ChrisH-UK

Are there any requirements you would place on designs such as number of parts, or wall thicknesses? I have a set of test detail parts (test as in will they work, will they look ok, will cosmetic flanges break off as the parts are applied to the model etc) that I was getting ready to send to Shapeways or i.Materialise when they both changed their price models which made that kind of test totally impractical. Parts have been sprued, gridboxed or joined together to meet their requirements. Thanks Chris H

86/0 then 86/3 and 4 had the same system as the class 87 for multiple working, this predated TDM through the coach's RCH cables by around a decade. There are photos out there that at first glance appear to be a pair of 87s or a pair of 86s that are in fact one of each but I can't say I've seen a ton of them.

In answer to 3, the 47/7 started being redeployed as soon as they started running down the service, I think dates for certain locos have been given in threads, my recollection is that most were gone by July 1990. After the summer timetables ended at the beginning of September, with the exception of rescues and the Fife Circle, I do not recall there being any booked loco-hauled workings until the summer of 1991, which was mainly the Inverness-Aberdeen and also the Kyle Line as you suggested. I believe there were others but I don't remember the specifics. I remember 92 and 93 as being a mini renaissance in Scotland with the addition of loco-hauled services from Inverness and Aberdeen to Edinburgh and on the West Highland line. Details of the 1991 services were printed in an issue of RAIL, I'll see if I can dig it out but the chances are someone else will have the details before me, they probably exist for subsequent years too, I just remember the 'fanfare' that accompanied the 1991 services was bigger and have a clear image of what I'm looking for. Chris H

As nothing more than a footnote, one of the "Platform 5" books listed 413 in Mainline, I think it was 1990, all the evidence has it going from Large Logo into RfD. Was it a typo during book production or was it planned to be repainted into ML but the order was changed? We may never know.

We're coming at this from opposite ends. The point I was making is that numerous reputable sellers do not take paypal. But lets get back to the real purpose of this thread before we have to have a Mk3 version.

I have far too many bits boxes and ziploc bags and small plastic tubs. One thing I've done in order to stop the chaos going even further is to use the card boxes (like the ones that cake companies use to try and make you think their cake bars are bigger than they really are) and store all the parts for a wagon or a track machine project in its' own box. In the past I've bought a box for holding 30 cotton reels and used it for bits and bobs, it was contoured for the reels which has the advantage that there are less corners for small parts to get stuck in and you can use the curved side to slide the small part up to grab it easier.

To me the lack of paypal isn't particularly meaningful, recently I was shopping online for a couple of wagons that I planned to buy using paypal, checked many online stores including some well known names and found that only about half of them took paypal. IIRC even a few of them that sell things on ebay (therefore requiring paypal at the moment) didn't have it in their website checkout process.

I think this is one of those "it depends" questions. In this case on your physical abilities, the logistics of your house, (doorways and corners, changes in levels) can you mount the board on a rolling frame and move it that way or do plan to lift and carry a decorated baseboard. Chris H

I was given the details of 3 formations from late 89 and early 90, two of the three were BSK, TSO x3, CK, CK, TSO x3, BSK, the third was 90% the same, just missing one of the BSKs, I have no clue where the piece of paper I was given ended up though. A friend who commuted on the line also said on an average day one turn was worked by an 85 and one by an 86, I had thought it was more than two trains a day each way, but by 1990 maybe not.

One of the elsewheres referenced in Fat Controller's post would be Larbert (between Falkirk and Stirling) here's a picture of a similar train in a different location https://www.flickr.com/photos/neil_harvey_railway_photos/27298259696/in/photolist-m9tkfr-HAfHxW-bV5hWC-5MR8JM-Q869sq

Or not, Mk1 were released from the Cobbler services to Old Oak, presumably they were in a better state of repair?

Yeah, don't believe the 2 item thing, you add "any scale" and you get all the items. That style of listing things is also part of what's considered a modern website (IMHO only by the people trying to earn a living from website design) so be prepared to see it more while hoping it'll disappear quicker than it loads to be replaced by some other "marmite" method.

What kind of parts on drainpipes? I've seen a lot of great looking detail made from various thicknesses of foam which requires skill and dexterity (and probably a bit of trial and plenty of error) rather than tech. I'm not sure that big and inexpensive go together for 3D printing. I had ambitious plans to cooperate with a friend on designing and making models for ourselves, the designing was no problem but getting a kit printer with a reasonable build size to actually work reliably was a problem. Ok things have moved in leaps and bounds since then but in that time I realised what I want to do could be achieved with a smaller build and by using other tech like laser cutting or a vinyl cutter like the Silhouette. I'd think the Silhouette would be capable of cutting the windows but I have no experience of this.

