railtec-models

Hi there, yes unfortunately they've been out for a while but they will return. If you haven't done so already then if you click on the Notify Me link on a product that is out of stock and pop in your email address, then it'll automatically email you with a link once it does return. Frustratingly, making these requires me to block off several solid hours at a time, as the process is as much of a black art as trying to remotely manoeuvre a delinquent potato through the rush-hour North Circular with a ZX Spectrum. The range will also grow. Meanwhile resource has been slammed refining both conventional 2d and 3d techniques, making the print the best it's ever been and several noticeable notches beyond where it was even after upgrading tech some years ago, as well as the joys of navigating VAT delicacies and rolling up the sleeves to re-write the shopping cart code on the web site. Oh, and still releasing a ton of new product! I genuinely don't think anyone is crazy enough to go to the excruciating lengths to get the variations in typefaces and angles of subtle digits on a single data panel designed per the real thing that maybe only 0.1% of modellers might notice (though it looks amazing in 7mm), and that's just the tip of the iceberg

Hi John, Railtec has had the license for EWS trademarks for some considerable time. A number of the EWS trademarks (incl large beasties) have been available for several years on the web site although the small cab side beasties haven't as yet found their way into a pack on their own. I've done them before on a custom basis and they look great. The larger 3 beastie offerings can be seen here: https://www.railtec-models.com/catalog.php?search_str=3+beasties Is it just the small cab side beasties that are needed @JonKing? To come to a few of the other points above (it's an enormous challenge trying to keep on top of all the various forms of inbound comms and an even bigger one to manage the absolute sheer volume), Custom "orders" or "requests" have never been unavailable, though remember these fall into 2 very different categories: Orders for custom items advertised on the web site, e.g. complete loco pack with your choice of loco number. Templates exist for these so they're pretty straight-forward to turn around. Requests for "can you do..." These are what hammer the emails, IMs, forum tags, Facebook tags & IMs, Whatsapps etc 24/7/365. There was quite a comprehensive behind-the-scenes explanation of what I've created for everybody and its constraints on this very thread (page 17 for me), link here. Yes the contact form on the web site has been pending an overhaul for a good while. As the page says, it's just pending an overhaul and there's no other reason. Just to give a real-world example from the past couple of weeks, much of it has been spent re-writing the shopping cart code (as fun as a week long bout of food poisoning), crunching the numbers for the 2020 Q4 VAT return, and crunching the numbers for the FY20 tax return which requires navigating the ever changing legal landscape. Those have been 3 pretty meaty tasks but in amongst that all the web orders get dispatched normally of course and I've still managed to make available a dozen or so new products for people which didn't exist before. The contacts have piled up more heavily than normal, particularly with more people being at home, but I'll gradually be ploughing through them as and when I'm physically able to get to them.

Ah that's a relief. When I saw LFC I immediately thought of, well, you know, something football related These could be done although IIRC the plate had two accompanying crests, for which I would need perfectly square-on very high res images. Once there some good results can be achieved:

Great minds... 2mm, 4mm and 7mm now available in response to the existing thread: https://www.railtec-models.com/catalog.php?search_str=luggage+trolley 4mm image:

Here's a grab of what the later TOPS variant looks like for the MDVs (pack 4mm-6943). Pack based on useful info and images in the likes of Larkin, Rowland et al in addition to a wide variety of freely available media from around the web.

The accompanying leaflet recommends to avoid MicroSet/Sol, and instead to use soluble PVA in normal tap water. Some modellers have used MicroSet/Sol ok, and others haven't. But really, unless you're bedding in over uneven detail then plain tap water will do the job absolutely fine. Other modellers have sporadically reported success with other softeners but there can be numerous variables behind the methods used from one modeller to the next which will impact the end result (not least how the model was prepared, brand of paint used, method of application etc), so the soluble PVA seems to be the blanket safest bet.

It's no problem at all :>)

Apologies for the brief diversion but the numbers aren't Railtec. Glen & Carol asked me for these but I declined this specific job (in amongst a large number of other jobs) purely for this reason, and also because I understand another large well known manufacturer already did the numbers, so I asked G&C if they minded sourcing them from there.

