Are we there yet? Taking Stock of 3d Printing with some LCs

DB completes the 3D printing review with what was to be the opener in the post...

I've had quite a few purchases from the Lewis Holden Printing Factory on my workbench for a while. Some for well over than a year now. So lets look at a few frustrations from 3D printing (this has since been started in previous posts on passenger cars). 

Some of these models are LC tops. These are the same as ones I've bought and posted about previously, but putting them up against the latest additions to the four-wheeled coal train, the Trackgang whitemetal LCs (the brown completed one below) shows a contrast when it comes to the details like the placement and 'finery' of the ribs and internal tie-down 'bumps', and also the overall straightness and squareness that 3D Printing was supposed to help us with, although I suppose in this case, bent bodies were pretty realistic for coal route LCs!

But also note the chunkiness of the ribs and wall thickness of this particular design (and my earlier KS wagons).

My Z scale exploits have made me pay more attention to wagons 'riding high', and in recent projects you may have noticed me sanding down bogie mounting points and inserting the Peco chassis 'up into the body' for the recent batches of LCs. To my eye, this presents a far more accurate portrayal of the LC than when the top is sitting way up high on top of the chassis.

Modelling that lower look with these printed models (or making any alterations at all) is more of a pain than with scratchbuilt stuff, because the resin is so tough and brittle, so to 'raise the floor' you really have to get in there with a dremel, which is challenging to get into tight corners, and messy.

To make a proper low-rider, I need to remove the above areas painted black with a Sharpie pen, to let me insert the chassis. 

In fact even without my low-rider desire, I'd still need to either thin the Peco's plastic chassis or remove a smaller amount of resin print because those walls are so thick the Peco won't fit between them as intended anyway.

And ideally, for looks, you want to thin the inner side walls a little when viewed from the top. Further surgery had to be performed on the Pecos (see in the pic below) to make up for not being able to get a dremel deep into the corners of the underside....

The end result is nice:

In the pic below, compare the low slung LC (light brown one at right) with the sit-on-top Euro-look LC (darker model at left) in the below pic:

But getting to this point is too much work for a 3D print. I could have scratchbuilt this from styrene in half the time I spent dremelling. Why not just modify the design to save everyone the hassle? 

And that is exactly what Lewis has done with his latest creation, after some back and forth with Dandruff HQ.

This is his build in the pic above, looking pretty sweet. This is a great example of "if you're going to go to the effort of designing it, why not make it as good as you can?"

So, a number were acquired, but they have been sitting on my bench for a while as they required some pondering time. The outsides look superb:

That's some mighty tasty and fine detail. Note the handgrab and footstep on the end (the little knobs on top are from supports used in the 3d printing and curing process and are easily removed with a file.

The floor is supplied as a separate piece:

The challenge is fitting it... The tops have a little protrusion that is probably supposed to locate the floor, but mine were only on three of the inner sides. It was a very tight and tricky fit for the floor. Plus they are inclined to be a little warpy by their flat nature, so after many attempts I decided there was no way I was going to get flat or consistently located floors without assistance. 

After fiddling with various sizes of plasticard rod, I reckon 0.060 inches-worth of Evergreen styrene is the right depth of stopper to have the floor sit at the height I want.  So strips of .040x.060 were cut and levelled with the bottom of the side walls thus:

I quickly found it easiest to do it the way pictured below, holding the wagon down and simultaneously pressing the strip against a knife blade (or a ruler or something) held in the other hand for a few seconds while the superglue took:

Then it was time to create some NZ120 marching powder by thinning one side and one end of the floor:

So the floor drops in nicely against the stoppers. If it warps up in the middle that's no drama, because the chassis will be secured at the corners anyway:

From here it was paint time: various shades of reddy brown on top:

And some drybrushed brown on the bottoms as the wagon assembly plant rolled into action:

Ta-da:

About 15 years ago, I had three holy grails for NZ120. 

1. A module standard.
2. A realistic one-piece modern freight bogie.
3. And a relatively cheap LC and KP top that you could just pop onto a Peco - meaning anyone could churn out trains quickly without needing any special tools or skills.   

It looks we are getting very close to being 2/3rds of the way there.

