Model Railway Forum

Prevention of access to the railway has been a controversial topic and there have been a number of debates upon this subject. Firstly for many years the railway companies only had an obligation to protect neighbouring land from interference from passengers and staff, by providing a boundary fence. A...

Perversely there was a narrow gauge line at a cement works in Kent at a place called Swanscombe where the wheel flanges OUTSIDE the rails . So far as I know this was unique. Originally the waggons were horse drawn but later they obtained a fleet of steam locomotives, many of which were of the geared...

Early Railways are a fascinating area of study. The granite railways were a particular feature of mountainous districts such as Dartmoor, but in areas where hard stone was not so easy to obtain railways made of timber were used instead. The coal mining districts especially chose timber for their rai...

There is absolutely no reason why a class 50 could not have visited Hither Green and although I have not seen any reports as such various classes did arrive here over the years on transfer moves. Difficulty arises with driver traction knowledge so unless a South Western Division driver had route kno...

Building a Funicular as a model railway will require quite a bit of ingenuity. The trickiest bit will be making it work. As the track will be laid on a severe gradient the usual model railway propulsion of adhesion is out of the question, so some form of rope working will be essential In model form ...

I get Scam attempts on my mobile and landline as well, at 07:47 this morning I got a call from 07483816287 which consisted of a recorded female voice telling me that my National Insurance number was about to be de-activated! Needless to say I pressed call ended immediately. Then at 10:53 I got a cal...

There is a curve on the Bexleyheath line between Kidbrooke and Eltham (just west of the site of former Eltham Well Hall station) where the radius of the curve is approximately 160 metres. It has a check rail and is restricted to 20mph. In 1972 an express excursion from Margate to Kentish Town hauled...

Unless you are extremely fortunate and have a large barn into which you can build your model railway you will have much less distance to place signals realistically. To give some examples it was usual for a distant signal to be 3/4 of a mile before reaching a home signal, and the clearing point beyo...

Yes I realised it as soon as I posted it, finger trouble, now corrected, well (and very quickly) observed! Of course "S" indicated Sevenoaks. The letter codes were originally intended to match, so far as practical, the destination, or sometimes the route, and was intended to help passenger...

A few illustrations: https://i.postimg.cc/VJy5mNm3/2-Hal-at-Otford.jpg A 2Hal unit passing Otford Junction, in 1944, headcode 94 is for Victoria to Maidstone East https://i.postimg.cc/LhYH5MCR/3-Sub-at-Otford-for-Sevenoaks.jpg A 3 coach suburban unit passing Otford Junction in 1944, heading to Seven...