noiseboy72

For the test print, I put in some Bachmann metal wheels from an old bogie bolster. Probably not quite right, but they certainly added a little weight. There should be room to get some more just under the buffer beams at each end, and still be invisible, and perhaps even a little along the sole bars, tucked in between the sides of the hopper. 

11 hours ago, JustinDean said:

Gannet time!

 

@noiseboy72 printed a couple of Gannets from the file previously talked about on here.

I sent the files to @Middlepeak for perusal also and he spotted a couple of errors such as the print isn’t an open frame design like the prototype. I’ve gone ahead regardless, curious to see if a passable model can be made. 
So with a fresh scalpel and steady hand I’ve removed the struts from one of these tonight. Shown in the photo below, there’s still a fair amount of cleaning up to do. Also the sides have bowed inwards. I’ve encountered this on other 3D prints and some gentle bending in warm water usually does the trick. Wheels and brake levers have been printed separately and will be added once the clean up is done. 
Im wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction for suitable buffers for these?

I’ll be heading over to @cctransuk site for transfers and I’ve already sourced disc wheels from 51L. Should be a fun little project!

 

Jay

 

Glad these arrived in one piece. Hopefully the bowing is not too severe, it did not look too bad on the test print, perhaps 0.5mm over the length of the hopper?

As per @RedgateModels suggestion, I can happily do some 3D printing demos, along with displaying some of my garden railway models. 

Stock ranges from a Rocket loco with coach and wagon stock through Ffestiniog coaches to trams, including Wisbech and Upwell and LCC. All 3D printed or laser cut.

On 21/04/2023 at 14:56, RedgateModels said:

 

its a very deep rabbit hole LOL

I have been incredibly impressed with your design skills, they are much in excess of my own. What you achieve with MS builder is just amazing. Your APT bogies and pans are a work of art, and would be hard to create in Solidworks, let along MS Builder. 

It's a genuine pleasure to print parts for you :)

On 21/04/2023 at 10:56, RedgateModels said:

these came out great, bare black resin prints, connected to each other and an original Hornby half bogie

 

 

Thanks Ian.

Yes, I use a variety of resins. This is an ABS like resin and I find it remains stable after printing. I've just made some signals for my garden railway, so time will tell how long it lasts. Hopefully it won't crumble. I use a modified Mars Pro, which uses high intensity light and a better screen to give very short exposure times, this seems to help with keeping things more flexible after printing. Post cure is limited to a few minutes, nothing more.

We sold our 2 GMRC layouts a couple of years ago. Our Mars layout from the heat is still pretty much in one piece, with all the main items still in place, but it's been modified as a roundy roundy, to make it easier to operate. The Bond layout has been stripped back to bare boards, which was unsurprising, given the less than stellar track plan we were given to work with!

It was great fun making GMRC and we'd happily all do it again.  The production team knew very little about model railways, but then again, they probably knew very little about Thai airports - which had been their previous production! They are there to make general entertainment, not 100% authentic records of what went on during filming.

Had they set out just to capture 3 team building some model railways against the clock, there would have been lots of shots of people drinking tea while waiting for things to dry, shots of people chatting to other teams about the best way to do things, people lending tools and materials, and generally just building train sets at an much increased pace to normal. They need to make entertainment and tell a story from a particular viewpoint, and that's what they do. If that involves enhancing the few disagreements and problems the teams encounter, so be it.

I think the Hornby show is similar. They will show a very small part of the design process, scenes of things not going quite right, followed by the grand ending of the finished product going on show. They compress it down to seemingly a few moments, but we all know it's a 12-18 month project end to end, with the designers probably working on a large number of other projects - at different stages of completion at the same time.

On 22/03/2023 at 18:06, noiseboy72 said:

I found a nice gentleman in his top hat and he worked out quite well through the 2D - 3D app. I did have to tidy up his hat, but that was about it. It's actually a fancy dress costume, but it still works very well.

