meurglys3

Interesting it (60 095) has gone over to Doncaster after a month or so on the Tuebrook-Shap-Haydock stone trains, which haven’t run this week. I wonder if it is coming back or will we get a different loco this week if the train runs.Edit: ah, looks like it is coming back this afternoon...

And I feel guilty for ordering another class 24! What's that little lot cost?!

I had a day trip to Glasgow on Saturday from Wigan, there sure was a lot of shiny new stuff on Carlisle Kingmoor in the sunshine. On the return journey I was on the wrong side of the train but was ready to move when the two ladies sat across the aisle got off at Lockerbie. But two teenage girls beat me to it. And they pulled the blind down so I couldn''t see anything. To make it worse, they put the blind back up just after we passed the depot! I did hate them for a while there!

I saw Tim and his band at the time, "Always the stranger" when they supported Roy Harper at Longridge Civic Hall back in 1984. He badgered me to write about them in the fanzine I was doing at the time, which I did. I like to think his longevity and ensuing success, albeit cult, is mostly my doing. ;-)

Portakabins and stairs made on the Cameo. Just add some square profile styrene for the supports. Bachmann ones of these are over £30, I have a cutting file and can make as many as I want! Don't really need any more though :-)

I have travelled Preston to Barrow a couple of times based on the fact that RT showed it as loco haulage (diesel locomotive, trailing load etc) so no, they haven't always.

Realtime trains now shows the 10.04 from Preston pathed for a class 158 sprinter. Have the loco hauled trains stopped now?

Amazing work. I strive to achieve brickwork like that

Damn, wish I'd known that was running. Would have been worth the short drive to Wigan. Presume it went through Wallgate?

I wonder if different types of plasticard have an effect? The 10 thou I am using is Javis, which is all my local model shop had - in fact they didn't have it, they ordered some for me. One side seems to have a gloss finish, don't know if that makes any difference. If I had thought on when I was at the Manchester show on Saturday, I would have got hold of various samples, evergreen, slaters etc. What are you fellas using?

Cheers Steve, I will keep trying using those settings, no doubt I will get there in the end. After long periods of trial and error with styrene, I thought I needed to actually build something before I lost the will to live, so I drew up a (freelance) loco inspection platform and cut it from white card, the pieces then laminated using spray mount and pva. It's by no means as fine as a brass kit, but those are, for the time being, beyond my skill level. What I like about this is I can make more, I might even make one for the full length of my depot, and it costs pennies and is actually quite easy and fun to assemble now that I have got the parts the right sizes to fit with each other. Also I think I have finally figured out how to do steps without them constantly falling to bits! (Waiting for the glue to dry while I type this.....) Pete

Great work! Are the parts cut from styrene? I'm still having trouble getting my Cameo 3 to cut even 10 thou styrene, even with a brand new blade and using the settings suggested on here. Any tips? Carry on Steve, you're doing a great job. Nils bastardus carborundum! (don't let the b******s grind you down!) Pete

Has anyone used the "deep cut blade"? I saw this option in the cutting menu but obviously you have to buy one. I'm wondering if this would help with cutting styrene, or would the drag from the material be too much?

I've got a warm fuzzy feeling now :-) thanks brylonscamel. Your signalbox is looking great! Good luck with it Pete

Okay... I have had my silhouette cameo 3 for a few days and am getting to know it. It's a love/hate relationship so far. The first thing that annoyed me was, having bought the A3 plotter I wasn't impressed to find that the cutting mat supplied was only 12" by 12", so I will have to buy an A3 mat. The second thing - the machine has fittings for 2 tools, but only one is supplied so if I want to cut and crease I will have to buy another tool.... The third thing - the cutting mat is way too sticky, so I am currently leaving the blue cover on it, and applying a light spraying of spray mount to the card I want to cut, and taping it at the edges with masking tape. Anyway, I have recently built a signal box by the traditional method of cutting lots of styrene by hand, but I wasn't happy with the staircase as it was very fiddly to build and I couldn't get the treads straight. I had devised a method of cutting risers with notches for the treads and slotting the shaped treads in to these, but it was very difficult to cut accurately by hand. I had all the plans drawn up in Illustrator so I thought I would use this as my first test job (if you disregard the paper doyley I cut to show the wife..) Despite the urging by Silhouette to buy their Illustrator plug-in software (they remind me of a phone app, constantly offering extra in-app purchases) I knew that through the export menu in Illustrator, you can output .dwg files. I did this and opened the file in the Silhouette software. Bingo, it appeared. After a lot of trial and error, I got the file to cut some spare card I had lying around, something like photo paper thickness but matt. At this point, when I offered up the parts to the signal box, I realised that the software had not imported the image at actual size. I have now re-sized it with measurements taken from the existing staircase. Despite it being too small to use, I decided to build it anyway to see how it went together. The results are OK but I need to find a non-stringy glue that I can paint on to the parts. I used UHU and it's left a bit of a mess. So yeah, it looks nice and delicate and the ironwork is cut cleaner than I could do by hand, but needs tweaking. Onwards... Any comments, help and advice would be welcome. I plan to get some thin styrene sheet at the weekend and see how I get on with that. By the way - I had a few failures where the blade didn't cut right through the card, but other times it did a good job. I need to determine the right settings. Currently I have it set on "cover stock", speed set at 1, thickness (does this mean the cut thickness?) at 33, and the blade set at 10, though I have tried various combinations. Pete

Go on then... LNWR 3 storey box based on Lowton Junction, 00 gauge.

Hi folks, I have been following this thread with interest. The opportunity has arisen for me to get a cutting machine (the wife fancies making stuff) Looking on amazon etc I see there is a Cameo 3 now. As I don't remember this being mentioned, and don't have the will to look through all the pages on this thread, I wondered: Is the v3 machine better, ie more features, more powerful etc than the previous model? And, as I know adobe Illustrator well (I use it in my work), is the Silhouette software still capable of importing vector files from Illustrator? The wife fancies making cards and family trees in the Rob Ryan style, so I guess I will be drawing up her designs in Illustrator and cutting on the cameo. I would want to cut (00 gauge) window frames, staircases etc for a start, I'm thinking laminated thin styrene or card. Thanks in advance :-) Pete