News from your model shop - scratchbuilding in all scales

Hello

We are dispatching orders every weekday apart from Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day. If you order is time critical, select next day delivery at checkout.

The shop in Sandown is open on Tuesday 23rd and Wednesday 24th for your last minute needs. The shop is closed from 25th December, reopening on 30th December. 

We have added lots of nice second hand bargains to the website including: several O gauge engines with sound, OO gauge engines and some N gauge engines as well as rare plastic and resin kits. Click here to see them all.

And finally, we have very few copies left of Railway Modeller from December with a free Metcalfe kit, a few of the January issue with a free backscene and some Railway Modeller Special 2026. Buying these magazines from us help support the newsletter and they can easily be dispatched at the same time as any other order.

Feel free to send this newsletter to your friends, family and club members if you think they will benefit from it. They can subscribe for free.

Railway song of the week

"Santa’s Got a Choo Choo Train" is a warm-hearted, festive country number from Blake Shelton that leans into classic Christmas imagery with a playful twist, swapping sleigh bells for a steam whistle as Santa rolls in by rail. With its easygoing rhythm, twangy charm and nostalgic storytelling, the song paints a cosy picture of small-town Christmas cheer, blending holiday spirit with down-home country warmth and a wink of humour that makes it feel both traditional and refreshingly different.

Starting with OO gauge, you'll find the Bachmann Jubilee Class 5XP in BR green with late crest and factory weathering. This split chassis version is in excellent condition, appearing virtually unrun and has been fully tested to confirm smooth operation in both directions. For those building up a goods train, there's a rake of three timber covered wagons plus a brake van, all finished in BR bauxite livery. . Moving to HO gauge, the Bachmann SD45 EMD in Pennsylvania Railroad livery is in near-new condition with directional lighting fitted and detail parts still to be added, giving you the option to complete it to your own standards.

Scratch-building is a scary subject for most modellers who are not already scratch-builders, and often there's a preconception that there are modellers with the ability to scratch-build, and those without. But in most cases, that simply isn't true and many modellers who scratch-build have gently gained depth into modelling this way through a necessity to build something not readily available rather than any desires.

If you're on the fence about whether to scratch-build or not, apprehension shouldn't be a reason not to. Starting small is the key to becoming a confident scratch-builder and adding to or adapting existing models is a good place to begin. Evergreen may be able to help with this as they are a manufacturer who produces a large and comprehensive range of styrene building materials pre-shaped to portray virtually any real-life sheet, beam, pole or girder in every size a modeller is likely to require. The materials can be easily cut, bent or painted and a plastic cement is a clean and precise way of securely attaching parts together.

The most basic of building materials includes plain plastic strips, rods and sheets produced in sizes to suit virtually any project.



Probably the next most useful materials comes in the form of round tubing, half-round rods, quarter-round rods, square tubing (also available as rectangular), I beams and H columns.

You can access all the unboxing videos by visiting this page or simply click on the link called "videos" on our website.