Signals and VeeDubs in Hornby Magazine

Something a bit different from me in this month's Hornby Mag - For Bolsover (the latest layout built by the magazine), I was asked to knock up some signals using Ratio Kits. These turned out to be pretty fiddly, but the results are very nice.

Two homes, two brackets and a super tall signal were required and that's what I produced. These aren't traditional kits, you can assemble the parts in lots of different ways to make the signla you need for a particular location. The tall one has two posts stuck together for example, but looks very convincing - at least to my untutored eye.

In deference to the target audience, and because the parts are plastic and not that robust, the finished models are non-working. If you want the arms to move you need (IMHO) to do more than just stick the bits together. Plastic cranks don't seem like a recipe for reliability to me, especially on a layout which will the lumped around the country like this one will be. Mind you, I think it's not out of the question to do this, but then I'd replace the arms with MSE items too.

Elsewhere there is a real fun project - repainting 3 VW Type 2 vans into BR colour. It's not a difficult job, just strip the paint off the die-cast models and spray them with the new colours. For such little effort, the results look fantastic. I'm not sure where they will end up on the layout, but they will be there somewhere I think !