Railroad Model Makers Everywhere  

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

I no longer do railroad, but a 3d printer would have been a godsend when I did.  

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

Well, I persuaded wifey to let me buy a 3D printer after we build a model railway:

The only problem is that we used the printer(s) for models way too big to fit on the railway, or just not appropriate for one 🙁

Peter

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

Peter,

Wow! I can see your dedication to modeling and thanks for referring to the videos. The modular layout is what brings the youngsters into the hobby many times because they can see a tangible operating realistic objects that stirs their imaginations.

Model Railroading has a long history and some very famous masters that scratch built their layouts, rolling stock, engines etc. I recently saw parts of John Armstrong's layout that was preserved and of course he was one of many celebrated masters that was well covered in the hobby press in past years.

I am also a scratch builder and have had discussions around the topic of when is building a model from a kit or developing it from scratch no longer model building if you have a machine do it for you? Sketching it and printing can make it look like a freight car or passenger car was fresh out of the shops from the manufacturer as delivered to a railroad. That is the problem I have with mass produced injection molded ready to run models which is fine depending on what your needs are for your model railroad. It is much more difficult to model a piece like a 1907 Stock Car that has been in service for 10 years. Weathering the models just don't cut it sometimes for me anyhow, unless you are only judging the weather paint job.

However, a bigger aspect for me in the use of 3D printing, is now I have the advanced capability to print tools that go a long ways in helping do my work in scratch building. For example, I have printed many Dremel Rotary Tool attachments to extend its usefulness and is now in my overall tool set. Another example is I can now more easily develop jigs that make assembling parts and model components more precise. And lastly, when I do restorations on older models, particularly those that are rare or one of a kind, the printing aids me in developing missing parts, making engines operational again. The older imported brass models had early plastics such as Delrin plastic parts in the drive mechanisms that shattered with age and while you never see the part, it is integral in doing restoration work. You simply cannot buy replacement parts any more.

Now I suppose every hobby has its critics or complaints most rather trivial at times like the impression some model railroaders have about 3D printing. Someone told me the other day that "those model makers in 3D just print sci-fi". I would like to change that notion by joining together some of the experts from the model maker community here with the master model railroaders that attend the conventions because I see a mutually beneficial enjoyment of these hobbies for both groups.

Thanks for responding and hearing me out.

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

I am excited to announce the next major SONC 2020 Convention and our Executive Committee!

As Chairman John Wubbel, it is my pleasure to share in this responsibility with Co-Chairs Matt haling from
Denver, Dick from Iowa and Nick modeling in Maryland where in Rockville the 50th O Scale Convention was convened
in 2018. I hope you will reserve time on your calendar to attend on July 16th - 18th 2020 as we will try to make
this one of the most well attended meets to bring the East Coast, Mid-Continent and West Coast modelers together
to share stories, models, modeling techniques, trading, clinics, and tours to mention a few activities planned.
Oh yes, not to forget our O Scale friends in Canada either.

Most exciting SONC 2020 will take place along side the NMRA's Gateway 2020 National Convention in St. Louis. Did
I mention we will be holding our convention in St. Louis?

Working in partnership with the NMRA our mutual goal is to invite more people to the hobby, expand or social
network to share our enjoyment we all have experienced with many others in our communities. Above and beyond
that, twin conventions can offer more choices to attendees in terms of shared venues and events.

I am also looking for 3D Print model makers in the Midwest to join us and our hobby as a great opportunity to
share skills.

The O Scale Kings has a unique opportunity to participate and expand its reach and growth. This opportunity to
grow supports more member services and support for future conventions. This is a unique 2 part occasion where
first, all O Scalers can partake in a very worthy project by signing up now to help put on the convention and
second to volunteer a little time during the convention that will earn some monetary value back to the O Scale
Kings organization. If you must call this work, you cannot say it is not fun collaborating with fellow model
railroaders, the very best experience I have ever had in more years than I can recall going to conventions.

