Thursday, August 9, 2018

NSWGR Small Station Signs and Shapeways Changes

I have just uploaded two sets of small wall mounted station signs for NSWGR station buildings to my Shapeways Signals Branch shop.

These signs are based on actual measurements that were taken from signs on Junee station building and used to scale other size signs based on the size of the bracket used and other aspects such as the spacing of the wording used on the signs, height of the sign, etc.

Firstly there is a basic set of signs for a small station.



Secondly there is a large set of all the sign variations I could find on a search of photographs in books and elsewhere.


The brackets on the signs are the most common type I could see in the photographs. While I saw a couple of other types I suspect that they might be repairs.

There is also a very early fancy style of sign and bracket that I haven't done.

The signs have a 1 mm peg that is designed to be inserted into a 1 mm hole drilled in the wall of the station building.

Painting instructions are on the shop in the product description for the signs.


Shapeways Changes

A word of caution here, Shapeways is currently changing the look and operation of their web site. Luckily the shop doesn't seem to have changed so far but for us designers they have been moving a lot of things around, very useful, NOT!

Shapeways has a new Chief Executive Officer and I think a new board, so this will be him showing that he is doing something.

Another thing I have noticed is the lack of any discounts or free shipping offers, I don't know if these types of offers will continue or not but several materials have been removed from their 3D printing range so I suspect that there is some belt tightening going on.

Also you will see that most items on the shop now have very odd pricing, this was always the case if you viewed the shop showing Australian Dollars due to the currency exchange rate. However, now the US Dollar prices are odd, this is due to the fact that Shapeways has included the Australian 10% GST as required by our government.

I guess we will get used to the changes.