Model of the Month

By Ian Maunders Here is the result of my lockdown project; it's a Smallbrook Studio "Sprite", with a few modifications, including moving the cylinders out a few millimetres to increase the clearance for running on 45mm track. I made up some basic steps to hide the piston rods, as they protrude from the front of [...]

Photo 1. A trainload of happy holidaymakers. By Dave Watkins A few years back I bought a couple of kits for Groudle Glen carriages from Yatton Model Engineering. At last my 16mm scale locomotives based on Groudle Glen Sea Lion (steam) and Polar Bear (battery) had matching stock to pull. For most of the time [...]

By Michael Belham I wanted to construct a portable indoor layout in 16mm scale that could live in my office until I had room for it at home. As a member of Bala Lake Railway, I decided to base my new layout on their headquarters at Llanuwchllyn. The first structure I wanted to attempt was [...]

By Bob Elsam This is the station building that I have scratch built over the lock down period - thank goodness for the workshop! I used 3mm plasicard for the walls and roof. The galvanised sheets are made from aluminium cans. I made a jig from wooden barbecue sticks, and put the aluminium between them [...]

By Andrew Mawer The prototype was used on the British Aluminium Company’s Upper Works Railway, serving the intakes for the water pipeline supplying water to the hydroelectric scheme which powered the Fort William aluminium works. The wagon chassis dated from ~1929 and was one of a number supplied by W G Bagnall at this time. [...]

By Robert Gillespie I am a descendent of George Henry Wood – a Director of the Isle of Man Railway from 1875; he is my great-great-grandfather. An engine, built in 1905, was named after him, and it seems likely that he was the inspiration for the "Fat Controller" in the Railway Series books – once [...]

By Simon Fletcher It’s said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.  For those of you that read Model of the Month regularly, you’ll appreciate that there is often some form of inspiration contained in other contributors’ articles.  In this case I have to credit/blame David Jackson for putting the thought in my head [...]

By Tony Skraga I am a relative newcomer to the 16mm scale world.  Since dismantling my ’00’-gauge layout 40 years ago (it had almost a scale mile of track!), most of my modelling time has been spent building boats.  When ill-health forced a rethink of my regular handling and launching of often heavy boats, I [...]

R/C & range extender for (very) small locos By Simon Fletcher I’d recently completed an IP Engineering Lister RT that had been languishing part-finished in the garage for some years.  It had done its shakedown running and all worked just fine, but I noticed you need fast and dexterous fingers to stop it.  And on [...]

By Brian Barrow The construction of these trucks came about almost by accident. I was at my daughter's house just as a delivery of logs arrived for her wood burner stove. In among the larger logs were some smaller ones just the correct scale for 16mm. The decision was made to recycle as much as [...]