 

 

Pictured here printed to 7mm, along with a rather lovely sarcophagus that's in the grounds of Kingston Lacy house in Dorset. I did a quick lap around it and captured about 40 photos, before uploading them to Kiriengine and creating a really nice little model. The American student - Annie has now been painted, so I've added her to the shot as well. 3D viewing links here:

 

https://www.kiriengine.app/share/ShareModel?code=AM34IJ&serialize=fddf1f2720bb41ed8a2fb32afa1f645d

https://www.kiriengine.app/share/ShareModel?code=AM34IJ&serialize=764c08e4f4904889803e0f8794363e62

 

 

I updated my old original Mars printer with a new mono LCD and Mars 2 firmware. It's more than halved the print times and uses the more efficient .ctb files, so the processing and Z lift control is much improved. Less than 2 hours to print out both models - something that would have taken 5 with the old screen and firmware.

 

 

A quick photo update following painting..

On 20/03/2023 at 23:25, woko said:

First attempt, with image straight from google

 

Image from google 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I thought what if i change the background colour a bit, and levels in photoshop to see if i can get a better result!

Image after slight manipulation darking levels and adding a darker background to help push the contrast between the figure and the background hoping to get a better read for the model

 

 

 

Slightly more detail comes through now around the hands as you can see, but still missing some geometry which is annoying so I thought I would try a bit more image editing to see if it helped.

I put in a slight gradient in the background, and coloured the sleeves to help make them more readable i hope?

 

image amended slightly

 

 

And then finally we are getting more detail to the figure I think i might keep this one, see if I can clean her up slightly in Zbrush and have a go at printing her at 7mm

 

 

 

 

 

This was my attempt from your picture...

Main problem looks to be hands and feet. I've added her a peg leg, which should be OK up to 7mm, but I might need to graft on some hands from another model.

13 minutes ago, RedgateModels said:

I spy a flex hinge in the background 😉

One of 12 I've printed out today for butcher's scales apparently... 

I found a nice gentleman in his top hat and he worked out quite well through the 2D - 3D app. I did have to tidy up his hat, but that was about it. It's actually a fancy dress costume, but it still works very well.

Pictured here printed to 7mm, along with a rather lovely sarcophagus that's in the grounds of Kingston Lacy house in Dorset. I did a quick lap around it and captured about 40 photos, before uploading them to Kiriengine and creating a really nice little model. The American student - Annie has now been painted, so I've added her to the shot as well. 3D viewing links here:

https://www.kiriengine.app/share/ShareModel?code=AM34IJ&serialize=fddf1f2720bb41ed8a2fb32afa1f645d

https://www.kiriengine.app/share/ShareModel?code=AM34IJ&serialize=764c08e4f4904889803e0f8794363e62

I updated my old original Mars printer with a new mono LCD and Mars 2 firmware. It's more than halved the print times and uses the more efficient .ctb files, so the processing and Z lift control is much improved. Less than 2 hours to print out both models - something that would have taken 5 with the old screen and firmware.

I did some comparisons between photogrammetry and this single photo technique. I am sure you can predict the results...

This is a young American called Annie. I scanned her the other day using around 40 photos:

This is the 3D model of her generated with the 2D reconstruction compared to the photogrammetry model.

At first look, the 2D conversion has done a fair job, and has brought out the facial features better than the photogrammetry, but the pose, hair and body shape are all incorrect. The detail in the jumper is knitted in, so should not really be brought out in relief. Still not a bad attempt though.

This is the 32mm character I've made for her from the scan.

Thanks for the reply.

I did precisely that, and got it to work well enough to download the .Obj files, even if the pointless video animation didn't work. 

Not sure my Python skills are up to putting this together as an on-machine version, but let me know how you get on!

On 09/03/2023 at 16:30, eldavo said:

This is pretty impressive stuff.  It doesn't look to have been worked on for 3 years, at least not in this public collaboration.  I've managed to get some quite usable figures out of it even just using the 512x512 low res image test mode.  Being a research project, and 3 years old, installing the software on your own machine is a little challenging and it took me several hours of tinkering to get it working but it was worth the effort.

