Din

Beautiful work, do think it needs just that touch of algae, it'll be waiting in a siding for most of the year, in theory.

Yes but for the time being we're UK only based. You can upload a file, and pay us to make it. You can also contact us seperately about individual such works.

We're covering a completely different area of work and are registered as such. We also have the 3d bit on the end

Good job it just went live then! Designers can sign up as "Invisioneers" and we'll have some different emails and bits and bobs out there. Saw, and met, one of the guys from Warlord/Clockwork Goblin the other week and stood fascinating watching a Konflict 47 game. Did mention your own stuff and he seemed interested, so here's hoping we both get a nice customer. ...I foresee much money lost in my future from that particular gaming system.

Pretty much the same as you would on any commercially available printer. Ideally walls about 1mm or so, I reckon with a bit of tweaking on our own parts we can soon narrow that down a tad more. My hope will be to get bigger and better machines as we grow.

So we continue to inch closer and closer. https://invision3d.co.uk/ A basic page is up, with hopefully a "sign up" box and things appearing soon once I write the content to go onto the home page. My friend has had his baby, little tyke turned up four weeks premature, so there was a bit of panicing and the little one kept in hospital, and he in turn having to offload all his work from his day job far earlier than expected! Little one is now safe and well along with the mother and all are back home and relaxing and settling into their new life as parents. This thankfully has also freed him a bit to work on the various bits and pieces we've come across while studying other websites. He's began talking about building our own slicer that will do the basics and calculations, or a modification of an open source one, to help calculate the costs and material usage to automatically publish them to your pages when you upload a model. Part of the cloud computing systems and solution he's coming up with means there won't be a single server box sat with the slicer and files doing their thing, so things need modifying. He's also having our adorable mascot animated so expect that sometime soon. I also plan a bit of a fun thing with that, including a 3d model which I will print. I've also began introducing myself to various societies, wargaming stores in the area etc and have chosen a 30% discount for retailers and societies interested in stocking some products. This will be taken from "our share" of the costs and will not effect anyones comissions from sales. Tides rise all boats and all that. I may introduce a minimum order amount, as I'd really like some custom boxes made with Invision's branding on them and they're a little more expensive than bog standard cardboard boxes. Plus would look more "professional" in the shop displays and even issued out to customers. While I dont think it will be a "Main source" of income, there's something nice about getting things to a physical shop and I am not the largest beleiver in murdering the high street with convenience of the online. Plus if said shop say, passed on 10%-15% on to the customer... all the more reason for them to come back and order through you instead, eh? Having also seen how difficult and busy shows have become now we're returning to normal (I cheekily went with cards for Invision3d to Doncaster to give out and wound up handing out about 3 over the entire show) I'm beginning to wonder if making our own stand extolling our virtues to a few expos and exhibitions might be a better idea and pull a Mohammed going to the Mountain instead. So, guess that's this months update from me, I'd best go write content for the Home Page.

Saw this layout at the show on the Saturday, right at the very end. Brilliant little layout and highly atmospheric.

Another obsession here seems to be for the "common man" to be able to cheaply afford this hobby. I have to kind of ask... why? In car terms you'd buy second hand, or wait for the cheaper cars to come about by buying a grotbox or other easy vehicle before aspiring to a more classical/better motor, which quite a few folks can get second (or fifth) hand. I myself own a "modern classic" in the form of a Rover 75, I did not at all pay top dollar for it due to a sympathetic owner who wanted it to go to a good home. (it's certainly being put through its paces and mild admiration since I bought it). It was a car I always liked when I was a child and this happened to fall into my lap. Even on entering this hobby when I was younger, my parents didn't run out buying me a Hornby starter set... but an old Mainline and later Jouef starter set for far cheaper, combined, than a new Hornby starter set of the era! Its also obvious that most people in the hobby are 30+ and thus at the age of being able to have a bit of disposable cash to splash on such a hobby. Is there really a place for ultra-cheap models instead of people buying the equivalent, if not more, second hand? Should we prepare ourselves mentally for such a market likely emerging as seems to be the case?

To be honest its just the latest in a string of faux pas and other right royal wazz ups that Hornby's done. Heck, just last year they were selling a rainbow branded wagon to celebrate Gay Pride Month... and were not donating a portion of the proceeds to any such charity (as is standard corporate practise) didn't even have to be much money, but the principle wasnt there. Never mind the janky Rocket video and the bendy banana chassis Hush Hush's. This is the latest of "What can we get away with?" only its likely annoyed people who were likely to give them more lucrative tie-ins.

I just imagine that StudioCanal finally sent the C&D letter through, Hornby at last called up their lawyer who promptly shouted "YOU DID WHAT?" so loudly birds scattered in a four mile radius.

Some of us might be smart and sensible and show the film to our children, as happened to me. I assure you, I shall most certainly be around for the 100th where I expect the rights holder to make one with synchronised steam/smoke effect, working cylinder drains and holographic fire projection, thank you very much! Din, Aged 33.

If only we could have such a big room for our hobbies!

Is that a kit or scratch built? Either way it's stunning!

They did get away with Olton Hall, mostly because she was in use outside the films in red as "herself" but in the Harry Potter inspired livery. This is flying hilariously close to the sun.

