Vistisen

On 20/12/2023 at 17:29, AY Mod said:

 

One of those skips appears to be upside down.

I've never seen a skip with a vinyl base!

On 12/12/2023 at 23:29, Titan said:

 

So you're a waffle man!

Plenty of waffle in this thread

On 16/12/2023 at 23:46, Hroth said:

 

Its finished?

Hurrah!!!

 

(I see Corrie beat Eastenders, which has to count for something...)

 

Is what finished?

On 07/12/2023 at 02:32, kevinlms said:

Conveniently ignoring the fact that PSTN lines were never guaranteed to be 100% reliable either. The exchange may have had batteries (how good were BT at maintaining batteries in latter years?), but the street cabling had 1000s of guys keeping them working.

Not to mention the risk of cables being dug up. 

11 hours ago, hayfield said:

 

Ian

 

The timbers on which the first two slide chairs sit on have protrusions/guide strips which hold a slide bar between the base and these strips. a slide plate can be fixed to the switch rails using wire. Its up to the builder to decide how to move the slide bar . A piece of card with ballast stuck to it will cover the slide bar , 

 

Edit

Martin has come to my rescue with a diagram, as usual a well thought out method by Martin

 

Please remember its an experimental method which is starting to take shape, anyone thinking of using it should check the machines which are being used by the group, these are ones trialed by Martin and known to work, including the Alkaid which is the cheapest resin printer on the market and under £90

 

I am about to bite the bullet and try and build a 3D printed point, it can't be worse than my first attempts at handbuilt points. I plan on using this point motor:  https://makeitminiature.bigcartel.com/product/single-switch-turnout-actuator. I have a resin printer and hope that Santa knows a bit about FDM printers. Who knows whether it would be possible to get Martin and James to agree on th standard attachmet method so that track bases are fixed to the pointmotor, and can be mounted in place as a single unit... That would be billiant. 

7 hours ago, hayfield said:

 

 

Jol

 

Thanks for the post, I totally agree with you its not for everyone, but firstly these jigs are only available to members and can easily be resold at near or more face value, To buy the 3 jigs I have it would now cost over £100 to buy them and the switch rail jig is more or less unusable, or very difficult to get on with. I find the Fast track jig much easier to use and works with flatbotten track from code 75 to 100. They are limited to one crossing angle and whilst designed for flatbottom rail works fine with code 75 bull head

 

However after seeing the results at Scaleforum  I now have both a FDM and resin machines. at a cost of a modern 4mm scale top of the range loco

 

I have only just started to use the FDM machine, but the learning curve is very low and the results are way beyond my expectations. I have just printed and used one of the switch rail jigs, cost about £2 and a couple of nuts and bolts

 

 

 

Its starting to pay me back instantly, I have one of the prototype filing jigs from 2 years ago and its still working well, I accept your argument but the Templot Plug track gives the average modeler the ability to build turnouts to the same high quality as the best track builders, in some cases with even more detail

 

But why stop at track building (once you have finished building the track) obtain files for other items !! 

I have what might be a silly question.  Are the filling jigs one use, throw away items? Surely when filing a rail which is metal with a metal file the plastic is too soft. I would expect the file to grate the plastic like a piece of parmesan cheese 

2 hours ago, airnimal said:

I believe this gentleman is a politician who values see through policies. 

That's what some of my 3d prints look like as well

Going off at a tangent, which has never happened before om RMWeb, One of my son’s friends was taking his driving test in Denmark where the test is run by the police. The car in front did a hit and run on a cyclist, The uniformed police officer then uttered the immortal words “Follow that car, don’t worry about the speed limit. At the next set of traffic lights (which were red) stop in front of him at an angle” He passed his test!

