Table of contents for March 2025 in Model Rail

Back in olden times every railway station in the country would have a resident cat who kept vermin at bay. Stations with cats tended to attract more passengers too, though dog owners not so much. Station cats are now few and far between, with many stations being unstaffed. A few of the more internet-savvy cats have taken to social media, and the Huddersfield Station Cats have quite a following online, both locally and globally. It just goes to prove that cats both young and old can indeed learn new tricks.…

“I'm not sure what this says about the improvement of my modelling over the past half century, but I built Ebridge station when I was a teenager and it is more than 50 years old! It has been on three different layouts and doesn't look out of place at ‘Ebridge’, even now. I don't know if that means I built it exceptionally well all those years ago or if I've not made anything better since!” The station is not the only old part of Phil's layout, there's some Model Rail history on there as well. “When Model Rail was still a supplement in Rail, a paper wagon works kit was offered to readers in ‘OO’ gauge. I scanned it, scaled it down to ‘N’ gauge and wrapped it around a…

Last month, I outlined the reasoning behind this latest layout project, which serves to provide the missing link between Hemyock and Culmstock, two locations that I've already modelled in recent years, as described in Model Rail issues 309-312 and 327-329 respectively. As a brief re-cap, those previous projects were created on modular baseboards, allowing the layout as a whole to be developed in piecemeal fashion, which is just as well given that I work mainly in a spare room at home, which can only accommodate a few sections at a time. Whitehall Halt, as in real life, is an intermediate stop between Culmstock and Hemyock on the long-lost Culm Valley line in Devon, which closed to passengers in 1963 and completely in 1975. Accordingly, this new section, which measures 7ft…

As a lover of the old so-called ‘Dinosaur’ diesels, particularly if they survived into the 1960s, I was very interested when Heljan's model of 10800 arrived in 2023. Although withdrawn by British Railways in 1959, it remained in store for a couple of years before being purchased for a second career with Brush Traction. Indeed, while I was looking online for photos of 10800, up popped an image of a strange looking version of the North British-built Bo-Bo. The photograph was taken at Brush's works in Loughborough, and showed 10800 in its lighter shade of green, with small yellow warning panels, and boasting many external alterations which changed its appearance significantly. It set me to wondering if it would be possible to tweak the Heljan model to portray the locomotive…

What makes this layout great? “'katie Lane’ feels like a snapshot of a much larger depot in a bustling industrial environment. With the glimpse of terraced houses and the rear of a Tesco store, you get the impression that a busy South Wales town is just the other side of the backscene.” We often think of model railways as a relaxing hobby that we can do to while away the hours, painting miniature people and making sure everything is exactly how we want it to be before moving on. But what if you haven't got hours to spend on the finer details? What if you are told you have just three weeks to build an exhibition layout before the Swansea model railway show? That was the challenge Dan Hughes found…

◆ GAUGE ‘TT:120’ ◆ MODEL Hornby Class 66 • TT3017M 66097 DB Schenker red • TT3018M 66779 Evening Star GBRf retro green ◆ PRICE £159.99 (DCC-ready), £214.99 (DCC sound) ◆ AVAILABILITY Selected Hornby stockists Web www.hornby.com Announced at the outset of Hornby's excursion into ‘TT:120’, the Class 66 has been eagerly awaited by modellers with a penchant for the post-privatisation era. Five versions have been produced so far, covering the Class 66/0, 66/7 and 66/8 sub-classes, across DB, Colas and various GB Railfreight colour schemes, with each being available with or without DCC sound. For this review, Hornby kindly supplied us with Class 66/0 66097 in DB Schenker red and GB Railfreight's ‘66/7’ 66779 Evening Star in retro BR locomotive green. Also arriving, just before the issue went to press…

◆ GAUGE ‘OO’ ◆ MODEL Hornby R3908 Class 802/2 TPE ‘Nova 1’ five-car unit ◆ PRICE £549.99 ◆ AVAILABILITY Hornby stockists Web www.hornby.com From a commuter's point of view, TransPennine Express (TPE) rank pretty low in terms of reliability (I speak from years of bitter experience), but its trains at least carry some of the most striking liveries of the contemporary scene. Despite operating solely across the north of England, with tentacles reaching up to Glasgow and Edinburgh, TPE trains have proven popular with model railway enthusiasts, with Dapol's Class 68s and Accurascale's Mk 5 coach packs selling well in recent years. Hornby announced its intention to join the TPE party back in 2022, but the development of the Class 802/2 ‘Nova 1’ five-car unit has been dogged by delays.…

