For modeling steel cable, don't use sewing thread—it has stray fibers that look ratty, especially after painting. Instead, use beading thread. This material is thermally bonded, so there's no fraying. Example product: Beadalon WildFire .006 inch (0.5mm) thick, in black, light grey and other colors. Available at Michael's and most craft stores.

Well here goes nothing. I bought a MTL F-7  trainset, a GP-35 trainset, also a Marklin 81466  Micado steam loco set.I also got 2 packs flex track [ ... ]

A few days ago I received the set that I REALLY wanted in the first place - the 81862 30th Anniversary set from 2002.

For some inexplicable reason Marklin [ ... ]

Scratch building is defined in Wikipedia as “The process of building a scale model "from scratch", ie. from raw materials, rather than building it from [ ... ]