Metcalfe UK postal service only

Hi all, I was just taking a look on the Metcalfe web site.
I see sadly they have given up posting their products to oversea,s customer,s.From now on they will supply UK customer,s only.
Oh well looks like more scratch building!.
regards,
Derek

If you're looking foe card kits why don't you have a look at my download and print kits at www.smartmodels.co.uk

…..They look interesting, Brian!

Doug

Thanks Brian, I shall take a look at your work,
regards,

Derek

Hi Brian, I've been searching for some stone paper to match Purbeck stone as in the attached pics. Note they also use the same stone for roofing! I've tried other download papers, but not yet found the correct colour, I've even tried tweaking the printer colour settings, which is a right PITA. I even went so far as to import to a photo editing package and playing with colurs there, managed to get pretty close but not close enough!

Can't understand why photos print  fine, but PDFs even when imported and fiddled with just seem to always need a considerable reduction in the red percentage to get anywhere near, stone which looks grey on screen prints almost light brown, if I get it wit a green cast on screen then it prints nearer what I want.

I'd like to model the cottages in the first pic, not seen another like it, if that stairway is in place of an internal one it must be a bit chilly going up to bed on a wet and blustery winters night. The stairway has been there as long as I can remember, first time I saw it would have been just after WW2, so it's not a recent flat conversion. The thatched place with the wisteria would be another challenge, a bit awkward with that angled end!







Cheers MIKE

Hi Mike,

Colour matching from a computer screen is nigh on impossible. I used to work in Print Prepress and we had a £15,000 proofer that never got close.

Grey is a really difficult colour for CMYK inkjet and Colour laser printers to match as the inks are not light enough colours. You could always print onto a light grey coloured paper and just print the tones of the stones in grayscale. There are some nice mottled grey papers manufactured - look at Scrapbooking suppliers. Also some of the papers are textured as well.

Simon

I would agree with that. Colour matching is notoriously difficult. I've made many texture sheets for people from photos and while I do my best to match the colour on screen you can never be certain that it will print out the same across different printers. The colour is also effected by the light conditions and colour balance settings of the camera when the photos were originally taken.

Yup, I tend to always adopt the Adobe colour choice on myEpson, and leave it like that for PDFs, I've never managed to match colours well to photographs.


Doug

I must say they are great looking building kits Brian,

Just the job for us internet customer,s.

regards,

Derek

Thanks. They're proving very popular. I'm just about to launch junior range of kits to encourage the younger modeller. See below. The one on the left the simplified junior version of the signal box. I think its very important to encourage youngsters into the hobby.

Excellent idea Brian.
I have downloaded some of your range of kits.
Now I need to get some good card and clear sheet for glazing.
I remember somewhere seeing people using A4 invoice paper with peel off sticky back to print on. I must check it out.
For future projects ? Maybe some nice Coal Hole building,s.
LNWR,L&Y or Midland design. Just a suggestion.

regards,
Derek
PS. Maybe Robert might give your products a thread of their own Brian.Save metcalf people getting confused?

Well I'm happy to build any kind of building as long as I've decent reference material for it. I don't know much about steam era but if you send me some reference material I can have a look at it add to my ever growing list of models in development

Hi Brian, Sorry for the long delay to your post.
I have a few examples of coaling stages with ramps the drawings sadly do not have dimensions, They are pictured in some of my railway books.
Will do some further checking.

Regards,

Derek