◆ GAUGE ‘OO’ ◆ MODELS Accurascale • ACC2353 BR Mk 1 BS M43361 • ACC2347 BR MK 1 BT E43113 non-gangway coaches, carmine red ◆ PRICE £74.95 each ◆ AVAILABILITY Accurascale stockists Web www.accurascale.com The first of Accurascale's BR Mk 1 57ft non-gangwayed coaches arrived last autumn, carrying the rather austere Rail blue livery. A more vibrant version is now with us, thanks to the delivery of carmine red coaches, a livery that was applied to these vehicles from new. With each of the main vehicle types being manufactured by Accurascale, we received a pair of Standard class brake coaches for review, namely Eastern region BT E43113 (built at York in 1954) with KINGS CROSS INNER SUB lettering at each end, along with London Midland region BS M43361 (built Derby…

◆ GAUGE ‘OO’ ◆ MODEL Hattons Originals Genesis six-wheel coaches H4-46Pack-1501 triple-pack, NCB blue ◆ PRICE £149.95 triple-pack ◆ AVAILABILITY Rails of Sheffield Web www.railsofsheffield.com First released in 2022, the Hattons Genesis range of four and six-wheel coaches went down a storm with modellers. With the vast array of livery options and an impressive detail specification, they certainly filled a gap in the market, especially as Hornby's take on the same theme arrived around the same time, yet both ranges proved a success. Hattons announced a second production batch not long before the sad demise of the Merseyside retailer, with Rails of Sheffield taking over the project. Pre-orders had been healthy for these new versions, which included many liveries being offered for the first time, including CIÉ green (early and…

A rarely modelled side of steelworks is the various wagons required to move materials around the works. Phil purchased the Minitrix slag ladles from eBay, threw the box away, repainted them, and has never found any more since! The hot metal carrier was also a Minitrix model, but it was so huge that Phil chopped it into pieces, resin cast the bits he needed and put the castings together to make his carrier. After this, he visited Scunthorpe Works and discovered that not all of the molten metal carriers were torpedo-shaped, so he found a spare tank he had lying around and painted that to match. The metal and slag which has accumulated around the top of the wagon has been created from plastic filler.…

Recent years have seen an explosion in the availability of high-quality ‘OO’ private owner mineral wagons, with a vast range of colourful liveries and branding offered from various manufacturers. It's a far cry from the turn of the Millennium, as evinced in an article I unearthed by renowned wagon expert Paul Bartlett, in the February 2000 issue of Model Rail. Back then, the release of Bachmann Branchline's ‘Blue Riband’ private owner wagons ushered in a step-change from the previous RTR offerings, followed over a decade later by newly tooled Hornby products, plus the great value offerings from Oxford Rail. Each of these are still available today, but the emergence of Rapido Trains UK's stable of pre-Grouping-era rolling stock has added even more variety, in terms of prototypes and colour schemes.…

Designed originally for the LMS, 10800 was built by the North British Locomotive Company during the late 1940s. Entering service in 1950, the diesel-electric Bo-Bo underwent running trials on the London Midland, Southern and Eastern regions before withdrawal in 1959. Proving to be the forerunner of the Class 15 and 16, 10800 certainly proved its worth. Following storage at Derby Works, 10800 was purchased by Brush in 1961 to act as a testbed for experiments with AC power transmission. At the time, all diesel-electric locomotives had operated with DC traction motors, but Brush decided to replace the original 827hp Paxman diesel unit with a more powerful Maybach MD655, plus an AC generator and traction motors. Unofficially named ‘Hawk’, 10800 ran trials on the Great Central route between Leicester and Nottingham…

◆ GAUGE ‘OO’ ◆ MODEL KR Models Bulleid ‘Leader’ No. 36001, BR mixed traffic lined black ◆ PRICE £162.50 (DCC-ready) £245.83 (DCC sound) ◆ AVAILABILITY KR Models stockists or Rails of Sheffield Web www.railsofsheffield.com I think my first encounter with a model ‘Leader’ was through an article in Model Railway Constructor in which an enterprising contributor had created a passable ‘Leader’ using the body of a Trix ‘Western’ and two Hornby-Dublo ‘R1’ 0-6-OT chassis. Yes, really! It was good enough to raise my awareness of a locomotive I'd never heard of, and it sparked a latent interest in the ‘Leader’ which has remained with me as a fan of all Bulleid's locomotives. I'd wrestled with the odd kit-bashing exercise but not succeeded in creating a working model. KR Models’ standard…

