The Wiki contains useful information about acquiring, building, modifying and running locomotives of all types.

Ready to Run Reviews of ready to run locomotives, articles about adapting or converting them and a list of manufacturers.

Loco kits This page contains Loco kit reviews, Loco kit construction articles and videos and links to pages about Components, techniques and detailing.

Scratch building Links to pages about all aspects of scratch building locomotives

Live Steam A page of information and links about building and running live steam powered locos.

DCC related articles A page of information about using DCC especially in locos.

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.

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!

• British Rail and subsequent companies' locos
• Great Western Railway locos
• London and North Eastern Railway locos
• London Midland and Scottish locos
• Southern locos
• Industrial locos
• Other locos
• Diesel & Electric
• Non british locos

• Workshop practice

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