justin1985

Well Gordon was super quick! Wheels back and loco reassembled. I went for green with full yellow ends, which will get a serious weathering. Spot the issue though! Playing around with it, it's remarkable how much the bogies are sprung upward. Pressing down on the loco roof, the body will compress down toward the bogies by about a mm - which brings the buffers much closer to the correct height! The existing pickup setup definitely seems part of the problem - I've noticed it cause problems on Dapol coaches too! Is your idea to replace the upright tabs from the bogie with springs, and have them rub against the existing flappy contact strips (but with tension taken out of them?). J

This is a great video - and full of really helpful tips for slicing and designing supports etc. So much better, and more entertaining, than most printer "reviews"!

You've basically just described the Bachmann (and Farish) train sets! This is surely the market that they find. Thank you - this really hits the nail on the head! Just because younger modellers are connecting in different ways that many here don't see or recognise, it doesn't mean they're not there, or they're a different species. Or even that at the end of the day they're interested in different things!

This is just what I meant. Especially with the Mermaid having the same kind of problem, I can't help but wonder whether specified dimensions / clearances "from wheel to X" mixed up which point of the wheel they were measuring from. So the problem isn't so much the wheel size, it's all of relationships between the wheels and the rest of the bogie and solebar height of the chassis. Nonetheless, I've got one for my little Scottish themed layout, and I'm pretty happy with it. I've already sent the wheels away to be turned down to 2mmFS (don't trust my own lathe skills yet) and I'll give it some other fettling and weathering, and I'm sure it will do a great job as a shunter on a small 'plank' layout! J

I really like this idea! I suspect the protection would be more important when it comes to protecting from operators, especially when assembling/disassembling, rather than from the public! I hadn't quite clocked that you intended to make it join up functionally with the Caley Road station, Tim! That does sound like a potential nightmare to rig up and level the underground track - but also, a seriously impressive feature that I'm sure the general public, and especially kids, would LOVE! Might it be more practical to have it set up as a "false" through train though? Tube train disappears southbound from Caledonian Road, stops in headshunt, and remotely triggers an identical tube train to appear from equal and opposite head shunt at York Road? (Shouldn't be too difficult to design and print some new tube train bodies to fit on KATO tram chassis, as per recent rebuild of the original one?) Those Tardis like boxes

Can't be done? Modern continental diesels like the MaK (Vossloh) G1600/1700 series, modelled accurately by both Minitrix and PIKO, which Les showed in his video as the comparison, are pretty similar in terms of having really quite narrow bonnets. Likewise, no shortage of narrow bonnet American diesels in Z scale. It seems pretty well established now, by various respected modellers, that the cl.17 is accurate in all dimensions EXCEPT height. It seems a common issue with models that DJM had a hand in, especially the Mermaids. I can't help but wonder whether the diameter of the wheel faces and diameter of wheel across the flanges were mixed up during the design stage, messing up the relationship between solebar level and track. J

This has got me worried Tim! Storage / transport? Passage for less than acrobatic operators past the Toberlone when putting errant locos back on the track or to/from Mrs Wilberforce?

Quick question - do we know if Gordon Solloway is still offering the wheel turning service at the moment? I understand he was retiring from work on the normal wheel range, and especially with the COVID situation, I thought it would be good to ask if anyone knows if he is still able to offer the service? J

Glad to hear a fresh LCD made a difference for you! I haven't had to do that yet. I did find the Jackson products twin rail upgrade did virtually eliminate banding in my models though! I'm not aware of any UV resins that can be bonded with styrene solvents - I think the chemistry of the two substances are just too different for that to ever be possible. (I don't know if there are filaments for FDM printers that might be styrene compatible though?) For resin to plastic joints, as far as I'm aware, the usual suspects of epoxy (araldite), impact adhesive (evo-stick) or superglue (CA) are your only real options. For resin to resin, as I said above you can use liquid resin and cure it into place as a joint.

The KATO N gauge chassis aren't necessarily intended for kit and scratch builders in the way we think of. They're designed as clip in optional extras for the extensive range of quite cheap unpowered collectable models, usually of trams, EMUs, and some locos, that are widely available in Japan. As well as the finished unpowered models by Tomytec and KATO, there is a whole genre of snap together, ready painted "kits" of trains, just like the collections of 1/144 aircraft kits etc, made by Bandai, and others. A lot of these are the "shorty" range - caricature models of things up to and including Shinkansen, but on a standard very short wheelbase Bo-Bo chassis. Everything in this range is very cheap - about £20 per item, and it's all very easy - easier than an Airfix kit, as everything is clip together and ready painted - no mess. But you still get to feel like you've made something! And the small size and caricature nature makes it explicitly fun, to fit in a small space. I would have loved something like this when I was a teenager! Rokuhan do the same concept in Z gauge. And they have a Hello Kitty license! On a related note, I think everyone here is underestimating the impact of YouTube, and how popular rail modeller YouTubers are - especially with unboxing videos and the like, pitched at non expert modellers. It's amazing (if a bit worrying) how kids love watching videos of other kids unboxing and playing with new toys - I think that crosses over very neatly into rail model unboxing videos! J

