lyneux

Yes - still working on the CAD but nearly there!

Jack, These look great. It's good to see some quality FUD prints after the variable results from Shapeways recently. Have you thought about trying to cast the bodies in resin to make a (cheap) rake? Guy

Looking nice Chris! You are motivating me to get my arse in gear and tweak my LTF model so that I can start work on a rake of these! Did you use the latest Shawplan grills for the roof? I have two sets of these that I need to fit.

Looking good Jon! Nice tip with the "reverse sequence" painting.

These are now available via my shop on the Shapeways website: olympiamodels

Jack, hopefully things at Shapeways will improve as they go through their growing pains. The bogie in the photos is the best of the eight that I had printed. Four of them, I'm probably not even going to try to use as they are too rough. You are right about the worst effects of the roughness not being visible on the one in the photos. Pete, the bearings are simply pushed in place at the moment. They are a snug friction fit but could be secured with a dab of glue if necessary? I think I'll run them without glue and see if they work free or not. The shape is a tad complicated for resin casting without producing a kit of parts (I need to get better at resin casting first!). At the current price for FUD they are viable for use straight from Shapeways.

Unfortunately the latest prints of the revised design haven't come out too well: they exhibit the rippling effect that many people are seeing and Shapeways have now agreed to re-print these for me. This seems to be a common problem at the moment with frosted ultra detail from Shapeways and people are speculating that it is to do with the calibration of the machines. You can make your own mind up and read more about the problem on this thread on Shapeway's forum: http://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=rview&goto=40321#msg_4032. Despite this, I thought I'd have a go at priming the best of the rippled prints and seeing just how well the new LTF-25 design fares... is it any quicker and less fiddly to put together? Four of the prints are totally unusable, whilst the one in the pictures is the best of a bad bunch. I'll let the pictures tell the story, suffice to say, they go together very easily with Colin Craig's wheels and are nice and free-rolling on the Markits bearings. Plus the wheel sets are now easily removable for e.g. painting. Twist the wheel set to remove the wheel - being careful not to pop the black plastic bush out: Thread the Markits bearings onto the axle: Using a back-to-back gauge, replace the wheel: Drop in the wheel set from below with the bearings in the centre: Slide the bearings into position with a pair of tweezers:

Now that I'm looking for it, I can see the "ripple problem" on the bogies printed in the Y direction too. Have a look at the middle photo (showing the bowing) and look particularly at the area of sprue in the middle of the picture holding the two spare dampers. The right damper shows very bad ripple effect.

My latest order for FUD was also very badly affected with problems that I didn't see on previous prints. It looks similar to the problems that you have shown but the problem didn't appear on every model. I assumed that this is due to print direction but having seen your recent results, I think it might be more to do with problems with the machine. The attached photos show some of the problems. I raised an official complaint with Shapeways and am waiting to hear the result.

Hi Martin, The sound I attached is from the free Zimo SD40 sound project. Presumably the Howes chip that you have is based on the free ESU project (which could sound different/better)? I'm keen to know what you make of the Howes sounds once you have the decoder installed. If they're no good, I've just seen that Digitrains do a 59 sound file for the Loksound which you could get blown on it (although this could also be the SD40 sounds given the description on their website: "Generic sound file for this class using the correct engine type and UK horns etc."). http://www.digitrains.co.uk/ecommerce/dcc-sound/class-59-diesel-loco.aspx Guy

Reviving this thread; I'm not sure that this sounds very much like a 59 (ignoring the horns and bells obviously): http://www.zimo.at/web2010/sound/sd40.mp3 I'm not sure that going with the SD40 sound is all that great an idea. Bif, any progress with getting access? How about the forthcoming "Angel of Bedlam" tour?

Looks great Jon. It's a shame I missed the Tolworth show as I'd have liked to have a look at Hamworthy. Is that a 4TC paired with the 73?

Which edition did you get? The pricing is not obvious from their website for the Pro and Expert versions. The only other thing that puts me off is lack of a Mac version (but I can run it in an VM layer in Windows).

Sheet metal function looks great. I'm watching the Alibre videos at the moment with a view to using it for my JHA. I'm really lacking this feature through using Blender.

The 3D render looks fantastic. What software did you use to render it? All my renders in Blender look rubbish! ;-)

Looking forward to seeing your weathering Chris! I've gone and bought a rake of HHAs to make into JMAs.... dear oh dear. I guess that means I'll have to do the JMA LTF-25 now as well.