More 3D moaning with Wooden Carriages, but it all works out in the end.

DB rails on from a post that was going to be yesterday's which will probably appear out of order in the next day or three, but since I've started on these carriages:

My next frustration with 3d prints is strata. When I dipped back into NZ120 about 15 months ago, I bought a set of 3D printed wooden carriages:

I didn't realise they were this bad until I had primed, painted, dulcoated, and then started washing them with some weathering. They certainly don't look great with a light shining off them that's for sure. Had I noticed this earlier I'd have sanded them down a bit. Which I did with the roofs, as there is a pronounced 'ridge' along the roof centreline and on the rounded ends. Fairly easily dealt with using a long thin fine file for the centre ridge (so as not to knock the roof ventilators which are nicely done, and fine sandpaper for the roof ends to give them a smoother-flowing shape where the curves join.    

These are fairly old prints now I guess, and new ones from higher resolution printers will be smoother... but having said that, I've paid for them, and there is now a much better one available. A bit like every camera and computer I've ever bought I suppose. 

My next grumble is is warping. It seems most 3D printed things that are shaped like a bathtub will warp - wagon sides and locomotives bow out like the below, and often they have a minor 'humpbacked' longitudinal bend. 

While most prints seem to have relatively fine supports inside in an attempt to counter this during printing and curing, they tend to snap and break off due to the warping forces. So why not make them stronger and more numerous? These carriages have this feature already, with some good thick cross pieces under the crown posts that tie the sides together. If there were two more located here (red arrows) the whole side would be nice and straight, and the truss rods wouldn't splay out and then pull apart: 

These structural tie-pieces would be welcome on my ZAs, and even the Wb loco (as the user can remove them many months later when applying a chassis - I note the DM print has these, which is sensible).

And my last frustration with the 3D printed stuff, and then I promise I'll zip-it (other than tomorrow's post), is the sagging of fine detail. This sometimes manifests itself in hanging edges becoming curved or scolloped (compare the scalloped underframe of the car-van in the foreground vs the ruler-straight sides of the car because I have overlaid its bendy bits with styrene, although this pushes them out closer to the red 'wooden' sides than I'd like:

Fine unsupported rodding often sags too, such as on these Shapeways Z tanktainers:

Presumably this is from a lack of supports, or maybe it happens during curing. 

So you have to cut off the offending bits, and then due to the material's brittleness, even more bits snap off. Maybe its time to accept that 3D isn't yet ready for this type of fine detail yet and it could be omitted, with slots or holes left instead so that we can put these details in ourselves using straight plastic or brass rod. 

I used .030x.030 plastic square rod to replace the broken and bent truss rods to match the existing printed rodding, but in hindsight, looking at some prototype pics afterwards,  I should have used much thinner brass rod and done all six carriage sides.

Enough moaning. These carriage bodies look ok from 2-3 feet away. Arguably the finescale MMW ends and bogies make everything else - carriage bodies, couplers, track, buildings, other rolling stock, ballast and scenery, look horribly chunky.

Bogie screws and couplers are yet to be figured out. I added battery boxes to one of the cars and immediately took them off because they looked silly. Now after dredging up some prototype pics, I wasn't actually that far off so will re-add them. I also need to do something about glazing the guards ducket. Or replacing it with the modern pressed steel pattern.

-----The next day:

I pulled out some Microtrains and Peco couplers to fit the cars with, but with the bogies having cross pieces at the ends that I didn't want to fiddle with, couplers would have to stick out a long way to clear these.

So I started playing with the 'sprue' of the MMW parts, cutting an L out of the corner and putting a slot in the end of it. This was three small holes joined up with the help of a knife and some files. 

And this made up a simple hook-and-eye arrangement:

Note also the white .040x040 rod bearers added to the bolsters of the cars to encourage upright running in the above pic. These were added at one end of each carriage.

In testing, the cars negotiate the tight curve behind the roundhouse and the 'S curves' of the pointwork at Studholme whether pushed or pulled. Those are large radius turnouts, so perhaps they would struggle on medium radius crossovers, but I'll leave that for some future experimentation. 

