JimFin

Pestle and mortar for that which does not go through at the first pass?

Hi Patrick, sorry its not going the way you would have liked. Best I can suggest would be to contact the London branch of the Swiss Railway Society to see if any local members may be interested in taking it over london@swissrailsoc.org.uk as they would be relatively local as shifting that about the country would be quite difficult.

Good job, can see from that, you could not have done the Swiss light mapping anyway so saved some effort. It is a nice livery.

Been able to make some progress having shaken off the festive cold! The footpath to the pedestrian bridge and on to the viewpoint is coming along nicely, can see a tree making session in my future.

All advice offered by Pete the Elaner is very good and the above particularly so. Muck about with a number of test pieces first to develop your eye and skill. A summary of main techniques here - https://www.world-of-railways.co.uk/techniques/weathering-model-trains--top-tips-and-techniques/ is quite helpful. You need to choose a method you are comfortable with. I prefer weathering powder and use wash in places as well. You are as well buying a set of powders so you can mix and blend OR if you have them, crush or scrape some dust off soft pastels as that's what weathering powder seems to be. Micro Brushes are helpful both for applying the powder and to use with paint wash. I have never been able to work out the difference between the cheap "make up" ones and the "model making" ones other than the 400% mark up.

No problem, not a great photo but that is 2mm, make it a paper rod rather than a tube though, much stronger.

If you cannot find any, paint the post black and apply the white stripe with a short length of white vinyl is one way OR print a strip of paper with black and white lines, cut to length and roll into a post.

It will so long as you keep them isolated - not quite sure which is the loco shed road though. You might need selector switches to choose which DC controller to use, this would slightly complicate the DCC conversion - You would have to connect your DCC controller to both the input feeds from your DC controllers to be able to make the whole layout live.

Its a great piece of work but before you over invest your effort, maybe check that that level of detail is capable of being printed. I suspect it is getting towards in 7mm (beyond in 4mm?) the limit of resolution of even a resin printer.

I have used "tooling leather" to cut .020 plasticard successfully. The limitation seems to be that the option to edit the "Knife Blade" settings is locked out. I suspect because of the rotation capability, it would be too complex.

Noch do a few - https://www.noch.com/en/product-categories/figures-and-decoration/figures/figures-scale-0.html

Yes, carefully. The axles are splined and the wheels need to be eased out to the 12mm gauge. Bemo only makes one model and just press the wheels to different gauge.

Hi, assuming the switch is a straightforward 6 terminals job, the attached should work.

RocRail does all you want (and a lot more) Free if you are using a USB connection. Your restriction actually becomes the iPad as you cannot connect it to you ECoS as far as I am aware, a windows or android device will do the job, you could then link to your iPad via RocWeb (12 euro p/a extra) if essential. Does a lovely schematic for the touch screen and will operate any digital accessories, points, uncouplers, lights signals etc.etc.

Come out something like this with a coat of matt acrylic (HOm) -

Faller did a range of animated construction items a while ago - 180682 was a compressor with a road drill, 180683 a bulldozer that chugged back and forward, 180684 a road roller that did similar and 180685 an excavator and tipper truck. Still some listed on e-bay. As and when the roadway is up and running, there is also their road works set.

That would work but as a quick simple fix, suggest you use Tinkercad as I see you cannot import STL files into Cubify Design. Means you would not have to download anything. Open Tinkercad, import your wagon, import the file I sent you, move into position, edit and adjust for perfect fit. Group, save the complete as an STL, export and print.

I may be the bearer of bad tidings bit I am afraid you are probably going to have to learn an alternative as I believe Cubify has closed down completely now. This means that sooner or later Microsft or Apple will release an operating system update incompatible with Cubify and it will stop working with no support available for you. Probably as well to forward plan to learn something new than be forced into it at what would probably be an inconvenient moment. Personally I use Tinkercad (online) as a first choice and Meshmixer on my local laptop as a second choice although have used Sketchup in the past. It may be about finding what you are most comfortable with. Nice feature with Tinkercad and Meshmixer ( and I assume Sketchup) is you can import virtually any STL file from any source file and edit it in them so the work you have done in Cubify is not wasted. While I cannot help with Cubify, attached is an STL file of what I believe you are looking for, you should be able to import, edit and add to your wagons. Side panel.stl

128 gives finer control at slow speeds

Only possible with the latest type of loco where the lights are individual LED's rather than one light at each end, the light being distributed by clear plastic filaments. If they are individual LED's than the Zimo swiss mapping is what you need, check page 27 S3.17 of the Zimo manual to set CV's as appropriate. (good luck!)

Couple of questions for clarity - were the lights working before you changed to DCC? Generally the lights only work in the direction of travel - do you mean they are only working in one direction?

Why so complex when 4 triangles work?

Each door would have to be faced with 4 triangles, the hypotenuse flush with the side of the wagon and the apex aligning in the centre and +n mm. Roughly like this -

Just about to ask / suggest that option as the technology behind it is maturing nicely. Micron Radio Control in Malton has some useful information on their website.

Simple answer - substantial minefield! 2 major parts to the route through the minefield - 1) For N gauge bogies, you would be best served with a resin based printer rather than FDM - the Elegoo Mars gets decent reviews as the Anycubic photon seems to have alienated a lot of its fans by changing specifications recently. Alternative is to use a print house rather than owning a printer, probably one near you these days.. 2) You will need to invest time and effort in learning how to use a CAD package to produce the 3D drawings of the bogies you want unless you have that skill in your locker already. There are a lot of free packages out there which will get you started and you tube tutorials on using them. Choosing one depends on your computer literacy skills, how powerful you laptop/PC is and familiarity with this kind of software. For a basic entry level, you could try Tinkercad which is free and cloud based so all the hard processing work is done by their servers, you don't need a particularly powerful computer to use it unlike some others which would run on your own machine. Hope that gives you food for thought.