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rdr

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Everything posted by rdr

  1. sadly i've had to shelve this idea due to lack of available space, but a more concise version is underway and is making slow progress.
  2. It's still a 50/50 choice for me on a single line or this double line
  3. i've created a new version of the double road entry for Intermodal, which seems to work reasonably well on paper. Can anyone see any unforseen problems with this. The second pic is a closer view of the entry.
  4. A little story about the old presented by the young (well i was then). Many moons ago i built a radio controlled "OO" lima western, with it's own battery onboard and 27mhz radio control. It was a magical thing to watch running, incredibly smooth and would start from a minute crawl to a supersonic overspeed if required. There were no problems with trackwork at all as there were no pickups to worry about and no dirty track to care about. So off i went with my creation to show it off to my local model club, with all the youthful excitement i could muster. All went well, my western performed beautifully tackling the complicated pointwork of the station approach with ease and the batteries lasting for ever. Sadly the club in their wisdom decided that the cost of changing over to a new system would weigh too heavily on the members pockets as the stock was spread across quite a few owners. With hindsight their concerns were flawed as they eventually all moved over to DCC, but the western still survived to be a shining example of the future that never was.
  5. and as a bonus you can fix your car for free.
  6. Don't let the cat out of the bag, everyone will want it.
  7. you could lay sheets of plasticard (or equivalent) for the yard base and glue the chairs directly to it with acetone.
  8. I've added a few bits of stock on the plan to highlight the station curve, the container yard and the workshop siding.
  9. maybe a better word would have been "stability". The base is quite solid and with a 9mm ply top, it will make a "stable" base layer for the 6mm ply to form the running surfaces. The running areas are split to two different levels, the container yard being a couple of scale feet higher than the station area.
  10. and with it's track layout printed out, it's so much easier with a 42" printer using templot.
  11. A temporary top surface of 6mm ply which will be the running surface for each level, it will have a 9mm ply base to give it strength.
  12. After a hectic week sitting on my rear end adjusting the innards of the baseboard in Templot, the baseboard has finally been completed. Occupying the one side of my office, it currently hides what's left of the stack of computers bought from a school late last year. The jumbled layout of braces at the thin end is designed to house the dock and loco traverser, and the staggered run of braces at the thick end conveniently avoids the point mechanisms. The next choice is the surface material, 9mm ply seems to be the best option, with thinner 6mm ply on top to give different levels of track surface for the yard and station areas. I've planned to have the station area slightly lower than the container yard, using a full sheet of thin ply raised and cut through the middle to allow the station area to flow down. This way i should be able to get away without any awkward joints to blend in.
  13. An update, well things have changed a bit and moved in a few different directions, mostly for the better or certainly simpler. Templot/me have been busy drawing the impossible into a space that was never suitable, but as you can see from the picture it works and seems to flow well. Intermodal has grown a small amount in length and girth to suit it's surroundings, and is now in a temperature controlled room that will save a lot of headaches in the future. Gone are the straight lines and B8 points and we're now in the lengthy realm of C10's and very few straights. The full length station area has been tweaked to have a workshop siding and a storage line with a shed for an overworked 08, connected by a single slip. The 3 road container yard is still the same with it's cheeky traverser, and has grown an added road above for re-fuelling. The main stock traverser is now just a single 3m line that feeds the stock back underneath the layout to a stacked fiddle yard with at least six levels (see second picture), so plenty of room for stock. The framework has been designed and construction starts tomorrow, with hopefully some more pictures to follow.
  14. you could use printouts of the points you need and lay single sleepers to suit. With just standard resins chairs are very brittle, but it's not a problem to add a flex resin in a percentage to cure this (pardon the pun)
  15. sorry for not getting back any sooner, i must have missed the notification on your post. I had to do a combination of pictures and drawings, to get it somewhere near correct, probably not spot on yet. I have a very basic cad drawing of a three bolt chair, which i shall try to locate and put up here. Found it, if i could just figure out how to get it into my attachments. If you want a copy message me your details and i'll send it.