This is perhaps where Rapido has the advantage with its method of ordering and sale, it relies on preorders for a lot of items to gauge how many units are actually likely to sell with a minimum break even point. This includes shops who can either risk buying a few for their stock, or to act as pre-order points for Rapido themselves, so far as I am aware . This makes more sense than Hornby's scattergun/constant release approach a bit of an issue, there's stuff that sells regularly and should sell regularly, but are they in sustainable production run numbers? We can see items such as the 66 and Peckett likely do but the B6 and other items do not. Other "core items" like the Terriers and Scotsman might not shift in constant units expected which is a thing Hornby likely grapples with every time they consider a relivery. One would think Hornby might learn from others and adopt a similar (maybe via the Dublo range or another of its many aborbed brands) to take a risk on doing things the same as the smaller boys nipping at its heels. Perhaps Basset Lowke could've come under this brand instead of an interesting, but perhaps ill branded, steampunk range?

Not sure anyone can blag it's a cake though...

Shows how well that particular peice of rubbish is remembered! Looking it up, it seems this particular peice of "smut" which the poster mis-remembered as indeed Eurotrash was some show on BBC2 between 1988 and 1992 which, according to wikipedia: The show which would usually go out in an early evening slot, such as 7.30pm on a Wednesday night, featured reports from up-and-coming new bands linked together with footage of De Caunes standing in front of a large Rapido sign on a white background.

Never heard of "Rapido the smutty program on channel 4 years ago". Definitely heard of "The Titfield Thunderbolt", in fact I have it recorded from home VHS many, many years ago when it was on channel 4 and now own the 60th aniversary edition. All my railway friends have also either heard of the film, or have watched it. As have a few of my non-railway friends. All of us are under 40. But yeah, you're right, a big company just blatantly ripping off product after agreements had been sought by said company is totally fine! It's why I'm launching an "inspired by" toy range called "Euston Bear". Give me a break from these fools thinking Hornby isn't badly in the wrong here, or because they're the bigger or older company they should "naturally" have first crack at something someone else agreed to and signed a contract over! End of the day, especially in English Law, A Contract is a Contract is a Contract*. *Inspired by Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #17.

Probably because Hornby's QC as of late has pretty much collapsed, the internet is littered with people and youtubers pointing out their broken or otherwise wonky Hornby locomotives. The Hush Hush seemed like a complete dice roll on if yours would work or not. They do seem to be playing hard on the class of products angle, which while utterly scummy would be legal in the legal writing of the law. Lots of "It's just not cricket" alarms blaring out. Hornby also seems fairly confident in pushing mainland european style prices onto the UK market at this point, knowing they do have a returning or new audience who won't "know better" and likely fork out the cash for their new hobby. Prices have trended steadily upwards in recent years, but the rather obvious leaps in the Railroad range (at which point you're just paying high prices for a lesser detailed model) show they feel confident enough to do this. It's odd, it feels like Hornby's still in the "We're going bankrupt tomorrow" mentality which has lead to these horrible practises and attitude when we know now this isn't the case. It's leading to a lot of products suffering for the profit-at-all-costs, never mind the horrific PR among what could be considered it's "core audience".

Ah yes, this is how I keep acquiring cars, I just get there "first" doesn't matter that the others put down a deposit or have a signed contract saying that the car is theirs. I just rock up before they can get there and drive off.

Generally when you stop defending it. Or if your name becomes a catch-all "generic" reference to that item in particular. So had Lionel actually played hardball they likely could've won because UP had not bothered for the 50 years prior. Two fun cases over here in Europe were the RAF Roundel and the Big Mac. The RAF in 2004 attempted to sue various clothing companies to defend its trademark only to find that, because they'd not enforced its ownership of that "brand" since the 60s mods and rockers movement they no longer owned the rights to it being placed on clothing. McDonalds decided to gun after a small Irish restraunt chain that had been operating since 1974 as "Supermacs" in Ireland, with about 100 or so outlets, they tried to argue that "Supermacs" would somehow confuse people over their much more famous "bigmac" burger. There's a few other technical points they lost out on (namely they couldn't site restraunts under the "Bigmac" name etc) but the end result was Mcdonalds losing the trademark under specific circumstances, and a BurgerKing branch in Scandinavia renaming all their whoppers to "Bigmac but flame grilled" and "Bigmac but bigger" for a few days. Now for two examples of defence/not defence. If I say the word "Hoover" am I talking about the household appliance or the company? That's become a generic term in the zeitgeist because it was the first successful company to market them commercially. Nintendo ran a successful campaign in the 1990s defending its name as increasingly parents began to refer to any games console be it Sega, Atari etc as "A Nintendo". They poured millions with Mario at the forefront pointing out that it was only "A Nintendo" if it had their seal of approval, while the campaign doesn't run today, the seal remains on every official peice of Nintendo product.

The Bachmann Junior Range models seemed somewhat exempt from this, but Hornby dragged Bachmann to court over it, where the court ruling specified that Hornby has the exclusive rights in 4mm scale only. It's why the G-scale stuff started being introduced by Bachmann not long after the Junior range was pulled in its entirety. Hornby then let the rights lapse/be denied a renewal not that many years after. The current slapfight over Skarloey and Rheneas is apparently an internal affair between Bachmann Europe and Bachmann USA, the latter of which refuses to "let" Europe apparently have the locos in sensible colours, hence the weird bright yellow Rheneas being released over here.

Ah yes, a 3 horse race. So much better. Go and have a good long stare at this section of the forum. Rather a few more than 3 all commissioning models in approx 2,000 runs or so.

There were also basically no companies back then. I'm sure Hornby would love to go back to the 60s where they had absolutely no competition until the arrival of Palitoy and the Mainline Range in the 80s! Of course you're going to shift nearly 20,000 units when yours is the only option! Most models run a, what? 2,000 unit run or so? When you consider that's "most models" as well its likely sales are healthier in some ways than they were 60 years ago, never mind the cottage industry attached.

I personally prefer "Kohler's Folly" in the style of a similarly arrogant man getting a rather brutal ending.