New Railway Modellers Forums

Sleeper grime is just that, muck! It's a mixture of oil, (coal dust in the steam days), break block dust and stone dust kicked up from the ballast, so it's not going to be a consistent colour. Some colour photos of trackwork will give you an idea of what it is possible. I use a mixture of acrylics u...

Great to here from you again. Is Seren still your lady controller or has she morphed into a teenager? I still get questions from the granddaughters but they are usually about things they've seen in the news and want explaining.

OK the first thing to grasp is that there are two sets of wiring per point, one is from the two stock rails, through a switch operated by the point motor with a single output to the frog, the other circuit is the one that throws the solenoid to move the point blades. This circuit is powered by an AC...

Fifteen months since the first lockdown could someone remind me what the small disc on the left is for

You could try running it on a slightly reduced voltage you may need to create some expansion space to decelerate the smoke and allow it to drift up the stack.

The magnetic track is galvanised steel rail. Every time you clean it a bit more of the galvanising wares away, leading to it needing cleaning again even sooner. When Peco settrack came on the scene, it was available in nickel silver as well. Then they dropped the galvanised steel and only did nickel...

Unless you are determined to keep the loco original I'd replace them with an LED.

Âbout thirty years ago I queried the adjustment of the tabs which go under the stock rails with Hornby's service dept. The answer was that they were totally ineffective, they would eliminate them when the tools were render but for the time being should be pressed down to avoid them making contact. I...

Rejrob tell Dave, you fell victim to the evil AI word checker, you don't seem to be able to turn the darned thing off. It follows you along as you type just far enough behind for you no to notice what it's doing. Just to make the point when I finished the last sentence I looked back and it had decid...

Old strings of Christmas lights used the same holder. In the pre LED days they were used in radio and electronic equipment for panel illumination, pretty much world wide. They are a miniature "Edison Screw" bulb holder. I presume the range goes large ES, standard ES, small ES, miniature ES...

The speed you want is very low for a small DC motor, which means a large reduction ratio, lots of gears plenty of noise. You might do better with a small stepper motor with a variable frequency driver (hidden in the boiler or firebox. Try searching on eBay, the seller "bee studio" might be...

Give him some slack, he'll be more likely to slag off one of the big boys on a bad day, then watch what happens when he tries to delete the page after they've taken him to court. ooooh narstie! Borrowing from Frogger, treading on the aligator's snout on your way upstream can prove very dangerous whe...

Anything with fine flanges is likely to fall off on Sam's curves, they are laid on carpet and that's just what oversize flanges were adopted for. Things to check if you have a loco that falls off on curves are, misalignment on entry to sharp curves (rad 2 or less), an outward tilt, an inward tilt/su...

If you've only used water based acrylics you should be able to remove it all and try again. Warm water and an old toothbrush are the basic tools with a few drops of....quite a few things are recommended by different people, various disinfectants, the additives used to make whites whiter, as long as ...

You are unlikely to find any critical comments on his site, as one has to pay to register, and who's going to do that when he holds the key and can delete any posts he doesn't like. Take a look at his tale of almost setting the room alight, something you would expect to scare a little caution into h...