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Tractor spotting
 One of the benefits of visiting a farm to sail boats or play trains is that you see some fascinating machinery.  I was in a barn marvelling at the size and complexity of a combine harvester (sons of...
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Wagon label
I've seen wagon labels before, sold fresh as daisies on railwayana stands. I've seen the clips on the side of wagons they fit in to, but never the two together. Until last week at Quorn on the GCR....
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Formcraft
Over on RMweb, in the discussion about Ruston Quays, someone mentioned the Formcraft building system launched in the 1980s. Long out of production, the concept is reminiscent of Bayko. Blocks were...
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Bantam back doors
Filling in the back of the Bantam cabin shouldn't have been much more than a scribed rectangle of 2mm thick plastic. Then I looked at the photos and realised below the doors is a towing eye. I suppose...
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Making rivets
On the tug cabin side are strips of metal riveted in place. In 4mm scale, bodgers like me will use cubes of plastic well washed with solvent to take the edges of. In this scale something rather better...
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GrA's Models, Stamford
With a couple of hours to kill before a meeting, I took the opportunity to have a look around the pretty town of Stamford rather than just driving through it. A couple of circuits of the centre later,...
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Crosti 9F
I remember when I first became aware of the Crosti 9F. It was in an issue of Scale Trains back in the 1980s. There was a double page spread of photos showing the supremely ugly sister of Evening Star...
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Cheapskate modelling - Grey pastels
 Picked up from the Arts & Craft section of my local branch of The Works for a miserly 3 quid, a pack of 12 pastels all in different shades of grey. I'm going to be modelling a large area of tarmac...
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Portholes
Time for some holes in the side of the Bantam. I know you can buy lovely turned brass portholes but they cost money and since these are pretty mucky on the real boat, I don't plan to be polishing them...
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Warehouse Wednesday: Ipswich
I've been digging through my photo collection for some images to illustrate a future Ruston Quays article. Over the years I've built up a huge collection of industrial building pics and so I thought...
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Handrails
More fabrication, this time the handrails. Some 2mm rod poking through flat stanchions, just like the prototype. Plenty of plastic solvent and the result is very strong.The problem is, having made them...
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Parker's Vans
A couple of new vans for Ruston Quays, well we'll need some road transport amongst all the trains. Regular readers might remember that for the August issue of BRM, I built a small factory unit using...
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Shed-tastic
I've been looking at the underneath of railway arches recently. Firstly, it's because my car has reached MOT time again and the tester is under an arch. One new tyre since you ask but I fitted a pair...
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Exhibiting model railways isn't all glamour you know
I know you think that life on the model railway exhibition circuit is all glitz and glamour, but it isn't. Years ago, we exhibited at Genk in Belgium. Overlord had been invited and there was space in...
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Nuts'n'Bolts in plastic
Larger scale models allow, or demand, larger details. In 4mm scale, I can get away (or at least I think I can) with a cube of plastic for a nut. On the Bantam tug, I feel I ought to do a little better....
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Cap'n Captain Scarlet
I'm going to need someone behind the wheel of the Bantam. The big windows into the wheelhouse will show up the ghost doing the steering. A little work with the calculator shows my model to be 1:21 or...
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Warehouse Wednesday - Concrete at Ipswich
We're in Ipswich docks again this week. There's lots of things I like about this photo. For a start the quayside building sticking out right to the waters edge providing cover for goods to be...
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Shuttles and Railcars in BRM
I'm thinking about diesel railcars in this month's British Railway Modelling Magazine.Ruston Quays continues with me setting up the shuttle unit to run the upper level. We've used a Guagemaster unit...
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Sleeper stacks
I've been spotting stacks of sleepers recently. Yes I know how sad that sounds but you're reading this so stop laughing. The first was at Quorn on the GCR. Presumably concrete sleepers will chip if you...
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Bachmann Collectors Club members day 2015
In my capacity as MREmag editor, I occasionally find myself invited to events. Not often, which is why it seems only polite to go when I do. Last Saturday, it was the Bachmann Collectors Club members...
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