  16. It's got slightly longer and the trackplan has changed quite a bit. I'll update this thread when i get my workshop a bit more organised, with some room to move.
  17. i used to love browsing through the W&H catalogue, i'm sure i've still got one somewhere.
  18. To me P4 is all about the look of the track, you're not going to see the wheelsets to judge how fine the flanges are or tell if the thickness is spot on, but you will see how accurate the track looks, and how pleasing it is to the eye. If you're going to modify wheelsets and build your own track, then why go to all that effort and still make it narrow gauge with the wrong sized flangeways and blade gaps. We who model in P4, can't accept OO track or even EM, but is that your mindset, do you look at OO track and say "ew that's just not right". If so then P4 is for you, if not then stick with OO. Modellers have proven you can make a length of OO track look wonderful, but it all fails when a point is introduced into the mix.
  19. You'll love making the point, and yes all plastic looks great. I love the way in templot you can just add a slight curve in a point to get the sidings or routes exactly right, and vary the angle or length of it to make it fit perfectly. No need to buy templates if you design the layout in Templot. Curves are there in most track station/yard formations, it's straights that are the rarity. Track normally fits the terrain. I have about 200 versions of my layout saved in Templot, a slight alteration there, a touch of curve there, a longer point just by there, would a slip be better in place of those points, a three way point could save me a bit of space. So many ways to improve and you could replicate a plan of the place you wish to model exactly. This is the second layout i've built and i would never use flexi, it just doesn't look right, and it doesn't have the cant on the rail. I'm trying to use my 3d printer to print the track for this new layout, as the cost of track parts is quite high. Bit of a steep learning curve but worth the effort.
  20. As you've said the 2mm difference doesn't bother you so go ahead and make your track by hand to oo gauge with code 75 rail, it's really easy to do, and is quite relaxing. Templot will give you an accurate plan with all the sleeper placings and rail positions, whether you use C&L or Exactoscale track parts it's your choice, or even print your own with a 3d printer. Start off with a rough plan or a photo, and see what you can draw up in Templot. Once you get the jist of it Templot is pretty easy to use and gives amazing results. When you've got exactly what you want, have the whole plan printed on a big printer, stick the plan down on the baseboard and just lay the track on top of the plan, it really is that simple. Everything is aligned perfectly and i guarantee it will look great.....even in "oo". PS. do not use flexitrack, it's isn't that good. Build your own, it looks so much better.
  21. first off there are several methods of 3D printing, FDM, SLA, DLP, ect. All have different results and in the hobby level considerably different costs. FDM is probably the oldest system where a line of plastic is extruded and placed onto a bed in specific places to make the product. It is inherantly slow and leaves a visible array of lines that will need considerable work to be smooth. SLA is probably just as slow as FDM, as a laser is fired into a medium and a spot is cured each time eventually making a product. DLP is usually the faster 3D printing process as it exposes a layer of resin the size of the screen in one go. FDM machines are relatively cheap, SLA machines tend to be costly, and DLP is a bit more expensive than FDM increasing in price with screen size. Raw material costs are very low but in each method of printing there is a certain amount of post printing work to be done. It is time consuming to 3D print, and on a commercial basis not very efficient. To print a coach you may need a fairly large printer and for a good finish i would recommend the DLP resin printer. There are DLP printers with 10" screens that would probably be big enough to print a MK1 coach in 4mm scale, but beware you need a good understanding of CAD programs to draw the part originally. Hope this helps.
  22. i bought the standard Photon, as i'm making a mod for it to take out all the levelling issues. I was thinking of upgrading the firmware to use the new file system, but a lot of owners are having issues with the new firmware.
  23. One thing i noticed when i first started printing multiple items on the plate, if you space them out about 5mm apart the resin clears a lot better. What printer do you have ?
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