Greengiant

No idea yet, Domenic of Darkly has only spoken about it on a couple of YouTube videos recently, that it is in development with the Q1 release. Martin

Interesting to hear Darkly are aiming to launch a 50 Watt diode laser Q1 of next year. Martin

Looking good Giles. Any idea what you may be loading yet? Martin

Yes, I had to do the lens upgrade, my early one burnt out the middle of the lens. The new quartz lens is better, the lens mount is way better and makes cleaning the lens a very quick and simple procedure. You don’t take out the whole unit like you do on the early lens unit and no faffing around with the 3D printed lens ring remover. Martin

Thank you and me to, which is why I first drew up the concept. Yes the embankments and trees are to be modelled. Currently modelling some of the industrial units along Station Approach. Martin

Just noticed this thread, it is our small group who have built one in 16mm scale. We are at the final assembly stage, but on hold at the moment while we have other projects on the go, I expect we will finish the RotaYard off sometime this year. Here is a video of our first powered test run to prove the concept. Martin

It has always been the intention to add pipework, cabling and the odd box or two on the walls of the factories. A start was made cutting out a selection of brackets, these are done to suit two sizes of Evergreen tubing. They used up some of the offcuts from previous jobs in 2mm MDF. I experimented with various methods of bending Evergreen tube and found a hair dryer with bending pliers was the most successful. However, I could not get the bend as tight as I would have liked before it started to kink. The pipework is to be flanged pipework, so I also cut pipe flanges to fit from Trotec laserable sheet. The brackets will enable me to create some nice pipe runs. Some pieces of tube roughly placed to try and get a feel for potential pipe runs, but it became clear this would be easier if I could plug in some 90 degree elbows. There seems very little plug in pipe fittings available to fit the Evergreen range, well not that I could find anyway. However help was at hand via a friend of a friend who has a Shapeways shop with this very product, but not for the larger size tube that I also wanted. A couple of emails later he is now working on the elbows for me. Initially he drew and sprued them up for Shapeways printing. The elbow drawn in Sketchup. How they would appear on Shapeways. In an effort to reduce cost, he knows someone who has a Formlabs printer, so reworked the drawing to make best use of the Formlabs route. The elbow needed to be as a three part assembly. To be printed like this. This is one the first 12 test prints, early impression are good, they will be sending 6 in the post to me to review before running anymore. Martin

No knowing when The Yard will next be out at an exhibition, time felt right to make a start on that list of jobs to be done on the layout. Never really been happy with the main baseboard joint, we tried some thin foam with paint on, but the paint quickly flaked off. Rather than try and disguise the joint, why not make it a feature? To this end I drew up some grills in two rows, the join between them will be the baseboard joint. They will be laser cut from 2mm MDF. They took a while to cut on the Emblaser 2, but a lot quicker than trying to do it by hand! These were then primered, painted grey and topped off with some gunmetal and buffed up. With the boards apart, the true joining edge was set using a scrap of MDF clamped to the baseboard frame end. This then gave me a stop to place the grills and score where the cobbles will need to be removed to allow the grills to bed in level with to cobbled tops, in theory probably should be slightly lower, but I did not want to have a step that might affect the lorries as they pass over the grills. Carefully the cobbles were cut away, using the grills to check fitment as I went. A few hours later they were all in place, stuck down in a bed of PVA. The other board was done the same, then offered up, separated by a strip of paper and the opposing grills glued in place. I used a syringe and a micro bore tube to squirt in some matt medium, onto which I sprinkled some dried and sieved garden soil to effectively grout these in. That is as far as I have got with them, work has got busy at the moment, so put a stop to things. In parallel to this I have been working on some pipework for the factories, will do a separate post to detail that. Martin

With our model railway club in lock down, we took early precautions on this and members took baseboards and projects home so they could be worked on in isolation, that way we can keep progress going with the layout. The latest piece to be completed is the rear gardens for the houses that back onto the station. Martin

Thank you. The base colour is Vallejo 71027 which I think I added a drop of their concrete colour as well. For the streaking I used a combination of MIG Oilbrusher Starship Filth and Rust, with other bits using WHSmith water colour pencils. I generally mix the colours on the fly as I go along until i think they look about right, rarely use a colour straight out of the bottle. Martin

Thank you, very kind to say so. I am enjoying the process and looking forward to doing the large over bridge section. Martin

