Time for a new hobby...

[toprob]

Progress is still slow, but steady.
I took my grandson (22 months) to the Silverstream Railway Museum early this month, and we rode up and down a few times in the old wooden carriages. I've been working on some 3D prints of these lately. This will be my first rolling stock print, and I have no idea whether it will ever run!

Here it's just sitting on some bogeys, with the roof just clipped on. This is an early version at the moment, but it's great to see that it is starting to look the part.



It's been a funny day, I've been thinking that the me from 20 years ago would just not understand what I've been doing, 3D printing, using AI to improve scenery textures etc. Life is weird, but I like it.

[emfrat]

The Pendon Musuem folk have finished a new station, and added 8 photos of it to their online jigsaw puzzle collection. It looks great. I do the 200-piece ones, which fit nicely on my screen and while away 30-40 mins per puzzle
https://www.jigsawplanet.com/PendonMuseum

Mike

[cowpatz]

Looking forward to the next update Robin......hint hint

[toprob]

I'm taking a breather at the moment, mainly because I need to find a home for the layout -- at the moment it's sitting on the workshop bench, but it can't stay there. I need to find some trestles for it, but in the meantime the workshop is chocker with everyone's junk, mainly my son's sister's stuff, and my ex-mother-in-law's stuff. They've promised it'll be cleared at some stage, but I can't really lay any more track until the two sections are in their final resting place. I did break a big layout rule, in that the track on each section doesn't meet straight-on, so they don't just slot together, otherwise they could just stay separate while I work on them.

In the meantime, all my time goes into NZCH for MSFS. At the moment I'm also taking a break from childcare, as my grandson and his parents have covid, otherwise I'd be off at the play centre today:)

[Charl]

The Pendon Musuem folk

Well thanks for this - last year I hadn't heard of Didcot, but next year we are visiting my nephew near there!
I'll certainly go 'ave a look.

[emfrat]

The Pendon Musuem folk

Well thanks for this - last year I hadn't heard of Didcot, but next year we are visiting my nephew near there!
I'll certainly go 'ave a look.

Don't miss the Didcot Railway Centre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didcot_Railway_Centre

[Charl]

Well bless my soul, the things you learn on flightsim forums!
I can see the trip may have to be extended - Oxfordshire has many places of interest.
I mean, Harry Metcalfe lives there!
EDIT:
And... I did a 50-piece train puzzle in 10 minutes, so your 200-piece one is right on schedule

[emfrat]

Wee bro John, the author, was a supporter/contributor to the Iron Duke replica project, and was invited down to see it steam for the first time. I'll get there one day.

[jpreou]

Your competition Rob!

https://www.odt.co.nz/star-news/star-di ... Q0kzc20GOk

[toprob]

Your competition Rob!

https://www.odt.co.nz/star-news/star-di ... Q0kzc20GOk

There's no way I'd ever be confused for one of those old blokes who put together these amazing engineering feats in their back shed -- that's just so awesome.

I finally got my carriage painted and put together, although it will get some more work done for versions, let's see, maybe I'm up to v5.... It actually runs, although it would run better with some weight added.



This is the state of the layout at the moment. The big shed is just a mock-up at the moment, there's is really no easy way to print this, so I'm mulling over some design ideas. The paintjob will eventually be covered up, this is just to stop any white bits showing through. So the right-hand side should blend with the left when it's done:)

[Splitpin]

Rob, the vegetation is an art form on its own ...amazing.

[Charl]

Looks like fun... have to ask: is that a Big Blue Supermoon??

[toprob]

Looks like fun... have to ask: is that a Big Blue Supermoon??

It's a time portal -- if I make a major mistake, I just pop a note through to my earlier self, telling me what not to do.

[Charl]

Well, as you build over to the RHS, you may want to add some buttons:

[toprob]

Finally getting this loco looking roughly like the real thing, having bought a bargain 'prairie' loco on Trademe, and swapping the tender out for the sloped one I had on the other loco. The rear carriage isn't coupled, as I need to swap out these couplers at some stage. I originally settled on more realistic magnetic couplers rather than the more common 'clunky' ones, but as they are quite rare second-hand, I may switch again. As I've mentioned before, nothing is as easy as I expect. Since I bought the new loco I've been swearing and cursing trying to get it on the rails -- it has a lot more wheels than the previous one -- so a re-railer is becoming a priority.
I'll look at some customisation way down the track, no pun intended, when I'm feeling a bit more confident.



