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I am delighted with mine. When I ran it on the club layout, the room fell silent. A teenage member asked if it was a German loco (which seemed a fair question) and afterwards an ex-railwayman did quietly tell me it was a fictitious livery. I think it needs some nameplates, perhaps on the solebars. - Richard.

Yes. You could add a window to the end wall of the 'office' and put the lever frame in there; and perhaps locate the building at right angles to the tracks instead of parallel. The kit will easily build up into a mirror image if this helps the location you have in mind. - Richard.

Three more detail photographs, and two views of the finished building. - Richard. Upstairs window is layers of 1mm card Outer layers for lean-to extension 0.020" styrene sheet overlays and then 0.100" x 0.015" strips Finished model The details on the end of the office are from Hornby magazine earlier this year: a 1:43 letter box and a 1:76 sign and empty notice board. I've never seen a meter box modelled before, so I measured the one on my house. I need to add guttering and flashing, but the roof still looks better in the photo than in real life. The barge boards are still unpainted and left in their 'raw lasered state' which I quite like. The roof sections are resting in place so I can lift them off to show the interior.

Here are some photos from the last week ... - Richard. Faller embossed stone card, marketed for HO but looks good at 1:64 The outer wall for the booking office has a curiously familiar shape

Hi Jim, It is a well-proportioned building (which is probably what attracted me to it in the first place) but I think it would look twee in 0 gauge. For example, the bay window is less than 11 mm deep - that's barely 18 inches at 1:43. The model might work at the back of a 0-16.5 affair, or a standard gauge light railway. Some of the features of the kit show up the differences between a scale model and a dollshouse. I mentioned the floor level being too near the ground in the first post, but also the barge boards are too short - they look pretty, but they don't reach the eaves. So when you start thinking about adding guttering, the ends of the soffits will be in mid-air. The barge boards measure 2.5mm wide which scales up to about 4.2 inches - too narrow for a real building The walls are 3mm and 2mm MDF ... if you pad these out to something near scale thickness either the rooms will become even smaller, or you will need to cut some larger roof sections. So I think it's too small. It might work as a cottage in rural surroundings at the back of an 0 gauge layout, but in this case I'd still want to reduce the sizes of the doorways. It is part of a large range, and some of the non-railway models might work better. I want to try another one for the same layout. - Richard.

A couple more photos to show how the building is taking shape. The plan is to finish the interior and stop for a while ... the treatment of the outside depends rather on the region being modelled. The model is glued together with Evo-Stik Impact wherever possible. (This is a solvented contact adhesive if you’re unfamiliar). I choose this because it doesn’t let paper have a chance to warp, and it sets just about instantly. I resort to occasional superglue, Mek-Pak and woodworking glue when I have to, which usually means when the Evo-Stik would dissolve the surface. The staircase is from small-section triangular stripwood, glued onto a strip of card. I added stair treads from flat stripwood too, but while the camera struggles to pick these out, it finds faults like the crooked kitchen plinth which I never noticed before. - Richard.

