Larger Scale Model Railway Etched Kit Building is a wide-ranging guide to the many techniques of model railway kit assembly, including metalwork skills such as cutting, drilling and scribing brass; soldering and gluing; painting and lining; etching and weathering; sourcing logos; and general tips on locomotive and rolling stock features to help bring extra authenticity of detail to your constructions.

The book will be A4 format, with around 180 pages, most with full-colour photographs or illustrations. Publication is scheduled for early summer 2009.

See below for preview images and table of contents.

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Table of contents: click to enlarge

What the magazines are saying ...

Garden Rail: All scales.

A new book written by well-known GI modelmaker Peter Smith. Etched Kit building, does for you precisely what it says on the cover. This is a modellers' book providing not only a wealth of information regarding the building of etch brass kits, but shedloads of peripheral information for those who work in metal rather than plastic. There is also some rather unexpected stuff - how about headlamp codes for steam locomotives (including bell codes) – or BA tapping drill sizes – or blackening brass – or paint lining! Thought about making your own door handles and grab rails? It is all in here and I keep finding new stuff. While this volume is largely aimed at those modelling the standard gauge in the bigger scales, most of the hard information and all of the various techniques very suitable for narrow gaugers. This is not however, a coffee table book! While copiously illustrated, the pictures are there to illustrate the information provided in the text rather than to provide eye candy and I would expect to see this very useful tome on the workshop shelf rather than in the bookcase. At twenty sovs, this is a very worthwhile purchase for the modeller and builder.

Gauge One Model Railway Association: David Halfpenny. August 2009.

This isn’t a whole book focused on etched kits – they take about 20 pages. The rest takes a wide view of metal rolling stock construction.

(List of contents)……. Not only is the scope so vast, but it starts at a very basic level – a page on types of screw head for example, and two pages on the Whyte system.

So how does Peter shoehorn it all in?

To start with, he doesn’t ramble on. It only takes him a quarter of a page to sum up the pros and cons of air-brushes, and the bullet point format allows him to limit a topic to one sentence if that’s all it needs. Yet he’s far from superficial – there’s a whole page on four methods of fixing coach cant rails, and six pages on making one’s own coach door furniture.

Peter also gives lots of references to more detailed sources if you want to pursue something further.

What doesn’t it cover?
- Ply.
- Card.
- Plastic sheet.
- Steam.

Who should buy this book?
-Anyone setting out on railway modelling - in any gauge - should read it from cover to cover because it explains lots of rolling stock jargon and sets out lots of modelling choices simply and clearly.
-Anyone who scratchbuilds or kit-builds rolling stock - in any metal – should park it with their
G1MRA compendium books.

Reasons to give it a miss?
-If you only buy ready-to-run rolling stock, you don't need it.
- And he can't spell Nickel
- Er, that's about it really.

OK, for all its superb printing and binding, it's a teeny bit like a hard-copy of a hobby website. Even if you didn't know who 'gauge1trains' were, you'd know this book was self-published.

Great! Well done Peter, and thanks.

G1MRA. Editor Nick Rudoe

Peter Smith trades as Gauge1trains.co.uk and is well known to G1MRA members for producing ready-to-run coaches and parts.

The introduction states that the book has been written primarily for people building etched brass kits of locomotives, coaches and wagons and who are not very experienced. Fewer than half of all kits bought ever get completed, and the book’s aim is to get modellers started or unstuck and to move them on. Another aim is to help the modeller develop his “how to” skills.

The book’s contents are sorted alphabetically, so that for example under the letter ‘C’ one finds the following topics: “Coach interiors”, “Corridor connectors” and “Couplings and Buffers”. If you have a set of aluminium coach shells and are looking for information on how to create holes and slots for furniture such as handrails, hinges, handles, door stops, droplights, etc and on how to scribe lines representing door edges, you need to turn to the section for the letter ‘A’ where you will find the topic “Aluminium” which describes working with coach shells. This may strike the reader as a little strange at first sight, but once you have flicked through all the pages and are familiar with the location of the various topics it works quite well. Thus instructions for assembling Peter’s LNWR horse box kit appear under ‘B’ for Brass. As someone who has built a number of proprietary brass wagon kits, I found these instructions to be quite a bit more detailed and comprehensive than most of the kits I have worked on (none of Peter’s, I must add!), which should definitely be of help to anyone who embarks on one of these kits for the first time.

Much of the descriptive text is accompanied by colour photos and black & white or colour drawings, all of which enhance the descriptions and make for a very attractive volume which is a pleasure to look through.

The main virtue of this book is that it draws together in one place most of the techniques that are required by the modeller: using adhesives, painting, riveting, soldering and fixing decals. In addition it includes material on such diverse topics as files and filing, gauge and scale, loco headlamp codes, types of model loco motive power, and wheels. It does not purport to cover model engineering techniques such as silver soldering. There are also the usual (and useful) tables covering BA screw and bolt sizes, numbered drill sizes, standard wire gauge sizes, and tables of imperial to metric conversions and of scaled dimensions.

I would definitely recommend this book to those of our members who have joined recently and who fall into the category of “novice modeller”; they would find lots of information here that would enable them to avoid many of the pitfalls that await the inexperienced. It would probably be of less benefit to those with a longer background in modelling as they would have already notched up many of the skills illustrated in the book.

Larger Scale Model Railway Etched Kit Building
Tables, techniques, terms, tips and tools

By Peter Smith. Gauge 1 Trains
ISBN 978-0-9535657-9-5
£20
Hardback, glossy paper, colour illustrations, 170 pages