Tag Archives: model railway magazines

Information, Layout Design, Magazine, Publishing, Web

Site Seeing – December 2025

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It has been a while, I know. I promise you, it’s me, and not you. However, there are some really neat free (as in beer) e-zines that I’ve found over the last couple of days that I just had to share with you. Let’s get into them.

Free E-Zines

Free, yes, you guessed it, free as in air, electrons and radicals.

  1. Produced by the “Toowoomba Model Railway Club Inc.” in Queensland, Australia (that’s the pointy bit of our country on the right-hand side), Train Talk is a monthly publication. Certainly club-based, but plenty of modelling information inside too. You can read online or download it here: Train Talk
  2. Railway Modeller Australia, another E-zine in Australia, is a reincarnation of Rail Modeller Australia magazine, which was started in June 2020 by Robyn Taylor. I could not find any mention of the original in my searching, though. Lots of modelling content and well worth the read. You can read online or download it here: Railway Modeller Australia
  3. This last one you may already know about, but super worth mentioning. Ian Holmes has been producing the Micro Model Railway Dispatch for nearly 5 years now. For those of you looking into small layouts (and I know you are), this is a great read. Produced quarterly, get on Ian’s mailing list to get a reminder when the newest E-zine is available for download. Head over to the website here: The Micro Model Railway Dispatch

Finally, Ian Holmes has a new E-book available for download. A Journey into Micro  Layouts. I’ve just bought the book, and as soon as this is published, I’m off to read it. Available from Ian’s Buy me a Coffee page. Not free, but more than well worth the low cost (I only paid A$15.53 in Australian Pesos for what I think is a US$10.00 book).

And that is all for this Site-Seeing adventure.

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E-Book, Site seeing, Sites of interest, Web

Site seeing – March 1

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I’ve been a scratchbuilder since my early teens. In those days it was mainly sci-fi models that I built. The modelling bug bit early, like many of my friends, with ship, tank and aircraft models; most of those in the early to mid 1970s being Airfix kits.

Sci-fi kits however were a little harder to come by and once you want past the Space 1999 Eagle Transporter, sci-fi kits in Australia were thin on the ground.I saw lots of them in the modelling magazines, but for an economically challenged teen in Sydney’s west, they were out of the question.

Early on I came in contact with Plasticard and balsa (both of which at the time were cheap) to begin making my own models and accessories. I remember among the first of these was some extra pods for the Eagle Transporter. Over the last 20 years I’ve built many models that I wanted, or that I’d seen in the model railway magazines and wanted to reproduce.

NOTE: Keep an eye out – I’ll have an article on a long-term scratchbashed O gauge model will be posted some time in March.

This year I have a couple of scratchbuilding projects in 1/32nd scale running on 32mm scale track. I know it’s not quite exact for the gauge of track, however, it is easy to get running and there are parts available left right and centre. There are a lot of articles in my head but little on paper (or on-screen) at the moment.

Site 1: David Baillie’s ‘Modelling Victorian Railways‘

Today’s site gets the nod because of the amount of sharing that David does. Every modelling project he does gets its own PDF (available for download). Good one David!

There’s a list of complete scratchbuilding projects, and kitbashing subjects on Victorian rolling stock as well. Most importantly he has a range of ideas, and best practices for building models from the ground up.

Take a look at the site, and no matter what railroad you model, there is information here that will increase your modelling skill.

PS: David notes on his site “5 Jan 2015: I am in hospital undergoing treatment for an aggressive cancer, and I am hanging on to get home to see my family maybe sometime in February. In the meantime, I will miss my modelling, but even more so my family!”

I feel for him as a fellow cancer survivor. I wish him all the best. If I get any information back from David, I’ll let you know. More importantly if you feel right about it, send him an email from his site. I’m sure he’d feel better knowing others were thinking about him and his family at this time.