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Sir Kenneth Grange – HST on a budget
Although the current Hornby superdetail High Speed Train power cars are popular, they are not particularly cheap, but the secondhand market is awash with older Lima and Hornby models. These of course generally display older liveries, limiting choice if you want a more recent HST. However, the restoration of pioneer production HST W43002 into its …read more.
Jan 31, 2021
Pete Waterman talks to Lawrence Robbins – World of Railways playback
As part of the World of Railway Virtual Exhibitions, the MRC’s Lawrence Robbins interviews leading lights of the model and full size railway world. Ahead of the 3rd event on 13/4th March, here’s another chance to see some of those interviews. Pete Waterman needs little introduction, so here he is: And he’s back again at …read more.
Jan 25, 2021
Vintage O gauge layout for sale
We’ve been asked to find a new home for a 1946 built O gauge layout that is 4.2m x 3.4m and an ideal size for a loft. Indeed that is is where it now. The most recent owner is the late John Hall-Craggs, probably better known for his extensive 9 1/2 inch gauge garden railway …read more.
Jan 23, 2021
Orchard Wharf’s Trackwork bubble working party
This piece of trackwork was under construction for an eternity — long, long before lockdown had been thought of — and it was finally attached to the baseboards during an all-too-brief working session in early October. It’s the crossover at the London end of the high level lines. The plain track for the running lines …read more.
Jan 3, 2021
Brutal Warehouse modifications on Copenhagen Fields
The representation of the KX Goods Yard has featured some magnificent (and large) warehouses, based on some of the buildings at KX, that Mike laser cut and made to produce a critical structural mass. In fact, the warehouse had already been shortened at the front by a bay, before our MRJ photoshoot last February. The problem is that these …read more.
Jan 2, 2021
Bulletin 518 – Out now!
Edition 518 (Jan-Feb 2021) of the Club’s bi-monthly Bulletin is now available online in the members’ area of the website, with posted and email copies on their way over the next few days. It’s another 16 page edition – with space for Barry Witham to tell us why Sierra Leone is a paradise for modellers, …read more.
Jan 1, 2021
York Road – Permanent Way takes shape
As Young Timothy has been valiantly polishing lumps of coal dust for his latest green painted shunter, I have made a start on the crossover formation for the tunnels to the North of York Road station. The running rails for one of the turnouts are now in place, and I will start putting chair plates …read more.
Dec 30, 2020
Done Any Modelling Lately?
MRC President Tim Watson takes a look back at 2020 2020 didn’t start like any other in the Watson household. We had almost completed a four month massive rebuild of the back of the house to make it wheelchair-friendly for Cecily: family Christmas dinner was achieved with some ingenuity laced with dust, but it took …read more.
Dec 29, 2020
PGA – Repaint programme
Having satisfied myself that the adaption of the Lima wagon to EM works, I decided to move on to painting. I had a pretty wide selection of bodies and existing liveries, which would easily show through new paint. So first job was a good soak in IPA – not the Greene King from the bar, …read more.
Dec 29, 2020
2020 Review – Cancelled Exhibitions and the birth of our on line shop.
2020 has been a very different year for The MRC. We started off with plans well advanced for the London Festival of Railway Modelling – the layouts were lined up, hotels booked, stewards and working parties had volunteered, vans and other logistics sorted. Then with less than a week to go, what we had feared for …read more.
Dec 28, 2020
A new Hogwarts trainset for Christmas
It is a great treat to open a trainset on Christmas Morning and it is about 60 years since I first did. I had noted this set when Hornby first announced it. It is a joint collaboration with Lionel and only the Hornby version was meant to be in the UK but somehow my daughter …read more.
Dec 28, 2020
Class 321 build for Ingatestone – Part 1
As Tom S pointed out rather longer ago than I remembered, a few of us are supposed to be building the EMUs for the Club’s OO layout project Ingatestone. My experience of 321s is on the WCML in their earliest days from the late 1980s where they had taken over from the Class 310s (with …read more.
Dec 27, 2020