 

I'm particularly looking for figures for Edwardian era through to the early 1920s and there really isn't a lot of convincing models available off the shelf.  So to the internet...

 

This is an image from Shutterstock adjusted to be 512x512 with the extra bits down the side just plain black...

 

 

...and here she is printed to 7mm scale with a very crude paint job:

 

 

A bit more work on the painting and it's a usable figure.  As you can see the algorithm doesn't recognise a stack of books so her hands are empty!

 

As to what happens at the back, well here are a selection of models I created yesterday:

 

 

and from the rear:

 

 

As you can see the algorithms struggle with long skirts but there is nothing that can't be fixed with a dab of filler.  On the other hand the gent in the suit is pretty much spot on.  His face is a bit blurred because he had a beard but overall it's pretty good and certainly good enough for a background figure.

 

If you try more modern figures then the reverse modelling is very good for both male and female clothing.  I can see myself using this quite a lot and maybe reading the research papers and looking at extending the capabilities (there's nothing on the telly!).

 

Cheers

Dave

 

I would be interested to know the detailed steps that you went through to install this, as I am struggling to say the least. I get errors around finding and installing the correct dependencies.

I would like to use this to salvage some photogrammetry projects where the end result is less than optimal due to lots of plain colours preventing accurate image matching, or just poor photography in the first place!

Any assistance gratefully received and I will happily share the resulting files with the wider community.  

We had to prepare plans for both semi-finals as well as the final itself.

Our unbuilt semi-final layout would have been on the theme of Myths and Legends and our plan was to create a derelict theme park set around the theme. We would have had the park's own railway running with western style stock around some run down fun fair rides, an edible gingerbread house, an animated jack and the beanstalk and a loading challenge featuring us loading a standard gauge wagon onto a narrow gauge truck and transporting it on a stretch of 009 track.

Our final layout idea was to do magic tricks with the trains! This would have included a magical train that changed from a steam engine to a diesel in a very short tunnel, Find the Lady with 3 identical short trains disappearing into tunnels and reappearing at random points in the layout and a card trick with the reveal being transported from the other end of the 3 layouts.

We very much enjoyed our time on the show and would go back in a heartbeat. We've also had fun exhibiting our layouts - we're at Mansfield model railway exhibition this coming weekend and were at Newark last weekend and had lots of interest from children and adults alike. We're open to further exhibition invitations for our heat layout, but intend to retire our semi-final layout as it's not really up to the rigours of exhibiting and has limited operational interest.

Just an update on this, as I had an email from the production company last week. There's currently no firm plans for a 3rd series of GMRC, but discussions are ongoing. 

Fingers crossed...

The problem is that they edit and quality control the programs on calibrated monitors viewing at close range in a darkened viewing area.

Translate that to a typical TV, probably not calibrated, with all the processing switched on and viewed at a more typical distance and things get trickier. It's the same with sound tracks. They sound fine on a decent system, but squeezed through the speakers you get on current TVs and the vocal clarity goes out the window.

The flyer was at Warley - on the winner's layout stand.

They are always on the lookout for new and interesting teams. I would imagine that they don't get quite as many suitable teams as you might think. Finding a bunch of people who are a: available for anything up to 10 days in a 1 month period, b: happy to appear and confident on TV and c: good speed modellers is quite hard!

If you are interested, have a look at our website - as this gives you some idea of what you might face. Then, drop an email to knickerbocker and see if they respond

It is a fun experience, but it is stressful and tiring, so make sure your team are fit and ready for anything...

I've seen a few flyers inviting competitors for a 2020 series, but nothing more. 

We now have 3 shows confirmed for 2020.

29 Feb - 1 Mar Lincs MRS @ Newark Showground - Semi-final layout

7-8 March Mansfield Railway Show - Semi-final layout

4-5 April Bingham MRS @ Cotgrave Miner's Welfare - Heat layout

The layouts are still on display at Rocket Railways and can be viewed most Mondays and Fridays, 9-5.

