Track building, an essay in brass.

Although the current trend in track building is the use of plastic chairs on plastic or plywood timbers, there are still other ways to build your track. As much as I like the plastic chairs from Exactoscale and C+L finescale, they are bordering on the expensive side especially when 100’s+ are required, that’s not to say they aren’t worth it as they are exquisitely moulded. It’s just that for your average Dad, it’s getting harder to justify. Also there is a discussion with regards to the checkrails chairs in P4, that under a certain turnout radius the checkrails may not act accordingly in relation to gauge widening. So with both those issues in mind, I cast my memory back to reading about Masokits brass half etched chairs for running track and turnouts.

Michael Clark’s Masokits range of brass etched chairs require copper clad timbers to solder to. These were acquired from Wizard models and a long with a few packs of the etch brass chairs certainly is a step in the right direction for both cost to myself and allows exact control over the building of tight radius turnouts.

Today was spent cutting up copper turnout timbers and fitting them to a copy of my Templot plan on my workbench board. Simply cut with a pair of side cutters they made light work of the cladding and I had a full set of timbers within an hour. Shown here awaiting fixing to the templates with double sided tape.

Now I’m all set to start folding the etched chairs and get soldering.

Severnside Models Weighbridge

After entering the MRJ Cameo layout competition, more to follow, I picked up a Severnside models weighbridge kit. A very nicely etched road vehicle weighbridge kit in brass.

As suggested by the company the kit was built using CA glue, although you can very easily solder the building together, which may be easier, attaching some of the parts that require the usual three hands to hold everything.

A magnifying glass/stand is required, as the kit has an etched door-handle and mount and even with 30-something eyes I needed help locating the etch.

All the etching is very crisp, and the next stage is a priming coat, to see what needs a little tidying up.

Severnside models

I know common wisdom is to use an etch primer, but I’ve been reading on a few US modelling streams about a new airbrush friendly primer, called Stynylrez from Badger. It can be airbrushed straight from the bottle and comes in a range of colours.

A little experimenting should be fun.