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I've been using a Mars for the past couple of weeks, with the idea of producing many of the models I sell on Shapeways at a lower cost . I've standardised on using the Elegoo gray ABS like resin - It's much less brittle than the normal resin, though with a slightly matt finish. It's not particularly cheap - €25 for 500ml - but it gives me the results I want and that's in my opinion is worth paying for. Hopefully the 1 liter bottles at €37 will come back into stock soon at Amazon FR. It's enabled me to produce some of the some of the Stuff that has never sold at Shapeways because of it's prices there - £60 for this Freelance but GWR styled bogie railcar for instance or this colonial style bogie car It's also enabled me to new things that were just too expensive to ever make before, like this 009 steeplecab loco blown up to 1:35 scale and an open tram trailer for it to pull If you're wondering why my succulents appear in the background of some of these, it's because I'm UV hardening them in sunlight outside, on the shelves where I propagate the succulents.

Printing at Shapeways and printing at home are two different things with two different sets of costs. Nearest analogy i can make is going out to eat a meal at a restaurant and cooking the same meal at home. You know the former will be more expensive but the results should be better because they have more experience doing it and have better equipment to work with, although this is not always the case in both scenarios! Doing it at home will take more of your time and skills and you may have to make capital expenditure if you don't have the right equipment - having said that domestic machinery is much cheaper than the commercial equivalent that you need if you are using it day in day out. However to continue my analogy whille some home cooks will be able to produce restaurant standard meals at home others will struggle to produce anything edible, even if given the recipe and full instructions. But for the most part there is the middle ground. The home cook can produce something fine at considerably less cost. Equally most people with the skills and time can produce home prints as good or better than the commercial services, but there is still a place for those services to cater for those who don't want to cook/print themselves or may not be able to do so for any on of a thousand reasons.

This is another problem for me - I'm in France and selling things means registering a business to do this, however payments from Shapeways count as royalties, where you don't need to have a registered business - like an author, I could be receiving those royalties long after I've done the work creating something.

Maybe, but then they go away feeling cheated or even worse, thinking that you are calling them stupid. Or of course they could just say they are having problems to get a refund......

Oh I still lurk round here - just too busy with designing things and rebuilding houses ( I'm currently converting the other half of my house here into 3 flats to rent out) to spend much time replying. I do wish there was a simple way to share STLs for profit. Problem is once you sell the STL you have very little legal control over what people do with it. You can (in theory) stop duplicating the file and giving copies to other people, but trying to restrict what they do with the things they produce from that file is a legal minefield. You could in theory issue a licence for them to produce x number of copies, but it's very possible that the first sale doctrine could invalidate that anyway. And if you did want to chase anyone up for copyright infringement you would be talking about investing £5000-£200,000 in a case where you might only win a few pounds in damages and there is every chance you would not win. My though was to make the stls cheap in the first place so people would have no incentive to copy, but that then hit the problem of people not realizing that 3d printing still requires some skills.

Now I've made a decent number of my designs available for free on the Thingiverse. Quite a few people have made money reselling them on ebay - I don't mind, I did it to promote 009 and 3d printing. Downside is there have been some very inferior versions done, which have probably done little to promote 3d printing, but overall I'm happy with the experience. I did a little experiment last year selling stls of various things for a lowish price - 80% went fine but the other 20% of people needed too much hand holding - it's OK selling the STL for £10, but not when you need spend 2 hours trying to explain to people what they are doing wrong !

My friend Stuart and I have been working on making the generic 009 wagons I have on Shapeways available as 3D printed styrene kits The idea is to provide a low cost option for those wishing to try 009 or extend their existing 009 fleet. They will require a little cleanup and Grafar/Bachmann wheels or similar to complete, together with your choice of couplings. Prices start from only £5 each, currently only available on ebay For current range see here https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/T-and-S-Models/4mm-scale/_i.html?_storecat=3732370819 Will be expanding this soon. We would welcome peoples opinion on these.

