big jim

Started a quick ‘in the house’ project earlier, 37423 from 37405 using ‘rainbow railways’ nose ends Donor loco, 37405 picked up from Topp trains a few months back for £65 Coloured the wipacs and jumpers using sharpie pens Nose ends off The nose ends come complete with a pcb for the working wipacs which I glued in place To be honest I’m not that impressed with them for what they cost, marketed as a direct replacement for the existing nose ends but they took some fettling to get to fit and the bottoms are quite a way out from the body When I glued the top of the nose to the body (which Really I shouldn’t need to do if they fitted as promised) the bottom ended up well away from the body And width wise was out too Anyway a bead of superglue applied with a brush and low tack masking tape to hold the ends in place and I got them to fit ok, one end is better than the other but still not perfect I found some DRS class 20 decals in my stock box which quite handily only had the 2 and 3 left as individual numbers so I can use them to renumber it, ordered the nameplates from railtech Got more to do to it like fold and fit the supplied brass top headlight mount, refit the multi jumper cable sockets to the nose, OHLE flashes on the nose, fit the lenses to the wipacs

Printed off a copy of my eldest earlier, unfortunatly the filament ran out with 15% to go So rather than throw it away he chose himself a nice top hat Back to the ground signal, tied it up a bit and added some fibre optics to the front plate Not the best pic but fitted the rear plate and stand, only UHU’d together Then shining a red LED onto the fibre I got it to show ‘stop’ aspect And a white one for proceed So it’s certainly achievable to get them to work with a bit of work, I’m going to give the tiny SMD leds a try too though

had a go at printing some ground signals i found on thingverse cruel close up removed from the print base but not cleaned up yet im happy how they have come out considering they are less than 6mm high gonna fettle em up later and see if i can do anything with them, i have some very very fine fibre optic that i recon i could use to get them to work using led's mounted below the baseboard, could even haver a go at designing and printing some sort of under board holder!

Some from yesterday, was rest day in the middle of annual leave but got asked to move a loco from crewe to Toton and onward to derby, being as the job started 1/2 mile from the house and I could tie it in with passing out another driver on 67s i jumped at the chance The loco was 67002 in arriva livery which is in hire to cover 67027 which is having attention in Toton, nice for me as I have the Hornby model of this loco Set off from crewe and met the other driver en route as he had already moved 37057/37418/37521 from derby to Washwood Heath earlier in the day, and over we went to Toton Where it was topped up with fuel and we collected 67023 Noticed these pair outside the depot at Toton, note the different font on the numbers, 047 has had a repair following collision damage and it looks like they have stuck any old numbers on it (look like arriva decals to me?) We then set off for derby but went via the Erewash to Chesterfield to get the final hours driving required to pass out the driver, going direct would have left us short time wise Then after arriving into derby I got roped into doing a brake test at Tyseley, so a quick trip over in the train to brum, dropped the cock, and train Home, well would have been had I not been sat on the wrong platform only to realise when my train pulled out behind me (and yes it was the last train of the night!) so unfortunately it was a taxi home! And that’s me until next week as I need to use up my leave or lose it!

Bloody hell you’ve got good eyes!

I was thinking the same when I looked this morning!

Baring any major unexpected leaf fall last night was the final Cambrian/North Wales RHTT of the year

There is an unusual banner repeater at grand jn in Birmingham heading in towards new st, it is located about 50m M ‘derby side’ of the junction with the line from duddeston, the associated signal is located about 100M beyond the junction When you are coming from derby and the signal is ‘off’ the banner shows ‘off’ as well as would be expected, however if you are coming from duddeston over the flyover if the signal is ‘off’ for you then the banner repeater (which is on the derby line remember) shows ‘on’, I must be interlinked with the point work in some way, i’ve Never seen a banner acting in the same way before, it really to my eyes serves no purpose being ‘on’ when the route is set away from it as if you have unknowingly spadded the previous signal then you don’t have to stop at the banner and will still run through the points, in reality you would have to be having a spectacularly bad day to not be stopped by TPWS or not see the flashing SPAD indicators at that particular location!

Just one poor pic from today, went to Blackpool and had a trip up the tower, was going to take my proper camera to get some zoomed in shots of the station but didn’t bother in the end but here’s an iPhone pic of blackpool north station sans tracks apart from platform 1 where there’s a freightliner ballast train

As Jeff says it should be on the SD card but I downloaded the newer version of Cura from the net before I got the printer, the only thing with it is it doesn’t have the ‘balco’ listed as a printer option but I set mine to Prussia i3 which is the same

It was in derby yesterday morning as a 4 coach unit, no conference coach, but I don’t know if it was off anywhere, normally goes to Heaton on a Saturday but yes it certainly was out of action last week as I should have had it Didcot to derby but got a night in bed instead, quite what’s up with it I don’t know

some from last night, a nice little 30mph trundle derby-new st-litchfield-alrewas-new st-derby popular loco new st that was it for work, this this afternoon we got given some tickets to go to the santa special at the foxfield railway, despite being 30 mins form home ive never been there before, a nice little line with some interesting locos the loco at one end of the train, ex woolstanton colliery and bellerophon at the other whats this all about then?