There was a point where the plain grey ones were used for scrap between Shotton/Dee Marsh and Ravenscraig. IIRC the "Railfreight Today" video covering the Northwest shows them tagged on to the rear of the Clitheroe-Gunnie cement train.

For clarity, do you mean the Metalair design numbered BAHS555xx built by Powell Duffryn or the depressed centre design numbered ALCN112xx?

Instead of a straight list (or a wiggly one) it might work if people were to add a little bit of narrative, something like "I used X to make Y. The wheelbases are 99% correct, to be accurate the wheels need to be swapped but it looks perfectly fine". A sentence, a paragraph or a link to a thread with the detail.

Back from my spotting days I remembered trains with a couple of BAAs either end and 6/8/10 BBA sandwiched between. When I looked at videos on youtube I noticed it was not regimented anything like that, a right mixture of BBA and BAA. Based on the videos the BBA were mostly 'eye to the sky' and the BAA mostly had cradles. Additionally I have no clue if the Ravenscraig-Shotton trains were different formations to the Llanwern ones

It's a bit crude out of the box, almost equivalent to an old Athearn bluebox but can be fettled into a nice model.

The dataset I used was one person's images of one specific vehicle, not just random images, many were taken from a similar distance and overlapping but admittedly the number that were not similar would be enough to throw off the result. I'm not sure how much processing was actually done on these pictures but the point is moot, they simply do not contain enough data. I knew there wasn't enough data for a great result, I hoped there might be enough for a fair result, I would have been willing to move forward with the most basic result. One thing I did not realise until your reply is that the recommended sensor size puts it out of range for most non-DSLR/DSLM camera users as pretty much everything else uses the 1/2.3 or smaller. I made a hypothesis, tested it, observed the result and came to the conclusion that the hypothesis was incorrect. I was not trying to pass judgement on photogrammetry.

Following through on my hypothesis I did some testing using pictures of one specific truck from a truck sales site. The original sample was 200 pictures, many were of tyres and transmission, I narrowed it down to about 49 pics of relevant parts and ran it through 3DF Zephyr, it accepted 31 of the images and produced a 3D model of... a small patch of the truck body and the back corner of the cab. I then tried less images, ones that concentrated on the cab and the result was a model of the site's watermark rather than anything on a truck. Conclusion: Photogrammetry has lots of potential, but so far doesn't produce good results using collections of found images

Have you tried it using other people's pictures of that object and comparing the results? I have no clue how possible that would be with the lizard but it would provide an interesting control experiment. Cheers Chris H

I'm trying to find info on tanktainer operators circa 1990, I'm pretty sure that Hoyer was operating them at the time, until a recent magazine photo I thought Stolt weren't around but I now know better (I believe the Stolt tanktainer on Bachmann's freightliner wagon is a different design though). I thought I had seen a Transamerica Leasing tank in a youtube vid from 1990 but I can't find it since. Are there any others, is what I remember correct or is my brain playing tricks on me? (wouldn't be the first time) Thanks Chris H

ACT are strongly associated with the Anchor Butter train which used reefers, I thought I had seen standard dry boxes with their logo on but I can't seem to find any evidence to back this up. Does anyone have pics or have knowledge to confirm or deny this? I would have thought that ACT was a big enough operation that they would have brought more than just butter to the UK, did everything else go by road maybe? Thanks Chris H

If it was used to move tool vans it might have been described as a tractor unit. According to wikipedia it was a DMBSL so it had lavatories, a hand brake and perhaps a hotplate, all useful to breakdown train crews. I wonder if it had donated its engine to another DMU years before it entered departmental service. Also, if it was part of the Bletchley breakdown train until 1982 why was it solo in Westhouses in 1979, could it have been sidelined for 4 years?

In April/May 1990 Royal Mail launched an updated livery on TPOs with two TPO vans repainted to include the new logo/corporate image of the text on a red horizontal bar across a white vertical bar with the crown in it, the rest of the year saw just a few TPOs in the updated scheme, it was 1991 before it happened in any volume. What was the score for road vehicles, did they start getting updated before the April/May launch, in the months after it or did they also have to wait until 1991? Thanks Chris H