PhilH

A family member will be starting a new job shortly which will involve training on and operating a £20k laser cutter. She has been told that a certain amount of use for ‘home’ projects will be tolerated. As a prelude to this(!) what file format do these things use? Are they machine specific or does one size fit all? As always many thanks for any replies.

Is there/ will there be a premium on fares to travel on HS1 or 2?

I'm sorry to labour the point but if you go with what you expect or what you assume then you will have an accident. You have to make absolutely sure as to what actually is, that is your responsibility as a driver, and act accordingly.

That's the whole point you don't assume you make absolutely sure before you commit to a move towards the train.

If you don’t know where the train you are supposed to buffer up to is, how can you move towards that train without finding this rather important point out? Buffering up /shunting 101 surely?

Before I got old and lazy I was a driver on the Mid Hants for quite a few years. As such I obviously carried out a few thousand buffering up operations during the course of this. I don’t wish to be overly critical of someone else’s driving, it’s not an easy job, but I do have one observation. Whatever else went wrong in my opinion he came in far too ‘hot’ leaving himself not a lot of leeway in case things went wrong. Buffering up is a (hopefully controlled) collision, so the more outs you give yourself if things do go pear shaped the better. I used to err on the side of caution and didn’t have too many problems. As I say it’s just my opinion but as soon I started watching the video it did make me wince a little.

Here's a question for the plastic kit modellers amongst us. There seems to be a huge amount of interior detail featured on most modern kits especially in the larger scales. Sadly a large percentage of it will not be seen again as the kit progresses. My question is a)do you include it and b) if you do include it do you bother painting it with all the detail it deserves?

What baffles me, bearing in mind the Curry red card, is that the Kriel tackle on Dempsey wasn't even looked at by the ref or TMO in the SA v Scotland game, for me there wasn't a huge amount of difference between the two. I think the referees have got to get their act together over the lack of consistency displayed so far in this series, it's certainly making for a lot of frustration in my opinion.

Thanks for all the replies.

I'm watching an interesting video on YouTube of a class 59 which broke down I think yesterday (not only steam locos which breakdown it seems) on an aggregate train. Apparently it overheated and was shut down. A rescue engine was sent in the form of a 66 which coupled onto the rear of the train. The whole thing then moved off with the class 59 leading as a dead engine and 66 propelling it. My question is would the person in the 59 be able to drive the train using the 66 as the power or would it all have to be done via radios?

What a grey colourless world we would live in if everything was banned just because it was this that or something else. Thank God I'm an old man, I won't have to put up with this bullcrap much longer.

I think it’s fair to say that every layout exhibited at a model railway show tweaks reality to a certain extent with regards to the timetable they run to. For instance, branch lines with almost continuous movements when in reality, they would possibly have one train an hour if that.

Head over heart for me. Heart…buy Hornby Bulleid coaches from Kernow for £17.99 each. Head…. hang on, you have 18 Bachmann examples.

here you are, hope you can read this ok.You might be able to blow it up and print it out, if not I at least have it on the mac so there might be other options to explore which I, although as tech savvy as a sack of potatoes, might be able to explore

Good news and bad news, I have on a very ancient Windows computer over 1300 Southern Railway drawings of Bulleid Pacific details including the one you want. The bad news is, I can’t quite work out how to extract them from that computer onto my iMac. I will keep trying, and if I can, I will send you that drawing.

Haven’t you got to whistle up a shunter as well or has that requirement changed?? These days the only available one will probably be at the other end of the country.

The problem there is there aren’t that many organisations able to provide suitable motive power for these excursions.

This. In these days of entitlement, cancellation, outing, blame culture etc. it would appear that society is increasingly less able to do this.

Might? Try definitely will. My experience, 10 years in, is you only need one plan…adapt and overcome.

I thought I’d post this as it may be of interest to some who are perhaps on the cusp of getting into resin printing. There are on Thingiverse files for loco lamps and brake van lamps. They are scaled for 5 inch gauge but obviously can be scaled down to anything you want. They are downloaded as bits but all then needs to be done is to put them into tinker cad and basically put the bits together. Then transfer to slicer of choice and print. These were printed on a basic 2K Mars 2 pro printer, even the handles printed successfully! edit forgot to say they took 18 minutes to print and apparently cost about 2p in resin

They do seem to discount stock quite regularly….my local model shop (shameless plug, AC models in Eastleigh, superb shop) have a shelf of discounted Airfix kits at bargain prices. This is a purchase from there from a while back, add to that my 10% discount for being a member of a local model club the prices become even more attractive!

One thing I’ve learned over a relatively long life is that whatever disaster or event you’re prepping for a curveball will always appear, and it will be nothing like that which you have prepared for. So for me, a better solution is being able to react quickly to whatever appears in front of you.

For those modelling railways of a certain age and who have a resin printer (or knows someone with one) this might be of interest. Although scaled at 1/148 it obviously can be scaled up in your slicer for other scales. It looks fairly detailed so should print well. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5697004 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5697044