Giles

I've finally got it beaten! I have eventually used four thumb joysticks of various sources - non of which centred 'off' if you see what I mean.... I got round it by (one channel at a time) prying the potentiometer off the side of the joystick, cutting off all the locating bits, and refixing it with globs of Milliput, rotating it till it was correctly zeroed, so nothing was happening. Only when it had completely set did I go on to the next one.... this took days...... A real bodge, but it actually worked, and I have a usable transmitter. So I'm happy. I did have an accident early on in the process, where I had a couple of the crane ones done, turned it all on, but it lost the signal, and the winches happily wound everything up till things started breaking...... but I've got everything repaired again now. Job done.

Superb weathering on this - absolutely superb!

I find Cut2Dlaser (supplied with the emblaser) works very well and reliably, and I 'feed' it with DWGS from autocad, but if I had not got that - I should use Draftsight, which is free, and very similar. I use several passes to cleanly get through 2mm MDF with the Emblazer, but it makes a very neat job of it. One has to remember that the Emblazer is only 4W, compared with the CO2 lasers that are ten times the power! I always make the dimensional adjustment for the kerf on my drawings, as if I am producing windows, say, I will need the extra dimension to be on the outside on some instances and on the inside in others....

This was the Garratt that I gave a home yo

I'm sorry you're suffering with these - I'm not surprised- I found one extremely heavy going, and two must be torture! However, the eventual result will be something quite special. There are a few around, but very few 're-worked' ones, I suspect... and they do look nice!

PS nice coaches!

Absolutely. One Of of the things to look out for, when setting the belts up, is that the carriage of cross bars carrying the laser is actually at 90 degrees when you've set it up- as any error here replicates in anything you cut.

Outrageously brilliant. Quite unique. I really want to see this in real life.....

In 1981-3 as Stage Manager of a touring theatre company (Great Eastern Stage, in Lincoln) our truck was a Ford D series 7 1/2 tonner, with a pantechnicon body fitted. I drove it nearly all the time, and grew very fond of it - I certainly begrudge it when it went for service and we had to borrow a TK for a couple of days! My first agency job (on HGVs) was with an old Leyland Marathon at 38 tonnes dragging bricks. That was a heap of junk. It needed bump starting in the morning with the yards big fork lift (simply picked up the back of the trailer, and pushed the whole lot, ready or not....), and the broke a spring centre bolt on the unit's rear axle, which saw me crabbing down the A1 at an alarming angle.

....looking forward to this!

Variable, with a cack-handed driver!

Ebay job. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TRUCK-TRAILER-BEDFORD-TK-1960-80-HALES-CAKES-IXO-FOR-ALTAYA-1-43-SCALE-NEW-BOX-/152397450981?hash=item237b988ee5:g:GbEAAOSwopRYe61r

Hi Chris- it's 1:43, being a small prototype. I did check a couple of dimensions which were correct....

I'm having problems with the transmitter for the crane. Andy from Micron was going to develop a four - stick one for me, but he's run into difficulties with it and doesn't have time, so it's over to me. I've just tried fitting thumb joysticks but they don't work, as they don't have 'trim', and they're all over the place.... Di's home got to go....

It's nice that The End of THE Line is in such hood hands... TK now gently weathered and completed, ready for work.

They did eventually- thank you very much Simon - it would appear that the signal is negative... However, I found (wired this way) that when switched off, the leds ghosted, as they were fed directly from the battery, aside from the signal,bwhich was of course switched (the on off switch was on the unit, not the trailer) so I ended up fitting a main on off switch on the trailer, together with a charging socket there as well... However, we've one!

Looking better for decent mirror arms and proper sized number plate. A bit of road muck will help!

Hi Chris - it is actually 1:43...... of course they were much smaller than we're nowadays used to.....

I found that the capacitor supplied (470uF) did nothing at all (same Zimo/Chetter setup from Digitrains), and I replaced it with four 680uF as supplied by Digitrains, which I thought would give me loads.... in fact, it gives about half a second - a lot less than I thought, but in practice does the trick very well.

That is looking superb Peter!

Excellent! I have hacked a couple of large servos in the past for the fun of it- to use as a reversible ESC - but at this size...... Brilliant.

They are indeed Simon - I won't have time tomorrow, but I'll rewire on Saturday and try that!