There is also a tiny bit of play in the bogie mounts too which can't hurt. After wondering how I was going to attach the bogies, I ended up using small flat-headed nails that are about an inch long - the points of which have been liberally contact-glued to the underside of the carriage roofs! Seems to work...

The below was a first cut at carriage steps - a plastic one glued to the underframe, and bits of MMW steps attached to the corners of the bogies.

These didn't last long and were replaced with folded up MMW ones attached to the frame, shortened and mounted a fair way outboard to clear the swing of the bogies on curves.

A little weight was added underneath using nails. Keepin' it classy, NZ120. Bogies have been mounted, and steps are in place.

As afterthoughts, I 'painted' a loo in using some white styrene behind the windows, added the centre (ventilator?) (top-middle of that red sides) which might also be loo-related, and steps under the baggage door on the van. I should have done the rain strip on the roof above the baggage doors, but that would have upset the weathering that I'm pretty happy with.

Battery boxes were re-added - these had to be very thin styrene because the truss rods are so far outboard. Painting everything 'weathered black' helps disguise the inaccuracies.

And as a final touch, the circular number and class plates were also carefully painted weathered black. These are quite prominent on most of the pictures I've seen, so I painted little yellow 2s to signify second class. This was done with yellow that had a touch of dark included. Then to further lower the contrast, a blob of Tamiya 'smoke' was placed on top. Another blob may yet be applied...

You can see how far the Microtrains couplers had to stick out on the ends to clear the bogie frames, but my homemade couplers give a really nice 'close coupling' effect between the cars.

I don't know much about carriages, but I assume these are 47-6 ones. Not even sure if they operated on the Coast or on the Waimate Branch, but most importantly, they are red, so will look the part behind a DJ or a tank engine or at the end of a mixed train. When viewed from the rigorously-enforced mandatory minimal viewing distances.

Mark's Model Works (MMW) bogies and railings for carriages

DB bought a set of 3D printed wooden carriages when he dipped back into NZ120 about 15 months ago: 

This was to be a post on 3D printing, but I've decided to break that into three parts, so more on the carriages soon, but this post is about some roundy feet for them.

Options include nice plastic bogies with superchunky wheels from some olde-timey carriages (Ibertren?) as seen under that 30-foot van; or Kadee passenger car bogies (a little small, but these 1017s don't look terrible after the removal of some superfluous brake and stabilisation detail; plus they have a bonus coupler. 1014s might be better but I've never seen any in the wild); or these scary-looking Mark's Model Works etched bogies. Eek.

I've seen a completed MMW set before and they look lovely, but there's no way I could ever make those up with my fuzzy eyes, wobbly hands and 1940s-era welding axe and matching skills. 

But why not give them a crack... so I studied the instructions with an intensity and frequency that no male has ever employed studying instructions before.

To my surprise, they came together fairly quickly. After about one and a half hours I had the six made up, including bearings, wheels and soldering. About twenty minutes of that was spent cutting the ends off some petrified clothes pegs (as recommended in the instructions) to make clamps that are perfect for holding things together while you apply the solder that locks everything together. The hardest part is arguably the first step, crimping the leaf springs.

The eagle-eyed may note that there are three subtly different models of bogie here (different numbers of leaf springs among other details. 

I bought some Dundas DP09 brass top hat bearings from Trackgang a while back and they coincidentally fitted the MMW bogies perfectly, indeed being recommended in the instructions.  

The wheels are some pricey Bachmann/Farish BR coach bogies from Ironhorse, purchased randomly a few months ago, and their axle length happens to fit perfectly too. They are a nice broad diameter, but are discs, not spoked, if that matters.  And oddly they come in a pack of ten. Just the perfect amount for... two and a half carriages. Shrugs shoulders. The sixth bogie was filled with two Peco plastic wheels, which are a tad short in axle length, but with the frame bent inwards a smidge, they roll ok.

In summary: as long as you follow the well-illustrated instructions, the bogies are not hard to fold up and solder. They are etched in phosphor bronze, which is nice and stiff and springy, but is a forgiving material if you do start folding something the wrong way, as it doesn't fatigue as fast as brass. As also noted in the instructions, I needed to separately put a splash of solder in to affix about half the bearings in place. This requires slightly more finesse than I possess, but my efforts didn't hinder their operation or looks. Even my neanderthalesque soldering skills had the main soldering job (one line across the top of each bogie side) come out quite neat.

