Just in case you don't know what I 'm on about, I mean these bad boys :

Now they are not cheap @ £17.95 each, but they do the job of several switches in one go, and they can be interlocked.

Those in the picture are not mine btw, I see this chap had the same problem as me, getting all the guides lined up properly, unlike him i didn't glue mine down before thinking about it !

I am a little confused about DCC's instructions in painting these, it says to polish the guides up to a bright steel finish using wet & dry, no problem there, except they don't seem to be made of steel, and neither are the levers, the handles of which you are also told to polish to a bright steel finish, the levers seem to be made of a copper/brass alloy with the copper being a touch on the heavy side. It looks as though I will be doing what this chap has done and resorting to painting them with silver paint.

I'm still in the process of putting mine together, I've started by doing as advised and cleaning everything up, you need to do this anyway, because the castings are not what i would call "top quality2 which you would expect for the price, to get mine anywhere near decent I had to start working with an 800 grit paper, and so far I have worked down to a 400, with copious amounts of water, once I get them really bright I plan to clean them with alcohol before giving them a coat of varnish.

The idea being to sink the bulk of the switches into the baseboard, so that only the top of the frame shows, then if my skills allow, I'll build a signal box like cover around them.

So far I like the look of them, but I am yet to be covinced that they are actually worth £17.95 each.