Ian Major

Jon, Thanks for your input. The socket in front of the holder 1 is mentioned in the instructions so it is fairly clear how to use it but the plastic tool is not to be seen. No doubt I will find a use for it though usually I end up using things for purposes beyond their original design! Sadly I will not be close to Stevenage in a week's time (oh memories of the Grampian Hotel). Having got my hands on some kit a demo would make more sense to me now. Aardvark, I am pleased you found my ramblings useful. If there is anything specific you would like to know about the Cameo 4 I have just drop me a note. The preset list of materials in SS for the Cameo 4 includes metal (engraving) and balsa. Sounds like a great boon for making model aircraft wings. I had a hunt around the silhouette filestore looking for drivers that could be called directly and failed. I didn't see the cutter in the printer list but now that I have a better understanding of the box perhaps I should look again. With the new style of cutter holders compared with the Cameo 3 I did wonder whether third party units such as the Amy Chomas engraver and the CB09 could be used with the plastic wrap around devices. The CB09 bodies appear variable in shape and the ridges on the inside of the wrap arounds look as though they would not happily attach to the CB09s. The Amy Chomas ones look better engineered so may be OK. Ian.

We got our youngest grandson a train set for his birthday. This consisted of a new Hornby 0-6-0 loco, some refurbished track and stock which had been his father's 30 years ago. I bought some new turnouts and controller plus made a 4ft x 3ft board on which to mount it all. For Christmas he asked for point motors. So we obtained these and some Hornby levers. To house the levers I decided to make a signal box. I looked at the dimensions of the ScaleScenes R010 signal box and decided I could house 5 levers in it. Since I was modifying the design I emailed John Wiffen for his blessing, which he promptly gave along with some advice on the modifications. Then it was download the file, print it and mount the prints on card. At this point I regretted using Hornby levers because they are quite expensive but the quality does not match the price. In fact of the 5 that I obtained 2 were duff and had to be returned. The ground floor of the box was built following the normal instructions fairly closely. There are a couple of differences. The rear wall is cut in two to give separate lower and upper walls. The internal strengthening walls were spaced further apart to clear the 5 lever bodies. At this stage I only had 4 to play with so it all had to be done by careful measurement without trial fitting. The levers are actually a little too tall for the signal box, so I made a thick base out of laminations of 2mm card. Little boys like to move things around so recessing the levers in to the baseboard was out. The next part to be modified was the lever room floor. This was cut to match the internal strengthening walls. I also added a narrow strip along the top of the rear wall. This is because the unmodified floor butts against the unmodified rear wall and I wanted a level surface for the upper wall to sit on. I also cut a slice off the bottom of the upper rear wall to allow for this. A test fit of the levers showed that I needed a couple more layers on the base so that that top of the lever would be level with the upper floor. I also folded up the upper front wall to ensure the levers did not foul the windows. The upper floor was assembled. The roof was tiled then cut in two. One half of the roof was fitted permanently to the front and side walls. The rear half of the roof was attached to the upper half of the rear wall along with a reinforcing frame. This frame also lines up the detachable part of the wall/roof. The barge boards were mounted on thick card and cut back to the rear edge of the side wall. This was to make them knock proof. The rear of the porch should butt up against the rear wall. With the rear wall removed for operation this would leave the rear of the porch unsupported. As a compromise I reduced the depth of the porch so that it fully butts up against the side wall. This left some of the dark tread area exposed so a small piece of the floor covering that had been removed earlier was fitted as an overlay. After the photo was taken I painted the white areas and edges to mask them. The next photo shows the detachable part in place. Sadly it shows up the fact that I managed to leave off the thickening areas under the corner pieces so they are rather flat. Doh. ....and now with a chimney pot made from some Biro tube. The next view is the underside showing the recesses in the base to allow routing of the wiring. The contacts on the end of the wires supplied by Hornby stick out too far to fit in to the signal box. Out came the lathe. I turned a set of replacement connectors. The heads of these were cross drilled to take the wire and the pin cut part way down the middle. This cut was opened a little with my scalpel blade to give it some bite in the socket. The following photo shows my version (on the left) compared with the Hornby version. ...and a set trial fitted to check wire routing. ...and the full set of levers fitted to my grandson's layout. Finally a view with the signal box fitted with my grandson's pride and joy passing by. I am pleased to say he is very happy with it which makes it all worth while! Ian.