This is build of a 1:48 dollshouse kit by Petite Properties into a freelance 1:64 scale model. I bought my kit from the dollshouse show at the Tower Hotel in London earlier this year, a nice change from the usual model railway circuit. The core of the model is thin MDF but most of the modelling is in card and paper so I hope this forum is a satisfactory location for the post. The kit is marketed as a 'basic kit' for the builder to finish to their own specification, and essentially comprises laser-cut walls of MDF, and window frames, doors and roof panels from 1mm card. There is also a second set of window frames laser-cut from thinner card (so you can have a frame on both sides of the glazing) and some detail fittings like chimney pots and window sills. The building presented is a one-up one-down affair with a lean-to extension on one side and a further extension on the other. This second extension might be a ticket office or perhaps (after cutting a doorway into the main house) a kitchen or living room. MDF core with foam board chimney stack The living room and bedroom scale up to about 11’ x 12’6” at 1:48. If you put a staircase and a chimney breast into this, and start thinking about a shower room or a kitchen, it is clearly a very bijou residence! A bit too twee for my taste, and so am building it as a 1:64 scale model instead … for a diorama now, and maybe one day a layout … I reduced the height of the walls of the main house by 3/16”, and the heights of the two extensions by 1/8”. I used the offcuts of MDF to trim down the door openings to 1:64 scale. I want the window frames to be near flush with the outside of the building (not on the inside walls) so the rooms can have window sills, and the plan here is to attach the windows to the outside surfaces of the walls and then add new outer wall skins from card on top. The MDF walls are 3/32” and 1/8” thick, far too thin for a scale thickness even at 1:64. I added pieces of 1mm card on the inside of the main house to add thickness and to provide rebates for the upstairs floor to slide into. The bay window is built outwards from the front wall on 3/32” wide strips of card to make depth for external cladding and decoration. The kit has one serious shortcoming in that there is no attempt to model the location of the damp course, and so the entrance doors and floor are at ground level. I raised the whole of base of my model on a piece of 3mm foam core board, and then glued this onto a sheet of mount board. The mount board is oversize to help blending into a layout. I have also put the chimney stack on one side of the house, instead of at the rear, to let me put the foot of the staircase near the front door. After all this you might wonder if it would be easier to start from scratch but for me no ... the laser-cut walls are flat and cut true, and make a good foundation to work on. I have tried to avoid painting as much as I can, and so the model is finished with coloured papers, card and especially veneers. I picked up an unfinished marquetry kit at a jumble sale and this has given me the “oak” flooring, “mahogany” office counter, and some kind of “dark wood” kitchen worktop. So far I have resorted to styrene for only the dado-height panelling in the office, the skirting boards and the brick base of the lean-to. Hope you like the pictures so far. - Richard. General arrangement Station office Lobby and shower room Edited to simplify content on 21st April 2014.

It's the A end. Dapol have put a black letter A below the cab hand rail nearest the camera. I didn't realise it was there, I need a magnifying glass to see it. The access flap Geoff mentions is on the side facing the camera, and is just about visible (if you know what you are looking for) if you enlarge the photo. Thanks both. I've put a Kadee coupler on the other end; so I'll remember when the loco is pulling a train, the A end is leading. - Richard.

Here is a photo of my D1011 'Western Thunderer. The plates are by Shawplan, and the track is C&L '00'. Could someone tell me whether this is the A or the B end, and why? - Richard.

I've had plenty of ballasting failures but the techniques described here ("put ballast onto glue") have always worked for me, sometimes after a second application, while the "add wetted glue to ballast" method made messy and shapeless results. I like to apply masking tape along the edges, apply glue and sprinkle the ballast from a height. Then lift the tape and vacuum up promptly. It's easier to add too little ballast and top it up next day than pick off wet bits or chisel off dry lumps. Perhaps with a very fine ballast like sand, it would be worthwhile to apply an "undercoat" of coarser ballast to get near the wanted finished surface, and then next day apply the sand as a "top coat". - Richard.

I bought mine in Watts bookshop in Sheringham on Thursday, six in stock there. There are some in the convenience store in Hatfield Peverel today too. It is a good model to try out weathering techniques. - Richard.

I get the feeling that part of the success comes from painting the track before starting the ballasting. Paint doesn't stick to Peco track very well (I expect SMP is better for this) but paint does help seal the sub-base and make a consistent surface for the glue to stick to. - Richard.

I have used a similar technique, but I applied the glue using a cocktail stick. I dipped the stick into the glue, then used it to draw a box between the sleepers. This was Peco OO9. Reloaded the stick for the next gap, and so on. This was slow but it did put down a consistent amount of glue along the track. I was using a thinner mix of glue than is descibed here, more single cream than double, but it seemed to work. A thicker mix of glue would be more controllable, and I'll try this next time. - Richard.

Spotted at the Tower Hotel in London this afternoon. - Richard.