As I have an interest in large operation based layouts. I was intrigued when someone mentioned that Allan Garraway used to have a large O gauge coarse scale layout in his flat above Porthmadog harbour station and later at his house in Scotland. Has anything ever been published about this layout ? Tom

There was once a proposal by the GWR to run passenger trains over the dock lines, across Four Bridges to the Secombe landing stage to serve Liverpool by the ferry. I belive it never came to anything, though some track improvements were done.

https://www.karlsruhe.de/b1/stadtgeschichte/kulturdenkmale/denkmaltag_archiv/2010/fahrradtruemmer_innenstadt.de

I know he did a lot of different things, but I didn't know he did any Narrow gauge, other than the G scale American stuff he did. Any details on this ?

Ah OK will be off the Hejaz Railway then. Almost certainly French or Belgian built. If you can find a Hejaz Railway stocklist you could look up wagon M 8 and see who built it.

It's a French meter gauge dropside wagon, not sure which line it is off though.

Isn't CE self-certified ? I know when we were looking to import something from China a few years ago the CE stamp was an optional extra, but only a couple of pence a unit extra, so I guess the CE stamped one was exactly the same as the non CE stamped one.

Well I pulled the H&M Flyer appart. The problem turned out to be the diode bridge gone short circuit - it's made up of discrete diodes, rather small ones. Disconnected it for the moment so I can use the AC output to test the compspeeds. Both the normal single knob ones worked, but only 1 of the 2 Rambler Minors did. Will search out other failed transformer controllers I have and see if any others will work as AC supplies only, as I'd like to fix the Flyer for using on my test track again. Another suggestion from another forum is the power supply for halogen lamps. I may have some of these already, as the railway in the basement of my old house was lit by these. Brought them with me with the intention of using these on my new garage line, but by the time I'd got round to building this cheap LED stips had become avalabile and I've used those instead.

But But both those to are £20+ for a 12v 1 amp+ power supply and quite a few of the options are no longer manufactured. I'd probably save money by looking for a cheap consumer item that used them and buying that ! No 15/16v ac ones seem available now for instance. Chinese 12v dc power supplies can be had for a couple of quid !

The problem is most of the wall warts and the like are high frequency switch mode power supplies which supply smoothed DC - ideal for most situations, but not unfortunately, the Compspeeds.

Annoying all my old H&Ms seem to have packed up. I bought a £5 Flyer from a club stand last time I was in the UK for use on my test track and that died 2 days ago. Worst was a brand new in the box Executive which failed to work when I plugged it is - though it had been in that box for over 20 years ...

This is precisely why I'd have prefered to buy one of the switched mode power supplies from China - they're cheap - I just paid £3.95 for a 6 amp 12v one for my kitchen lights inc postage - and they come ready in a nice package. They are also more efficient than an old style transformer. They are easier to get - I live out in the wilds of rural France, buying large components either entails a 200km round trip or paying the price of the item again in postal charges. But I had a vague memory that they needed either unsmoothed DC or AC input, so it looks like I was right.

I'm doing a retro layout which needs DC control. I've got a number ECM Compspeed controllers lying about which I could use, but it would appear that all the old transformers I have stashed away no longer work ! Would they work with a modern power brick that gives smoothed DC or do they specifically need an AC supply ? The power bricks seem significantly cheaper than buying a cased transformer. I can't find any details of the circuit the compspeed uses to try and work it out myself.

yes, it's important to realize that transition curves are not just about high speed, they minimise the difference in the offset of a pair of wagon ends as they enter the curve, preventing buffer lock or, more likely in our case, derailments caused by the couplings becoming too far out of alignment.

Instructions on how to use above templates

and 2 sets of templates

Article from Model railroader about the principles of Transition curves

OK this is the EM gauge society booklet I mentioned earlier - having looked at it it's fairly technical http://www.emgs.org/wp-content/uploads/MANUAL_1_2_2_1_pages_all.pdf