Nice repaint Tim. What did you use for the cantrail lining?

Hi Chris, I've just received the fox transfers but I'm really not impressed! Not only are they fuzzy but there are some completely fictitious items included on it that have never appeared on the ARC JHAs (they look like they came from the PGAs). I also hate the way that they provide individual numbers rather than pre-numbered data panels (I'm not that bothered whether I am modelling e.g. wagon 19813 or 19814. Given the cost of them (£15 for 3 wagons worth) and all the issues outlined above, I prefer to do my own.

The Electrostar and Loftus road look great! Olympia is my local station and yes, the dual voltage Electrostars are very much in evidence every day. In fact, I'm off there now to go and catch one to work! How about doing a 378 "Caterpillar" to go with it?

Thanks gents! Jon - No wobbling with the one wagon that I've done so far. Remarkably stable. Just broke my airbrush nozzle so painting has come to a standstill. Working on the (custom) transfers until the new one arrives.

I've been working again on the 3D model and refining it to the next version ready to print: Refinements include: Revised secondary dampers (shown in blue) with extra strengthening (these broke in the first test prints). These also now have their own sprue (shown in green) to try and stop them breaking off during the printing and cleaning process. Spare dampers are also included in case of breakages. New mechanism for inserting the wheelsets. With two Markits brass bushes positioned flanges to the middle on the axle, the axle can be inserted from below. Bushes are then pushed outwards. The missing piece of the bearing housing has also been included so it can be glued in place after the wheels are fitted. These pieces are printed on the spacing sprue between the frames (you can't see the sprue in this view but it's there!). Again, I've included two spares in case of damage or loss. Extra bracing to add strength to the side sub-frames Note: all sprue elements shown in green and included to try and minimise warping during printing. These are easily cut off from the final print.

Yes absolutely - just a question of cost. Maybe I'll have a go at uploading my 3D model of the body to see roughly how much this would cost?

Thanks for the comments! Paul Bartlett has recently posted some photos of the wagons being delivered that show that the colours are probably correct after all: http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/arcjha I guess the wagons are either faded or just dirty in subsequent photos. Colour is very subjective anyway and photographs on film can vary so much in the way that they are exposed and the colour balance used when printing them. Chris - have you tried a spray fade on the NPs? I'm currently modifying the 3D model a bit (make it stronger and prepare it for taking brass bearings). Whilst I'm at it, I'm going to do the NP LTF-25 bogies as a variant and make them available via the Shapeways store. Just a matter of finding a couple of hours spare to tweak the 3D model.

More progress on the LTF-25 bogie and the JHA this month. Back in August, I was offered the chance to acquire 5 scratch-built JHA bodies. This seemed like a good solution in order to get a mini rake of 5 wagons up and running quickly. Colin Craig kindly supplied me with a few more wheelsets at Scaleforum so I've now been able to put the first wagon together with the better pair of my test print bogies. Although the wagon bodies could do with a bit more detailing, rather than go to town on them, I've decided to simply paint, transfer and weather them until I finish my own bodies. The following shots are of the first wagon sprayed with Phoenix paint (ARC mustard & grey). I've assembled and painted enough of Colin's 4mm diameter etched handwheels to do the mini rake of 5 but I want to make sure that the paint job is correct before fitting these. I'm planning to fit Kadees to all vehicles and buffers to the outer vehicles. Finally, I tested fitting in brass bushes as bearings into one of the test printed bogies. I had to drill out the axle holes to 3mm and then inserted the bushes from the front of the bogie. They are a snug fit and the front of the wheel stops them from coming out. They are also fairly free running too. The main faff is fitting the wheels as they both need to come off the axle in order to get them in place. This is a delicate operation but by following a few basic "rules" and the aid of a back to back gauge it can be accomplished quite easily without breaking any of the fine detail. I'm not really happy with the colour of the Phoenix paints: they seem a little bit dark compared to prototype photos. I've linked to a couple of prototype photos below that I've found on the web. Gareth Bayer's shots were taken in the late 90s and the wagons have had a chance to fade and weather down a bit. However, even in the second shot (taken early 90s) the grey looks quite a bit lighter. If anyone has good side-on colour shots of these wagons from the period when they were new then I'd love to see them for a comparison.

They still "ying" though! Still wondering if anyone has tried the Olivia's chip...