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Don't forget to read our latest modelling tips located at the bottom of the newsletter.

Ray Dunn kindly sent us some pictures of his diorama with some explanations: "Thank you for your tips, assistance and prompt sale of bits and pieces that I have used to make a little diorama to show my respect for all who fought in the Battle of Britain 80 years ago. I call it 'Hawkmere dispersal'. Most of it was scratch built ... but you'll notice the odd building and lots of grass that I got from you. There's months of work in it, with so much detail. I just got carried away with small scenes within it. The question is ... what do I do now?"

To see the pictures in full size and more photos, simply click on the images below:

This month in history - Metropolitan-Vickers is most famously associated with our very own Bo-Co BR Class 28, however, their Manchester-based works were also responsible for the production of the A-Class (later known as the 001 Class) that provided the backbone of Irish diesel power for both passenger and freight duties from 1955 until the mid-1990s when they were eventually replaced by the 201 Class. The very first A class was delivered in this month 1955.

This week we are taking a look at different types of roads. In real life road surfaces and their state of repair differs greatly depending on era and location and this is reflected with the wide variety of road and tarmac types that are available in model form.

Not so many years ago it seemed to be the case that you would purchase a model portrayal of a road and then create your layout around it, this is definitely no longer the case, and modellers can now start with a scene or diorama in mind and with a little bit of hunting come up with a ready-made road surface to match.

Busch would appear to be the front runner in this area in OO gauge but it's always worth digging just a little deeper to find the exact road surface that you're looking for.

Here are some examples of how Busch has created different kinds of roads in 00 gauge to suit various locations including country lanes, country roads, town streets, curved roads, old roads and even parking spaces!

The same rules apply when modelling a road as when you are modelling a railway track: you start with something rather sparse and add detail until you have a diorama that you're happy with. A lot of the products that you would use to create grass embankments/verges, weeds and weathering etc are the same ones that you would use to age your railway lines. But here are a few ideas that are specific to roads in 00 gauge that you may not have previously considered or simply realised existed. This includes Langley's street bollards and traffic cones that you paint yourself to reflect era and location, resin roadside dry-stone-walling sections for your countryside lanes, Auhagen's massive bumper-pack of road signs containing 780 road signs and 70 posts and track crossing plates for modelling pedestrian or country-lane railway-crossings. If however, you want the bespoke look, you could always consider making your own roads using Vallejo's Black Lava.

Black Lava comes as a paste that you spread onto your roadbed or baseboard, it can be thinned with water or used neat to produce different textures of road-surface and once dried it can also be painted for added effect but is equally convincing when used straight from the tin.