D869

Do you intend to get the foil off Cellotex somehow?

I bought some foil free pinky/peach coloured stuff a fair few years back but I haven't seen it in the dreaded DIY sheds recently. Don't the manufacturers know that putting foil on their product makes it less suitable for model hills?

These look like the old Association compensated bogies. You had a bolster casting, etches for the 'structural' sideframes and multiple options for cosmetic cast outer sideframes.

The rocking pivot was a ridge of whitemetal that you had to squash a bit once the etch had been fitted over it. I have a set under one of my siphons. The wheels would never stay put so eventually I modified them to be uncompensated which turned them into better behaved running gear.

If you dig out a very old shop list then you can probably get a definite identification on the various sideframes in your stash.

11 hours ago, keitharmes said:

As Steve said, the Castle chassis is a cut & shut job with the front and rear of the Farish chassis. A couple of photos show the method. The Farish brake gear was also persuaded to fit the 2mm Assoc chassis.

Thanks Steve and Keith.

Although I seem to have had brain fade when asking the question yesterday (I'd already read that it was using the milled chassis) I'm still curious about the oft quoted challenge with the front pair of driving axles on Castles and other big wheeled GW 4-6-0s. How does it all fit in? My understanding is that scale wheelbase, scale tread diameter, Association flanges and a motion bracket won't all fit - something has to give. Having looked closely at the real thing in the shed at Didcot there ain't a lot of room to spare in that area.

Regards, Andy

Splendid stuff. Any idea what the situation is with the front two driving axles with regard to spacing when doing the 2FS conversion? ... did Mr Armes need to reduce the flanges or has Mr Farish spaced the axles a tad further apart than they strictly ought to be?

I did some with a single belt on my Unimat SL on the middle step of each pulley.  Nominally 1600 RPM but it fluctuates with load. TBH I wouldn't get too hung up about speed as long as the thing is cutting nicely without undue noises,  chatter,  smoke etc. 

Just start with some wheels where you have a big surplus to practice  on, in my case Farish coach wheels. 

I recently built one of the SNCF steel minerals.  The chassis for this allows other options to be built. I haven't looked in detail at whether it would work under the Association RCH body but it seems like it might.  Has anyone else? 

I tried a '1' in there but that didn't help.

I also tried a CT in the Western and it ran just fine. The MC1 has a step upwards in throttle response around step 11 or 12. Maybe fixable but life's too short. The throttle response was smooth when I fitted the CT decoder.

Thanks again for your help. The MC1 will be taking up residence in the bottom drawer along with the TCS board for the MP15.

Regards, Andy

26 minutes ago, queensquare said:

 

 

Morning John,

its definitely a Midland loco in that livery although the class designations on the coach doors has me baffled!

 

Jerry

I think 25th class is a modern innovation for services which connect with Ryan Air.

2 hours ago, nick_bastable said:

I think I expected it to be a magic bullet and produce consistent lines, eons ago I used a quality bow pen ( try finding one now ) and got better results.   However my efforts where patchy may have been the paint or me or both.  At the time I was time poor and just got on with something else 
 

I bought my bow pens direct from Haff (www.haff.de) a few years ago and have been happy with them. The ordering process was somewhat old fashioned (international bank transfer IIRC) and you may need a bit of google translate too but I think you can probably still buy pens from them should you wish.

Regards, Andy

Thanks both. The photo sesh is done now but I'll have another play with the Western when I've got everything back in their proper places again.

@Nigel I do get the feeling from other posts on here that the 20 quid Zimos are well regarded and plan to get hold of one to try out next time I am in the vicinity of a DCC trader's stand at a show. In the short term all of the decoders will be coming out of all of the the locos so it will be easy enough to try out a CT in the Western and find out whether it does better. I'm aware that the MC1's back EMF parameters can be tuned to the motor but the chip seems pretty basic in other ways so I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

I do have some previous history that colours my views on this. I bought a TCS back emf decoder PCB that was purpose designed for the Atlas MP15 chassis in my class 22. I never could get on with driving it and my efforts to try to tune the CVs couldn't make it right. In the end I fitted a 6 pin socket and the CT does a really good job in that loco too.

