Having trouble viewing this video? Please visit our Video FAQ page Malcolm Furlow, a multi-talented artist and MR mainstay in the 1980s, shares his techniques for distressing, scraping, sanding, and staining wood used in model railroading projects. […]
Having trouble viewing this video? Please visit our Video FAQ page Allen Keller visits with Malcolm Furlow and his HO (narrow gauge) layout that fits to a 8 x 10-foot space. Discover and explore what inspired many of Malcolm’s creative scenery-making concepts. […]
Model Railroader magazine’s associate editor Bryson Sleppy shares his technique for installing an LED kit into a modern, HO scale passenger car that did not come factory-equipped with lights. Even better, Bryson adds an NCE Light-it DCC decoder he’ll use to toggle the interior illumination on/off. Be sure to follow the exclusive In The Workshop […]
N scale trains on HO curves: In 1968 Aurora and Revell gambled that N scale train sets would be a big hit in the toy market. Aurora struck a deal with Minitrix, a German company, to produce its Postage Stamp line, and Revell turned to Rapido (also German) to manufacture its offerings. I have no […]
After host David Popp cleans up a few foibles around the cork roadbed, he turns to the task of modifying turnouts to accommodate Tortoise switch motors. And then his full focus goes to laying down the trackwork! Follow his fastidious process for aligning the main line and gluing into place…to perfection! And be sure to […]
Better track, wheels, and couplers: Several years ago Atlas introduced its code 55 N scale track, and soon a great wail rose up from some in the N scale community. Beautiful as the track was, the wheels that came standard with Micro-Trains cars bumped against the track’s molded spike heads as the cars rolled along. The […]
Wheel quality keeps rolling: Over the last five years or so, N scalers have shown increased interest in replacement wheelsets. Maybe it’s just because so many more choices have become available. Up until the ’90s, some cars came with less than satisfactory wheels. Often the trucks didn’t roll freely. Sometimes cars would shimmy down the […]
Sidewinders, squeezers, and crushers: In Milwaukee, our winter days can be very cold and dry, our summer days hot and humid. We can control the climate indoors, or at least try to, with heating, air conditioning, humidifying, dehumidifying, and such, but still we sometimes run into problems with track kinking on our model railroads. The […]
Test twice, solder once: It’s one of the best lessons I’ve learned in building layouts. In fact, it’s such a good lesson that I relearn it every once in while. My problem is patience. Testing takes a little time and slows my progress, or so I sometimes start to think. Actually, it can (and I […]
Another layer of planning: Perfect model railroaders (of which I suspect there might be three in the entire world) strike a delicate balance between efforts spent planning their layouts and time devoted to building them. Most of us, though, are somewhere on the plan/build continuum. Myself, I’m pretty far over on the “let’s start sawing […]
Adventures in code 55 track: I’m now building my fourth layout featuring the Tehachapi Loop, so I call it Tehachapi IV. I’d used Peco code 55 track on Tehachapi III, and liked it very much, so I was planning to use it again. Then I saw Atlas’s new code 55 flextrack and was smitten. The […]
Helixology for N scalers: Never say never. I thought I’d never build a layout with a helix because of a number of well-known disadvantages: Helixes take up a lot of space, so unless you’ve got a large area in which to build, you aren’t gaining much layout. If you have enough space available for a […]