Further info on our website - www.mgnr.uk

5 hours ago, D9020 Nimbus said:

The coverage of the Dutch layout was excellent, but there was an obvious howler in the description of Team Grantham, who were described as a team from Grantham!

...And as the team from Grantham, it's caused quite a few misunderstandings!!

You can tell we were there as late entries as otherwise I think they might have put us in seperate heats.

6 hours ago, Legend said:

I think moving it to Sat night probably had the single biggest effect . I must admit that I have both the second SF and the final on my Virgin box but I havent bothered to catch up as yet as I found the first SF to be a bit far out for me . I doubt I'll bother .  Thats no reflection on the folks that took part , clearly some great modelling going on ,and I hope that it has attracted some to the hobby,  but I really do think the style of the program , making incursions into fantasy, turned some people off .

 

I wonder of the viewing audience how many were modellers that were turned off v general public that were turned on .  Possibly a tricky balancing act. Maybe there were more modellers initially watching than some people think.   I still believe the program portrayed railway modelling as something it wasn't what with volcanoes, earthquakes and dinosaurs . So even if folk took an interest  their first exhibition is probably not what they will be expecting . Still hopefully the colour , movement and engineering of model railways will keep them on board and in that respect any TV exposure can only be a good thing.

As a team captain in SF2, please give it a go, as there's real railway modelling from all 3 teams and much less fantasy. In fact in the final there's plenty of transferable skills and Whose Counting Rivets in particular produced a really good "traditional" layout with some really fun animations and effects to boot.

This was how we stored our layouts prior to splitting them...

The layouts survived very well with minimal damage. We've now split them and have almost finished rewiring the animations and all the track is operational. 

Getting them into the van in 1 piece at Fawley was "interesting"! Many thanks to the other teams and TV crew who all lent a hand. Getting them back out was a lot easier, as we had a forklift and expert operator who extracted them in a few minutes. The layouts we then put onto some old stage decks with 7' legs. A bit of bracing and we had some nice storage that was out of the way of idle hands until we had located a permanent home for them.

Just now, D9020 Nimbus said:

I also think linking the layouts together was a rather pointless exercise. Also, there should have been only three teams in the final unless the final was given more air time. With these issues we saw far less of the final layouts than the "heat" and semi-final layouts. Also, if there had been only three layouts in the final, there might not have been any need to reduce the build times. (You could have had the winners of each of the semi-finals plus the highest scoring runner-up.)

Ahem... As the highest scoring runner up team - scoring more than the 2nd place team in Semi-final 1, we wholeheartedly agree with this suggestion    

I do however think the linking thing is a good idea though, as it forces you to think about the bigger picture during planning for the whole competition. WCR in particular managed to link their layouts together very successfully from a design point of view and in my opinion, this should have got them extra marks.

Personally more flexibility in terms of layout size and gauge would add interest. The whole "We need to send the camera train around" thing is something of a red herring, as it could easily be adapted to larger scales and the current use of the mini-jib for the smaller scales would still give plenty of interest. As we have a couple of modellers who like O Gauge and larger, I think we could create something pretty cool given a bit of flexibility around the size and shape.

From our team's perspective, Chris's wonky chimney, Phil's banana rolling stock protection device and Jonny killing the alien!

We very much enjoyed seeing our layouts in various trailers and the kind comments from Steve and Kathy, particularly our heat layout.

3 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

A belated reply, I know...

 

I greatly enjoyed the modelling and thought that all the teams were very much on top of their game (not so much the production, but I've commented upon that elsewhere...) But what did puzzle me was why didn't The Railmen of Kent use any of the excellent Harry Potter models from Hornby (or did they? I don't recall seeing them...).

 

Is my impression correct that only a small percentage of their products were available from the sponsors?

They probably weren't in stock. Hornby in particular had quite poor stock levels for some items. We found the choice of locos quite limited, but rolling stock was generally better.