BG John

That's a relief. It means there's absolutely no point in considering buying one! If it was as running in 1905, things might be different!

Is the LSWR version the real thing, not as preserved? If so, what are the dates it ran in that condition?

Is there a difference between products sold as French Polish and those sold as Shellac, and if so, does it matter for this purpose? Living far from civilisation, I don't get much of a range to choose from when I go shopping, so would like to know if it's OK to buy anything I come across under either name.

EKR livery would be nice. The prospect of the Radial in any livery prompted me to start planning a Colonel Stephens layout at long last, but then I got seduced by the 7mm Dapol Terrier, that should be in a Colonel Stephens livery much sooner!!!!!

It's starting to make sense now! I've restarted this drawing, adding loads of guidelines first, then importing the drawing. It's not quite lining up yet, so I'll probably do a bit of stretching the sides until it does. That will partly compensate for what look like errors in the drawing.

I think that's going to be one of the challenges! Deciding how much to "improve" on the work of well known railway experts, who are/were far better draughtsman than I'll ever be. My Portrait arrived this morning. I was hoping it would be another day or two so I could get some other things out of the way first! Now I've either got to start playing with it, or try to avoid staring at the box in eager anticipation!!!

I've got a spreadsheet to do it for me now . I've started again with this drawing, and the first thing I did was set out guidelines for all the marked dimensions. Then I imported the scanned drawing, and I'm still fiddling around trying to work out why it doesn't quite fit. There seem to be some errors in the drawing, so I expect there will be in lots of the drawings we use. I'd like to get really proficient with this stage, so I can eventually churn out models in no time. Too many years without doing any modelling to catch up!!!!!

I've just scanned and imported what might be my first project when my Portrait arrives. I'm having a go at a private owner wagon in 7mm, so if it doesn't work out as planned, no one can prove I got it wrong! They can only argue about whether a dumb buffered wagon that was designed in 1875 would have been in the hands of a fictitious Sussex coal merchant in 1910! To make extra sure I got it as accurate as possible, I scanned the drawing into GIMP at 1200dpi, which is probably overkill. The drawing is actually approx. 6.4mm scale, and there is about a 1mm error in the height of it. Probably nothing compared to the inaccuracy the men with saws and hammers who built the thing (if it was built!) achieved, but an interesting exercise! I saved it as a PNG file, and imported into a new layer in Inkscape. I'd drawn two rectangles in a Guide layer. One was the width and height of the body, and the other the wheelbase and height from rail level to the bottom of the body. I got the dimensions by dividing the inch part of the drawing dimension by 12, adding the number of feet, then multiplying by 7 eg 12' 11": ((11/12) + 12) * 7 = 90.42mm. It turned out that there's about a 0.5mm gap between these two rectangles, which I'm sure is the error in the drawing, not by me, as I checked it thoroughly (I think!!). So my scaling of the image is maybe very slightly out, accounted for by the thickness and very slight imperfection of the scanned lines. Probably far too pedantic, but worthwhile while learning how to do it. I found the drawing wasn't quite square, so rotated it by 0.2 degrees using Object > Transform > Rotate. That lined it up just about spot on. What I found though, was that although I thought I'd locked the aspect ratio of the image, it was only resizing in one direction. This threw me the first few times I tried it, as I thought the aspect ratio was changing, and either the drawing was rubbish, or something had gone wrong with the scanning or import! It's a good thing I was lining it up with both horizontal and vertical guides. When I realised, I stretched it both ways until it fitted. I've been trying this on a new file, and it appears that dragging a corner maintains the aspect ratio, while dragging a side doesn't, unless the Ctrl key is held down, even when the aspect ratio is locked. That's fine when you know, but might catch someone out who doesn't, and they could end up with a distorted image without realising. Am I right, or have I missed something?

You mean something like this? As a totally new user, I thought I'd take up the challenge! An expert may know better though! This is what I did: 1) Draw rectangle 2) Round corners 3) From menu, select Path > Stroke to Path 4) Click Node Edit icon in left toolbar 5) Click and drag round the nodes at both ends of the top right hand curve to select them 6) Click on the nodes on the top line only that you've just selected, until they turn red 7) Drag them to the left. Holding down Ctrl key keeps it horizontal, unless you move some way up or down

Shame I haven't still got my 1600 Sport! It was yellow, had spoilers, and a couple of Cibies, and I kept getting flashed by Mexico drivers who thought I was one of them!