How the heck did this slip under my radar? Gonna get one ordered I recon, was thinking of respraying one of the cheap silver DB ones but this will save a lot of hassle The real things aren’t being used much at all at the moment as they are limited to where they can run due to gauging issues, on top of that there are only a number of drivers who sign them (I need a refresh on them) but I have taken them formed as a train before now while training on 67s, even had 73138 on the rear! And some early testing when DB has the contract

Let’s see if the OO Gauge version gets dropped to a similar level in the advent calendar, if it does then I may well get my card out

im going to do my upmost to get to this show this year, missed it last year due to work but im off long weekend on the 9th (and i can tie it in with dropping christmas cards etc off at my aunties house in the town)

They don’t get that dirty! Well ok, maybe they do, that’s 67001 back in 2009 in toton

The description says it’s sealed The only thing I can see with it is the bed temp is recommended to be 40-50 degrees or unheated where as my printer recommended 60 degrees for PLA

payday tomorrow, will be following suit with the arriva unit, was torn between that or the chiltern one (as i used to work for them) but as i have the wag express and ATW 153 i thought id go for that one (and i used to work for them too!)

If you want a ‘proper’ 3D scanned ‘big jim’ see Alan at modelu He already has me and a number of other Colas drivers as figures in his range https://www.modelu3d.co.uk/modern-image-figures-update/

It does say in the manual to add ‘blue’ masking tape (designed to not leave a residue) I’ll give that a try if I can find some

I revisited the printer last night and tried printing something else with more success, not brilliant but it printed ok, the issue seems to be adhesion to the base plate, I fully didn’t expect to be an expert after a day with it and I feel that despite the setbacks I’ve done better than I thought I would after a couple of days the first print got as far as this... Then the 2nd one successfully printed but I noticed about 1/3 of the way up the raft on one side had come away from the base, it was still printing ok though so I left it running but it’s an issue that needs looking at, my initial thought is maybe the base wasn’t completely level and as the extruder is travelling left to right it’s catching the print and pulling it off the base Anyhoo, I’ve started a thread about my printer save clogging up this one http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/128665-big-jim’s-adventures-in-3d-aldi-printer-and-xbox-kinect/

As a follow on from the Aldi 3D printer thread I thought I’d start a separate one highlighting how I’m getting in with my new 3D printer Updates to follow as I get to grips with it but for those who haven’t seen he Aldi thread the printer is a clone of a wanhao i3 plus, I’d call it an entry level machine but what I’ve done so far I’m quite impressed with but at the same time also frustrated with it at times! As well as the printer I’ve been experimenting with an Xbox Kinect camera as a 3D scanner with mixed results, but again it’s something new to me, a steep learning curve! Basically the Kinect is connected to the PC via a special usb/power lead, drivers are downloaded and it can then be used as a 3D scanner (or webcam if you want) As my job was cancelled tonight and I’m wide awake I thought I’d have a play About with it, normally you would get the subject to stand still and scan round them but as I was on my own I set the kinect up high and got a revolving breakfast bar stool and sat on that to get a 360 view of myself So using that and reconstructme software after a few false starts I got a scan of myself Then adjusting the scan area a bit I managed to get a bit more body in and a raised arm (as per a class 60 power handle height) Which using an on line converter I turned form a PLA file into an STA so I could import it to Cura ready for printing Dropped my legs through the base so it would only print the top half of me, I’ve done no editing to the scan, as the camera was quite high it didn’t get a scan of the bottom of my arms and for some reason the very top of my head I then gave it a quick try to see how it would come out with its various holes and non scanned bits , no particular scale just somewhere ‘around’ OO Gauge Came out ok, bit of a smurf hat going on but easily fileable if I wanted to Not bad for an 8mm high print (sans hat!) I can see me having fun with both the printer and Kinect as I get the hang of it, watch this topic for more updates and questions as and when I get futher into it (got to learn 3D cad yet too!)

i didnt print any additional support off, i did wonder if it was just printing to thin air as it were i printed off a cooling fan housing without issue and tried it out, had another go at the platform afterwards only to find i got to the same point in the print and the filament "plopped" out of the nozzle, not long after the fan kicked in, tried it a few times and got the same issue on every attempt (it was luckily on the first "raft" layer) , even after taking the custom cooler off and reverting back to normal i still got the same result at the same point in the print at that point i gave up for the night before i got too frustrated with it, the only thing i've set up different was the layer thickness which i'd changed from 0.1 to 0.15

That’s what I was saying, the front bar holding the legs to the platform just came out as strands of pla, that bit was pretty much the final few layers that was printed Regards the temp it was 200 degrees so I’m the next thing I attempted at printing I dropped the temp to 175 degrees which is what the busy printed at and it failed pretty much straight away on the first couple of layers