3mm track and is 1/450 in scale. It is approximately a third of the size of N gauge.  Because of the small weight, wheels are magnetic to improve traction. Two British...

Despite what most places will say, the voltage on the track when using DCC is not 16V. It is not 15V or 12V either. Actually, as the DCC signal is digital, it is a square wave. Unfortunately, square waves cannot be measured by standard digital...

Gn15 is an exciting scale for smaller projects with quirky or unusual engines and wagon. Gn15 is a combination of garden railway which is G scale  (1:22.5) running on OO gauge track. The 15 in the Gn15 is the width of the prototype track in...

Chipping medium is a weathering agent that creates chipped surfaces to give a more realistic look to your models. It can be added to vehicles or door edges or in fact anywhere that you would expect to find areas of chipped paint. It is very easy...

When most people think of a model railway, they think of an oval where the train can go around and round. With an end to end layout, as the name suggests, the train runs from one end of the layout to the other and back again. This is a good way...

Mallard is the fastest steam locomotive in the world. This has to be one of the most iconic engines ever, it is 70 feet long and weighs in at 165 tons with the tender. It is a pacific steam locomotive class A4 and was run by LNER. It was built...

It is not essential to use an underlay for your layout, but it is definitely a good idea as the underlay will help to suppress the noise of your trains when running around the layout. The underlay absorbs vibrations of the train running so you...

All Hornby track is compatible with Peco track. There is a misconception that different brands will not work together. This is not the case as all track for OO scale has 16.5mm spacing between the track. There is a small difference in colour of...

Ballast comes in varying degrees in coarseness, fine medium and coarse. For OO scale the most realistic would have to be medium. OO gauge is 1/76 scale so measure a few ballast stones and multiply the size by 76 to check whether it would be...

Some modellers new to the hobby are understandably daunted at the prospect of adding semaphore signals to their layout. What do they do? How do they work? what are the different colour semaphores signals for? What are upper and lower quadrants?...

The only difference between normal paint and airbrush paint is that the airbrush paint has been thinned with a thinner and can go straight into the airbrush saving you the time and effort of having to thin the paint yourself. If thinning the...