ktundu99

More progress on Pensoddit (quite like that suggestion, thanks Brian!). The landscaping has been finished, and I've built a retaining wall at the bottom end of the layout. I've made a start on the ballasting, but I'm undecided about the best colour - I have several different shades in the bits box, so I guess I'll do some experimentation. I'd expect such a line to be ballasted using spoil from the mine, so we shall see how that turns out (I'm not altogether happy with the colouration of the rocky areas yet). I've also made a decent start on the vegetation - nearly everywhere which will have vegetation has had a layer of woodland scenics 'earth turf', followed by some 'green grass' scatter. Once this has dried I'll go at it with some static grass, and add some extra tufts by hand. Slightly torn on the trees issue - I think any realistically-sized tree would dwarf the diorama, so I'm tempted to satisfy myself with some furze and scrub. I've attached three photos showing the current state of play. Both first two feature an unpainted hudson skip, and a freshly-primed GVT loco I finished the bodywork of this afternoon. Still needs some tinkering (and a chassis!), but I'm reasonably pleased with it. The first photo shows the retaining wall looking towards the point, and the second shows the entrance to the mine and the bridge. The final photo is the same view, only with the Brian Madge kit (still incomplete). Looks much more to scale with the skip. Next challenge is to work out how to make the skip tip reliably where it needs to, and to not tip at all elsewhere... EDIT: grammar! EDIT: and spelling!

I've recently had to take a break from my 'large' (5'x2') 00 layout, so I've turned my eyes to something I have space to work on without dominating the available space. I've been interested in 009 for some time, and I've finally taken the plunge (joined the 009 society, purchased several loco and rolling-stock kits etc), and I now have a new embryonic layout, which will eventually fit in an 8'' cube. The trackplan is very simple (it features a single point), and will allow a short-wheelbase loco to haul a single hopper from inside a mine around two edges of the board, before shunting back onto a spur and offloading into a stockpile/truck/standard-gauge railway. I've purchased several hopper kits, with the hope that at least one of them can be successfully converted to function reliably. The curves and slight gradient mean that anything with more than 4 wheels is a definite no-no. I've fairly arbitrarily set it in Cornwall, on the basis that I have no idea what mineral should be being transported. I think it's something like 95% of minerals which are mined anywhere in the world have been mined in Cornwall at some point, so I've got a fair bit of flexibility here. As for the name, I've recently discovered Posy Simmonds, and taken a liking to the idea of christening the location 'Tresoddit', but I've not taken a final decision on this one yet... I've attached some photographs of progress thus far, featuring a not-quite-finished (the body has only been primed, and hasn't yet been fitted to the chassis) Brian Madge Ruston LB for scale. Everything's a little crude as a first attempt in 009, but it's really meant to be a test plank for a larger layout I've planned for when I have the space. Three general views before any landscaping took place, showing the trackplan and gradient (about 3%). I spent this morning making a dreadful mess with polystyrene and pollyfilla (until I ran out of the latter), so I now have a partially-landscaped layout (I've completed about 1/3 of it I think). I've got this week off work, so tomorrow I'll pop into town and stock up. I've tried to represent some distinct strata, which I'll reinforce with my ground coverings later. EDIT: spelling....

Looks good fun to me Not sure I share jaggzuk's scepticism of 1st radius curves though - when I was a lad in the 90s with my Hornby trainset on the living room carpet, I'd have all sorts of things running perfectly happily around 1st radius curves and points. Trying to run something with a long wheelbase (like a GWR King) too quickly would inevitably lead to a derailment, but that's clearly operator fault. I'd avoid tight curves where trains may be long/fast (like the main circuits), but I'd be perfectly happy with them on the branch or on sidings. My own layout (a 5' long shunting plank) is packed with 1st radius pointwork to fit it all in, and I've never had any issues! That said, I never had any gradients to contend with...

Certainly from my experience, there are two things that could make me describe the cutting as 'reasonably fine'. One is only really an issue with vinyl, and arises from the tendency of the vinyl to slip in the rollers slightly - on model-sized pieces this isn't a problem, but on some of the several-feet-long vinyls I've made this can start to be an issue. I've attached a photograph (horribly cruel close-up at an unflattering angle) of the other minor problem, demonstrated on a half-finished converted cattle-truck I cut the parts for on the cameo. If you look at the grille, you'll note that the holes aren't quite symmetrical. These were perfect rectangles in the file I cut, but have been slightly skewed by the offset of the blade - the blade rotates in the holder, and will therefore take a short-cut around any corners, slightly smoothing them. The software mostly corrects for this automatically, but in particularly fine items it can still show. I'm not bothered by this - from a normal viewing distance the effect is completely unnoticable. Please excuse the poor paint job - serves me right for using a rattle-can rather than get the airbrush out...

I'd agree that adding a turntable is probably overkill - I've seen far too many layouts which are full of track with no space for anything else. I'm far from the last work on realism, but the plan in post #3 definitely has too many loops - it's far more eastern European than British to my mind. I think that your solution in post #5 is possibly optimal, though I could also suggest that a cut-down version of #4 may be better - if you get rid of the loop off the bottom and one of the facing crossovers. This would eliminate the need to block both mainlines between run-around maneuvers to access the sidings. The second facing crossover fulfils no useful purpose in any combination of vaguely realistic train occupancy or shunting scenrios I can think of.

