Buffer Stop

Want to be a good modeller? Just keep your eyes open...

Peter asks: Looking at Phil’s various micro layouts and considering their transient nature, compared with larger layouts, what factors influence your acquisition and disposal decisions on suitable rolling stock?

Good question! Serial layout builders will be faced with the problem of what to buy, and what to keep, if they insist on changing their prototypes, or even scales, with each project.

As with our hobby generally, if you want to keep the costs down, just buy what you really need. DHAPR wagon works can get by with a single locomotive and half-adozen wagons. More would be nice, but a luxury.

Buying even this amount of stock for lots of layouts will add up, but if each locomotive and wagon is personalised, then the process takes longer, slowing the spending a bit.

If the next project can’t use the same items, then yes, there might be a problem, but we suspect that for many, the materials on hand will influence your ideas. Not just rolling stock, but kits and all those bits and pieces that make a model. At least this gives us an excuse for the stash of models!

But, if a complete change is your plan, why not see if you can sell the layout and the stock as a package? There are plenty of time-poor people out there who would enjoy a ‘turn key’ model railway.

The flipside is that your project layout might be based on the stock you already have. Inspiration for your next project could be waiting for you – just take a look in your cupboard and we bet there isn’t a need to buy anything new. Not that this has ever stopped anyone...

What’s the best biscuit to dunk in your tea?

Andy: I don’t want brown bits in the bottom of my cup when I finish another tea, but I will dip crackers into a mug of Bovril.

Debbie: Chocolate Digestive all the way

Howard: Thou shalt not dunk thy biscuit in tea, for great sogginess cometh.

Phil: I’m not a dunker I’m afraid, but if you insist, a bourbon.

Ruth: Stroopwafle biscuits. Tea dunking game changer!