Janjy Giggins

Thank you all - that's very helpful! My memory of the railways only goes back to the late 80s and early 90s, so this is very useful information. It sounds like for a station ambiguously dated between the 20s and 60s depending what I feel like running, if I put a couple of desks in the room and a mixture of telegraph machine and phones, that should work OK.

Sorry if this is a silly question, but I'm modelling a station building loosely based on York, c. 1920s-40s. Looking at an image I found of the architectural plans, there's a telegraph room/office. What would this kind of room have actually contained by the early 20th C? Would it have been a public facility for passengers to make calls or send messages, or a private railway office/switchboard for managing communications around the railway? It's not a massive space, but it is fairly visible from the platform so a bit of advice on what to put inside it would be much appreciated. General suggestions are fine - I'm not looking for slavish accuracy to what was actually in York. Thanks!

Thank you! Tried this this evening, with excellent results. I was using 2mm foamex so it didn't go all the way through, but it did cut it very well and it was by far the easiest to finish off of all the materials I've tried so far.

I did try the 3mm Kraft blade on the chipboard last night. As expected, initial results weren't great, but I'm not ruling it out yet. With the smart cuts disabled and a very low force it seemed to work OK. I think it might be possible to get through the card by using lots of passes with very gradually increasing blade depth. Realistically, though, I'd only be using it for big shapes - walls etc. - so if I can just get it to score through enough to mark it out for me to finish off by hand, that will probably be fine. I do think the foamex might be a better bet overall though - will try some after payday!

Thank you! I will definitely try it when I get hold of some! Your results with it look stunning.

Thank you - that makes a lot more sense! Do you just get the SE Finecast sheets from their website? I don't think I've ever seen them in an actual shop. Thank you! What settings do you use for the foamex, incidentally? If I can't get any success with the chipboard I'd definitely be interested in giving that a try. Thank you for all the help - if I ever get this station building built then I will owe a lot to this thread!

Thank you both! I'm surprised that Wills sheet is possible - I generally prefer that to the thin Slaters stuff but I'd just assumed it was far too thick and dense for a machine like this. I've just done my first cut, getting decent results on a very simple cut with ordinary .20 styrene using ChrisN's settings and breaking it out afterwards. I tried 3 passes and 5 and didn't notice much difference between them. I'll keep experimenting while I build up the courage to try the Kraft blade and 2mm chipboard. Thank you also for reminding me of Mikkel's blog. I was surprised to see he was able to cut foamex. Like the Wills sheets I hadn't even considering that but it might be a better alternative to chipboard for what I want. There's a bit of a learning curve with this, isn't there?

Hello! I just got a Silhouette Cameo 4 yesterday and am slightly overwhelmed with all the variables. I have been reading through this thread, but obviously there's a lot of it and if anyone could point me in the right direction for the settings to cut 2mm Cricut chipboard, I'd be very grateful. I have the standard autoblade and the 3mm Kraftblade. Also, has anyone got experience of cutting the embossed Slaters brick plasticard with it (4mm scale)? Can you just treat it like other kinds of styrene? My assumption is that it would probably cut better face-down. Thanks!