Hints & Tips No.1321
 Using PVA with Card  By George Paxon  

  There is nothing wrong with PVA on card if you use it sparingly. The card absorbs the glue readily and can warp if too much glue is used. You only need a film of glue to stick card- not a puddle.

Hints & Tips No.1322
 Equalizing the Intensity of LED's on your layout  By Greg Coghlan  

  Depending on which way they are facing and light conditions, LED signal lamps can look very different. To equalize these intensities, get a 5k potentiometer (“pot”) from and electronics place and set it to maximum resistance. Put the pot in the place of where the original resistor will go. Slowly turn the pot shaft until you have the desired brightness. Remove the pot and use your ohm meter to measure the resistance of the pot. Put in the nearest value from your resistors and solder in place.
  

  If it is a case of using the LEDs as supplied in a kit, there can be a big difference in light output solely because of variation in batches and the distance from power sources so be prepared to change your resistor values.

Hints & Tips No.1323
 Using Connectors as Supports for control lever wire  By Ken Church  

  I use simple coat hanger wires placed under my layout as point levers. To support these, I remove the screws from electrical connectors and thread the wire through them and support the wires by screwing the connectors to the bottom of the base board. This gives a consistent height and distance from the board.
  

  If I need to joint the wires to get extra length, I simply use two connectors side by side with the screws still intact and tighten on both. With the cheap wire connectors available from pound shops this saves a lot of soldering and makes for relatively easy adjustment.
  

Hints & Tips No.1324
 Using a Masons Level to check track   By Bill Wilken  

  If you want to achieve perfect track work, buy yourself one of the very small levels that masons hang on a level line. Mount the level cross ways on the back of a slow moving gondola or flat car. It will reveal imperfections in track work that simply do not show up on longer levels but which can make a bit difference in the smoothness of train operation. I have found my mason's level especially helpful when having to work out transitions to and from super-elevated curves, especially one long climbing "S" curve that once drove me nuts with passenger car derails.

Hints & Tips No.1325
 Controlling Foam base scenery when using a Rasp   By Richard Cowman  

  To help control the small pieces of foam that are created, I use some static spray, made to reduce static cling in clothing. Makes considerable difference.

Hints & Tips No.1326
When Your Rail Gaps are too wide Pt 1  By Charles Beckman (Nevada)  
  
If I find an excessive gap in my trackwork as a result of contraction and expansion, I (carefully) bevel a small facet in the railhead, on the gauge side. With no sharp edge to pick, the flanges stay between the rails.


A few weeks ago as I write, some of my gaps were in the 3mm range (dawn temperatures in the 20 degrees Fahrenheit.) Now (as I write) that things have warmed up to the 60s, they're down to 2mm. I have been known to put guard rails opposite spots which might become troublesome.

 Hints & Tips No.1327
 

 When Your Rail Gaps are too wide Pt 2
  By Steve Campbell  

  I had a pretty good size gap in one rail as well on my layout. At a friends suggestion, we cut off a piece of rail from a scrap piece of flex rail to fit, and soldered it in. It actually now looks like a prototype broken rail that was fixed.

Hints & Tips No.1328
 

 When Your Rail Gaps are too wide Pt 3
  By Paul Tenney (Virginia)  

  I used some 2 part epoxy that comes in soft bars. You break a little off each and knead them together. It stays soft long enough to fill the gap and shape it a little. No need to remove the rail joiner. Once cured, I ran trains over it for years
A note from Simon Parkinson
Fleischmann actually do a special expanding track section to allow for the extremes of temperature we can get in a railway room.
A note from Trevor
Simons solution could also allow for expansions or miscuts for odd sizes… as a good friend of mine did just a few days ago when the weather should have been on his side!

