Martin S-C

I went along today and Hope-under-Dinmore was my favourite layout. 1904 GW-LNWR joint. Stephen Williams (or was it Rex Davidson?) was there as well with Faringdon his beautiful GWR BLT. The other highlights were Kensington Addison Road, Remagen Bridge (though it seemed to suffer from some iffy running) and Bournmouth West. Micro layouts seemed to be the flavour of the day with diesel MPDs the majority, or so it seemed. Lots of useful traders and I picked up some bits and bobs from Skytrex, Wizard/51L and a couple of others.

I used to make my door handles out of bent brass wire but recently bought some brass turned ones from Comet/Wizard/51L and they are very sweet crisp little things and look so much better. It looks like you are using something similar Neil.

That is a marvellous looking engine. I am a huge fan of both saddle tanks and the 2-4-0 wheel arrangement so this one ticks all my boxes. EDIT: Do the disc and cross bar signals rotate as well?

For cardboard and polyfilla I am truly impressed! (though it would also be a treat to see how a laser cut window would look).

A simple short length of plastic tube for the brake cylinder is a great idea too. I have just bought several sets of brass Dean brake cylinders, gas tanks and gear as etches from a well-known supplier when I realise I could have made what I needed out of scrap and spent the money on something useful like a couple of bottles of Saint-Émilion.

The joke at the time was that all his models actually had square wheels, but they were invisible all except for a central circular texture. Mind you, he had to write some code to actually get that textured circle perfectly central inside the square otherwise his wagons and locos rolling along looked very odd!

In my provincial ignorance I was quite unaware that Bunnings had bought Homebase in the UK. To be truthful I do not visit Homebase that often but the one branch I used to use, I hadn't noticed an iota of change - perhaps it was a shop Bunnings were not targetting to change into a different style. My nearest local DIY place is B&Q and they seem to sell most things in tolerable quality at tolerable prices. I haven't yet explored their ability to saw timber to specification.

Yes, we had, but someone else chose to ignore that and I responded, then decided to delete my comment as life is too short and they were miles off the subject anyway.

deleted.

Aha, I see it now. You've done a very good job with the textures, working within the constraints of an old model. I see that the wheels of these models are made up of faces so they don't look round. I remember we had all kinds of problems with wheels in the early MSTS days and they looked horribly clunky. One of my friends who was a prolific 3D modeller hit upon the clever idea of using a circular texture with an alpha channel for the face of the wheel and another for its rear, but bigger to suggest a flange - two square textures, total 4 polys with the result of a perfectly round wheel rim.

Has the colour gone weird on the nearer wagon? The hatches should be central but I assume that's something you are unable to correct.

In the same manner, the two lads either side of her are not wearing stockings over their faces and about to become the Smallest Mail Cart Robbers in the West. If I know the plot lines our Jenny gets involved with, she's probably hiding under the postie's mail bags and going to elope with him. EDIT: and so as to bring something worthwhile to the discussion, for modelling purposes I note that many modellers will strew their fence bottoms with a lot of long grasses and weeds, but here we see that the grass verges on both sides of the road are both minimal and very short. I imagine this is because people walk everywhere in these times and usually by the side of the road to avoid vehicles/mud/droppings so the grasses get trodden down and the earth pounded hard (which discourages growth) and secondly due to all the horse traffic any verge grasses that get anywhere near juicy and tender get eaten in short order. So go carefully with your PVA and electrostatic grass applicator along your village streets.

You misunderstand my point. The issue that I find offensive is a law that allows private citizens to carry firearms. It may have been relevant at the birth of the nation when farmers lived alone in wildernesses where hostile natives or predatory animals were threats but it is not relevant today and probably became irrelevant around the period between the end of the Civil War and 1900; much earlier in established cities. Your personal experience is as irrelevant as mine as regards crimes witnessed in any particular nation. The statistics speak for themselves - because of a lack of gun control a person is much more likely to suffer gun related crime in the USA than any other "civilised" nation. I think only some south American and African states exceed the per-capita death rate from gunshot wounds. Its a disgusting statistic and it ought to cause both alarm and shame among American politicians. That it does not also says a lot about the mentality and the broken political proceedures in the USA. The media always paints pictures using negatives. You'd think from reading certain newspapers in the UK that a person is likely to suffer an attack by youths on motor scooters at any time. There is practically no such risk in the UK and I am not saying there is an everyday risk of gun crime if I visited the USA either, I am just giving my viewpoint on how USA gun laws disturb me personally and that the facts are plain for all to see regarding how arming citizens gives rise to greatly increased per capita gun crime incidents.

How typical of Americans to use this bent logic. Let's not take guns away from those who have them, but give them to those who do not. I just shake my head in sadness at how broken American society is in regard to its refusal to deal with gun control. Thousands of innocent people every year being shot or killed just because a bunch of men in wigs decided 250 years ago that farmers needed muskets to defend themselves against Indians and Redcoats. The insanity of American society in regard to guns is why I steadfastly refuse to ever visit the USA.

3D modelling is a bit of an art. I found it was something I had no affinity for, even though I tried. Gleaning enough information from how a mesh is constructed so I could change textures was about my limit and after about 10 years away from the hobby I have entirely forgotten even that. I see model locomotive scratchbuilding as a similar thing - you either can do it or you can't.

A very well deserved win, due I think, partly to the thoughtful choice of what is actually a part of railway life we rarely consider, plus being executed with great skill.

And to prove the cyclical theory of thread evolution proposed a page or three back, there's that horse drawn bus again.

Which one is that?

Its about keeping yourself busy. If your hands are doing something your mind gets focussed on that task. The best thing to do in a bout of depression is literaly anything, so as to keep your mind from dwelling on the things you need to avoid dwelling on. When I am feeling a bit down I just grab an RTR wagon and weather it. Or build one of my big stash of POWsides kits. It really helps.

That GCR 2-4-0 tank is simply gorgeous. I recall seeing Peter Denny's scratchbuilt model of one decades ago and fell in love with the engine immediately. I'd love to have a model of one.

I can't help thinking that possibly Alfie is private Walker's dad.

It was a joke. I pulled a random date out of thin air. Kind of you to try and correct me though.

Well it does have two wires. The first two.

The middle one has a rather sinister expression, as though she is planning to take over the world.

Ah, yes. The Internet. Leading the uneducated astray since 1994.