Here's a video (not mine) showing the setup running at Silverstream -- can't embed, sorry:

https://youtu.be/vR8VvdmmJD8?si=6kVN4PpXHd8Nu7L5

My son has cleaned up the workshop, and given me plenty of bench space for the railway, so I will have to get back into the layout now that the weather is warming up.

[toprob]

Last weekend was Railex, the model railway show in Lower Hutt, now a tradition here for my grandson and I. He's 2 now, so he can appreciate it more this year:) This had rekindled my interest, so I'm back into it.
The big loco shed I mentioned earlier can now be classed as my nemesis, I've printed this a number of times and every time is a disaster. However after a bit of sanding today, I managed to salvage the last couple of pieces, and I've begun painting it. Here is an early version on the layout, the wonky lean-to has been the big problem, today I used the last of my resin for a while to try one more time, and for some weird reason the two halves came out different sizes, hence the sanding to get a previous version to fit.


The painting has turned out to be fun this time around, I managed to figure out how to get the airbrush performing reasonably reliably, after a lot of swearing. One of the problems I've been having -- all my life, really -- is colour-blindness, and this had become more apparent working the current crop of models, mostly grey. There's this little cottage which sits on the hill above the platform, which printed very nicely compared to the boring, square engine shed. My photos -- and Google Earth -- showed the roof as green, but when I actually sampled the colour in Photoshop to start painting, it turned out to not have any green at all, just grey. The window trim and door, however, were a nice dark green, which I have a perfect paint for. But no, turns out there's no green in that either.
In the end I installed an app on my phone, Color Picker by Ideal Matters, and this is just amazing, $6.50 well-spent. I just tell in what paints I own -- make, type and number -- and then choose a colour from my photos, and the app tells me how to mix it using just my paints. So no more colour-blindly scrabbling around trying to figure out what colour things are.

Tomorrow I'll mask this little cottage and paint the windows/door, and it'll be done. However these will be a bit green compared to reality, just because I like it.

From now until April my railway budget is zero, as I'm off to Brisbane to see my family at Easter, but hopefully I can keep busy with the bits and pieces I already have.

[deeknow]

looking good, and that cottage is simply a work of art, so cool !!!

re the wonky shed, could you not "print" it with a solid wall and cut the door opening out of it after printing?

[toprob]

l
re the wonky shed, could you not "print" it with a solid wall and cut the door opening out of it after printing?

Unfortunately, you can't cut the cured resin, it tends to shatter. In fact the second version of this shed broke when I dropped it. The first version, by the way, didn't allow my locomotives through the doors -- although it was built perfectly to scale, the engines and track tend to be a bit over-sized in N scale, and I didn't think of that when I built it. I couldn't just scale it up, as in needs to fit the footprint between the stream and the track.

Third time lucky with three of the five sections, kind of, but the lean-to had a weird flipped-normal problem -- the cut-out doors came out as a thin solid membrane. The limited printer size means printing the lean-to in two parts, so when one broke while I was removing the supports, I've just used one of the flipped-normal prints. I'll just glue some closed doors on the end, although the original plan was to have them open. The lean-to is the closest thing to the front of the layout, so I had hoped it would be ok, but I might just have to stick some trees in front of it to hide the flaws. The other side of the sheds is looking great, it's just a pity that nobody would ever see unless they leaned over the layout:)

I was already feeling a bit inadequate after seeing the layouts at the show on Saturday. Oh, well, this is my first try.

[toprob]

I really need to print a backdrop for the new section, or at least paint the wall green:) I am hoping my son can put up his drone and photograph the hillside, so I'm not just looking at a blank wall.
The red-roofed ticket office was meant to be the centre piece of the layout, but the roof over-hangs so much that you can't really see it well, I may reprint it with a smaller verandah roof.


Almost ready to lay the track, and plenty of vegetation to come. I've started to run out of some scenery supplies, but trying not to spend any more money as I've had a quote of ~$1000 to warrant my car next week.


Yes, that's a rubber band on the lean-to, to try and straighten the side walls a bit. The bent roof line is not fixable, I just want the walls to be perpendicular to the ground. As I've said before, that shed has driven me balmy. The printer does some lovely stuff, with some very fine detail, but give it some big straight lines and it just falls apart. I won't be sticking the shed to the layout, as it needs to be moveable if something derails inside. So I could build a cardboard version one day.
After ranting about the shed last time, I dropped the end section and broke it, but rather than reprint I've just glued it, as you don't really see the broken side unless you lean over the layout.

[Charl]

Here's one that beggars belief, both for the model- and videomaking.
It's for you modelmakers.