The way I did it was to discard the steel weight inside the wagon. I put the bolt head below the coupler and the nut inside the depth of the underframe moulding. Then I filled the underframe with fine lead shot and superglue. If I was more ambitious I'd drill and tap the steel weight. I bought some Kadee screws but haven't found the matching tap yet. So I stayed with metric. - Richard.

The boxes respond well to Slater's 'Mek-Pak', but an M2 bolt and nut makes for a stronger job, especially with longer trains. - Richard.

A friend knew a Teresa Green ...

This is my most difficult loco conversion so far - a Hornby Barclay class 06 diesel. The coupler is a no. 141 'whisker' coupler which is a long underset shank, the gear box is seated into a slot I cut into the plastic chassis. The coupler is fixed with an M2 screw through the existing hole in the chassis opened out a bit. This is the cab end. The bonnet end is less tidy so I won't offer it as a suggested solution! One day I could cut off the buffers and dummy coupling hooks and fit some plain plastic sheet over the buffer beams, this would cover up most of the cut out put there for the original tension lock coupler. - Richard.

Pedestrian crossing at Manston airport, Kent ... photo by a colleague John Hanson deserves a wider audience. - Richard.

Kadees will uncouple with permanent magnets. Kadee also do a splined plastic stick which separates the knuckles when inserted from above and twiddled. This is convenient for operation, and the coupler is neater to look at than a tension lock. I like Kadees and prefer them over tension locks, but I also loathe operation using three-link couplers ... the choice is for the individual modeller.

The Sergent coupler is a 1:87 scale model of a US pattern coupler and it sounds to me as though it is intended for the US equivalent of our 'P4' market. It doesn't couple to the Kadee. Standard Kadees are useful as couplers on UK stock because you can pick a model up off the track or uncouple it more easily than a tension lock, and the thing is visually neater. They are widely sold too. The 4mm scale of 1:76 makes the Kadee knuckle a bit closer to a 'prototypical size' too but major other factors like the preferred height above the rails, and the fact we put them on stock which always used three-link or screw couplers in real life, means there is no real need for a 'scale' coupler. Perhaps the Sergent coupler would be useful within some sets of British multiple unit stock? Someone here will have the knowledge of a suitable prototype ... Richard.

Retains the slack space inside the box intended by Kadee, but reduces the contact area between gear box and underframe. Hmmm. Having seen how easily one of my glued boxes fell off a wagon (and disregarding how easily I glued it back on) I would like to add a screw to hold it in place. Looking at your third photo (888 mm radius) I wonder if there is scope for a sprung Kadee mount? Best of all worlds, if you accept restricting coupling to straights. - Richard.

Well, the platform is at the back of the layout. A train hides the platform, so you can't see passengers not getting on to the train (Peter Denny). When there isn't a train there, any missing half millimeter does not show. It is better to be slightly underscale than overscale (Cyril Freezer). A lower platform helps the model look deeper. If you ever choose to run different stock, a low platform may help. Consider half a millimeter to represent settlement of ballast ... live with it, paint the background a suitable sky blue and look again, it will be fine. - Richard.

I never saw a 309 or travelled on one - I arrived in Essex in 1995. But I stumbled upon the details of the Electric Railway Museum in Coventry who say they have two: http://www.electricrailwaymuseum.co.uk/index.php/our-collection They also have parts of a 307, 308 and (my own favourite) the 312. Somewhat annoyed to find when I drove round the A45 Coventry bypass last Monday I was within 1/4 mile of their premises ... - Richard.

There are some splits, but not as they used to be! Weekdays, the 0746 from Liverpool St splits at Chelmsford, to go to Braintree and Walton. The 1644 splits at Colchester to go to Clacton and Manningtree (Manningtree?). The 1708 splits at Colchester to Clacton/Colchester Town. 1832 splits at Colchester for Walton and Colchester Town. I guess the privatised railway splits trains only as a last resort. The first split I mention seems very odd, I only guess there are spare staff at Chelmsford and not at Witham. - Richard.