15 hours ago, David Bigcheeseplant said:

Those people like me who have a resin printer but not a FDM one it might be looking at local companies who can print your files, there is a company less than a mile from me who will do it so I am going to get a quote rather than investing in a machine,

I suspect that you may soon change your mind. I am still new to this 3D reason printing. I started off using my son’s printer, but soon found that even though it was free for me. The turnaround time from trying a print, waiting for the post ( or a 200 mile drive), discovering that I need to tweak the result meant that I soon bought a 3D resin printer. I have absolutely no experience of FDM printing. But I imagine that it is somewhat easier, With resin prints I often find that I need to tweak the supports, and change printer burn settings to match the items I am trying to print. I also find that printing 6 identical items, sometimes result I 5 that are fine and one that for some reason fails. It is no problem to just try again.

I imagine that if you use a commercial supplier then you are at their mercy as far as what setttings, resin and so on they use. Who pays for failed prints?

Hi  I bought a resin printer a few months ago. One of the things that you have to get used to is washing and curing your prints.  This takes some time. I bought a one of these https://www.elegoo.com/products/washing-and-curing-station-v2-0 to do that job, and it saves a lot of mess and time spent breathing fumes while cleaning small items

4 hours ago, whart57 said:

In the Netherlands bikes from at least the 1930s on had something called terug-trap which translates as back-pedal for braking. You can free wheel but if you pedal backwards you apply a small drum brake inside the backwheel axle. There are still bikes around with that today and it was certainly still standard on the ordinary go-to-the-shops sort of push bike in the 1990s. Never seen them in England though, which made the bikes my mum and dad brought over with them in 1955 somewhat unique.

The same thing is true in Denmark.  The lack of brakingpower is quite frightening. They only make sense in countries where they are separate cyclelanes. Since bikes with only this type of brake have the same stopping distance as a supertanker. Even more worrying when you consider they can be used for transporting quite heavy loads:

On 18/11/2023 at 12:44, Flying Pig said:

 

Good luck with that 😁

It seems to have turned into a what I don't wish list. That is much more original. 

3 minutes ago, hayfield said:

 

Vistisen

 

James Walters has produced 2 videos and there are some interesting posts regarding using the system, it is really a big step forward in track building as it has made the build process so very simple, whilst keeping the standard of detail so high.

 

It might not seem it but I am chumping at the bit to get some chairs printed,

Hi Hayfield

I have already seen one of the videos, James Walters has a lot of amazing videos, and his point motors are billiant. I am planning to try and use them on the points that I hope to build soon. Although 'soon' i always relative!

This is really interesting. I last used Templot several years ago, and still need to build about 6 turnouts fpor my current layout. I will have a go at doing these as 3Dprints. But I will need to do a bit of studying first to see how to do this. Time to start reading threads in the templot club.

On 17/11/2023 at 21:48, TheSignalEngineer said:

Railways need to be in a continual learning mode. We found out things the hard way, newcomers often don't learn the history of why and wherefore and will repeat the mistakes.

At 18 years old I was confronted by the sight of an AM4 unit on its side with Fire Brigade and doctors climbing over it to get to the injured and to recover the dead. Causes - (i) not understanding the reason for the normal  lie of a set of points when designing a resignalling scheme,  lesson never forgotten in my whole career,

(ii) not applying the rules correctly during shunting movements on the main line after control had been transferred to the power box.

Not long after I was working in Crewe Works when the wrecked AL1 loco from Hixon was bought in. The job of recovering the bodies of the crew was considered too bad for railwaymen to carry out and was done by specially recruited contractors behind closed doors at night. We didn't actually see to loco until the front end had been cut off and taken away. More lessons learned about level crossing protection, pity users don't learn some pof their own.

20 years later - Clapham. I had just spent three 12-hour night shifts supervising and testing on exactly the same type of work as was the final nail in the chain of events there. You have to look back on the run up to the event. We had five years of consecutive cuts and reorganisations in signalling projects. I got out of the design part of the chain when I was publically criticised in front of staff by a very senior figure within BR for wasting time and money in doing the job in the way that myself and others had evolved over years of hands on experience of all steps in the process. We knew what worked safely and efficiently from bitter experiences on previous jobs.

When things based on experience get torn up and history repeats itself and more stringent rules than before are applied. I spent the next two years of my career re-inventing instructions that had been thrown away by senior management in those five years. Some of the rules introduced in design were exactly the process I was chastised by management for doing a couple of years earlier.