Regards, Andy

55 minutes ago, Nigelcliffe said:

One of the various Bachmann badged 6-pin decoders is a re-badging of a Soundtraxx MC decoder.   Its probably that one.

Thanks Nigel. So probably not original to the Dapol Western then. I'm somewhat comforted by that because although it does run adequately with this decoder I'd expect a good deal better out of the box from a factory fitted decoder.

I do wonder whether the seller knew the decoder was in there or had acquired it like that. I dont think there was any mention of it having a decoder in the listing so it may be that he was trying to run it on DC. It certainly did run very badly indeed like that.

I don't think I'll be spending much more time on this decoder. I might try one of the CTs in the loco once we are done photographing.

Regards, Andy

Some time back I acquired a Dapol 'N' Western listed as a near non-runner via a certain auction site.

On investigation I noticed a blue shrink wrapped thing in the DCC socket. Most of my running is on DC so I took it out, fitted a blanking plug and the loco ran just fine.

I'm now getting ready for some photos and it would be nice to be able to be able to have the lights on with the loco stood still so I put the decoder back in and hooked it up to my NCE Powercab. Everything worked more or less as expected but the lights are too bright. The speed control is rather non-linear but I don't need it to move so I'm not bothered about that just now.

Powercab reports the manufacturer and version as 141 and 081, which as far as I can gather means ThrottleUp(Soundtraxx) / OEM MC1. I have no idea if this came from Dapol or was fitted by a previous owner.

I got hold of the manuals. These suggest that F7 will dim the lights by a fixed amount... but there is no noticeable dimming when I press '7' on the Powercab.

https://www.soundtraxx.com/manuals/MC1 Users Guide.pdf

https://www.soundtraxx.com/manuals/MC1 Tech Reference.pdf

I did a CV reset by setting CV8 to 8 and powered the whole thing off and on just to be on the safe side.

The manual says that the F7 behaviour is controlled by CV41 and its default value is 16. Mine was zero even after the CV reset. I tried 16 but that didn't help.

I also tried setting CV38 to 128 (it was also zero) which should put dimming onto the F4 button so the function state is displayed on the Powercab LCD, but again no joy.

All of the CV setting is done in Direct Mode which is supported according to the manual.

I also checked CV49 which is something to do with selecting lighting effects. This was already set to 1 which I think is what it should be for dimming. There is a bunch of US lingo in the manual here about grade crossings and Rule 17 so I can't really figure out what this CV is supposed to be set to but 1 seems most likely.

Does anyone have any idea where I might be going wrong? Have I identified the decoder correctly? Can it even do dimming?

I did manage to sort out the dimming on my CT equipped Farish D800s but so far this blue shrink wrapped decoder has not been persuaded to dim its lights.

Thanks in advance.

Andy.

Lovely job Ian. Decided not to stick with the NSLR livery then?

A set of compasses with a bow pen on one arm and a blunt bit of brass rod in place of the sharp bit is worth a try for painting lines around corners. Probably best to practice on something else though.

Regards, Andy

It was good to see you and Parkend at Tutbury Steve and glad that the other show went well. I guess you have seen the photos on the Tutbury thread that I and others have posted.

I'm not sure what to make of automating a layout to be in sync with the real thing in Japan. It's certainly original but I can't see it catching on for folks modelling freight lines with just one train per day

Regards, Andy

(apologies for inadvertently putting this in the PSJ thread at the first attempt)

Some photos from my camera. I will plead the same excuse as others for not providing photographic coverage of the whole lot.

Steve Nicholls' exquisite 'Parkend' - I've been hoping to see this for a while so was glad when I heard that Steve had been roped in for Tutbury

Glencruitten airship base - an interesting prototype - certainly a new one on me.

