murphaph

That's mega

You can always console yourself with the fact you got to play with, I mean use the model for several months before those buying them with a discount the year after

A little bit of video from our first ever visit today to the Woodland Railway: https://photos.app.goo.gl/XFY5ZrrTuB4QGeGj8 We got there for the first run at 11am. They ran "Rusty" the ex-ESB Ruston LM55 for the first hour. The lads said this was to allow them an extra hour in bed before firing Roisin up lol. At 12pm Rusty was relieved by Roisin (ex Bord na Mona LM44) and she performed the remainder of the runs. Great sound to her. The volunteers there do tremendous work. Fair play to them all.

Hey that's cool. Keep spreading the word!

Picked up a Mark's 00 one today and I'm happy with it visually. Can't go wrong for €100 really. I think it may even be possible to regauge it to 21mm without toooo much difficulty. The only tight spot is under the front splashers but they could be modified and when it's weathered you'd not see the surgery.

Lovely models but the locos are all P4 wheeled and so would not be for me. Great prices for the amount of work you are buying though.

Not exactly rail related but there are a few models in this post. Yesterday I visited the shipbuilding museum at Monfalcone near Trieste in Italy. This is the site of one of Fincantieri's largest yards and one that specialises in building some of the largest passenger ships in the world. The site has a deep industrial history and includes the manufacture of aircraft and later UAVs. I include a handful of the pictures I took here:

A close escape out of Paris for the young lad and I yesterday so....(sorry for the blurry image, it was taken rather hastily) This was the fastest speed I saw on the displays, though the line speed of the LGV Est from Paris to Strasbourg (where this pic was taken yesterday afternoon) is 320 km/h. The ICE 3 Classes 403/6/7/8 are all capable of this line speed (some are capable of 330km/h) but interestingly there are no lines in Germany where they are or any other trains are permitted to travel in excess of 300km/h. So the only place to hit this speed on a German ICE 3 is in France. The LGV Est is the fastest LGV in France and in fact it's the fastest high speed section of conventional rail anywhere on earth. This is the line the current world record (574.8 km/h) for steel wheels on steel rail was set.

That's just class.

It would be great if we could pick the buffer widths ourselves like this on future product lines. On a related note....If I may be so cheeky to get my own request in....would it be possible to include wider spaced holes under the chassis/bogies and include wider spaced brake gear that we can insert in those holes after snipping off the 16.5mm brake gear? (for those of us doing 21mm that is)

Very true. Unfortunately the world deviates from the ideal, hence the need for police forces, courts and prisons There will always be some people who, for whatever reason, are not prepared to treat others how they would like to be treated themselves.

I was a member of a much bigger forum than this which catered to English speaking so-called ex-pats (immigrants) like me in Germany. It was very successful in terms of membership but I guess it didn't monetise well enough for the guy who started it all so he took an increasingly laissez-faire attitude to the moderation and this encouraged an ever increasing number of alt-right type posters to plague the site with their version of reality because this generated the traffic the site owner so craved for his google ad impressions commission. Users would argue back and forth with these characters but then the normal members drifted away until there was but a handful of us left and nobody was arguing with the trolls so traffic collapsed. The site finally closed last year. A new site was launched by some former members and it is well moderated and beginning to thrive. Moderation is the life blood of a decent forum.

Nice work Darius. Looks very well on the black especially.

Ah ok so your process requires one to paint the model anyway, just around the transfer instead of painting a block of white to be masked into text as described by David. Apologies I thought you were offering a paint free alternative through the use of white transfer paper.

Basically this is not a blog. It's a moderated forum. You don't get to write whatever you like. Same on basically any forum I'm a member of.

How do you seal the cut edges? I've made inkjet transfers onto white transfer paper too and have experienced ink run when I've cut the paper too close to the print, so I'm kind of struggling to imagine how it would work where the technique would require one to cut through the ink. Perhaps you could knock up an example? Maybe we aren't imagining the same technique.

This technique (using white transfer paper) likely won't work with inkjet printers because the ink is water based and needs to be completely sealed under a layer of varnish. You can't cut away all the white margin leaving just the printed outer colour because then the varnish seal is broken and the ink will run as soon as you attempt to transfer the decal. It would work with colour laser printers and white transfer paper as the toner is not water soluble and doesn't even need any varnish to seal it.

Here in Germany the shortage of diesel locomotives is so severe that hundred year old steam locos are being hired by various railway companies from heritage operators to operate trains, often on maintenance duties. Several electrified mainline stretches are currently closed or restricted in their operations due to necessary upgrade works. This is forcing a lot of traffic onto the non-electrified parts of the network so the demand for diesel traction is very high. It's not that easy to hire from abroad as the locos often don't possess the necessary signalling equipment but several mainline certified heritage locos including some steam locos do. An article in German here: https://www.notebookcheck.com/Verkehrswende-mal-anders-Viele-DB-Bauarbeiten-und-Lokmangel-sorgen-fuer-Reaktivierung-der-Dampflok-58-311-fuer-wichtige-Aufgaben.862071.0.html

My wife told me her internet wasn't working when she tried to start working from home this morning. Turns out it was her corporate network she was VPN'ed into. Down for the whole DIN Group both on-site and remote. Crazy how much economic damage one bungled update can cause.

SO atmospheric!

Thanks for the kind words folks. You're right Rich, I think it may have been Ian Rice that said exactly that. It's sometimes very tempting to just "freelance" the whole thing and slap the grime on but it will always just look a little bit "off" when it's done like that. It takes a little bit of discipline to look at some photographs and only take aspects from those photographs and nothing else. The only thing I haven't found concrete evidence of is NIR roof patching but it was common on both BR and IR with these coaches so it's almost impossible to believe NIR didn't patch theirs to some degree. I just don't have that many images of NIR mk2 roofs and I suspect not many exist. If anyone has any, I'd be obliged if I could see them. I would never pass them on or publish them. But I can't take credit for the window masking. I had help from my friend Mr. Laser Cutter It's a lot faster than using Maskol.

And a corporate livery pack, bit more rust appearing on them by the time they were in these colours:

I haven't tried it yet Al.

Cheers Stephen

Ah thanks. I was going to try a smallersize but it looks like it's not that this time. Maybe @BosKonay would be so kind as to take a look