 

A lot were thrown away in privatisation and re-invented again. Some of the NR rules on developing and managing signalling projects were a straight crib from a document of mine written in the 1979-80 but thrown away by Railtrack c1995.

 

Back to the topic, too many volunteer organisations run on fag packet recording, decisions being made on-th-hoof by a small clique who don't like newcomers. Things get ignored like abuse and bullying by those who see it as their personal pet. Eventually someone has to take control of the situation. It isn't pleasant for either side when it's happening but it can't be left to fester or bigger problems will follow. As an official of a sports club I had to expel one member due to stalking and harrassment complaints against him, and more recently had to investigate some bad blood between two plot holders at the allotment site. In that instance it was more a case of banging heads together and telling them grow up. 

Very well written post.  In my own personal experience, it is when one of the heads that needs 'banging together' belongs to me, that it is vital that I trust and respect the person doing the act.  Respect and trust between management and workers is vital in any workplace of any size. The smallish company I work in has mastered this. Two days ago, we were merged into a much larger company rather than being a self-governing daughter company. It will be interesting to see whether we can keep the same ethos. I do hope so.

6 hours ago, JZ said:

Alternatively, it's where you go after here.

This sign is at the station. It would translate to english freight customer service

On 09/11/2023 at 17:31, hayfield said:

 

Keith

 

Thank you, but I am not alone. There is a small group in Templot club who have offered me assistance and I brought this machine as Martin has the same one and has offered to assist me with both setting it up and more importantly getting the files in working order.

 

As a last resort one of our neighbours both (husband and wife) are designers at Fords, apparently they have recently brought a 3D printer

 

My plan is first to print a 4mm turnout, then a 7mm one. Finally I want a small test track which can be used to demonstrate the system.

 

What I have not mentioned is that Martin has developed/is developing plain Flexitrack for the system

 

As for the resin printer do watch James's video

I'm the other way round. I have already bought a resin printer and begun to produce windows with it for scratch-built buildings. But trackbeds will not print well on a resin printer. As far as I can work out, the larger the base area is (and therefore larger track sections), the more difficult it is to get a flat level baseplate. I have an Elegoo Mars3pro resin pinter which I am very pleased with. and I also bought a Elegoo Mercury Plus wash and cure station.  Which makes the whole process og cleaning the resin prints much easier. I am thinking that an Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro might be tne next thing to get.  It has auto base leveling, which I hope will save alot of hassle

21 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

Even taking into consideration different formats such as vinyl, cassette, CD, download, etc. it always makes me wonder why someone who buys an album like Dark Side Of The Moon didn't buy it decades ago!

I think that there is also a gowing market for these 'classic' albums amoungst younger music lovers, who realize that autotune and quantization have destroyed all that is worth hearing in music. They are buying them for the first time. Almost all new music is created / repaired on a computer. I have two sons who are scratching a living as professional musicians. Both I am pleased to say, perform live and in the studio with no use of klik tracks, or pitch correction. Their music is vibrant and living as a result. No recording company will touch them because they spend too many hours getting things right, rather than fixing them in software. The eldest lad’s band was invited over to record in Abbey Road by a Danish student producer there who used them as a project in his studies. That was an amazing experience, and the result was brilliant (OK I’m not totally objective). But they did make Abbey Road history, they recorded the first Danish Language songs in the studio’s history.

39 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

Just print a fly on the porcelain, there's not a man alive that can resist that.  Got a real fly in mid air 'mid stream' once, one of the most ridiculously satisfying moments of my life* but there were no witnesses to be amazed at my accuracy...

 

 

*Feel free to make judgements on the subject of how generally satisfying my life has been on the basis of this zenith.  'ked his day up, though!

Was the fly anywhere close to the urinal?

39 minutes ago, CameronL said:

It's probably about -

250 pages of jokes

50 pages of funny replies to jokes

100 pages of unfunny replies to jokes

100 pages of political digression

100 pages of historical digression

100 pages of other general digression

50 pages of postings saying "I thought this was supposed to be the Jokes thread."