Hints & Tips No.1329
 Making Dry Creek Beds   By Elmer McKay (Virginia)  

  To make a dry creek bed, paint the bottom. Glue in the larger details like fallen trees and rocks. Add sand of the color of your choice. I use a spoon and tap the handle to apply it lightly. Brush any sand off the rocks and trees. If the sand is uneven, you can tap the layout around the stream bed to get the sand to settle down and fill in around the base of the larger rocks. Apply some alcohol from the edge or more hidden part of your stream bed. Use an eye dropper. Then add the white glue water mix the same way. You need enough to glue it all down so it should be saturated but not floating. Let it all dry for a couple of days.
 

Hints & Tips No.1330
 Painting Freight Car Trucks or 4 wheel Undergear Pt 1 By Bruce Leslie, (MA, USA)  

  I remove the wheels, put blue painters' tape over the bearing wells, and spray with primer, generally brown rather than rust. Then I apply black or rust weathering powder with a brush, and cover with Dull-Coat to seal the powder.

Hints & Tips No.1331
 Painting Freight Car Trucks or 4 wheel Undergear Pt 2  By Wayne Toth (Ontario)  

  Paint seems to stick to the plastic used on Trucks/Bogies/Underframes surprisingly well, although the trucks are not likely to get a great deal of handling.
  
If you wish to roughen them before painting to ensure adhesion and you can effectively “sand blast them, use baking soda as the blasting medium - I do not recall what pressure I used, but it does an effective job.

Hints & Tips No.1332
Sizes of Points or Turnouts Pt 1 By Don Thomas (Alberta)



Modellers frequently use shorter turnouts than would be found at comparable spot on the prototype. This helps use space more efficiently because higher-number turnouts are real space hogs, and it is workable because models can turn on much smaller radii than prototype trains withoutflying off the track due to their lighter weight.
There is less ability to shorten turnouts when running really long cars, especially passenger cars, since their greater end overhang accentuates the offset between the ends of adjacent cars and looks highly unrealistic. This is most noticeable on crossovers.

The size of turnout doesn't strictly depend on the kind of track where it is found, but primarily the speed it will be used at. Yards are by definition slow speed tracks so they use short turnouts. On a main track the turnout size sets the speed trains can take diverging routes. For an customer siding the turnout can be short since any movement into it will be slow. A passing siding will warrant a longer turnout, and a crossover or diverging route at an interlocked junction can be longer still. The cost of bigger frogs and longer switch rails is factored against the benefit of maintaining a higher speed through the junction to determine what size turnout to install. 
In model terms, one thing to consider is how visible the turnout will be.
  You could operate through a number 6 in an inconspicuous location near the backdrop or in a staging yard. but might find that it looks unrealistically short at the front of the layout. At any point on the layout, if the cars look like they are jolting around separately rather than flowing through like a snake, then the turnout is too short for you're the cars you are using.

Hints & Tips No.1333

Updating Model Wagons by Painting


by Gary Stevens


You can update some very good basic model goods wagons/ Freight Cars etc from a toy like appearance with a little matching paint and some varnish. I spent some time repainting roofing on my Bachmann cars so that the cat walk on top of boxcars etc were the same colour as the roof. A spray of Dullcoat afterwards and the appearance is no longer toyish but very close to scale.

Hints & Tips No.1334
 Sizes of Points or Turnouts Pt 2 By Greg Kelly
 The rule of thumb for mainline points in North America anyway is that the speed through turnouts/ points is (depending on the location) 1.5 to 2 times the size of the frog so a number 12 point would be a 25mph speed limit, no 24 or so would be 45 or 50 mph etc.
 Of course we cannot duplicate these sizes but this is the relative sized and the larger your points are in theory, the better. 

Hints & Tips No.1335
 Fastening Fascia pt 1 By Bob Knapp
 

Hints & Tips No.1336
 Fastening Fascia pt 2 By Robert Hartle (Western Pennsylvania)
 

Hints & Tips No.1337
 Fastening Fascia pt 3 By Douglas Rowley (Colorado)
 

Hints & Tips No.1338
 Detailing a Coaling Tower, depending on your era By Crandell Overton
 

Hints & Tips No.1339
 Using Scrap Rail By George Paine
 

Hints & Tips No.1340
 Checking for Cracked Axle Gears By Jeffrey Wimberley