njee20

No good for any ready to lay track, set track or otherwise! Great software though. 

 Crack on. Give them a really good shake as they may have separated a bit. 

8 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

I think the ebay discounts are only offered to private sellers, not to to businesses.  If it's stuff you make, depending on your sales volume you may be caught by these new rules coming in about reporting to HMRC as they are likely to class that as a business.  What I'm selling is things I am thinning out from my collection or no longer need which I understand doesn't count as a business although if the total value is too high they might question whether I was a trader.

Yes, I know, I’m not a business, I’m not exceeding the trading limit, which isn’t new. We’ve done that bit to death, they’re not looking for people who happen to sell £1100 of stuff in a year. The overwhelming majority of my sales is also just thinning out the collection. 

Intriguing. Would be fascinating to know what the parameters are in their algorithm. I’d say I do exactly the same, I certainly don’t list things ordinarily except for a few perpetual listings (of stuff I make, so I can just keep topping up quantities). Long may the 80% discount last!

6 hours ago, andyman7 said:

I get 70% off. None of us will be privy to the algorithms but I suspect it's more nuanced than that. As an inveterate collector of things, ebay was godsend for offloading stuff so that I didn't end up getting buried in my own junk a la those hoarder programmes. However, I'm experienced enough to know what to sell, how to describe it and actually move it on, so my 'conversion rate' of listings to sales is pretty high - that might be a factor. Another is value - if someone sells lots of items in the £20 range, the 'system' might point to 80% fees - if you sell more £80 items it might favour 70% off. Or maybe the other way round....

 

Similarly the so-called 'coveted' £1 max fees isn't much cop if you're selling a wagon for £8, in which case a % off is much more useful. All I can say is compared to the days when a friendly dealer would give you half value on anything you had surplus, ebay fees with selling promotions are still well worth it for the amount they take and the market size they reach.

Couldn’t agree more, was idle curiosity more than anything. I never understand people bemoaning eBay fees; the market you can access they’re superb. I typically sell 3-5 items a month, so low volumes, which typically equates to £3-500 a month, just hadn’t heard of 70% off offers.   

Interesting! Presumably you sell a lot? 

The actual level of discount does still vary, and it seems some occasional sellers still get the much coveted £1 fees offer. I only ever get 80% off fees, which is still worth having, as said that's live right now.

Will it have those side windows? They'll complicate the insulation, and you probably don't want the layout to have too much direct sunlight. It's also a hybrid shed/summerhouse, which presumably includes internal partitioning. I'm sure it won't be a problem to omit, but you have extra doors you don't need. It's advertised as being 10' internal too? With a 4' porch.

6 hours ago, daz9284 said:

Hope they don't leave the discs brown, as they should be silver/ clean

Depends, they rust rapidly once the wagons are stationary! I would assume most would prefer polished though. 

As has been said… it’ll never be ‘complete’. There is no standardisation. You can have a template for yourself, and remap all of your decoders, but that’s just yours. Then you’ll find some projects have 4 different horns, whilst others have more announcements, or bird song, or toilets flushing or whatever. 

I was going to say all of that but I had no clue didn’t have time to type it all 🤪

Insightful as ever, Jo!

I think what you want is important here (as you’ve alluded to in your second post), because that’s not what I’d build in the space. I have to agree that only having capacity for one train moving feels remiss in the space, but it’s your layout.  

Genesee & Wyoming, rather than the other way around, but yes to the rest of it. 

Yes, of course most would argue that for literally any aspect of N versus 2FS, that it’ll work fine, but won’t look as good. Just wasn’t sure if I was missing something there. The long gap at the crossing nose does make sense. 

27 minutes ago, CF MRC said:

They are exceedingly long. Take a look at the turnout that starts under Silver Fox. 

 

Tim

That doesn’t look that long, I’d need to remind myself, but the crossover I built is about 800mm. Using the well known A4 unit of measurement that looks to be about 1.5 - 2 A4s? I’m genuinely curious why 2mm FS is thought to be a necessity on longer turnouts, doesn’t make sense to me. I realise Keith won’t be answering, so no drama if you don’t know why he’d have thought that. 

On 03/12/2023 at 20:30, Adam1701D said:

I'm afraid it is too late to change the model choices, as these are locked in and pre-orders have been taken.

 

There will be a retailer's special in EWS and another in EWS International, which will be announced in due course.

