Cheshire Railway Modellers

On-line Model Railway Club

Tips and Techniques

Have you ever seen a bit of modelling and wondered how it was done? Here we share a few tricks of the hobby. Members with articles for addition to this page are requested to post in the Transshipment Shed on our forum.

Contoured Hillsides

On Corwen East we used a technique of re-using old cardboard tubes - kitchen rolls are particularly good, to form a lightweight substructure for "tall" scenery.

  • The tubes were roughly assembled into the area to be filled and a rough contour marked on them.
  • The tubes were then cut to the required length and angle and glued in place with hot melt glue. We found that there only needs to be a run of glue where the tubes touch.
  • Final trimming to contour was done with scisors.
  • We used a rigid foam base, however, the fully glued tubes will, more than likely, be self supporting once set.
  • The ends of the tubes were filled with scrap paper and the whole covered in plaster bandage. It may be lighter to use PVA/kitchen roll. We found that the plaster layers became heavier than we would have liked.

The photos show the technique.





John Rutter - Wirral & North Wales MRC / Cheshire RM

Cassette Alignment

I cannot claim originality for this simple but reliable method of alignment. I first saw it on Brian Mosby's Newmarsh Goods at the Pennine MRC's Upperby show in 2006.

Solder a short length of paperclip on the outside of each rail at the end of the cassette. These clips will then engage to fixed track at the end of the layout providing both positive alignment and electrical connection. On a micro layout with short trains they don't need fastening down to stop them moving.

The photos below are of the off stage arrangements on San Vince de Rey which is N scale but they will work with any track gauge or scale.

1. Cassette clear of fixed tracks, showing the rail clips.

2. Cassette lined up on rear track.

3. Cassette attached to rear track.

4. Cassette attached to front track, note there is no separate electrical feed required to the cassette as the clips provide power from the fixed track on the layout. Also note that the cassette sits flat on the same surface that supports the layout with no further attachment required.

Bob Hughes - Crewe MR&ES / Cheshire RM

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