simonmcp

If you are only going to use it occasionally I would get one where the head is included with the ink cartridge, HP definitely are and some Cannon ones. I know the cartridges are dearer but I had two Epson printers dry out and clog the print head, totally useless, unless you want to try putting brake fluid through to clear them.

It's the 'Ski jumps' that are the problem you remember Eddie the eagle Edwards.

For those not in the know, the 'Penson' method is to use high quality card, hand emboss the mortar courses and paint with watercolours. Very time consuming but worth it. A very beautiful model Gedward.

Personally I wouldn't start my first scratchbuilding project using Wills sheets, they are great because of the amount of relief or detail but that's also what makes them more tricky to get right. I spent over a month doing a small wall and steps for the surround of a terrace outside a small chapel during lockdown. I started with kits (not made to your superb standards though) and then progressed to a kit that was more of a scratch aid, this was in the late 70's, which was thin walled. I seem to vaguely recall that it didn't pass my critical eye even back then, but it did serve as a test bed and honed my skills. Remember Pendon museum get potential modellers to make a Privvy as a test piece. So when you're good and ready, perhaps start on a small shed made from thin sheet embossed plasticard and use something like Slater's as the courses of bricks line up vertically which is better than Wills sheets as they don't. I think the superb job you have done with the kits you've used is almost scratchbuilding anyway.

I think @Ralf mentioned on page 2 that he used the "flip horizontal" function of 'Preview' on his Apple Mac. I know PDF Pro let's you flip or mirror as well. There may be a website that lets you do it as well(can't find the link at the moment).

Oh I don't know, my late mother (no my parents didn't die because of the cars) was once lent a Renault Fuego, in the late 70's, for a whole weekend 'test drive'. That thing was like a Tardis - it seemed twice the size inside than out.

I knew a Renault salesman who said where he worked they wouldn't take a Renault, even one they sold new, in for part exchange for a new one. My late dad once bought a Vauxhall Viva on a Friday, we had it for the weekend and on Monday it went to the scrapyard.

I can make out CAMBRIAN in the top arc and RAILWAY (?) in the bottom arc so wondering what the extra character/letter is after RAILWAY.

An 'Old Etonian' once told me that they are taught that they are superior to the rest of humanity. I go with the Bible - we are all created equal. It's what you do with your talents that count not who your parents were.

Happens a lot on that well known auction site. They claim that the goods are in the same country as you, but as you say the three month delivery is a bit of a giveaway.

Or use Peter Denny's approach - leave it to the imagination, but he had the advantage of no digital photography or cruel enlargements of pictures.

Having had an amount of time elapse since I last did any close up modelling and now having to wear variofocals I was dismayed at the detail I couldn't see. That was until I got enough light on the scene and now I have no difficulty. I was lucky to purchase a multi LED daylight colour balanced magnifying glass of a well known (but sadly forgotten) make at half price from n art supplies shop.

"Oh and I do lack self discipline as well....." You have a lot more than I do! You have built some brilliant layouts which have inspired a lot of people. I would never describe any of your layouts as lacking fine detail, quite the opposite I think they have just the right amount of detail to be extremely realistic. Keep up the good work, you are motivating a lot of us to have a go, your use and adaption of 'ready to plant' buildings is fantastic. Simon

What is the very strange shaped 'building' with multi coloured wriggly tin roof to the left of the engine's bunker??

I was drawn to the platform edge, very uneven, just like a thin card surface in model form.

I see you've taken Mr Macawber's advice and kept a spare Farthing.

Unfortunately I think Hobbit's are Luddites, so no large mechanical engineering of any kind. But I am not advocating abandonment of railways quite the opposite. I think the general situation is getting to us all. Press on with what you enjoy Edwardian and maybe a solution will appear.

I know how you feel, I can't count how many times people have tried to help me in these two areas and I just don't seem to be able to grasp 'Electickery' at all, and even with a full sized track plan still mange to be inches out when transferring to the baseboard. I blame the fact that as far as I know, "Electrician" means someone who does magic with "Electri...", the 'cian' part of the word is actually what the modern use of the word "Magic" really means. The Magi actually means wise, as in the "Three wise men". So a Magician is a wise trickster. As you will very likely know from your profession Edwardian, the English language is a mangled thing indeed but not quite as mangled as most of my track laying. I believe that a certain Mr Rice and others advocate a mirror to line up their tracks, not tried it myself but others swear by it.

Do we get a refund for that hour? I used to work for a charity that received European Union funding so am familiar with the way it works and also how it doesn't work. The 'mandrins' in the UK, supposedly driven by the European Union rules, made a small charity bankrupt because they said Europe changed the rules three-quarters of the way through a two year project and asked them to pay back all the grant they had given them. The fact that the people they helped, who were illiterate, were supposed to fill out 8 pages of registration forms didn't really help. We came up with a way to get these people a qualification at the same time as we discussed with them their enrollment on the course and therefore managed to help more people. I was then invited to share our methodologies with the rest of the project's partners within the County. I was not told that the 'suits' from London were there. I did think for while that I had blown it and our charity would be stripped of our grant but luckily they approved of us making their Money go further. I do also think it a little perplexing that the proposed basic skills computing course, which ran to 3 large ring binders worth of densely written text was going to be allowed to be taken by people who couldn't read or write. Happy and healthy New Year to all. Hope you resolve your points conundrum Edwardian.

Are you using a desktop with a separate graphics card or a laptop with integrated graphics? Perhaps @alangdance is using an online version, I managed to 'break' an online version with only a very small brick wall. Simon

Can you please tell me what is the make of that lovely little diesel? Simon

There is a link on RMWeb of a video by an American chemist here https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dht4tbCiFxeM%26fbclid%3DIwAR0CFXMRdVbalYAU1boNucBYMQS3lb96LZFMJCvmbBZ1JeHMEFYE3WXITEI%26app%3Ddesktop&ved=2ahUKEwjz24mT4PjtAhVQUMAKHf6pALsQwqsBMAB6BAgBEAM&usg=AOvVaw22ZKhbPLRTHejSICfDcMPT, who very politely, says that is not true.

Tatie Oggie or as auto correct wanted to call it - Tatty Office?

Where is the absolutely staggeringly awesome button when you need it? Mind boggling amount of detail there. I just hope that you haven't gone to the trouble of recreating the smell inside as well.

My comments were to warn the people new to 3d printing that some of the models available on Cults 3d are faulty. My reason was not to have a moan about the content but to warn any newbie to 3d printing so that they didn't spend hours trying to get a good print from something that was faulty in the first place. Apparently programs like Meshmixer can fix the faults, but I haven't tried it so can't comment as to its effectiveness. There are a lot of perfectly good free STLs out there but you do still need to know how to use the slicing software to get a good print from them. It is not just a case of grab an STL and press print - you need to convert the STL into a file that your printer can handle. In Cura (which I use for my Filament printer) there are literally hundreds of settings you can tweak to improve the quality. Conversely if you make the wrong changes to the settings you can ruin a print. The files usually included on the SD card (sometimes called 'benchies', short for benchmark) with your printer will have been optimised for your printer so should come out okay. One of the best ways to improve the quality of the print on a filament or FDM printer is to slow down the print speed. Also 'enable retraction' stops you getting a string of spaghetti like output. I managed to print perfectly good 4mm scale light clusters for a class 142 on my cheap Aldi printer by slowing the print speed down to 10mm second.