That’s a shame, as it had the lifting eyes at a different angle to the other 249 EWS ones! Given you’ve gone to effort of retooling surely telling retailers the running number has changed on a model which is still probably a year away isn’t impossible? 001 and 002 also had maroon body side grills on delivery, although they didn’t last that way. May be a bit like the FGW mk3 roofs, where doing them wrong will look better!

On 28/01/2024 at 17:08, CF MRC said:

It really doesn’t matter what the difference is in the trackwork between 2mm FS and N gauge, it’s the overall ambience of a layout that matters.  However, when Keith Armes made the mainline crossovers from a scaled up prototype track plan, he remarked that they were the longest turnouts he had ever made. They could not work with N gauge standards. 
 

Tim

Why not, out of interest? I’ve just built an F20 crossover to N gauge standards. It’s not particularly good, but that’s entirely my skill and not the standards adopted! I don’t know how long the crossovers are on CF, but I don’t recall seeing anything particularly long?

8 hours ago, Camps Junction said:

It’s only 3 if you look not 4 also there going to the fiddle yard, , The curves at top left are 3ft to do 90 degrees, As said this is not done there is a stone quarry/yard bottom left to go in also a double steel bridge just before stone yard, Plus bottom right the bridge will be going over a river/gully, As for a lot in one place it’s about bounds green yard that I lived opposite as a child. Thanks Drew

Ok, it’s 3 lines, but you show the 4th just stopping? Again you’ve got a really tight curve there into the fiddle yard. At one point you were talking about a helix, presumably that’s off the cards?

that curve at the top left is less than 12” on the inside track, given the grid it’s easy to see it’s nothing like 3’, although it could be, and would look better. 
 

It’s a great plan - just needs a bit of finessing. Stuff like that will ruin a great layout if you find it doesn’t actually work in practice. Like Phil though, I’m assuming you actually want the feedback…

You can resin print track bases (we’ve discussed that on Hayfield’s thread I’m sure), but obviously Martin is pushing ‘plug track’ utilising both, and the stability and build volume from an FDM base will be advantageous. 
 

I’ve got an Elegoo Neptune (because I had a Saturn/Mars/Mars 2 and the brand was a known quantity), and it’s been a good printer. Sorely tempted by a Bambu P1P.  

Bigger resin printer needed then. The Saturn 3, or a Saturn 2 (if you can still get one) are superb. or print in two pieces and join. 
 

much like with resin orientation matters, printing a roof vertically would probably help alleviate the stepping, but would cause other problems with likely warping along the length. There is no panacea, but I wouldn’t be using any FDM printer to print roofs. 

More words may help here, I have no idea what you’re talking about… just print roofs in resin. 

Here’s a shark I (FDM) printed this morning for my son’s school project, you can see it looks like a contour map on the gentle curving upper. It’s about 9cm long FWIW.

Chassis yes, definitely. Things like roofs not ideal IMO (assuming you mean rolling stock), the gentle curve just accentuates the ‘contour lines’ you get from the layers. It doesn’t sand particularly well either, much harder than resin.  

Why condense all 4 running lines into a single one at the fiddle yard entrance? That just seems to create a bottleneck. 
 

Those curves top left seem tight given the huge amount of space you have, making them much more gentle would pay dividends. 
 

I don’t quite understand why you’re trying to fit all the ‘interest’ into 2 sides, then have 2 sides which are just totally plain track. Why not try and open the whole plan up a bit? You’ll still have time for trains in the scenery. 

No, he’s talking FDM. Possibly not the most helpful of title. 
 

- stability: superb, no long term changes

- shrinkage/warping: negligible, yes a coach chassis will stay straight indefinitely. Nothing like resin. 

- gluing: just about anything - CA works fine

- holes: depends on the printer/nozzle. Nothing close to resin, and honestly I’ve never tested a minimum, so I’d not like to say definitively. Most printers come with a 0.4mm nozzle, I’d not expect accuracy below 1mm

-brittleness: depends on the material, the orientation has a marked impact on strength, as the layer orientation is always a source of weakness, nothing close to resin though. Materials like TPU are like rubber. The ‘standard’ PLA is still a step change from resins. 

They’re both useful tools in the arsenal. For railway modelling I use my resin printers 95% of the time, but for stuff around the house, FDM is much more useful.

Some of the newer printers, notably Bambu Labs, are blurring the lines between FDM and resin, I keep being tempted. Of course print volumes are usually bigger too. There are plenty of 500x500mm printers.   

In the process of re-liverying a Revolution Pendolino into 121, the 'climate change' one, so any more photos of that one always welcome 😀

Particularly struggling for decent side-on photos of coach C/D/G/H (similar designs) if anyone's photting!