Hiya John, each Castle plate needs a lot of design and testing as they're all different. Some are getting there but they do take an extraordinary amount of time and specialist skills to get looking right. With the exception of custom work then unless it's showing on the web site then it's not yet fully baked and not available. It'd be easy to quickly bang out something which looks "ok", but it's just not the Railtec way and hopefully people do benefit from me going that extra mile. Whilst I'm here it's perhaps a useful point at which to help folks further understand the constraints and challenges of driving such a hugely niche beast, particularly one which injects 400+ new product lines into the hobby each year, as this may help enlighten some of the more enthusiastic comments that occasionally get made. So for those that wish to know: Due to the utterly colossal volume of incoming emails, IMs, forum tags etc in addition to everything else listed below, it's unfortunately often not feasible to be able to comment on requests for approx time scales of availability of new product, simply because there are numerous moving parts on a daily basis, some of which can come about quite unexpectedly, such as: - Keeping up with new liveries when they are unveiled. These tend to be popular but only for a limited short time. I am fortunate enough to get a quiet heads-up for some of them, but not all. - Largely dropping most things when TOCs/FOCs/govt organisations (who are kind enough to grant licences to reproduce their trademarks so we can all benefit) get in touch to ask for bespoke product such as decals for retirement gifts etc which are usually required within a relatively very short time frame. - Responding to large bulk orders from manufacturers large and small. - Continually having to replenish stock. - Preparing and dispatching the increasing number of web orders for stock items. - An eye-watering amount of R&D and countless tedious test cycles which go into developing new releases. Sure, some are straight-forward, but others can take literally weeks upon weeks of manual labour and fine tuning. This is probably the most time consuming element of Railtec, despite which, there are still 400+ new product lines released each year for everybody. - Researching and developing new techniques, c.f. 3d waterslide and tampo printing. - Preparing for and attending shows (when there are any). - Keeping the web site and other processes compliant with law, new software, etc. - Keeping up-to-date with compliancy around the finer details of HMRC requirements, and even more so now that Railtec has to be VAT registered, keeping on top of and compliant with VAT requirements. - Trying to have a life! (And usually not managing very well). I sometimes get people lecture me, "You have to hire somebody." But if I were to do this in a capacity whereby they would help to drive Railtec: - Quality would risk taking a dip whilst I train them up on what's quite a specialist subject area. In fact running Railtec requires 4 specialist skillsets: Immaculate graphic design with attention to detail that would not even be seen with the naked eye (yes, some people do get the magnifying glass out at the Railtec stand at shows). Knowledge of what's quite a niche subject matter. Web design (incl set-up and admin of back-end database, server-side scripting and shopping cart integration). Knowing how to manipulate both commercial intermediary software and hardware to tweak and hack it to do what I want it to do. Ask a recruiter what it would cost to hire for just one of those skillsets. Preferably I would want to be spared the madness of the world's best graphic designer ringing me up every 3 minutes with a question like, "Steve, what's a class 37?" All of the above are self taught from scratch (my degree was in something completely different), which is why I'm able to offer what I do at the low price I can. - The huge output of new product would diminish for the forseeable. - Prices would increase n-fold, likely way beyond what additional income hired help would generate. That would have to be passed on to everybody else. - Once you've invested a huge amount of resource training somebody up and they get to see all of the little hacks that differentiates your product from all the others even if they have exactly the same set-up, guess what, off they go and set up on their own, not unrealistically in direct competition to the point where any margin becomes negligible and the market (and quality) gets devalued for everybody. - One of the appeals of moving towards a self-employed model was to no longer have the hassle of managing staff and the impact that has, both around stress levels and other areas relating to tax, employment law, workplace pensions etc. Go to any of those corporate management workshops and they'll tell us that the biggest overhead of many organisations is the often non-quantifiable aspect of managing resource, relationships and staff. In terms of hiring in somebody to help with admin, there'd be little point as that only accounts for <10% of what Railtec is. The absolute hugest overhead is going to the nth degree (sometimes bordering on certifiable) to R&D and test new product and techniques. Those who frequent the Railtec Facebook page will frequently see just how tediously laborious some of those test cycles are. But hopefully it's worth it!

