simonmcp

The posher scaffolding boards have metal ends, might be difficult to replicate in 2mm though. I had a brother in law who was a scaffolder and helped him a few weekends in the late 70s. I remember that those 25 foot poles dug in my shoulder when carrying in them.

The long poles were 25ft, and as I'm sure you've seen were carried diagonally and would probably be up over the cab. They usually also made a frame of poles to carry the medium length ones and the scaffolding boards would be flat on the bed. The clamps would be a challenge in 2mm or N gauge.

Don't you wish you could press mirror on a real solid building just like in 3d printing, I know I do sometimes. Mind, I accidentally did that while printing off some buckeye couplings for a friend, so that was a definite reprint.

In the mid 1990s someone burnt all the "Extent of highway" paper maps of Cornwall after they had digitised the centre line of the roads. Thing is no one thought about recording the actual extent of the highway.

A compass and old fashioned drawing board with set square would help as well. Studying how John Wiffen of Scalescenes does his kits will also give you a good idea of how it is done. When it clicks in your brain it will seem simple but it's actually hard to explain without seeing it done. I couldn't find any short sensible YouTube videos either.

Enough already, I followed that link and it brought back less than happy memories. Of course you'd have to include all the readers (okay I know most of them only look at the pictures) of "The National Enquirer", the literary equivalent of the Sport paper. I'm sure we could find a deserted island somewhere to send them all to, failing that we could use the Douglas Adams solution and fire them off somewhere in a space craft. Yes I do think lockdown is getting to me.

Talking of Alp Grim or more accurately Alp Grum, why is there a 'sort of' loop (not enough clearance for two trains to pass) on the tight curve?

I hope the moderator still has him muzzled.

You could always have a strategically placed tree to hide/disguise the fiddleyard exit.

That's the most realistic 08 I've ever seen, the layout looks amazing and your weathering is superb. Is there another thread detailing the original build? I would love to see more of your work. Simon

Hi everybody, The following link was posted in a thread on here and I thought it was surprising that nobody commented on it! He is/was making a German Engine shed/machine shop with turntable and associated works including all the machinery inside, as well as things like pallet trucks, all produced on his 3d printer. I have spent a couple of days on the forum and am only at page 23 of 59! https://www.stummiforum.de/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=171433 The stuff he has produced with an FDM printer is totally mind blowing. Yes you do need Google Translate to get the benefit of the forum posts. It is a real shame that I have only just found this as it will change the way I use my FDM printer now, and also he was giving away STL files for free but at the moment as I say I am on page 23 of the topic and I think he may be selling the files now. The quality he is getting is almost up to Injection Molding and is easily as good as resin printers. He was a professional CAD specialist so knows his stuff. There are tips on how to produce grids just using the settings in Cura (warning the screen shots are obviusly still in German) for supports as well as changing the settings to not print walls and just the infill that then gives you a square or diamond mesh. Simon

Can you make them available to us mere mortals now from Chris at CWR please?

I realize mentioning someone who model's post 1920's is a little 'infradig' on this thread and especially as he models foreign railways as well but here goes. I am not sure if any one is familiar with Emmanuel Nouaillier, (link here:- ) but he does extremely finely detailed buildings. They look superb in small groups but in my humble opinion I think they don't work when incorporated into a larger layout. Being an artist perhaps I prefer the impressionist approach.

Have you seen some of the characters in the Pre-grouping docks thread? They look very well nourished, in fact I think they "ate all the pies" and some more! Shades of Mr Bumble from Dickens. Simon

Living in Cornwall I have been, back in the 90's, for a guided tour of the Clay Dries. One memory from that trip was of track embedded in concrete that 'disappeared' into a building but not through a doorway. It seems they just built a new building right on top of the old track, might be an interesting feature to include.

That track plan reminds me of ZOB by The Baron aka Brian Harrap. A nightmare to shunt in the case of ZOB as it was three separate gauges and not every siding had all the gauges, also see Quai87 for more quayside inspiration.

