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Pete the Elaner

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Everything posted by Pete the Elaner

  1. Look for images of 90136 then 90036 in its Sybic livery. Although the red on the sector logo stayed red, the "Railfreight Distribution" branding on the lower bodyside faded from red to yellow.
  2. Nice to see I was driving the banker properly too: Stopping short of the train before moving forward to couple up (or in this case, connect). 😁
  3. I don't remember seeing any locos in Swallow with light grey. I have found a couple of photos of 87031 with the Italic Intercity branding with yellow ends (but no wrap around) & light grey but no swallow logo. But I would not be bold enough to state that no locos ever ran like it. Exceptions are the 43s & 91s which had both silver white on the lower side of the nose end & light grey on the lower side at the coach end.
  4. It is not problem free, but layouts rarely are. The problems were manageable though. We were able to keep things running. There are plenty of things going on around the layout besides trains moving so having Paul or Gordon interacting with the viewers was very helpful & I am sure both enjoyed it as much as those viewing it.
  5. Tomorrow lunchtime? I thought today is Wednesday, or have I slept an entire day?
  6. I recall that CMX recommend cutting material from an old pair of corduroy jeans, but they seem to be out of fashion now & I have not seen any for years. There must be another material with similar properties?
  7. Re-sizing is quite a simple function with Sketchup but I cannot import a .stl file with the free version.
  8. Their status page is the most informative of any manufacturer too. I can understand them not wanting to over-commit by promising delivery dates. There are things outside their control which can go wrong.
  9. That seems to be common across manufacturers. We don't know who the assembly company in China is. Some may be shared across manufacturers, others may not. They may well be used to adding plenty of lube because another manufacturer has asked for this because some of their previous models sat around on shelves for several months drying out.
  10. Did you have anything in mind when you bought the printer? They are ideal for detailing parts for both trains & buildings, which is exactly what I bought mine for & I am happy with it. Designing complete wagons or locos for printing is very advanced. This is why those who can design them usually sell their work for more than it costs to buy a similar model ready to run. You are unlikely to find an stl file for a complete model because so much work goes into creating it, that the creator will not want to be giving away their hard work for free. Items are available as stl files from such places as Thingyverse, but browsing here will make you realise how personal many items are & therefore less useful to somebody else.
  11. If you can't get OEM parts, things like these are ideal for 3d printing. Unlike entire bodies for locos or wagons (which can take days or weeks to get right after you have learned the basics), small fittings like these are a good way to start 3d design & they are small enough that a batch of 50+ takes no longer than doing 1 set. I made some MU fittings for class 86/87 but have not fitted them yet so cannot show a photo. I will need to make the pipes themselves separately though, but wire should be ok for this.
  12. I would expect that. A generic sound file could well have been compiled before a model is available & in the case of a 37, you could choose to fit it to an Accurascale, Hornby, ViTrains or Bachmann one. These have different lighting options. Using Bachmann's as an example, it has gone from having front lighting only to front & rear together, then separately operated front & rear, then with an extra high intensity light, then with extra lighting like cab & engine room. These are too new to be standardised so manufacturers will have gone about enabling them in different ways, especially when they are both working on them separately & concurrently. The project will need to work differently to enable them, which is why the DIP switches are there.
  13. I guess you don't have the artwork ready? Do you realise just how long the design process takes? It took me 12 hours to design some chimneys then another 8 to adjust my artwork after I was disappointed with my first attempt. That was 20 hours just for a set of chimneys. It takes less time for somebody more experienced but it is still not a quick job. I spoke to somebody at a show who was selling 3d printed coaches & he said that with practise, he had got the time to 1 day for each new design. I would be happy to print something from an .stl but creating the artwork for an item of rolling stock is well beyond me.
  14. APT-E was an experiment to evaluate high speed running, for wheel/track reaction, Hydro-Kinetic braking & most visably, tilting. Turbines were used because traditional diesel engines lacked the required power:weight ratio to meet requirements.
  15. Exactly. It was standard practise to use a 2 digit date format to identify the year & many systems would have mistaken 2000 for 1972. Many programs had to be re-written with a 4 digit year format. In house programs needed manually reviewing & bought applications needed to be checked for compliancy, which in many cases meant updating them. The hoax was that things like microwaves & toasters would just stop working.
  16. My Dremel 8000 has a 12v battery. I can't imagine a 4v battery supplying 3x the current, so the Dremel will almost certainly be more powerful. Unlike cheaper (full size) drills I have owned in the past, the Dremel does not lose power as the battery discharges; it gives full performance then stops completely. But for £12, the Aldi one is surely worth a go?
  17. The BW one is very fragile. Hornby have made 4 'standard' ones: A grossly overscale one, a plastic one moulded permanently in the down position, a flimsy plastic sprung one, now an improved plastic poseable non-sprung one. I guess they decided that making a decent one which would not break inside 5 minutes when used like a toy was not achievable. The along came Bachmann.... The one on the new APT is terrible & will not even stay partially up. The base on the 91 is narrower than the ones used on class 86/90 or 87, so the options are limited. Hurst models made a brass kit of one but I believe they do not trade any more and I am sure they have no pantographs left.
  18. Many villages grew around their railways so, other than duplicate lines, they will not be in the wrong place. Rebuilding an abandoned railway does not require any route re-planning & consultation or purchasing of land & buildings on the route, so it is very much cheaper than creating a new route.
  19. This sounds like a complication. Is a Loksound DCC similar to the v5 equivalent of a v4 Loksound Select, which can only be re-blown by projects compiled specifically for a Select? I am considering a reblow of my AS Class 37 (which I assume is a Loksound DCC). Will this be possible?
  20. Beckenham & West Wickham club. Their Chairman was (& still is) Greg Marshall. Certainly not an "old 'un" but a very active modeller & I felt he portrayed our hobby very positively. I may be biased with that though, because I know Greg & we get on very well.
  21. Are you sure about that? I just looked up Zephyr Express on Digitrax's website & the manual shows a USB port on the back. It says it can be "used as an interface for other compatible layout control software", so JMRI should not be blocked. I second Nigel's comment. JMRI is great for so much more than function mapping. It has made itself my 'go to' for any changing any settings.
  22. No, because they are rarely, if ever, on the end of a train. They are either coupled nose to nose or top & tailed.
  23. You are free to get up an hour earlier. Quite a lot of people do things like shopping, running, cycling at 9am. That is not excessively early but would be dark in December if we used BST. GMT is not a solution to a problem. It is the UK's native time & existed long before BST. Working hours were based on GMT but this was considered wasteful in the summer as I explained earlier. BST is the bodge, not GMT.
  24. Not just light. The daily thermal cycle lags behind daylight & it is usually coldest at dawn. It takes a while for the sunlight to warm the place up again. When it gets frosty, UTC means the frost thaws an hour 'earlier' which is an advantage when going anywhere.
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