4mm & 7mm packs for 08938 just released @tractor_37260Ken: https://www.railtec-models.com/catalog.php?search_str=08938

Spooky as I'm literally just designing a test cycle right now to get the thickness of the black outline looking correct on the ED box. Once I've done that the revised design will be dropped into the mock-up already shown and then it's just a case of printing. Tedious test iterations like this are the lesser-seen (and infiinitely time consuming) side of how most of the days are spent.

I'm reasonably confident it's the white balance in the photos, particularly on the latter inside the shed. In the first photo the background behind ED looks to be distinctly lighter than the black of the cab window surrounds above it. As far as I can gather from the dozen or so photos I have of the loco both in its ED and ML variants, the background was what I could best describe as BR blue. I have a couple of photos in identical positions at Motherwell. In one photo (where I would say the white balance is poor), the badge looks white on black, but in another almost identical photo it's definitely BR blue (or as close as damn it), seen here: My guess is that when it moved to Motherwell, they just painted over the box (or perhaps even just painted out the ED) in the same colour and applied their own ML mark. There's perhaps a better photo of it at Eastfield here: The only question mark I would have is whether the blue box had a thin black outline, but I think opinion could easily be divided on that one (and how prominently that would show at 4mm is negligible anyway). If somebody knows 100% categorically then feel free to chime in. Who knows, maybe even the gentleman who applied it could be reading this! EDIT: I think Eddie is cracked it whilst I was responding. I'm going to amend the ED variant to BR blue with a thin black outline. Nice one Eddie. And people sometimes wonder where all the time goes!

I've just briefly taken it off to revamp it to include both the ED and ML variants on the same 4mm pack, and add the ED version for 7mm too (the 7mm ML version was already available). Here's a sneak preview of what the 4mm now looks like. It'll be available on the web site once it's been scheduled in to a print run. Currently anticipate it being in a few days' time. A classic case of what might seem like a simple loco pack to do, turning into a can of worms to get it looking bang on. Those hand painted ED numbers took some pain staking manual recreation of artwork (and one side has slightly different spacing to the other and a couple of the numerals are thicker on one side), and then there were the ED badges and unique stencil solebar detailing to figure out too. Before you know it that's another 3+ hours of your life gone!

PM sent.

I do pretty much everything myself (design of artwork, web site code, social media, physically making both the 2d and 3d product, development and testing of new concepts, database administration, legal compliance, making the tea and as many other things as humanly possible to keep Railtec in the air) so there's no dependency on any third party etchers for me to do the 3d work. The custom 3d plates have been unavailable since earlier in the year simply because of the continued colossal incoming volume of requests for stock items off the site and particularly for new designs. I will switch that back on at some point, though it does eat up quite a bit of time to research every plate to get the spacing, typeface and even mounting bolts bang on. Ok, 95% of people might be happy with a generic style plate so long as it's the right colour, but that's just not the Railtec way, and if I don't make a design the best it can be then it will irk me. There's an equal argument to say that whenever somebody orders a bunch of custom loco numbers that it is equally labour intensive, as I research every single loco to get the correct number spacing, but I get the sense that if people had to choose at this precise moment in time between "ready made custom loco number of your choice" vs "custom nameplate of your choice", that the former might come out in favour. Specifically in the case of 43188 City of Plymouth, the plate itself wouldn't be too much work, but it does have an accompanying crest (at least at some point in its Intercity career) - and anyone who knows anything about graphic design (as I've discovered since I started Railtec) will tell you that crests can very quickly turn into a huge amount of work - at least to get looking good.

I've done the transfer pack for the ML version for some time, and the ED variant is already in design for somebody else who has also asked for it. The ED version has a few quirky bits on it so it's not as straight-forward as what many people might initially think - at least if you want to get it bang on.