In the early years of privatisation, many of British Rail's aging diesel locomotives were ready for retirement. Accordingly, the UK's biggest freight operator, US-based Wisconsin Central, looked back across the Atlantic for a solution. Following the success of the General Motors/Electro Motive Division Class 59, ordered by Foster Yeoman in the 1980s for use on Mendip stone traffic, Wisconsin Central saw a design that was already certified for use in the UK. A fleet of 250 locomotives was built at EMD's London, Ontario works and shipped from Canada to the UK between 1998-2001, emblazoned in the red/gold livery of Wisconsin Central, which had branded its UK operation as English, Welsh & Scottish Railways (EWS). Although the Class 66 looked outwardly similar to the Class 59, the new design differed markedly…

◆ GAUGE ‘OO’ ◆ MODEL Accurascale • ACC1024 BR Dia. 1/108 16ton mineral wagons Pack D • ACC1071 BR Dia. 1/108 16ton mineral wagons Pack R ◆ PRICE £74.95 per triple-pack ◆ AVAILABILITY Accurascale stockists Web www.accurascale.com Based on vehicles built speculatively by private contractors during the inter-war period – and others built for the Ministry of Transport during the Second World War – British Railways eventually amassed a fleet of over 220,000 16ton steel-bodied mineral wagons by 1959. Designed to offer greater capacity and longer service life over the prevailing timber-bodied vehicles, the 16ton minerals shared a common 9ft wheelbase steel chassis and a body featuring hinged side and end doors. However, elements of the design evolved, leading to differences in brake gear, buffers, and either riveted, welded or…

◆ GAUGE ‘OO’ ◆ MODEL Heljan 1114 35ton Class B tank wagons, Regent Oil, four-pack PRICE £109.00 ◆ AVAILABILITY Heljan stockists Web www.heljan.co.uk Heljan answered many a prayer when it released its ‘OO’ model of the 35ton Class A/B tank wagons in 2017. The enduring Airfix plastic kit (still available in the Dapol range) had been the only source of these groundbreaking vehicles until that point. Introduced in the 1950s – and operating into the 1980s – these tank wagons offered a marked improvement over previous designs and paved the way for the huge fleet of TTAs that transformed oil traffic on Britain's railways from the late 1960s. Heljan has once again listened to the call from modellers by producing another run of tank wagons, this time offering them in…

◆ GAUGE ‘OO’ ◆ MODEL Kernow Model Rail Centre • SB009F LBSC Dia. 1369 five-plank open, SR brown • SB009Q LBSC Dia. 1364 five-plank open, SR brown ◆ PRICE £32.99 each ◆ AVAILABILITY Kernow Model Rail Centre Web www.kernowmodelrailcentre.com Kernow's latest exclusive ‘OO’ wagon release is the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway's ‘Open A’. Thousands of these five-plank general merchandise open vehicles were built to Diagram 1369, by the LBSC and Southern Railways, between 1905-1926. Built originally with curved ends and tarpaulin sheet rails, the design was tweaked slightly over the years, with variations to brake fittings and steel framing, while the post-1924 versions (Dia. 1364) featured square ends. Indeed, many of the original versions were subsequently modified to match. While few survived into British Railways ownership on the…

After much demand, Rapido Trains UK has just delivered its second production run of Patrick Stirling's famous GNR ‘Single’ 4-2-2 No. 1, with an all-new tooling to represent the Sturrock tender that was paired with the locomotive for most of its life in preservation (see our review on page 86). Additionally, Rapido has also manufactured a batch of models featuring No. 1's more authentic GNR tender, which was restored and reunited with the National Collection icon in 2014. Available exclusively from Locomotion Models, the models are billed as Museum Condition, portraying the 4-2-2 as it currently appears at the National Railway Museum in York. Featuring a 21pin DCC decoder socket and pre-installed speakers (on all versions), developments in production techniques since the original 2018 batch have allowed some improvements to…

What makes this layout great? “‘Ebridge’ has a legacy about it. This isn't an exhibition layout where everything is perfectly modelled. It looks great, but Phil is able to look around the layout and recount modelling builds of years past that still find a home on ‘Ebridge’, a layout that covers his entire modelling life.“ For a lot of people, an impending house move would result in the dismantling of their precious model railway, perhaps to be rebuilt, perhaps never to have a locomotive run across it again. This is particularly the case when layouts are built permanently into a room and cutting up the baseboards would result in an irrecoverable mess. However, life finds a way, and Phil Mason has always found a way to get his layout ‘Ebridge’…

With plans for a number of new modelling projects this year, most of which will feature large areas of exposed rockfaces, I thought it prudent to try out some new products and techniques. This would help me to decide whether to employ them on these upcoming layouts, or if I should stick to processes that I've used before. What prompted me to experiment was the appearance of Mifoshape, a sculpting powder that has recently become available. Formulated in Belgium, it was created out of dissatisfaction with established plaster materials, with an aim of creating a medium that can be worked easily for up to 30minutes before it begins to set. With traditional plasters, we're lucky if we get 10 minutes to work the material before it begins to harden and…