Mr 'Shunting Tractor' Adams was snapped in the act of having a play with the Hayle tractor test bed. I really should have cleaned up my cake oriented detritus before getting the camera out though.

Oops - sorry - posted my photos in the wrong thread - the perils of having two windows open.

Err... the money shot?

All being well the L61 shunting tractor will be there along with its test bed and some wagons to push around tomorrow. Looking forward to a nice day out.

Err... jealous!

Looking forward to seeing you at Tutbury on Saturday.

Regards Andy.

Looks like Padstow station building to me. What are you using for the stonework please Jerry?

How are you doing the flashing?

Regards, Andy

Hmm... so is the 119 quids quoted here not an outright purchase price?

The US site also lists a more basic 'Designer' version for 60 dollars (plus tax) but this doesn't seem to be on the UK site.

Regards, Andy

Thanks Mike. It sounds like the TurboCAD way of creating fills is similar to QCAD (i.e. select the bounding outline) rather than DraftSight. I guess I just need to bite the bullet and change the way I draw my half etch outlines. I managed to get the red fills sorted in my new chassis deck drawing (which is a more 'normal' 10ft wheelbase 17'6 over headstocks tank chassis).

The red lines are all closed polygons and are drawn for just one quarter of the chassis and look like this...

I was lazy and used overlapping rectangles where the chassis members cross. These were filled a polygon at a time and then just the fills were mirrored on 2 axes to do the other three quarters of the chassis...

I've been continuing my work with QCAD as and when the opportunity arises. I don't want this to become a QCAD specific discussion but it does (I hope) highlight the differences that can arise between different tools in the same part of the market.

Most things in QCAD are bit different but it doesn't take long to get used to a new way. On the other hand I think that the way fills are drawn is quite different and will need me change the way that I draw the outlines.

Here is a coloured in example - the deck from a Pickering 14T chlorine tank...

In DraftSight I drew the overall metal outline first...

and then I drew the extra lines to divide off the half etched areas (the white outline is switched off for this screen grab)...

From what I've seen of QCAD so far this needs a different approach. In DraftSight the fills are done by turning on the required outline layers and then clicking on a point inside the area to be filled - rather like 'flood fill' in a bitmap drawing tool. In QCAD the fills are drawn by selecting the outlines bordering the area and then asking QCAD to fill the selected outline... fine here for the overall metal fill but not fine for the red half etches because at the moment there is no easy way to select the outline of just the half etch area for the red half etch. I think it needs a dedicated outline around each half etched area so parts of the white border need to be copied into the half etch border layers.

It will probably be quicker if I draw the half etch outlines as a bunch of separate polygons which overlap each other rather than trying to draw the whole complex half etched area as a single outline.

None of this is insurmountable but it's all work to do when changing from DS to QCAD.

Perhaps one of the TurboCAD users can tell us whether it needs the user to draw fills in a manner similar to DS, QCAD or has another way to do it?

Consider your lurking at an end

I semi agree with you... if the etch is heavily text based or perhaps for something like decorative ironwork then a vector graphics package will be better suited to the job.

I've done artwork both ways and I'm far more comfortable doing 'engineering' artwork (wagon chassis and so on) in CAD - it tends to have more advanced object snapping features and the ability to copy or move objects through a specified distance that my vector graphics package (Inkscape) lacks.

I did put some 'engineering ' stuff onto my Inkscape artwork but I was quite glad to get back to CAD for the next lot.

I'm sure that more expensive vector packages may have a better features.

38 minutes ago, Michael Crofts said:

Great help, thanks.

 

You'll have to stop me if my questions get dumb or this thread drifts too far from the title. I'm trying not to turn it into "Beginners Guide to Etching"!

