Etched Pixels

Yes but he added the the last day - and all those people who didn't read it initially with pre-configured snipe tools will never see that, so it won't end well.

They don't directly overlay without filler btw because they are the right size so you need to fill around the edges a bit.

The cabs were indeed not steel so didn't rust but flaked instead. One end of one loco if I remember rightly ended up with a steel cab when it needed replacing. The nickel silver does at least make that bit easy as well as the window frames as they can be scored not painted silver. I had the same experience with the cab roof etches being the wrong size and cut mine of scrap 5thou brass. Alan

Oh dear there goes the budget

I doubt the nickel silver expansion matters much compared to the contraction and shifting of any wood its nailed to !

Put heads and legs on the white balls and you'd have a perfectly normal Cornish scene 8)

If the bogies have the washers on them then the wheels clear the solebar and they do trainset curves reasonably happily. Gently opening out the middle axle a tiny bit also helps. However if you set them to prototypical clearances you get prototypical curvature 8)

If you are building those old bogies it's a good idea once they are the right shape to solder the insides of the folds between the top/sides, otherwise it seems they sometimes crack along the join over time. Looks like the kit was perhaps missing the bag of white metal bits - vents, axle box castings, underframe gubbins or it may be sold old it didn't have them

You are correct on both points. It's basically not commercially viable in the UK to redo the extruded roofs any more and trying to do it via China is a whole barrel of laughs I don't want to get involved in. Actually it's not clear it was *ever* commercially viable given I believe that Cav'n'dish did the original extrusions and went under As it needs a new tool making you would basically have to buy it by the kilometre and a kilometre of aluminium roof profile is a lot of N gauge coaches ! Right now its tricky. 3D print is almost good enough for a lot more things, and that means its simply not commercially sensible to do things like refresh or automate old moulds, instead there's a certain amount of sitting on hands and trying not to run out of stuff involved before we get the next generation of 3D print off Shapeways and friends. I am doing some 3D roof profiles and the polished ones are acceptable I think. Not quite as nice as moulded plastic but on the other hand you can put all those pesky vent-holes in the roof and save a ton of pain. A few folks will have seen and handled the upcoming Ultima LNER suburban roofs and I think the consensus is they are fine. The old aluminium siphon roof profile however I have lots of so is listed likewise the old (no longer used in kits) aluminium floor. Alan

If you know the dimensions you can probably 3D print them these days, depending on the material thicknesses.

Makes sense re the half axles. On the heat subject I was meaning with respect to soldering not running. I've stuck to about 0.4mm (0.3mm on the edges) with the various Gresley buffers I did.

You could also print the centres with half axles on them or half axles with a 1.6mm outer and 0.8mm central hole for a metal rod to hold it together. Pressing them just needs a block with a hole in it for the stub to dangle in. Heat is lilkely to be a problem - FUD goes a bit soft about 70-80C and in boiling water you can reshape it permanently. Good for drilling and tweaking, bad for wheels. FUD btw isn't entirely like white metal - it doesn't deform so easily so will resist a lot of small stresses far better and stay the same shape. On higher stresses it just shatters. It's certainly far better for buffers than white metal for example. Alan

Steam may not be dead yet! Even though it sounds like should be an imaginary locomotive Voith are testing a closed loop steam heat recovery add on for diesel units. It's been around for marine use for a while but is now getting tested on the continent for rail use.

Mine seems to be accurate to about 0.2-0.3 of a mm. It's not "accurate" in the sense of giving exactly correct readings and cutting to the stated sizes, but it is accurate once you allow for the small scaling errors in each axis. I believe its possible to recalibrate it but I've never bothered. All the stuff I cut is aligned with the marks in the same spot and same distance so its just a "magic number" by now.

If you want to just do model stuff I'd say Silhouette right now. There is a huge price range because the range includes "professional" kit that can turn out 30' long 2' wide banners for shop windows.

There are a couple of answers to the cleaning side - use FUD (probably mindnumbingly price in O but ok in N) or used the polishing service some suppliers now offer. That makes a big difference. Polishing these materials is also hard (PLA especially as its co-efficient of friction is so high it simply melts onto the abrasive). In some cases dipping it in a suitable solution to smooth out the gaps by filling them works better.

I would ask Dave Jones before assuming. Its possible they'll say no, or that you'll need to buy 500 but it may be worth asking.

For lower quadrant and DCC you may want to look at the Tomix signal instead. That is DCC controllable and looks very UKish. The one with the distant as well lacks the 'V' cutout so only matches very early practice but I'm sure could be 'edited' Another option might be to use a tortoise style controller that produces a 5v or so output and can be set to pulse, that'll drive an SSR (solid state relay) rather than a mechanical one. You can pick them up for £3 or so and with no moving parts they draw almost no control current and don't wear in the same way. They are polarised and deeply offended by excessive reverse current so need to be wired the right way round though.

Lisa - I've no idea how to. I had enough trouble making it work on vimeo at all.

Smaller scales just make it more 'interesting' but you can cheat and deploy mechanical aids to the problem such as a craft-robo cutter ! It can cut to 0.2mm accuracy unlike me

The factory owns Bachmann !