njee20

Oh god. This could be bad news for my wallet.

Anything is easy if you know how to do it. Accurate scaling of complex turnouts on paper isn’t necessarily so. Personally I’ve never found a layout design software program I’ve not managed to get my head round within an hour, and I’m certain I get more accurate results than I would hand drawing. We’re all different, neither is right or wrong.

So you advocate drawing by hand because using software takes too much time to learn, but to avoid the (incredibly easy) pitfalls of hand drawing you must spend lots of time learning...? The irony is strong. IIRC SCARM and Anyrail don’t work on Macs, so may not be overly helpful solutions. I find Anyrail the most intuitive I must say, but I know everyone’s different. I haven’t tried Rail Modeller Pro, but it certainly appears the limits are the physical products not the virtual ones.

Mmm, I wondered about that, but couldn’t find a UK source, and European sources are still nearly double the price of the Photon.

Not so sure, the firmware upgrade is quite quick, it makes some different beeps. Certainly with mine the firmware change worked (check in the system menu), and the printer was seemingly ok, just wouldn’t print. The LCD just blocks out the UV light from below, it doesn’t ‘light up’ per se, so “faint mauve glow” sounds like it’s not working at all - you’re just seeing all of the UV array from below filtering through. I certainly couldn't get the rectangle to show on the exposure test.

Cracked the screen on my Photon last week, not quite sure how, I'd guess a bit of resin on the bottom of the FEP stuck to the LCD. Put a replacement in, and got an "LCD error" (T_100 L_0). Swapped back to the old screen, same error, . Contacted Anycubic (on Friday evening UK time), this replied this morning asking if I'd tried updating the firmware - I had, and had tried downgrading and upgrading again, hadn't fixed it, so they're sending a new main board, no questions asked. Quite chuffed with that. It is only 6 months old, but still... Bought an Elegoo Mars in the mean time, as I imagine it'll take a few weeks to get here, and that seemed a better option than another Photon, and I wasn't sufficiently convinced by any of the more expensive offerings out there!

I never get Andy's agenda, any time I read a thread/post by him. This thread included. The whole thing seems a bizarre mess, possibly to promote a scale in which he has some vested interest...? Genuinely confused. I can absolutely get behind T-55 though, although as an N gauge modeller I'm tempted to start T-27.5. We need a good universal standard:

I had a Smart Control, then upgraded to an ECoS. The battery life was poor on the SC; it was basically always flat when I went to use it (Usually a few days to a week between uses). I found changing between different locos a bit cumbersome too, but It was pretty good. I prefer the ECoS for the size of screen, it’s far easier to control multiple locos, have mimic panels for points etc. I’m not sure I’d buy a Cab Control/another Smart Control. But YMMV.

Works fine for me. But... People use Bing...?

As per Tom’s link, you’re missing all of the Greater Anglia variants, plus the DRS and DRS blue with DB logos (which is missing from the link, I think only carried by 034). Basically... there are loads. As an N gauge modeller I’m very jealous!

Yes the weathered JMA/HKA looks great. good they’ve done it justice.

Is the 350 actually a new tool then? That seems amazing given the 350 wasn’t that old, was a perfectly good model, wasn’t that popular (based on sale prices), and is basically the same as the 450 plus a pantograph. Looks like the underframe may be more detailed? I’d have liked to have seen them rework them to avoid needing 3 decoders, but a weird choice to focus any more effort on frankly. Bit like the HKA when they already had the HHA in the range.

I think your wording is fine, although you’re specifically looking for a sprung door for a mk3 DVT. The mk4 DVT is also a class 82, also made by Hornby, but doesn’t have sprung doors. Ignore the 82 bit and just ask for a door for a mk3 DVT.

I installed the z-axis upgrade, and whilst it’s not been transformative it has definitely helped with those ‘banding’ lines.

That's an unusually clean IKA wagon!