20 pages of repeated jokes 

20 pages of posts saying "Didn't we see that joke on page ...?"

40 pages of posts that were put on the thread by mistake.

40 pages of  apologies for posting on the wrong thread

50 pages of random pictures of trains

 

I wonder how long it will be before some rivet counter posts to say that lot doesn't add up to 900.

 

That's more than 900 well done for the white text! I salute you, sir

On 06/09/2023 at 17:39, Captain Kernow said:

I wasn't going to bite, but I will anyway.

 

You may well find it 'easy', 'not difficult' etc., but for some of us, any kind of computer software that goes beyond the very basics of Microsoft Word is an inaccessible country. As far as I am concerned, it's an 'avenue of model creation' that has a 'No Entry' sign at the entrance.

 

And yes, I am at the older end of the spectrum. I'm sure there are some 'old dogs' out there, who are capable and willing to learn new tricks, but there are equally some who cannot (and not for want of trying at one time, either). I am also very happy to buy the products of such new technology from those that do it commercially, just as I was when etched brass kits started appearing.

 

I'm sure you and others who are expert in this new technology enjoy what you do and I certainly am prepared to admire the results of your labours, but to glibly say that such technology is 'accessible and easy' is certainly not the case for many of us.

 

I might as well try learning how to design and build a new Hadron Collider...

 

I quite agree that it not for all. But I would say exactly the same thing about building a white metal kit. It is totally beyond me. More positively I would have said the same thing about building my own points a few years back. But now I have hand-built points on my layout... and some of them work really well.  I have actually just ordered a Elegoo 3D printer. I started designing windows and door and balustrades for a model of a large country house.  To be honest I would say that if I can master learning to useTEMPLOT to design points, then Fusion360 to design 3d object is also possible. WHo knows where it will lead me.

For a few weeks I have been playing around with FUSION360 to produce Windows for a model of Hatch Court. I am lucky enough to have a son who is a professional 3D designer and up to now I have used his printer. But he lives about 200 miles away, which does make trial and error printing a very slow process. I can see that this is going to be something I will use more in the future. So, I have just taken the plunge and ordered an Elegoo Mars 3 pro printer and an Elegoo Mercury Wash and cure station. Up to now I have been using his Anycubic Eco Resin as the printing material. Does anyone have suggestions about using alternative resins for strength/rigidity? and what about painting? Do I need to prime models first, and what sorts of paint are best acrylics or enamels? Will they damage the plastic? 

5 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

This is very bad electoral practice, as there will always be a number of voters who will vote 'yes' because they think it is the more positive response.  A referendum on a devolved parliament in Wales in the 70s was set up so that a 'yes' vote was against the proposal and a 'no' for it; the proposal was rejected by a significant enough majority to suggest that this gerrymandering had not affected the result, but even so it was very bad practice.  Referendum or any other voting should always be 'for' this or alternatively 'for' that, signified by an X entered in the appropriate box.  Many modern elections are decided on quite small majorities and bad practice of this wor can genuinely swing results and mar the validity of the vote.

Reminds me of this classic clip: 

On 15/08/2023 at 19:40, The Johnster said:

Not sure about a butterfly impression, but I do flap about a lot I'm told...

It is you who is responsible for all those storms! Stop flapping.

23 hours ago, Michael Crofts said:

I thought this was a really clever use of different shapes and textures for a scenic break, and really good forced perspective in the view through the arch, also clever spot lighting there, I've not seen that before. The cranes painted on the backscene are very convincing but perhaps some of the other colours are a bit questionable - I'm really not sure about that phone box. The curve's too sharp of course but can't be helped given the constraints of space. I think they were pushing their luck with the name on the business under the arch. I've never liked humorous names on models, it spoils the illusion. 

 

Entrance to Swansea Docks (station apparently to the right). From a Facebook group, borrowed from somewhere else, no details of photographer, no hits on Google Lens. 

For goodness sake, how hard can it be to make sure your figures are glued upright, rather than sloping in two dimensions. Especially with his center of gravity!