JCL

It helps differentiates between thyme and ‘Mary J’ - thyme in your brownies aren’t going to have the same effect.

Doctor Who set from the 1980’s?

Off topic but related, but the chairman of the museum of town life in my hometown threw a good proportion of the town’s historical collection in a skip because the items were either duplicates or of no interest to him. He’d already declared his intention and everyone told him he couldn’t, so he did it on a Sunday when the place was empty.

I think it’s safe to say that British copyright law is an absolute mess, and therefore a goldmine for lawyers. I looked into it with @chris p bacon, and the only thing we could say for sure, as Dave has said, is that pre-grouping is ok. Although the photos are out of copyright, other factors can come into play depending on where they come from. These include the fact that the NRM hold a lot of out of copyright images that have restricted use. You would abide by those restrictions to ensure that you can keep accessing their photographic library. Other than that, there’s the whole concept of first published date to get your head around. Finally, location plays a part. This is quite an Interesting read if you’re bored. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Portrait_Gallery_and_Wikimedia_Foundation_copyright_dispute

Hi Martin. It’s a good model to do. I hope you let us know how you get on. cheers Jason

This has been an interesting read. I did have a shop on Shapeways, which I eventually closed down because I didn’t like their pricing or lack of respect for store owners. I used the shop to pay for the prototyping of the next model so that I never offered a model that hadn’t been tested. I’m the one that has been working with Chris P Bacon, and as he says, prototyping is key - you never know if something will work or not until you try it. Depending on tolerances, could be less than a millimetre out with a splasher and not notice until your printed model came back and the wheels don’t turn around. With this in mind, when buying, as long as the price is what I want to pay, I would only buy an STL if - I’d read good things about the designer, - the designer supported their model. For example, if it was found to be inaccurate or didn’t fit the recommended mechanism, they would adjust the model, - I could spin the model around so I can see it from all angles - important for more complex models, especially if I’m thinking of marrying it up to a chassis, - I could see a printed version of the model, - I knew the model was not too big for my printer (my printer isn’t a bad size, but still can’t easily fit in a 6 wheel carriage), - I was able to run more than one print. As anyone with a 3D printer will know, being restricted to a single print wouldn’t fly because there are any number of things that could go wrong - run out of resin, power cut, bad support structure producing a warped print, printer too cold, earth tremor (not likely in the UK, but happens where I am from time to time), forget to put the build plate back in, etc, etc. On the stls, there’s just no way of stopping them from being copied. For my sins, I am in a couple of 3D printing Facebook groups, and I think every month there is a tale of someone selling an STL of a figure which is then uploaded to Thingiverse by the buyer so that it can be given away to others. I’ve read it’s notoriously difficult to get those models taken back down. One thing, I do currently have a much smaller Shapeways shop than before, but only because I was asked if I could make a couple of items available again. I haven’t bothered reuploading the locos that I had on there they wouldn’t pass the current tests and it’s not worth my time checking them and redoing them. All in all, if I was into selling stl files, I’d look at what @oorail is doing.

Hi there, I’ve a different brand that uses a laser. Because it’s a laser, problem that I have is calibration. On the Mars and Saturn is it basically the case that given a good supporting structure, the model is that same size as the drawing?

I listen to your podcasts while I’m running, and they certainly make the run feel shorter! will check to see if this is on Spotify so I can go out tomorrow.

I think it will depend on cost, print speed (related to cost), scalability and quality. The first two are coming down all the time, and the last is going up as you can see from Mike's V2. It wasn't more than a couple of years ago that a body like that would have cost over $1000 to buy (I remember looking at an article back then). You can buy a printer and the resin to print it yourself for less than that now. Scalability I'd say is down to the company - for all their faults, Shapeways has done a good job of scaling up their process.

I’ve learnt something today. I always thought it was nip.

I did a lot when I first moved to the Canadian Rockies, and did the same as pH. A move to Vancouver Island (not so easy to get to the US) and an interest in British GNR kicked in, and stayed with me.

If anyone's interested, I did find this on formaldehyde: https://apps.sepa.org.uk/spripa/Pages/SubstanceInformation.aspx?pid=57 . Sorry it's a bit off-topic, but could be useful if you do start cutting MDF in the future.

