model railway stuff

[johnelliott]

A few years ago, when visiting a market town someewhere, my wife and I happened on an exhibition put on by model railway enthusiasts. The format was that there were a number of individual layouts, complete with highly detailed scenery, and these displays were arranged in an oval. The displays were linked by tracks at the front of each display, so that some trains were doing a complete circuit.
Anyway, we've been thinking about having a go at joining one of these clubs and making our own display for participating in exhibitions, as I've always liked model railways, and my wife has the artistic ability to do the scenery etc
Anyone know what this type of MR stuff is called?
A google search on 'model railways' isn't much help
John

 

[Anonymous]

likelihood is they were hornby stuff John, but you need to be careful about the scale...when I were a lad, I had a hornby set (as i'm sure most people did), but hornby themselves did at least 2 scales, one of which was tiny and hard to come by...also, hornby had rivals who also produced trains, rolliing stock and track that was slightly different scale to the hornby ones - i remember buying an old steam loco, non-hornby, only to find that it slipped lot on the hornby track cos its gauge was slightly different.

try http://www.hornbyrailways.com/pages/home.aspx for a start

 

[Gill]

Perhaps this link might be useful, John:

http://www.modrail.org.uk/

Gill

 

[Waka]

John

Hope you have fun setting the MR up. It was a thing I did in the past although not for display purposes, I had my loft fitted out in a previous house. It was great fun and the set up had the ability to run 8 trains simultaneously

Now unfortunately it has been packer away for some 25 years, not sure whether it will ever see the light of day again. The good thing is that most of the stuff is at least 30 years old and all in the original boxes. Inheritence for the Grand Children.

 

[Mcluma]

Well same story here, I had the EUROPEAN stuff. :wink: I had a Marklin train set Scale HO.

My set-up was 2500 by 1500 drie layers with about 12 traines.

The current european stuff is now all digitist so you can run every train you have on your track

I also had the europen kit-houses and trainstations from POLA and from FALLER
http://www.faller.de/
and here are some links to some european train manufacturers
http://www.maerklin.de/
http://www.fleischmann.de/
http://www.miba.de/miba/01/07/94.htm
And here are a number of example life displays
http://www.modellbahn-portal.de/show500.html

Currently my train-set is like Waka's up in the loft packed up in boxes awaiting the grandchildren to come :wink:

McLuma

 

[andrewm]

John,

I think a lot of this depends rather on which bits you enjoy and which bits you want to / are capable of doing yourself and which bits youwould ratherbuy

At one end of the spectrum various people have mentioned Hornby (amongst others). You can buy just about everything you need, rolling stock, scenery, buildings and put it all together and play trains. Really just a grown up version of the train set that you had as a kid.

Beyond that you can buy in the rolling stock and build the scenery and buildings from scratch or build the rolling stock as well.

OO is the most common for off-the-shelf kit 4mm to the foot scale and 16.5mm gauge. The continental equivalent is HO which is 3.5mm to the foot but still 16.5mm gauge so you should be able to use the same rolling stock.

If you are tending towards more accurate representation and build you own rolling stock then there are things like EM gauge which is still 4mm to the foot but uses 18mm gauge track and Proto4, still 4mm to the foot but IIRC 18.83mm gauge track. These operate to finer tolerances than straight OO.

If you want something smaller there is N gauge which is 2mm to the foot and 9mm gauge track.

For things like EM gauge there are specialist groups bit I think that most model railway societies have members with an interest in all of the various standards.

So, horses for courses really depending on what your particular interest is.

Andrew

 

[Ham]

John,

Go for real steam! see http://www.16mmngmodellers.fsnet.co.uk/. You can run as an indoor layout (with ventilation!) or more usually outdoors.

Cheers, David

 

[Jaco]

I have Marklin, oldest loco is 45 years. All packed away in huge box under worktable in workshop. Will pack it out when i retire. Was great fun as a kid to set up and build houses etc.
All electronic nowdays.

 

[Anonymous]

Buy a copy of Railway Modeller and it's sister contintial railway modeller. They have loads of stuff.

With 00 and H0 watch the overhangs (there's a word for this and I think it's loading gauges) as an H0 overhangs corners more (or it might be the other way round).

Peco silver track is the dogs round bits

 

[blurk99]

Morning John,

Do you fancy a short(ish) drive tomorrow? i saw a sign this morning on the way into work - Model Railway Exhibition, Abingdon Guildhall, Sat 5th March.

I've no idea who the organisers are / what standard it'll be but i thought i's let you know

Jim

 

[andrewm]

Of course if your really want to see how it should be done take a look at http://www.pendonmuseum.com/. Well worth a visit although I haven't got around to going there yet. blurk99, should be just up the road from you.

 

[devonwoody]

To Johnelliott

I also remember the section board scheme. A fixed rail point was mandatory at each end of the board to connect to a neighbor.
Any club member was then at liberty to complete his section to his own desire or to a previously agreed plan.
By memory the plot was very active in the USA during the 80's. Club nights, members would turn up with their section and make up a running section.

By the way any member that can get to Pendon (sat and suns only) would profit from the visit. The craftsmen who work at this museum cover all the spectre of modeling from building the club site to scenic display as well as modeling. I personally think the craftsmanship may be equalled but never overtaken. Sadly some of the founder members are no longer present but their past workmanship is still with us.

 

[RogerS]

Andrew - what a great place Pendon looks..must find time to get there.

Many years ago while in student digs we built our own train layout that ran around the perimeter of the upper floor. Being students naturally we made our own tunnels straight through the walls into the adjacent room. Door architraves were butchered to allow the track to continue and the door mechanism was fiendish in its' complexity :twisted:

 

[devonwoody]

Did you have excursion trains to the female quarters :roll: :roll: :roll:

 

[RogerS]

Female quarters? It was in the late 60's...flower power

 

[johnelliott]

Morning John,

Do you fancy a short(ish) drive tomorrow? i saw a sign this morning on the way into work - Model Railway Exhibition, Abingdon Guildhall, Sat 5th March.

I've no idea who the organisers are / what standard it'll be but i thought i's let you know

Jim

Jim,
I would absolutely love to take the day off and go see that exhibition. Unfortunately I am currently suffering from prettybusyitis. Got to go in to Newbury to pick up some stuff in the morning, and then in the afternoon I've arranged to go and quote on a kitchen for a manor house. In the meantime I need to knock out a few doors to finish up one job by Wednesday and make a bunch of doors for another job so that my painting person has enough to do on Monday.
I might still go,though, if I can, thanks for the tip
John

 

[Aragorn]

... my painting person

I've never heard of calling SWMBO that before! :lol: