Design and Planning

The best coarseness of ballast for N Gauge would be the fine or very fine ballast. This gives a better scale representation for the N gauge layout. If you were to use medium or coarse ballast, this would look out of proportion to everything else...

It is very tempting to use pins or nails to stick the track down but this may not be the best approach. Pins are difficult to fix in place without distorting the sleepers and points. They are also near impossible to hide, meaning your layout does...

For O gauge the best ballast would have to be coarse as this has much larger stone chips than fine or medium grade ballast and would be more in keeping with the scale of your layout. Keep in mind that O gauge is 1/43 scale in the UK and 1/48...

If you are modelling a road, you need to know how wide the real thing is so your model can be accurate. Road widths were standardised in the UK in 1993 however there are still exceptions depending on specific circumstances such as having a wider...

There are a couple of ways to get started: You can buy a complete starter set which includes track, train and controller such as the sets you can get from Hornby or Bachmann (a train set in a box), which will give you all you need to get up and...

When making a lake paint the base with a light colour (white or light grey) as you would if you were priming a model. Then create your shoreline adding sand or earth, whichever fits with what you are trying to achieve, then add rocks and fallen...

The Inglenook layout was created by Mr Alan Wright (1928 -2005) and designed on a four foot by one-foot board. This is also known as a shunting puzzle. The idea is to have your loco and five wagons starting on the main line/shunt head and three...

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...

A turntable is a means of turning your engine around. An example of this would be, if you have several engine sheds at the end of your layout, you would have track coming from each of your sheds leading up to the turntable. When you drive your...

There are infinite answers to how much space you need for a layout. The most obvious variable here is the scale in which you wish to build your model railway. Less considered factors are what you want to achieve with the finished railway and what...

If you are ready to take your modelling skills to the next level, then a recreation of a narrow-gauge railway is a good place to start.We are all used to the neatness and becoming nature of the many fantastic narrow-gauge railways that bestrew...

To answer the question: What is 1:160 scale? I would like to take a look at what the numbers mean when you see them represented as a scale. The first number (which is always 1) represents the models length in any measurement you wish, whether it...