 

I've attached a sketch of a very simple lineside plate - not to scale or anything. I've used Michael Edge's protocol of black = etch rather than the traditional red for front etch and blue for rear. In QCAD, if I create the text as text, then "explode" it to polylines, are you saying I can fill each letter as white, albeit manually?

 

If the answer to that is yes, I'll risk the 33 Euros and buy QCAD. I must stop faffing around and actually DO something!

 

Etching example 001 v01.pdf 25.47 kB · 1 download

You dont need to spend any money to find out. QCAD has a free version so you can figure out whether it will do what you want. If you want to use the DWG format (or a few other features) then you will need the paid version.

It's a little bit non-obvious - you need to download the QCAD Professional version, install it and then remove some files to 'downgrade' it to the free version. The pro version will work too but it is time limited.

2 hours ago, Michael Crofts said:

@D869

I see you have QCAD. Please would you look at it and see if it will do the equivalent of "explode text" which Mike Edge mentioned:

'Turbocad has a command to "explode text" which turns it into a series of polylines (fills) which are then reliably reproduced. It can no longer be edited as text but all the characters can be scaled, copied etc. '

I suppose this feature might be called something different - "Convert Text" perhaps?

have prevaricated long enough, I need to choose a CAD system for etching today. I wanted to use Turbocad because it is what a colleague in a forthcoming joint project uses but all the "permanent" copies/versions of Turbocad I have found are dubious and I'm not willing to pay annual licence fees for any software because there is always a risk that if you let the subscription lapse you lose all your work. I am therefore hoping QCAD will be OK, the Pro version states clearly it is a one-off payment.  In the near future I need to etch builders' plates, cast iron lineside signs, fire insurance wall plaques, road junction  figerposts, , etc. - all things with lots of text on them - which is why I am asking this question.

OK, can of worms officially opened...

First, the simple answer... yes the QCAD 'explode' command will turn text into polylines.

Whether it does exactly what you'd want is another matter - the polylines just give you the outlines of the letters - there is nothing filling in those outlines... which is probably not what you want for etch artwork. You can probably colour them in, but it's more work.

Artwork for nameplates and such like is one area where I'm not too happy with my approach. My approach produces results that I'm very happy with but I'm not happy with it for other reasons that I will explain.

Let's look at some artwork...

At first glance you might not think that there are any challenges here but there are a few...

• The most obvious is the ability to lay out text on an arc (Chas Roberts works plates need this too). I don't think QCAD can do it. Maybe other CAD packages can.
• The less obvious one is the ability to mess with word and letter spacing. Think about laying out 'ACTON HALL' and 'SHIRENEWTON HALL' on the same sized plate - it can be done but you need to play with the spacing.
• The final one is kerning of individual letter pairs. 'AR' for example meet with a serif at the base so don't need any adjustment. 'ON' on the other hand has just one serif at the base, so the layout looks more natural if the two letters are squished together a bit. 'WA' would be a better example, but there are none of those on this plate.

I did this artwork entirely in Inkscape - it's a vector graphics package and it has excellent text layout features that I suspect are lacking in most CAD packages.

...so just use Inkscape then... what's the problem?

Well, even considering just these nameplates, Inkscape is not great at ensuring that the top and bottom borders of the plate and the text baseline are concentric. It can be done but it's a bit of a faff. Getting the end borders to exactly meet the top and bottom borders required manual playing around at high levels of zoom if memory serves. None of that is insurmountable but what if I want mix this stuff with other artwork that has been done in CAD to fill up a sensible sized sheet? Then I get into all of the joys of either importing SVG into CAD or importing DXF into Inkscape... neither of which has worked particularly well when I've tried it.

Unless you can find a tool that can do both things well (and maybe some CAD packages can?), I suspect the answer may lie in rendering the artwork from one or other tool into a format with less scope for 'interpretation' - maybe even a high res bitmap and then importing this into a defined area of the artwork in the other tool. I haven't tried it yet so this is just a half-baked idea.