Small holes can be caused by all kinds of things - air bubbles in the resin, corrupt pixels in the file (often caused by dodgy USB sticks - especially the notoriously cheap and nasty one supplied with the Photon!), or insufficient support / an unbalanced cross section of model at that point allowing the model to flex a little bit as its printing, therefore little bits being missed. On that model (I think you're planning to use as a master for casting?) I'd just fill those little holes by hand - either with modelling putty, or drip in little drops of liquid UV resin and use a handheld UV light to cure them in place (a UV "laser pointer" is really useful for this). That method also works as the best "glue" for repairing snapped 3D printed parts, or gluing together printed components! J

So many great projects Pix! Was the glazing trick just a case of running around the "lip" of the glazing with black paint? Any thoughts on converting the 17 to 2mmFS? I noticed from a picture Ben Ando posted on the N Gauge Forum that it looks like it has pin-point pickups. So it's a case of having to turn down the wheels, rather than being able to use any drop in axles? I've got one on the way from Kernow for my distillery shunting plank, even though they hardly ever made it onto GNSR metals, by the sound of it ... J

The MERG version looks good. I came up with this little design, after a few revisions The bar has dimples for holes to be drilled for spacings from 6.5mm up, and the servo horn has a few dimples for drilling and fitting the pin at different distances - this version is 0.75mm, so giving 1.5mm travel on a full 180 degree rotation. It's running from an Arduino - I'll play around with slowing it down in the code. It could also do with a tweak to add a guide to make sure the microswitch (subminiature) arm doesn't push back against the bar too much.

I remember a tip from @CF MRC, I think, to use a soldering iron tip to slightly melt some paper or similar with a weave texture into engineering plastic, to help it provide a key for normal glues like epoxies. I haven't actually had call to try it since, but Tim might be able to confirm?

I don't think you're doing it wrong - I completely agree. Facebook just isn't suited to these kinds of discussions, but weirdly seems to have a stranglehold on 3D printing and laser cutting communities. A large part of the market for both gadgets seem to be American gun nuts, which might explain the popularity of Facebook as a forum (along with plenty of the weird trinkets that people post). Sites like StackExchange or even Reddit seem much better suited to the kinds of discussion about 3D printing, laser cutting, machines, etc., because threads, and individual answers to them, can get up or down voted. So the most useful posts, and best answers, stick around. StackExchange is super popular for programming questions. The best part is that the original poster can "tick" the answer that worked for them, and everyone can vote. There is a 3D printing forum but it covers both resin and filament types, so it's not so useful. Reddit does have an Anycubic Photon forum, but it doesn't seem particularly lively.

I use a Raspberry Pi for this - rather than a full PC. JMRI runs fine on the stock Linux on Pi, and can be set to run automatically when the system boots. Then you can either use Engine Driver on a phone as a throttle, or VNC Viewer on a phone or iPad etc to remote control the whole Pi desktop (and JMRI). This means the Raspberry Pi doesn't need a monitor, keyboard, or mouse (so long as it has a network connection) - which is called running "headless". It's a very neat solution - and very cheap!

How do you go about using the shellac with lasered card? Before or after lasering? I did have a skim through your P4 thread, but couldn't see it mentioned. When I first bought some laser cut card kits a few years ago I did experiment with using "Button polish" (which seemed to be the only variety of shellac I could find) to seal before gluing, but it didn't seem to make a great deal of difference. However now I'm getting a bit more adventurous with combining layers in buildings I'm laser cutting myself, and hitting some problems with warping, I wonder if I should look again at this kind of thing?

Couldn't really add to that great summary - beyond saying I that I get the impression that all of the people complaining about the smell as if its the worst thing ever, have never before worked with enamel paints, or mek-pak, or epoxy as part of their modelling. To the vast majority of users, at least on the Anycubic Photon Users Group on Facebook, model paint is simply Games Workshop acrylics (or equivalent). Anything solvent based seems to come as a shock to them! It does smell of solvent, and I would generally try and avoid being in the same room as it when its running (not least as the fans on the original Photon seem badly set up, so they distribute the smell more than they cool) - but not the end of the world to be near it for short times. If you can run it in the kitchen, with window open and door to your other room shut, that would be fine. I suspect the complaints about difficulty levelling etc that you've seen also come from the Anycubic Photon Users Group, or similar. The Facebook group in particular seems to be absolutely brimming over with bad advice, new users following that bad advice and the same hitting problems, and then good answers again being drowned out by the bad. YouTube doesn't seem much better, with self-appointed experts jostling to get more clicks for their "you'll never need another method!" tricks and over-complicated hokum. (such is the way with social media in general, huh!) The real experts seem to be the group calling themselves "Photonsters", who i think grew out of the Facebook group, and maintain a really good wiki type guide on their GitHub page here: https://github.com/Photonsters/anycubic-photon-docs . Personally I'd just follow the guidance there and ignore pretty much everything on Facebook and YT! J

I stumbled on this thread when I was looking up whether XT-60 connectors had been used for DCC bus wiring, after I noticed them while I was looking to make up an order of servos from an RC focused store with other bits and pieces to make the delivery charge worthwhile. These XT-60s look really good - easy to solder, only fit one way around, and this version has nice extra caps that provide grip and also save having to heat-shrink over the soldered wire connection. As @NoggintheNog said they're designed for both high but not ridiculous amps, and crucially also for frequent plugging and unplugging. https://hobbyking.com/en_us/new-xt60plus-with-insulating-end-cap-5set-bag.html 3D print designs for panel-mount housings for them seem pretty widely available, which looks good! https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3113398 I've ordered two sets to experiment with. They certainly look more convenient and handy than the pluggable 6a terminal block "choc-block" connectors I had been using for power buses so far.