In this Workbench feature I shall bring together the Timber Tracks and Intentio buildings featured in Model Rail 331 and 335, on a typical halt platform. I wanted to continue with structures based on the Newbury-Lambourn branch where, in the early years of the 20th Century, the GWR provided standard-height platforms and new waiting shelters to replace the rail level stopping places on the former Lambourn Valley Tramway. My plan was to use the Timber tracks ticket office and signal box based on Welford Park, with the Intentio Pagoda-roofed shelter and a scratchbuilt platform to produce an arrangement not unlike the Up platform at Welford Park. The halt would be on a one-piece base which could, on sunny days, be incorporated into my outdoor ‘O’ gauge running track. What Chris…

KR Models’ motto is ‘We dare to build’. It might well have been Oliver V. S. Bulleid's motto, too, for the Southern Railway's last Chief Mechanical Engineer was responsible for a series of avant garde locomotives during his tenure. Having gained experience as an assistant to Nigel Gresley on the LNER, Bulleid made improvements to existing SR locomotives, but his first new design was the austere ‘Q1’ 0-6-0, built during wartime constraints in 1942. He innovated again with his ‘Merchant Navy’ 4-6-2s and, following the post-war building of a lightweight version of his air-smoothed ‘Pacific’, his attention turned to pushing steam locomotive design to new limits, in the face of a shift towards dieselisation. Bulleid's final offering was a remarkable blend of, simply, too many innovations. With a need to…

◆ GAUGE ‘OO’ ◆ MODEL Rapido Trains UK 947001 GNR Stirling ‘Single’ 4-2-2 No. 1, GNR green (1938 condition) ◆ PRICE £249.95 (DCC-ready) ◆ AVAILABILITY Rapido stockists Web www.rapidotrains.co.uk Rapido Trains’ museum-quality model of Stirling ‘Single’ No. 1 first appeared in 2018, being produced with the aid of the National Railway Museum and based on the real locomotive's current condition. That meant that the locomotive was coupled to a larger, more original tender that had been restored from a derelict hulk in 2014. However, for 80-odd years prior to that, No. 1 had been paired with a smaller (and inauthentic) Sturrock tender, so this is how many enthusiasts remember the prototype, especially as it was brought back to operational condition several times during that period, the most recent being in…

◆ GAUGE ‘O’ ◆ MODEL Darstaed All-steel K-Type Pullman cars • D25-01G Kitchen First Evadne • D25-03C Parlour First Eunice • D25-05A Brake Third No. 77 ◆ PRICE £399.00 each ◆ AVAILABILITY Ellis Clark Trains Web www.ellisclarktrains.com The first batch of Darstaed's eagerly awaited ‘O’ gauge K-Type Pullman cars arrived in to stock recently. Produced exclusively for Ellis Clark Trains, the Skipton-based retailer kindly loaned us a trio of models for review. It portrays an all-steel design, built by Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon and Finance Company, which debuted in the summer of 1928 on the LNER's prestige services, with further vehicles being built for use on GWR and Southern routes. Darstaed's first batch consists of First and Third class Kitchen and Parlour cars, plus Brake Thirds, each available in a choice…

◆ GAUGE ‘OO’ ◆ MODEL Hornby R30364 GWR ‘King’ 4-6-0 No. 6009 King Charles II, BR green late crest ◆ PRICE £249.99 ◆ AVAILABILITY Hornby stockists Web www.hornby.com Hornby's GWR ‘King’ 4-6-0 has made a return to Hornby's ‘OO’ range after a few years out of production, with two versions now available. In Great Western green and sporting a single chimney and original pattern steam pipes is No. 6029 King Stephen, while our review model caters for the BR era, in the form of No. 6009 King Charles II. A former winner in Model Rail's Model of the Year awards, Hornby's ‘King’ tooling dates from 2016 and it still makes for a striking model almost a decade later, capturing the majesty (pardon the pun) of the real thing admirably. This…

◆ GAUGE ‘OO’ ◆ MODEL Parkside Model PC13 LNER Bulk Grain Wagon kit ◆ PRICE £18.95 ◆ AVAILABILITY Peco stockists Web www.peco-uk.com These days, the arrival of an all-new 4mm scale wagon kit is a cause for celebration for those of us with a penchant for building rolling stock. The Parkside range of plastic kits had become something of an institution before Peco took ownership several years ago, and it's great to see new additions being added from time to time. The latest new release actually replaces a much older kit of the same prototype, depicting the LNER's bulk grain wagon, which was based on a GWR design from the 1920s. Built in the 1930s, nearly 100 examples were put to work on bulk grain traffic, largely from the Port…