It certainly adds a bit of "character", but I'm not sure that most of us are after a bit of quaint wonkyness in our models! Think I stick with my plan of drawing it myself in Inkscape

With your interest in Silhouette cutters Mike, are there some useful ideas here, including the Smartframe, worth applying to home produced kits? How would card and shellac compare to plasticard?

And I suppose I'll have to sit here impatiently waiting for the next batch with the K&ESR one, while everyone else drools over theirs .

As the expert thinks it's the right one to buy, I haven't waited until the morning! Yolo are a bit naughty showing the price excluding VAT though, and extracting another twenty quid at the checkout!

Trace looks pretty accurate compared to other software I've tried. I think I'll aim to use Inkspace for all the drawing, and Studio for cutting though, as that seems to be a combination that works for other people. Of course that might change when I actually start using it! If no one else comments on my questions, and confuses things, I think I'll order a Portrait in the morning. I've started re-reading the topics on drawing the coal office and coach bogies in Inkscape, and writing an idiots guide for me to follow. I normally waste so much time when I try to do clever stuff that I know more or less how to do, but have forgotten the details, that I'm going to have a written procedure this time, so I can churn out all the models I've wanted to build over the last few decades in no time!!!!! Or at least avoid the frustration that stops me getting on and enjoying what I'm trying to do!

Removable covers of some sort to get at the weight is a good idea. I bought an O gauge van and a loaded open wagon on eBay that are almost three times the recommended weight, and will need rather drastic surgery to deal with!

Who cares? A Peckett is of absolutely no use to me, but a Terrier is!

I've never really got on with drawing on a computer. I can get so far, then get stuck. But I found Jason's coal office tutorial in Inkscape really helpful. It seems to cover just about every aspect of the software that's needed for railway modelling. Basically, pretty much everything is a series of rectangles and straight lines that you then bend about to match the curvy lines on the drawing! I've usually got bogged down in tutorials and manuals that tell me how to do things that are useless to me, and don't cover the things I need to know. The only things missing from the coal office seem to be handling text, and I've done enough of that in other software to have a fair idea, and colour fills, where locos and rolling stock will just be blocks of plain colour with no fancy gradients fills and stuff. I'll need that for the printed top layers. I had a go in Inkscape with a drawing of a loco I want to build, and soon got stuck, not because it was difficult, but because I'd forgotten which menu options to use. So I think I'll re-read the coal office tutorial and write my own step by step idiots guide that I can follow. The specification of the two machines quote cutting areas of 12x12 and 8x12, so the extra 4 inches on the Cameo doesn't seem to be any benefit for any locos or rolling stock, even in 7mm, but might enable more efficient use of material. Is that right?

I've been thinking about this for ages, and it seems pointless holding off any longer, as I've got various projects I could practice on. I've worked through Jason's coal hut in Inkscape, and just finished re-reading this topic, so: 1) Do I buy a Cameo or a Portrait? They've been around for a while now, so will something better come along soon, that I could put the £100 saved by buying a Portrait towards, but is it big enough? I've got a variety of uses for it in 7mm and 4mm. Most of the 7mm is under 8 inches, but I've got a couple of bogie coaches on the list. I've also got a 12" train shed to build in 4mm. But presumably with the right mat those lengths are no problem on a Portrait. So I'm leaning towards a Portrait, and if occasionally it's not big enough I'll have to get creative with producing parts I can join. 2) Are there any extras I need? I can buy them as I need then, but would like some idea of the total cost. The scribers that will mark brass look useful, as presumably I could use them for marking out loco frames etc. for cutting by hand. 3) Where do I buy it? Yolo keep getting mentioned, so is this best place?

Is it inaccurate enough to be suitable for converting to a 517?

I've just got to the end of the coal hut, and I'm very impressed. Either this is the best drawing program I've come across, the best tutorial, or both! As my only cutting device is a knife and my hands, I've moved the doors and windows away from where the walls are, and coloured the scoring layer. My laser printer has produced a nice sharp image for me to cut to. A bit of practice and I hope to be producing locos and rolling stock, as well as buildings! And I may have to buy a Silhouette!

Has anyone managed to motorise a triffid?

Doesn't look much like a "livery" to me. It's just a coat of paint .

Did LMS loco drivers control their loco by telepathy, while other companies drivers needed knobs, levers and gauges to do it? http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/O-GAUGE-LMS-PARTIOT-BACKHEAD-PLATE-/261941656987?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item3cfcf07d9b

My parents house that was built in 1927 had one, but I'm not sure that my Mum's family home that I think was built around the same time did.