First a little background. I??™ve been dabbling in several of the major scales for the past 15 or so years, though nothing has ever really stuck. I built a couple of n gauge layouts but was never satisfied with the appearance of the trackwork and the nightmare of couplings (never found a system that I got on with). I??™ve done a fair amount in 4mm too, but the plentiful RTR scene has left me a little bored.

I made the decision to make a change to something with less proprietary support, initially being very much drawn to 3mm scale. The 3mm society has some excellent products available and quite frankly it??™s a great time to be going down that route. It was a couple of weeks ago that I randomly came across Lorenzo Ricotti??™s website, on which he has written some great articles on kitbashing continental 1:87 stock into British outline models. I was instantly hooked. I was taken back to the good old days of hacking apart lima OO models to correct their character/errors. A bit more googling turned up the British HO Societies yahoo group, in which they have posted the vast majority of their newsletter back issues for anyone that is a member to download.

So armed with a little (dangerous) knowledge and 10 years of newsletters (with some excellent articles I might add) I made the decision to struggle against the current of convention and have a bash at British Outline 1:87!