I've got the Mk2 coach design ready to a point where I'm satisfied with it now. Here are two of the FO finished in Intercity livery, and another as a (NatEx era) Caledonian Sleeper lounge car (other side has two windows "plated"). I'm happy with the bogies now, even though it does seem to perhaps sit a bit high still. The next thing is to figure out a way of close coupling. The stock Arnold clone pushes the coaches a very long way apart, even with the coupling pocket printed as close to the axles as possible. I'm thinking along the lines of a tiny magnet (ordered some 1x0.5mm) inside the corridor connection, covered with a curved section to act as a pivot ... Justin

I just noticed that Mr Decal Paper seem to have bought the CraftyComputerPaper web address. I wonder if the businesses are connected? Their "about us" page mentions being a family business based in Leicestershire, and my old Crafty packet had an address in Leicester on it. They do seem to do the full range: https://mrdecalpaper.com/collections/mr-decal-paper-water-slide-transfer-film Has anyone actually tried these out? The old sheet I still have left from Crafty has a noticeably thicker film than the stuff I bought from Ghost (which they specify it as 7µm), so I'd love to find something as fine as the Ghost film with more reasonable shipping! The other UK source I happened across is Craftovator, who seem to specialise in candle and perfume making, and have clear waterslide film : https://www.craftovator.co.uk/waterslide-decal-paper/clear-laser-waterslide-decal-paper/ I'm tempted to buy a sheet or two from each to test out, but I'd love to hear if anyone else has tried either? Justin

Japanese YouTube user "diorama111" has got an awful lot of attention recently with his IR controlled motorised 1:150 Toyota Crown model (I enjoyed the fact he used a 'fonly lathe to turn down the original wheels to take tyres ...) but I took a look through the rest of his channel, and there are some really ingenious mechanisms and designs for miniature models in all kinds of scales and varieties. His "Slow motion turnout machine 2" really caught my eye - his design is a micro-servo moving a very simple under-track tie bar, controlled by a AT-Tiny chip (smallest flavour of the micro controller series that is the "brains" of an Arduino). Beautifully, it all fits within the plastic roadbed of a KATO HO gauge turnout. I know there are basically as many designs of Servo mount and other forms of Turnout Operating Mechanism as there are modellers building their own track, but this neat little design - just a very simple ex-center pin rotating in a very simple under-board tie bar - seems wonderfully elegant! It makes it look like we've all been over-engineering our turnout servo mounts, doesn't it? Justin

Ha - well exactly! But to listen to some posts on RMWeb, you'd think Farish stuff was routinely going for a premium over original selling price. That might be true of a handful of particular sought after items, but of the recent Farish I've sold on in the past year have gone for only maybe an average of 60%-ish of the original box shifter price I paid for them. Once you factor in the eBay fees, that isn't much incentive to de-clutter the models you bought as impulse purchases!

Only when you're looking to buy! When I last sold some modern Farish items a few months ago I was rather disappointed at the prices they went for. Sod's law, but certainly does seem possible to find a bargain - perhaps just look for one of my auctions!

I'm still very new to T Gauge, and only have a class 67 so far, but I would say this is a bit of an exaggeration. Having tried a few PWM circuits as "controllers" (I didn't buy the 'official' controller), I managed to get reasonable slow running - I think the PWM frequency seems to make a big difference. Potentially experimenting with PWM frequency a bit more (using an Arduino?) might improve things further. I haven't tried the DCC decoder route (am I right in assuming the decoder is mounted statically and feeds the track, rather than being in the loco?) - presumably the advantage is having a back-EMF function to better respond to the motor's load etc. Agreed - now - but perhaps a bit pessimistic to say never. With the right materials and tooling, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to engineer a Kaydee / Micro-Trains style coupling in a similar size to the stock T knuckle coupler. In fact the magnetic wheels might actually help with that - shunting with Microtrains couplings in Z can suffer from the stock being too free-wheeling\light so running away rather than coupling. I imagine sooner or later DCC decoders (or radio control equivalents) will be shrunk/integrated to single chip solutions rather than today's relatively complex small PCBs (if only to save costs in larger scales) which might unlock a lot more possibilities in T - not least higher track voltage (and therefore fewer stalls on starting) and more potential for extra functions like couplers. e.g. check out the single chip motor driver chip, AT-tiny microcontroller (i.e. Arduino-alike) and IR receiver used in this 1:150 car conversion that is doing the rounds online at the moment!