9th January 2026
Happy new year to all.
First the good news – 2 months after my operation I seem to have finally cleared all the anaesthetic out of my brain. Balance and concentration are now back to normal so I should be back to designing and building new locos (and completed existing orders) soon.
Now for some rather odder news. I have now shut down Orion Business Systems Ltd (the company behind Orion Models) as it has not made a profit in the last 25 years and HMRC’s new accounting rules have made it a pain to continue. Fear not – Orion Models will continue as a sole trader so that should relieve me of future accounting until such times that it turns a profit – if ever.
I am still trying to get rid of Microshit’s Windows 11. It’s latest nasty trick is to decide that I need to re-register Office (including Access) because my PC has changed – problem there is I have been using them for over a decade and a half and can no longer find the registration details. I had already moved Word & Excel files over to the LibreOffice alternatives but the conversion from Access to LibreOffice Base is not so easy. For a while I got over this problem by just clicking the Cancel button when it tried to get me to re-register. Problem now is that it no longer works properly but I can still export the data as spreadsheets. To be frank most of my 32 Access databases are little more than spreadsheets anyway so are easily converted. Add to that that MS always seems to bugger up something whenever Windows does an update. This particularly applies to networking so I have given up trying to reconnect Win11 to my other computers and now just use a USB stick to transfer files. It will be a relief when everything has been transferred to Linux. The problem at present is there are 3 programs that I still need on Win11. First is SolidWorks but I will be converting all those files to FreeCAD when I get the time – some 4000 files that all have to be rebuilt from a 2D drawing to a 3D model – time consuming. Next is the program that that produces my CNC files for the mill and the lathe – Dolphin CAD/CAM. FreeCAD appears to be able to produce mill CNC code for any 3D drawings it creates, but does not yet have a lathe CNC code generator. The third problem is TurboCAD – there are Linux equivalents but the ones I have tried so far are nowhere near as easy to use. This is a bit odd as 2D drawing in TurboCAD is extremely similar to that in AutoDesk, so I find it odd that there is no Linux equivalent. If anyone knows true Linux equivalents for 2D drawing and CNC lathe code generation please let me know.
Win 11’s latest trick is to mess up sound output to my 2K TV monitor – sometimes I can hear the the sound in YouTube videos, then it disappears a few days later. I can no longer hear sound from my DVD player. This all used to work until another of Win 11s useless updates. There used to be a good troubleshooter for sound on Win 11 but it now seems to have disappeared!
I am sure this website could do with an overhaul – if you find anything odd, displaced, duplicated or confusing please let me know.
Whilst recovering from the anaesthetic I got a bit distracted by the possibly of building a really small layout (and actually finishing one for once). So how about T gauge (3mm gauge). There are 2 layouts I am considering – Welsh (& Devon) 2′ gauge at a scale of 1:203 with an overall size of 24″ x 16.5″ and Swiss metre gauge at a scale of 1:333 with an overall size of 40″ x 20″. Obviously for both of these everything will need to be scratch built apart from the flexible track. The Swiss layout can use the T gauge points as the wheelbases are long enough to span the dead frogs. For the Welsh one I will have to build the points myself as most wheelbases are too short and would stall in the middle of each point. If I get round to doing this I will rescale all the loco and stock designs to make them run on 32mm gauge and possibly make them available as kits or ready-to-run.