Looking good to me, just need the triangular, most likely cast iron, braces under the main jib. Fantastic work on the rest of the goods shed as well.

Okay, so my experience of hand built track is zero but I have laid more yards of Peco for club layouts and and a 10ft X 12ft 4 track two station multi level layout with about 60 points. Wouldn't just painting the ends of the rail and the cast crossing solve any shorting problems? Of course you could always set out to try and make a reliable electrical connection, that usually ensures that it never works in my experience. Wayne, the Points are looking really good and I for one will be ordering some when the initial rush has died down. As you say you have a lot of experience of producing point kits and I think you have pitched the product's skill requirements just right your intended market. Most people can use the internet and find out more information if they need it, especially as I expect you'll put a PDF on your site with any extra instructions that any complete point making dunce like me could refer to.

As far as I know, before Brexit it would have been the Originating Countries VAT rate that was charged to all other EU countries. Whether Shapeways always got it right is debatable. HMRC's VAT notices are a bit heavy reading and don't always make much sense.

And believe me it takes more than one read through to understand any VAT Notice. I use them as bedtime reading, guaranteed to put me to sleep. As a bookkeeper I have to know how it works and I do for inter company or business to business (it is something called reverse charge) but even then I don't know exactly how it will work for retail customers and I suspect a lot of businesses will make mistakes and charge the wrong amounts at the wrong point in the transactions. The one thing to look out for is double charging of VAT. One thing I did pick up from the guidance is that it is the destination country who charge there VAT rate and not the originator country. Ireland's VAT is 22% so things from Ireland should be a little cheaper now.

Textures create huge files, best to use the spray from just too far away so that the paint creates some texture. Having said that I looked closely at the Wills injection moulded sheets of stone (I know I lead an exciting life) and they just seemed to have a few low poly shapes for the front of the stones and not as much detail as I expected. So it may be able to get away with less detail than we think. I did find a free texture of stone and load it into Tinkercad and it printed out okay on an FDM printer, although it was for a small footbridge abutment, about 40mm X 20mm, so not a huge wall.

The problem with trying to do 'random' stone is that when a stone mason, or whoever is laying out the stones, does so, they carefully choose which stone to go where. This means it's very difficult to actually do really random, as per a computer, which could decide that twelve of the same size of stone in a row is random, you need some kind of fuzzy logic in the algorithm as well. And there's ensuring that there are no vertical mortar courses through more than one row unless it's next to a really big stone. My very dormant code writing part of my brain is starting to try and kick in but as I am working full time at two jobs it may be a long time before I can do anything about it. I worked, in the 1990's, on the mapping data that is now used for Sat Navs, using a program called 'Arc Soft' on Sun SPARC Stations. The software developers allowed us to write our own 'extension' programs in a very high level language to enhance the usability of the base program. I wrote a small (2,000 line) extension to move the Key for map printouts so that it didn't go over the critical line on the base map. Easy stuff really as there was a limited number of places the Key could be in. That took me about a month to get right so you can see my work pace is not exactly lightning.

As Blender's code is Open Source it should be possible to generate a plug-in to make any brick bond. I failed the programers aptitude test so I don't think I'm your man to write it. Although I presume reverse engineering open source code may be allowed, if so it could be possible to adapt the other plugin code. Doing the queen closers might prove interesting though.

That'd be a challenge in 2mm scale

Oddly enough we haven't had "I did it My Way" at a funeral (I work at a funeral directors) probably since before the first lockdown and it used to be the most popular song at a funeral. I still think "Bat out of Hell" was the most inappropriate one we have had. Although saying that I do like Glorious Day which includes the line "I ran out of the Grave" https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DLfzpfqrPUDo&ved=2ahUKEwjv-KLOspfuAhUChlwKHW5PAYwQyCkwAnoECAMQAw&usg=AOvVaw2qDILf_o5r8aJoCMxGPgh7