That's part of the story: it's not just the profits that are being donated but the entire proceeds from the sale of the packs.

Not sure if you've emailed in or not about this so I could advise offline, but the accompanying instruction leaflet does recommend PVA to hold them in place, which really should be in sufficient qty in proportion to the size of the plate and the extent to which the model is likely to be handled. Someone would also have to do something pretty extreme to damage them too, so even if one were to become dislodged then it should still be perfectly useable. When I first started exploring the 3d plates a few years ago I just applied one to a test model I have here with plain tap water - and it's still on. Ok, I don't really pick it up that much but if it were being used properly and handled then I would probably use the PVA. The 3d technique has also moved on several iterations since then too. I think it's now on v6. Here's an example of one kindly demonstrated by Alex Roughsedge. (And no bias that I use this particular plate as a reference ).

I totally agree, it's a bit of a corner-case loco but it's what ellocoloco had specifically asked for some time ago so that's what got made. The way in which some of the more niche catalogs (c.f. 3mm and Gauge 1) are created and evolve is based on what people ask for, as it's often not feasible to invest the time needed to start mapping everything from, let's say, the 4mm catalog (which is a few thousand line items strong now) down to HO or 3mm. Whilst sorting 66789 I figured it was a good juncture at which to release the DB logos for locos in HO given the potential for continental rolling stock, so they're also available too. And thanks for the order - it's already on its way.

Nice job. If you're doing more then it may save you time (and sanity) to know that I'll be making a parallel 2mm offering that gives you any EMU set number, matching side vehicle numbers, depot code and data panel already made up: Here's what the 4mm looks like and the 2mm will be the same: https://www.railtec-models.com/showitem.php?id=2251 The set and vehicle numbers can be any colour, the vehicle numbers with/without prefix of choice, and where the set numbers are "quirky", c.f. 309s and 501s then I make them to suit too. The white lining is already available. Just thought it may be of interest as if I have resource to make modellers' lives easier then I will.

It's why I hadn't released the 37 transfers (yet) at the same time as the 47, even though the 47 was more complex to get everything looking bang on, particularly all the ornate detail on the crest. I'll likely still release the spot printed transfers for the 37 for those who still want to go that route, but thought I would make sure I could get the result with the factory tampo method and offer both at the same time, though cost TBD on the latter.

And now for what I believe is a world first.... Just out of China, well, Derbyshire, here's a factory RTR tampo printed version almost there. (This is the loco you sent me Robert and it'll soon be ready to send back to you). Only minor thing needed is to quickly touch in the door step and voilà. Wanted to fire up the tampo machine and try this rather than a transfer, in order to get the factory crisp lines whilst still maintaining their vibrant colours and without any bleed across all the uneven detail like the grilles etc. Even the Police branding has to sit across a protrusion so the tampo method works a treat. The photo was taken on a mobile so not the best quality and I wasn't paying attention to its depth-of-field setting, but at least the lens focus is pretty clear towards the middle of the shot.

Yes, any loco number of your choice made up as one transfer here: https://www.railtec-models.com/showitem.php?id=3123 Spot printed so no superfluous carrier film, the individual loco traced to get the accurate number spacing, and you get a spare. Also the correct size typeface for the loco as they varied (you'll notice that some Res 47 numbers for example are much smaller than others).

I can do custom loco numbering incl Res via the "loco number of choice" offering here: https://www.railtec-models.com/showitem.php?id=3123 I have the typefaces (and licence) for Res bits with most of the loco fleet already on file traced for correct spacing of the numbers. Some of them were obviously smaller than "standard" Res too.

@Steven B is it your intent to spray the stripe or would you prefer a transfer? These are just about ready to go; all I need to do is put them on the web site. Everything correctly sized so that it looks right on the model. Naturally they're spot printed with full vibrant colours and perfect print registration, so there's no superfluous carrier film to cut around (and in fact the lining is completely filmless). What sets Railtec apart? https://www.railtec-models.com/railtec-benefits.php