Looks quite an interesting plan. I do have a couple of thoughts/suggestions: -Assume you meant 4'x10' and aren't planning on building it in T-gauge? Not sure T-gauge is terribly child-friendly... -The gradient required on the red line looks like it could be rather steep to me. I'd want to test it out to make sure my locos/stock could handle it before I committed to building it. -Assuming you're going to be running some steam (and not using auto-trains etc), you might want to add a loco release crossover to the branchline station. This would do double duty as one end of a loop to make it possible to remove trucks from the coal yard without requiring a pilot. -The only loop you have in the mainline station cuts across both main lines. This means if a loco needs to run around a train while shunting the sidings then both main lines are blocked. This may not be an issue for you, but if you have a child who enjoys running trains as fast as possible around in circles, then this could be quite frustrating for both of you.

I thought I'd responded to this, but apparently it disappeared intp the æther. Let's try that again: Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll buy a rattle-can of matt varnish this weekend and give it a whirl. The layout lives upstairs and well out of harm's way, but I have several in-progress models which live on one of the bookcases in the living room, and it's these which have been attacked. Using salt isn't really an option on the carpet (I think my wife would probably have a fit), and pellets don't seem to have much effect (they still slime all over the ground floor every night). I think the long-term solution involves getting a new job and a better house (which I'm working on, as my current position expires in a few months anyway). I don't fancy making too much of a fuss with the estate agents - I don't trust them to not just give us our 2 months notice and replacing us with someone who complains less - I know there is legislation against retaliatory eviction, but I trust it about as much as I trust the agents...

I've just dug out the goods shed I've half-built for Brimscombe Port, and to my dismay it's 1) covered in slug trails, and 2) has had significant patches eaten away at. This is in the living room - the whole downstairs of the house has a slug problem and my landlord won't do anything about it (or about the plaster falling off the walls in the bathroom, or the pointing falling out into the yard, or the draughty single-glazed windows...). Never had any issues with slugs eating scenery since I tried storing a previous layout in my parents' (frequently-flooded) garage in my early teens. Does anyone have any ideas on: 1) How to stop slugs from slimeing all over/eating card models? I'm sure I can't be the only one to have had this happen... 2) Remove slime from card models without damaging the models' surfaces? 3) (Slightly tongue-in-cheek) how to purchase a reasonable house in this climate of falling wages and spiralling house prices?

I've never had that precise problem, but I've had similar. I'd use some kind of washer as you suggest, and fix it in place using Evostik contact adhesive. This seems to bond peco plastic (on their 00 points, at least) very well, it forms a strong, long-lastig bond, and is slightly flexible (which is important when it comes to preventing the same from happening again).

On the offchance that I'm not the only one who had issues with it, I've now persuaded the cameo3 and Inkscape to play together nicely under Arch Linux using this plugin https://github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-silhouette. The most recent version of inkscape appears to be necessary (there was an update to it last week, prior to which it didn't function properly). There is still the caveat that the autoblade doesn't work and only one of the toolholders can be used. The registration also appears to be off quite badly - I had to give it a manual offset of y=-106mm and x=5mm in order to hit the correct spot on the page.

All the 'autoblade' feature means is that the cameo can adjust the depth of its own blade, but it is also possible to manually adjust the depth. I assume the inkscape plugin doens't have the ability to adjust the blade depth but as long as you remember to set it yourself there shouldn't be an issue. Rather than the rotational mechanism of the old-style ratchet blades, the new autoblades are adjusted like a clicky biro - each progressive click makes changes the depth of the blade by 100 microns, and they have a little depth meter on the front of them.

I think wherever you purchase your Cameo from it will come with a blade and a 12x12'' mat, which are all you really need. I'd wait until you've got it and have had a tinker before deciding what other accessories it may or may not be worth splashing out one (for example, I've now decided that some kind of scribing tool would be useful but that the deep-cut blade I'd thought I'd want turns out to be unnecessary).

Yes, I installed the python-pyusb package (which provides python-usb on Arch), but I don't get any of the relevant menu items in Inkscape after running the install script. I think I'll have a chase up with the developers and see if they can shed any light. From my experiments with the same, this doens't work - an svg file is a description of the shapes and positions of objects, while a studio file (which the cameo can read from USB) is a description of where cut lines should be. Incidentally, I've found that cutting studio files from a usb stick has been unreliable, and some parts of files I've tried to cut that way have just been omitted by the cutter. I've been burned before when purchasing from suppliers with little interest in aftercare (though I usually only require it should the product break). I recently purchased my cameo from them, but bought it from their eBay shop; this way I have eBay's buyer protection built into the purchase (which has come in very useful in the past).

I'm using this one: https://github.com/fablabnbg/inkscape-silhouette Which I believe is the same plugin you linked earlier in the thread? I get an option under 'Extensions>Export>Plot...', but this expects a plotter on a COM port and doens't recognise the silhouette.

Finally received my Cameo late last week, and have just managed to sit down to have a play. I have a couple of questions which I'm not sure have been answered before (and a couple of insights I think have been missed). I'm a user of Arch Linux, and the Inkscape plugin doesn't appear to work with the most recent version compiled from source. When I connect the Cameo, I get a notification that a new printer has been attached, but Inkscape cannot communicate with it. I've been running Studio in a Win10x64 VM, which is painfully slow but seems to work. Do any of the other linux users hanging around this thread have any config advice beyond that in the docuantation for the inkscape Silhouette plugin, or is it just my fault for running a bleeding-edge OS? I've also been having a play with using Studio under Wine. The latest stable version which came out a few weeks ago (Wine 2.0) will not even open the installer properly, but the current (unstable) Wine 2.1 compiled from source will install it quite nicely but not run it (apparently the graphics libraries it requires aren't yet supported properly). I live in hope that future versions of Wine will work... Thanks for all the useful and inspiring information in this thread! I've attached a photo of the quick and dirty hut I knocked up (and scaled incorrectly, so is actually in 3mm rather than 4mm), potentially being rather optimistic about the windowframe thicknesses I could achieve - the whole thing is <4cm long. Must say, I'm very impressed thus far...