As a result of reading the excellent work by Jason(JCL), Mike Trice, Rob Pulman and others on here I decided I should take the plunge. My wife bought me a Cameo 4 for a combined Xmas and forthcoming 70th present. Here goes with my experiences with it so far. It came with two cutting mats, "weeding" tool, an autoblade and various bits of plastic. Most of the latter are obvious in their use, the odd one is not so. These days very few laptops etc have built in DVD players so no software disc is supplied. The instructions in the box come in 6 languages on a single A4 sheet of paper. One side are the sort of warnings that tell you not to stick your poodle in the microwave. The other side has a small section on manual adjustment of the autoblade and how to adjust the rollers and not much more. So it was off to t'interweb to look for the user guide. The first Silhouette site I found appeared to be aimed at gay men. A revisit to the single page of instructions returned an email address for tech support, part of which showed me the web site is actually silhouetteamerica.com. From there I downloaded the Silhouette Studio software and the cutter and SS user guides. The cutter carriage can hold two cutting tools. As the photo shows the two tool holders are keyed. So it is not possible to put identical Cameo 4 blades in both holders. In front of the carriage is a recess in which the autoblade can be pumped up and down to manually adjust it. The next photo shows the autoblade and the plastic bits. All are marked to go in to holder 1. The auto cutter is bottom left. The Cameo 4 tools are self identifying. The arrow points to a steel strip. The size of this varies between the different types of tool and is how the tool is auto identified. The row of plastic bits along the top wrap around Cameo 3 tools and allow them to fit the holder and be identified. For example the blue part is used with the sketch pens, the grey for the deep-cut blade. From this I conclude that Cameo 3 blades can be used in Cameo 4 but not vica versa. I have decided that the plastic bit bottom right is some sort of wrench for removing/refitting the likes of dust caps though there is no reference to it in the user manual. The software installed OK and the Cameo and cutter type were picked up and identified correctly but there were problems with the graphics. The "design" display should have a grey background. Mine was black. When I move or resized the cutting area it left a trail of images across the screen. The only way to clear this trail was to switch to the "write" screen then back to the "design" screen. Also any loaded design was mishapen and was ghosted on the cut area. This was obviously unusable. < Earlier in this thread there are descriptions on installing a silhouette driver and driving the cutter direct from Inkscape. This route appears to have been shut off. There is no software disc to load it from, nor does it appear possible to download the Cameo 4 driver and install it independently of Studio. My laptop is a Dell which is just over 2 years old. The graphics drivers are up to date. It also has a solid state drive which makes it fast. I sent a problem report to Silhouette and got a prompt reply. This was to go in to Studio Select Edit-> Preferences -> Advanced -> OpenGL Settings. Then to select a SOFTWARE ONLY option for graphics acceleration. This did not resolve the problem. I had seen graphics problems similar to this more than 20 years ago, so the pointer to the SS OpenGL settings was useful. At the bottom of the advanced settings page is the OpenGL Configure section. It was set by default to "None". I changed it to WGL_SWAP_COPY and bingo the problem was resolved. I fed this back to Silhouette. Now to see if there any unexpected issues with this and to try cutting something. I may be some time! Ian.

John, That is scrubbing up nicely. I was wondering about what you were going to do for the end corrugations. The Evergreen half round is ideal. Very neat. I will have to remember that. You were right about the gussets. They do look over scale. I used some Slaters sprung axleguards on a scratch built wagon that I made about 15 years ago. I found them great. To even up the ride/ adjust the ride height I just filed (gently) the individual fingers that point down on to the axlebox since the axleboxes ride on these. If I over did it then I soldered some fresh fingers in place. I call them sprung - strictly they are just compensated since the axleboxes don't ride on the springs. Excellent work as ever. Ian.

George, the Bulleid tender is looking the bees knees. The weathered Charlie is also looking well. Nice work all round. Ian.

I wish my work room was that organised. Ian.

Dave, That is looking very good. There is one thing - unlike your previous creation all of the locomotive's weight is on the four coupled wheels! Ian.

Gosh Hendie, Those lamps are out of this world. I continue to watch your work in awe. Ian.

Very nice indeed George. It oozes power. Ian.

Very nice indeed. The pipework is most impressive. I wish I could match it. One can but dream! Ian.

Hello Rod, I agree with the others. An excellent article. I had a wander around Google satellite and Street View to look at the current configuration of West Kirby. You get a clear view of the front of the station building as it is now. You can also get a nice view of the station layout from Bridge Road. I did a screen grab of the latter. The only part of the current track formation not shown is the facing crossover on the other side of Bridge Road bridge which gives access for incoming trains to the right hand platform. It makes an interesting comparison with your rendition . And there is the Fire Station - I look forward to developments on your's! Ian.

