Table of Contents
Locomotives
The Wiki contains useful information about acquiring, building, modifying and running locomotives of all types.
Ready to Run
Ready to Run
Reviews of ready to run locomotives, articles about adapting or converting them and a list of manufacturers.
A ready-to-run Hudswell Clarke model, by Ixion Model Railways, modified by David L O Smith. Full details of this conversion can be found in below.
Reworking an Ixion Hudswell Clarke
Dapol LMS Jinty as supplied. John Cockcroft's review can be found below
Dapol LMS Jinty Class 3F 0-6-0T review
Loco Kits
Loco kits
This page contains Loco kit reviews, Loco kit construction articles and videos and links to pages about Components, techniques and detailing.
Just Like The Real Thing Derby 2s described and built by Tony Geary
Kit Built Derby Type 2
LNER Class N8/9 0-6-2 Tank built and reviewed by Raymond Walley.
Gladiator LNER Class N8/9 review
Scratch Building
Scratch building
Links to pages about all aspects of scratch building locomotives
Drummond 131 class No132 scratch built by Ian Middleditch.
The 6 foot 4-4-0s of the Sou’ West in Scale Seven
British Rail D0260 “Lion” scratch built in Plastikard
Scratch building diesel locomotives in Plastikard
Live Steam
Live Steam A page of information and links about building and running live steam powered locos.
Live steam 4-4-0 built by Mike Swain
North London Tank Loco
Live steam for a LNER class A5 4-6-2T built by Tony Peck
Building a Live Steam Boiler
DCC
DCC related articles A page of information about using DCC especially in locos.
MERG DCC Booster built by Peter Reynolds
An Inexpensive MERG Booster for DCC
Loch Lochy, a DCC layout built by Julian Best
Loch Lochy
Wheel Standards, Motor/Gearboxes and Radii
Before making any purchase, here are some points to consider:
- The choice of wheel standard, Coarsescale, Finescale, or ScaleSeven is fundamental. Most kits are designed for Finescale but can fairly easily be adapted for ScaleSeven, but can be quite difficult to adapt to Coarse scale. In Coarse scale the reduced wheel back to back dimension usually requires that the frames be narrower. If there is doubt that a kit will accept a certain wheel standard, the manufacturer should be contacted for advice. There is more information on this in Standards but standards should not be mixed.
- If kit or scratch building a locomotive, the best motor/ gearbox/ wheel combination to suit it’s planned use.
- The tightest curvature of track-work the model is to run on. Most of the smaller ready to run and kit built locomotives, steam and diesel powered, will negotiate small radius curves and points while larger locos, particularly main-line express steam locomotives might need some modification if it is planned to run them round tighter curves. There have been a number of Gazette articles about this issue which can be found here.
There is also a document detailing a lot of information about “Old Motor Datasheets” which may be useful for modellers trying to maintain an old loco.
Loco by Company Name
You may want to find your next loco by the company name. For practical reasons this list will only cover foreign, BR and the big four!