Never built one, but I have worked extensively in brass/white metal for many years. Straight edge tin snips, good up to 20 thou'. Home Depot, Amazon...Cut outside the lines, and dress with a decent fi

That seems a lot of work. With a bit of adjustment it is not necessary to have the throw bar/tie rotating with pins. If a finescale approach is used the actual lateral movement is minimized. Increasin

For the mortals amongst us, I would recommend a good set of 3 point gauges (which have a small indent on the bottom for setting guide rails, wing rails and the like) as a minimum. I use the ones from

I looked at the effect of various cleaning pads and grits (200-2000) a few years ago. Anything below 800 I avoid. The rail head gets covered in microscopic scratches (examined under x400 magnification

Trainworld has them in stock.

I do my own. DCC and sound requires fool-proof pickups, which will usually mean a set of wipers on the insulated wheels of a brass model. Space in the boiler is limited even after some weight removal,

If you are looking for steam locomotives other than a Porter.it's a very short list - none. My modeling requirements call for 4-4-0, 2-6-0, 4-6-0, and 2-8-0 locomotives. Old Blackstone or even older b

Probably a waste of money. Get a decent airbrush and a compressor with an air reservoir and pressure adjuster. Nigel

Mk III for HOn3, Mk IV or V for other scale/gauges. The NMRA haven't updated their HOn3 gauge...yet. Not that it should make any difference, as the physical.distances are set in the standards. Ask the

Not available (and has not been available for at least a year). Nigel

That's about $2 in parts, $118 in labor. Armature wire is pretty tough, soldering it takes a bit of patience as the insulation easily melts. Probably why they went with something like 32 gauge insulat

Hi Bill, They're fine. I use a 3 rpm version with a PWM controller to get down to around 1 rpm. You may need an adapter to connect with the deck. Nigel

Hi Ed, You should be able to do this in Word using fixed table width/height. With any software you should callbrate the printer. Nigel

Forgot to add that a) while the input to the decoder is essentially half wave AC with the high frequency control signal overlay, the output to the motor is plain vanilla DC, and b) DC power controller

Hi Dusty, Modern DC motors are also PWM. Old decoders had too low a frequency, anything built in the past 5-8 years should be compatible with a coreless motor. These motors run pretty slow anyway. Hea

Hi Alan, I wasn't joking. Not all commercial wheels are truly concentric, and unless you have a lot of patience curving rail to a perfect circle with a radius of 6 or so inches is rarely achieved. Tha

Hi Alan, Round ones usually work well. On my last turntable build (On3O) I used regular freight car wheels with the flange turned flat on the lathe. I used regular freight car trucks with the inner wh

Hi all, Thanks for the responses. It was the book that sparked my interest, and there is additionally a lot of information out there in various libraries and museums. Locomotives, not passenger and fr

Hi all, Has anybody here ever modeled the Ohio River & Western? 112 mile long 3-foot narrow gauge that ran from Bellaire to Zanesville in Ohio from the 1890s through to 1931. Part of the PRR from 1912

Having been a member of several modular groups (and a member of a club with a modular baseboard show layout) I always build my layouts "module style". Current build was going to be 5-foot long modules