Speaking of looks, the bogies really look stunning. With this success, I must have a crack at those MMW brass IA wagons that I've had stashed away for a dozen years. 

Keeping the story on MMW, the carriages were topped off with his etched end railings which are insanely pretty:

These are just gorgeous. I use a Sharpie black marker to tediously colour them in before cutting and folding. This gives a much 'finer' effect than painting them with goop after they have been installed (as if you could get a paintbrush in there to do the inside faces anyway). I decided to not add the steps, as they didn't quite fit the stepwells. I may put them on later. I also inadvertently omitted the curved handrails on the red carriage ends. It seems that one (obviously, in hindsight!) should do this before glueing the end cages in place that prevent future access... 

More on the carriage build in the next one.....

Elmer Lane 20 - Misc buildings

 DB builds onwards:

Today I a added quick and dirty (not an ideal descriptor for a loo?) toilet/bike shed (for when you are really in a rush) and one of the buildings to the south of the foreman's office. There were really two here, one being a clerical store, and one being the EFCA/Loco Engineer's Assn recreation room. Who knew. I've only got room for one anyway. 

These specimens were made the same way as the Loco Foreman's office, even using some offcuts painted for such an occasion. Of course I'd forgotten that the window cutouts, corners, roof edges and so forth would have to be touched up anyway. 

Still no downpipes, but the other expelair has been used, and there is a toilet vent pipe on the loo roof, and a potbelly stove chimney on the other one. 

Elmer Lane 19 - Foreman's Office

DB marches onwards (as Bill Heslop would say, "You can't stop progress!"):

My next project was the Depot Foreman's office, conveniently labelled '16' in this crop of a picture by Ian Coates in the Steam Inclined book:

In later years, by the time the DJs arrived, the office had received a much bigger lean-to to the right (the side facing the railcar shed) replacing what I assume was a covered entrance door and loo in the little lean-to.

The prototype is somewhat odd-looking in the location of the entrance doors (which seem quite low) vs the windows (which look placed quite high in the walls). I wonder if you came in the entrance doors at a low level, hung up your wet lammy coat, and then stepped up into the main office. Either that or those doors are not for tall people (or the windows are). Anyway, be that as it may...

While in Christchurch the other day, I spied these etched N scale window frames from Ratio/Peco and wondered if they might be useful.

Today what is left of the Evergreen styrene clapboard siding was again wheeled out. It's probably a little coarse/overscale for this building, but it looks the part. Some sides were cut out, .040x.040 square rod used in the 'corners', and a few of the Ratio window frames modified to look a bit more like the prototype by removing some inner frame bits. Those white rods will go on the edges of the ends:

The window frames were glued in place, and the long sides, including the more visible one with its little lean-to, were made up out of offcut bits:

Test fit on site (more on this in a moment):

Painted:

Roofed, with some lovely real Swiss aluminium that I purchased in Wellington or Sydney in the mid-90s and have never used much of:

Underneath the roof peak and trough are some styrene reinforcements, and along the roof peak is a .040 circular rod that the roof sheets were butted up to at the apex.

A chimney with three pots was added on top of the roof and a flagpole at the north end, as these are visible in the Ian Coates pic. I wonder if I can find a tiny NZ flag...

And then installation on site... During the test fit earlier, I thought the whole office looked a bit 'short', but this was not helped by the tracks being about 5mm taller than the scenery base level here. So I added the brown underbits that the prototype had, made from .060 thick styrene, and also raised the wooden base it would sit on by about 2.5 mm. Ballast was then used to raise the 'ground level' around the building.

It looks pretty nice. Unfortunately it is nicer than the chunky railcar shed in front of it. Again, note the odd low doors vs the windows. The 'loo' in the little lean too at this end has whitewashed glass and even an etched fan in the top-left pane! Not that anyone will ever see it unfortunately! You might just make it out in the 4th pic of this post, as the long side walls are being assembled.

The next job will probably be to build some of the small rooms, stores and bike sheds around this office (14,17 & 18 in the top pic above).