Garden Railway Forum

Love the lighting! Very atmospheric

Great looking guttering, Philip. Looks very realistic as does the rest of the building.

Rik

Loving this building looks fab

I love the overall atmosphere that you have created here, so much of it is down to the precise detail of your creations. I do normally think with a 6 or even a ten foot rule and what the eye cannot see etc. Here you have knocked that theory completely sideways.
Have you created the travel posters yourself by photo reduction or are they commercial items?

Splendid detail Philip, I'm still telling friends of your printed fireplace and that fire. Many things stand out, but I have to say the fencing, the exit gate look so real, I can hear the gate squeek a little as it's opened!
Grant.

What can one say Phillip …..WOW is one word to describe your brilliant build, is that now two words…just puts my feeble attempt to shame, so in the bin it is going…not really.

Come on Phil, invest in a better printer and get selling station kits!

tom_tom_go wrote: ↑Thu Apr 19, 2018 8:36 am Come on Phil, invest in a better printer and get selling station kits!

I agree…

Thanks again for the nice comments, all.
Phil, the posters came from the net, resized, then laser printed on self adhesive vinyl to give them some sort of weather resistance. I've actually got more because the plan was to put enamel signs on the fences, but I decided it would look too garish ( although not unprototypical). I do have one I might put on though, because I found a sign for Basset Lowke, Northampton, which is not only appropriate for subject, but also fairly local to me here.

As for the 6-10ft rule and matching elastic ruler, I do the detail when I feel like it just because I enjoy fiddling about and like a wee bit of a challenge, not because I'm a rivet counter as such. I'm perfectly aware that nobody ( including me) will ever see the detail I put inside the waiting room but that doesn't bother me, I enjoyed doing it at the time and that was an end in itself.

Isn’t that the joy and beauty of our hobby Phillip, enjoying what we do, no matter how it turns out. Some like you are better then other’s….me…

Great station! I do love the dog, very nice detail.
What I'm curious about is what the sunlight (UV) does to all the printed detail. I presume the building goes inside your garage during winter?

If you have a lot of the same forms to print, it could be an option to print a few, make a mold and pour the rest of them with resin.

daan wrote: ↑Fri Apr 20, 2018 2:25 am
What I'm curious about is what the sunlight (UV) does to all the printed detail. I presume the building goes inside your garage during winter?

If you have a lot of the same forms to print, it could be an option to print a few, make a mold and pour the rest of them with resin.

Daan,
Only time will tell about the weather effects. Some items ( the earlier ones mostly) were printed with PLA which is supposedly bio-degradable, so I'm expecting problems sooner or later. I then switched to using ABS in the hope that it will be more stable. Everything, apart from the ridge tiles, has several coats of primer, paint and varnish, which will help. The ridge tiles are just plain ABS as they came from the printer, so we'll see. I don't take any of my other buildings in during winter and wasn't planning to with this, but I'll just have to see how it goes.

Your combined printing and casting idea isn't something I'd thought of. However, having had some previous limited experience of resin casting, I'm not sure there would be any real advantage. Once the drawings are done and the print parameters worked out, it's just a matter of printing things one at a time until you have enough. If you saw the pulleys I did for Rik's sawmill, the actual printing of all the bits was less than a day. Similarly with Tom's coupler pockets, to do 8 identical ones took about 4 hours in total, whereas making a mould of the first one and then casting 8 individual items from that, would take at least a couple of days for curing times, plus additional cost for the mould silicone. As for cost, Tom's 8 coupling pockets, printed in ABS, cost about 76pence in total . I'm pretty sure that mould materials and casting resin wouldn't come down anywhere near that.
I guess that going to a commercial scale operation, there could be a break point at which the printed master time and cost becomes less than casting materials bought in bulk, but I suspect that by the time you get there then simply conventional injection moulding would be the way to go.
Interesting 'lateral thinking' idea though, thanks.

Philip, that's an interesting reply. As a small business owner ( a hairdressing business run by my daughter) I completely understand the thinking behind your reply. Unless one is wealthy enough to be unconcerned about not making money, or worse losing it, then the bottom line i.e. profits the only thing that matters.

One could do some manufacturing as a sideline or small scale, but as you quite rightly point out if priced realistically then for most people the cost would be extortionate.

I am planning on building a batch of wagons. No matter how well they turn out I would not consider doing them commercially unless there was a sound business case which included paying back any capital cost as well as making a profit. Extremely unlikely unless a large volume of items can be made in the case of our hobby.

Ian

Ian,
The problem of then turning a hobby into a successful business is that it becomes a full time occupation and is no longer a fun hobby - as I'm sure Rik can testify to in terms of RC Trains.

Brilliant, love all the detail in your station.

philipy wrote: ↑Fri Apr 20, 2018 10:31 am Ian,
The problem of then turning a hobby into a successful business is that it becomes a full time occupation and is no longer a fun hobby - as I'm sure Rik can testify to in terms of RC Trains.

I completely agree.

Ian