Ian Morgan

Personally, my favourite of his was "Does your chewing gum lose its flavour (on the bedpost overnight?)". They knew how to compose a song title in those days.

You will come across various scales that seem to come under the N scale banner, 1:144, 1:148, 1:150, 1:152 and 1:160 for example. The differences can be quite small, and is often not noticeable, unless you have two similar items of different scale next to each other. A Mk1 coach in 1:160 (e.g. an old Minitrix one) next to a Bachmann 1:148 Mk1 coach will have very diffent height and width. However, with careful placement, it is possible to mix scales. Indeed, with 1:144 models in the foreground and 1:160 buildings in the background, you can achieve some 'forced perspective' making t

Not sure you want them leaping if they are pulling carts...

Reg, the Freshwater delivery driver, is about to start delivering the Luggage in Advance (LIA) to the hotels and boarding houses around Totland Bay. He is really happy that his Morris PV van finally has some glass in the windows. At last, off my workbench and fixed to the layout, I painted this white metal model maroon and cream over 12 years ago. I glazed it this week with some clear plastic from a tray of exceedingly good cakes. Then I did a little online research and found that the roof was canvas, and should be grey, and that the mud guards were almost invariably black. Also, t

For the last two and a half years, the layout has been quietly sitting on a shelf in the clubrooms. This was partly because we had mislaid the box with the control panel, controller and road vehicles in. However, the box has finally been found this week, just in time to fulfill an invitation we have had to take something along to the 'Thornycroft Day' at Brookfield Community Centre, Basingstoke on 26th June 2021. We took another layout there two years ago and had an enjoyable day, helping to raise funds for the creation of a replica of the clock on the former Thornycroft works to b

I used to attend the model railway club at RAF Brüggen in the mid-1980's (I was a civvie working in the Big House at Rheindahlen). The club had an old german railway carriage, which was parked by a warehouse at the far end of the tracks. Sometimes it was shunted away from where we could plug in to the mains, so we had to give up on those evenings. Rheindahlen had a model railway club based in an old SSVC building, with a large OO scale layout, but I was more into N. The carriage had been used as a bar and disco at RAF Wildenrath (now Siemens testing ground), and when it was no long

If you can get a big enough sheet of card, can you use what you have cut already as a template for a single piece roof?

or an angry letter to the Daily Herald?

If you look at the chassis end-on, are the W irons parallel to each other, and square to the floor?

But we all know that 'proper' 3 wheelers should have two at the front

Having used my imagination to create a non-descript building supplies/scrap dealership at the far end of the goods yard that I have not found photographs of, I decided the business needed a better means of transporting its wares than the old bicycle. I purchased an Autocraft white metal casting for a 1930's Reliant three wheeled van. This is a nice casting, but there are a couple of omissions. First, there is no interior detail, or floor. Second, are the wheels. Representing spokes in this scale is obviously not practical and the etched bicycles I use do not have them either, which is fine. Ho

Merg do a kit for a replacement PCB that also modifies Dapol signals to work with an on-off switch. This gives a more positive control of the signal position rather than the hit-or-miss passing contact 'change' functionality that Dapol inexplicably provide. It is a very fiddly kit to build and fit, but probably no worse than fitting a wired DCC decoder to an N gauge mechanism.

Having used my imagination to create a non-descript building supplies/scrap dealership at the far end of the goods yard that I have not found photographs of, I decided the business needed a better means of transporting its wares than the old bicycle. I purchased an Autocraft white metal casting for a 1930's Reliant three wheeled van. This is a nice casting, but there are a couple of omissions. First, there is no interior detail, or floor. Second, are the wheels. Representing spokes in this scale is obviously not practical and the etched bicycles I use do not have them either, which is fine. Ho

Carmarthen to Aberystwyth. Travelling across Wales between east and west is ok at various points, but travelling between north and south is a nightmare, even with a car. Cardiff to Conwy would still require reversals at Carmarthen, Aberystwyth and Machynlleth, change to narrow gauge at Portmadoc, bus or taxi from Caernavon to Bangor and back on the train taking many, many hours, while the alternative via Crewe takes about 5 hours but avoids most Welsh towns. Cardiff to Aberystwyth via Shrewsbury currently takes over 4 hours, so that could possibly be improve