Making good use the time I find myself with due to the current situation we are all in, I opted to paint and weather as much as possible before final assembly of the two stair units. Having photos of the real thing is a great help when doing this. In the flat and before the mortar is applied. Gluing up of one side to the sub base unit, now mortar is applied, which is nothing more than very fine ready mixed filler with a few drops of coloured acrylic added, this is then wiped off carefully with a moist sponge with frequent washing. These are the component parts of one of the wall infill panels, the thin black card is a packing piece for under the grey panel frame, this lifts it just proud of the brick wall surface. The panels on the right have been stuck on and you can see the frames just above the brick surface. One complete side with a scalpel to give an idea of size. I am out of my comfort zone in 4mm, much prefer my normal 7mm and 16mm scales, but quite pleased with how they are turning out. The pair of them now with the window frames installed plus the small trim strips at the very top of the walls, just under what will be the roof lip. Next is to cut the glazing, for which I have laser cut a template to make cutting easy enough, then it will be the roof pieces to do, then onto the main overbridge element. Martin

So far very pleased with the new lens, generally getting through in just two passes, although I have found out that not all 2mm MDF is indeed 2mm, some is as thick as 2.4mm! Lens cleaning is so much easier and faster and really no need to check focus afterwards, although I have been and it has not budged. I have been using up some of the scrap bits and using the inbuilt camera to help aligning of some of the odd shaped bits and cut some 7mm industrial windows... ...and some 16mm scale large industrial windows for a potential new project. Martin

Underneath the new cinema complex, opposite side of the road to what was once Debenhams. Open every Saturday and Sunday 10am - 4pm. I shall be there along with Gordon Gravett on Saturday 7th March. AIMREC Unit 2, Elwick Place Elwick Road Ashford Kent TN23 1AE Martin

Giles, Lens, prism assembly and shipping = £159.63 VAT, duty and DHL fee = £58.08 Total = £217.71 I have a lot of cutting to do today, so will be a good test. Will look into converting to a bigger extractor fan at some point. Martin

Chee Tor, Bucks Hill and Pempoul. If you want to see Pempoul it is on display for a year in Ashford, operated every Saturday and Sunday, I have operated it a few times and clean the stock and track for Gordon in between the times he gets there to run it. Martin

My new lens and unit arrived today. Before I installed it thought it best to give it a clean! Unscrewed the fan and found these airbrush cleaning brushes useful. The extractor fan looked in a bit of a mess. Surprising what came out of that. I then fitted the new lens and ran the focus wizard. Wow what a difference. Previously I was needing 3 passes with air to cut through 2mm MDF, sometimes needing a fourth to be sure. Now only needs two passes with no air, in fact it looked like one pass was doing it. So did a couple of test shapes after on one pass and it very nearly cut right through, but it was enough so I could still push the shapes out. May well try a one pass again with air, or drop the speed to 2.5mm/sec and see what happens. At the moment very pleased. Photo of the underside showing the result of one pass. Martin

It is game over with my Emblaser 2 at the moment, I had been cutting through 2mm MDF in three passes, then after a while it began to struggle and even six was only just getting through, so time for a clean up before cutting the final piece. Took the lens out to find it has burnt in the middle! Mine is a version 1 E2 with the two part lens and it looks like the adhesive in between the two lenses has burnt, so now scrap. Ordered a one piece Quartz lens from Darkley along with the V2 assembly which should make lens cleaning a whole lot easier and less fiddly. Once it arrives it will be interesting to see if there is any performance improvement with the new lens. Martin

Have now painted the concrete bits and the lower darker brick courses. Also tested out my proposed method of painting the bricks. Also made a start on the painting and weathering of the infill parts. Martin

Thank you. The outer curves are about 6’ radius, the inners about 5.5’ radius. The curves also have transition and superelevation which vastly improves the appearance of the trains as they negotiate the curves. Martin

Thank you and yes it is. Martin

This Sunday we had the use of the village hall to test the layout. Basically it ran well with a few tweaks to do. We also decided on operator and controller locations, at least until we prove otherwise, but I think we have got them correct, only time will tell. Need to design and cut some mimic panel holders so they can be mounted between each pair of operators without getting tangled up in handset leads! What it did prove is that it is easy enough for four operators to control eight trains at the same time without being taxing, so we should have plenty of movement on the layout. I need to do some research in to sound chips for the 4CEP units, anyone have any experience with these? Martin

Windows for the step units are made from three layers of laser cut card. Then sprayed with Halfords white primer before being cut from the holding frames. The brick walls have been sprayed with Halfords red primer. Windows dropped in place to see how they will look. Window cills, frames and panels in white primer, held in place with narrow double sided tape. Martin

Thought you had been suspiciously quiet of late! Oddly enough I have been working in 4mm scale, bit small for me long term, looking forward to getting back to the bigger scales. Martin

We packed The Yard into the trailer today, ready for the early start on Saturday morning, get the bacon rolls on. Martin