Hi All, I am currently editing the British MRE MAGAZINE (www.mremag.com) Hints and Tips Column. I have already written to some of you for permission to use the hints so this will not be a surprise to those people. Basically for Hints and Tips, I am looking for things that you do that may be useful to your fellow modellers either in buildings, scenery, trackwork, planning, train operations, maintenance, electrical or anything else that may be of interest. You might be surprised how some obtuse thing that you have written or know about is indeed another mans (or womans) treasure To start the ball rolling a H&T will look like this [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]If you are contemplating buying a longer railway vehicle and you are not sure if your clearances are OK you can buy literally any pair of freight trucks and make up a “plate” equal to the floor of the vehicle you are intending to buy. Plywood, MDF or Perspex will do. Mount the Trucks as close to the center mount as you can and also test this on your curves. The overhang will be the same as it would be for the vehicles and you will not have the expense.[/FONT] If you could email me off list with your name and approximate location and your nickname here, so that I can record "permission" to use it for mremag that would be great. Don't worry if you feel it is recycled... there is very little new here and I have tried to acknowledge those who passed the hints on to me in H&T I also save them for posterity as a "one stop shop" ( no actual purchase here) on my website www.xdford.digitalzones.com and you are more than welcome to visit! Thanks for your consideration, Regards Trevor Gibbs (Melbourne Australia):tb-biggrin:
Hi Trevor, welcome to the Trainboard. I think what you're doing is a great idea. Many modelers have "invented" little quirks to solve minor glitches, but assumed that 'of course everyone else knew about it', so why say anything, if they thought about it at all. One thing I did was ask my dentist for any dental tools that were no longer useable. Dental picks and probes go dull after years and are not allowed to be sharpened, at least here in the States. Mine gave me a handful of assorted shapes and sizes. They are great for holding springs while assembling/repairing couplers, or for picking tiny parts out of inaccessible places, or for shaping scenery as the plaster is setting, or for pushing small structural parts into place while the glue is setting, or.......