Ade, I agree with Chris, I am green with envy (in a nice way) . I look forward to seeing the layout develop in there. Ian.

Thanks Ade. George (T) is convinced that I am obsessed with MACAWs. I am not really. I meant to get a MACAW B but bought a MACAW H by mistake. So now I have got a MACAW B to make as well. My ending up with several MACAWs is a bit of a cock up on my part - but an enjoyable one! Ian.

Thank you for the likes. I greatly appreciate them. I gave it a run on the High Lane test track behind one of George T's locos. I was very pleased that it displayed no sign of wobble and it happily stayed firmly on the track. Construction work has moved on. I made a set of sheet hooks from 0.5mm brass wire. I used a pair of circlip pliers to shape them. To make sure I didn't snap the fine points off the pliers I annealed the wire. This did mean that on completion the hooks required a good burnishing to remove the glazed effect left by the annealing and to harden the brass. I then soldered them in to pre-drilled holes in the solebars. I soldered some short lengths of 0.7mm brass wire in to holes in the side raves to represent the loops to which security chains are attached. I decided to attach the buffers and stanchion pockets using super glue rather than solder them as I usually do. The bolster being in place shows slight doming in the floor over the pivot. The wagon originally sat slightly off centre on the bogie. So I removed the pivot support and re-positioned it. It took a fair bit of heat to release it and I have probably warped the floor a little in the process. Jim does warn about this in his instructions. The plastic false floor should mask this. The MACAW will now join the queue for my paint shop after which the false floor will be permanently fitted and stanchions added. Then - it is on to the next one. Ian.

Excellent stuff George. Look forward to seeing it when finished. Ian.

I watch with interest. As you ask -- Good Luck! I am sure will do your usual quality job. Ian.

I agree that replacing the etched brake adjuster with bar etc is a good move. Although, as you say, we only see the adjuster in relief, our two eyes and brain give a 3D perspective so if it is flat it will look flat. Beautiful work. Ian.

Tim, That is nicely done. I was very interested in the way you have done the interior. I have just been given one of these kits to do with my grandson and am looking forward to it (I normally model in 0 gauge). Were you (are you) a member of modelshipworld.com? I have been known to put the odd item on there. Ian.

As Raymond says the most common form of beehive is simple to make - as were the full size versions. My father was a market gardener who kept bees primarily for pollination purposes. The middle of the hives could have extra sections added so the height would vary. These would have perforated zinc sheets to prevent the queen entering that part of the hive. When that segment was loaded in honey it could be removed without the risk of the queen being lost. Below is a picture of one of his hives. It was an exposed location so the bricks were necessary to stop the top blowing off. The whole thing was very much home made. Ian.

George, that tender is looking very good. When you come to do the Charlie loco boiler construction it will be just like going back to making model gliders with ribs and stringers (though no tissue paper covering!) Great fun. Ian.

Well it appears to have outside valve gear, so it isn't a Great Western 2-8-0! I look forward to more. Ian.

That has scrubbed up very nicely. Excellent job. You will have to bring it to the club on Friday.

You have set yourself an interesting challenge! You haven't made the cab yet. Looking at the first photo in the first entry of this thread there appears to be coal stacked inside the cab side sheet. Were there bunkers on both sides? If you constructed these and packed them with lead they would add a fair bit of weight where you need it right behind the rear coupled wheels - even if there was only one bunker. It may help with the adhesion. You are producing a fine model. Ian.

John, you have made a very nice job there. The scratch built switch gear looks very good. I noticed the problems you had with clearance for the buffer extensions. In such cases I make my buffers self contained so that nothing protrudes through the beam. It does need access to a lathe to make replacement rams. It strikes me there is an opportunity for some parts manufacturer to commercially produce such items. (Or does someone already do this?) What's your next project? I am looking forward to it. Ian.

I believe you have made a good choice as a first foray in to brass model construction. One of the challenges with brass can be making lengthy folds eg for the solebars. Jim gives good advice in his instructions on how to do this and other modelling techniques. In this case the short wheelbase wagons makes it less challenging. If you have no experience in soldering brass together I would suggest practising on the bits of scrap etch that will be cut away before committing to the actual parts. I am sure you will enjoy it. If things go a bit wrong, don't worry it happens to us all and it is usually recoverable. I look forward to seeing the results. Ian.