I'm sat next to an Emblaser Core at the moment that is slowly engraving a garden sign into slate. I upgraded from Emblaser 1 at the end of last year, and I must admit it's been one of my better decisions. I can cut through the 3mm mdf from 4D Model shops, and thin ply, thicker ply doesn't seem to work for me. I'm incredibly happy indeed Darkly Lab's support - they replaced a part on the Emblaser 1 for free even though the machine was out of warranty - I had to just pay postage. There are a couple of people on here with CO2 laser cutters that love them, but build quality seems to vary, so it's worth talking to CO2 owners about their machines before making a decision. Good luck! -- and with that, 8 1/2 hours of engraving has just finished.

Blender 3D has allows me to write in dimensions to 6 decimal places. It's free, and is a modelling program, but it's got quite the learning curve.

We looked into this at the GNR Society, and came to the same conclusion. There's also a clause that some photos that were out of copyright can, in some cases, have copyright revived. In our case, the photo collection is viewable by members only, and is *generally* 1923 and earlier, so most of them are out of copyright.

No problem Chris. I'm not on here that often to be fair

Good lord, the Old King Lud - I once went to a leaving do there, I'd no idea who was leaving but they had a great buffet as a send-off. https://www.closedpubs.co.uk/london/ec4_fleetstreet_oldkinglud.html

On a slight tangent to the thread title, one thing that's available is Model Railroader Video Plus. It is full of how-to videos, review videos and multi-video layout builds for $45USD p.a. One contributer, Cody Grivno, has built up a following on the channel. I was a subscriber for a while a few years ago, and it was pretty good. I have no idea how well it's working, if at all, but it's an interesting sideline and a seems to be a way of making money from all the videos they have created.

Living in Canada, British magazine worldwide subscription rates are outside my budget, so going digital made a huge difference to me. When I first started subscribing I really didn’t care for digital magazines for the same reason others have mentioned, but I got used to them fairly quickly, and I wouldn’t read them any other way now. I’m on holiday at the moment, and I have my entire collection of BRMs with me for when the rain really starts bucketing down. I find nowadays that I tend read the magazine for inspiration/ armchair modelling, and the internet for ‘how-tos’. That said, I love books. I bought a digital book the other day and I just can’t get into it at all, so I’m going to get and read the tree-based version.

On the different heights, Wainfleet, Lincs used to have a low platform that necessitated the use of a set of steps. Back in the 70’s, my sister fell between the platform and a 1st gen DMU because she stumbled on the step. The opposite platform was higher as it had been built later when the line was doubled. Both platforms are now The same height, with the original station building now slightly below the new platform level.

oh, it’s very easy, believe me. There are a lot of different parts that have to be defined, and I’d say it would be unusual to get everything right the first go. Here’s how I know. It was not the first iteration of the coach, and I’m designing the brake now, which will be even flakier until I get my first test build done. your model is looking fantastic.

An A-W D1 any day of the week, and you only need one to collect the whole fleet.

They look great, I love the work you did on the stained glass. Don't tell Andy @uax6 about the brass, he'll be asking why you didn't use platinum.

Merry Christmas and a happy new year Chris

I've not had a chance to work on the 'carving', but a change in plans means I have been able to have a go at cutting on slate - and it's really easy and satisfying. I used 5mm/sec, 90% and 1 pass. The slate below took about 8 hours, but I worked out a lot of this was inefficiency of the program - the laser goes from the left hand side of the first letter to the right hand side of the last letter, and when you get to, say, the top of the letters in 'Cutting' it traverses between the left of the C to the right of the dot on the i. By splitting this up, there is much less traversal. To get over this, I split the word garden into 'Gar' and 'den', which saved me about an hour. One more thing, I knocked the machine at one point and the slate moved without me realising it. Some sandpaper on the 'den' erased the mistake, and I'm assuming that once I've varnished it the smooth area will disappear (although it's already much less noticeable in real life). Anyway, I'm really pleased with it, as will my wife be in a couple of days when she opens it. I know I'm ok putting this up as there's no chance she'll see it. Merry Christmas.