What exactly is finescale?

Many seem to think it is a particularly rigid branch of P4 practice (or ScaleSeven, or 2mm), or a rarified form of rivet-counting. It is, of course, none of those things. When Model Railway Journal set out its stall in 1984, we took the two words Fine Scale and ran them together to form - in a field where exactitude counts for so much - a deliberately nebulous term to cover all those modellers, whatever their skills and disciplines, who were simply trying to do better. So, whatever 'finescale' may mean elsewhere, and whatever it has meant historically, it represents to us an attitude of mind: the desire to make better and more accurate models . . .

It knows no bounds of scale, gauge, prototype or talent.

Bob Barlow & Gerry Beale MRJ 1987