MRH staff notes - 5
Is foam too flammable for model railroading use?
A reader contacted us recently with his concerns about the use
of foam on model railroads. He wrote: "I notice that there is
an increase in the use of foam in the construction of layouts.
You might be interested that there's a lot on the web about the
dangers of foam. It seems to me that use of foam represents a
significant fire danger. I have never this danger mentioned in
articles about layout construction.
We replied, "Fire hazard danger on a model railroad is not lim-
ited to foam. John Allen's fabulous Gorre & Daphetid burned
to the ground when they left the power on, and it predates
the use of foam on layouts. The real problem isn't so much the
foam as it is borderline wiring practices and leaving the power
on. Houses use foam insulation in walls full of wiring and
nobody gets up in arms about the use of foam there. But then
house wiring contractors must follow strict building codes,
unlike model railroaders." That about covers it, we think.
Speaking of photos ...
We have made another improvement in presenting photos
in Gen2. We've improved the Image quality in the Standard
Edition to allow zooming in to 200% on most images.
To illustrate, on the next page there is an image comparison
between two images in MRH from Ken Patterson's popular
"What's Neat this Week" column from the Standard Edition.
We've zoomed the images to 200% so you can see the
difference.
The image on the right is from Ken's column in the December
issue and it has the old Gen1 image quality that starts to blur
MRH-Feb 2013