Please contact me to find out how easy it is to join in the fun by cell phone/text message (570) 243-9053 or
email [email protected]

Skills Needed

Clinicians to host clinics such as for 3D Printing, CAD & Slicr Experience wanted
Webmaster
Graphic Artist
Bookkeeper/Accounting
Communications:
Marketing for Sponsors
Marketing target attendees
Publicity & venue events
Online Shopkeeper for the Store
Registrar
Management Positions:
Dealer Manager
Clinic Manager
Layout Tour Guide Manager
Diplomat Liaison with NMRA
Judge - Model Contest Regulations
Auctioneer
Finance/Fund Raising
Secretarial Light Record Keeping
Product Specialist T-Shirt Designs Logos, Convention Model Sales

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

The Electronic Craftsman

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

I attended the Indianapolis O Scale & S Scale Midwest Show on September 21st & 22nd. And as luck would have it, I met a really nice fellow with expertise in 3D Printing. His work in 3D Printing is in wax. My goal in attending the meet was to not only socialize with old friends and meet new friends, but to talk up our O Scale 2020 Convention in St. Louis next year. In looking for volunteers to help in putting on the convention, I spoke and got to know a lot of business people and vendors to find out what their needs or requirements would be for their attendance.

The gentlemen that does the 3D printing  was a vendor and his company is Oscale Turnouts, Inc. His products are highly detailed to scale. I hope he will volunteer to do a clinic to educate us on his processes and techniques. Here is my latest YouTube video to give you a quick look at the Indy meetup.

Happy Railroading!

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

I am sure you will find 3D printing grow in this group.  It sure has in the rocketry hobby.  

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

2 Rail O Scale Intimidation Factors 

As is often the case, it is human nature to put off or make excuses to avoid trying something new. In particular this is the case with some of the new technology in our hobby. But over time, I have always found a way around the reasons which might include: "It is to hard I can't do it!" "I don't have that skill." "It will take me to long to learn." The list goes on of course.

So do not let perception or other peoples perceptions dissuade you from trying. It is easy to get the wrong sentiments in your head by listening to others such as the hobby is to expensive, or I do not have the space, and once again the list goes on.

The perfect example is a hesitation to utilize the 3D printing technologies with the idea that the learning curve is way to steep. Even though there is little doubt 3D and Computer Aided Design (CAD) would be extremely useful as a means to an end toward building better models in O Scale. The trick of course is to take the baby or small steps in the learning process before hitting your stride to be successful with the new techniques. There is every opportunity today to reduce the time to learn and remediate the intimidation or procrastination component with the on-line help and YouTube tutorials. Avoid the immediate satisfaction desire as I am sure a model or stl file another modeler generated will be a "ready to run" model as we say in the hobby and can satisfy the immediacy need. So know that most things you want to model may not be ready open sourced which will result in some of your time to invest in creating an object.

What I found as a jump start was to take some simple objects to model in FreeCAD using primitive shapes that did not take me long to render and go to the PrusaSlicer for learning within that process. Years ago my Grandfather collected all the cereal box tin railroad logos or emblems (aka Heralds) that came in Post Sugar Crisp in the 1950's. Their were 28 different emblems slightly stamped and printed in color.

Set #1 NYC, Lackawanna, PRR, Nickel Plate, B&O, Reading, and Erie
Set #2 C&EI, CGW, Wabash, GTW, CNW, Rock Island, Burlington
Set #3 SP, Western Pacific, Santa Fe, Milwaukee, NP, UP, Great Northern
Set #4 ACL, Seaboard, IC, C&O, MKT, Missouri Pacific, Southern

So I decided to reproduce these and with the vivid colors of Prusa PLA the 3D visual was absolutely stunning. Immediate gratification for me of course and when I gave a few away at the convention there was definitely a WOW factor. This small stepping stone greatly increased my proficiency using the software allowing me to create more complex and detailed objects for my 2 Rail O Scale model railroad.

The moral of the story is don't be easily intimidated.

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

Electronic Model RR Kits Paradigm Shift

Developing the plans for the 2020 convention, the team has been considering a special convention car for purchase by attendees. It should be unique and perhaps have a theme or decal that commemorates the meet or railroad prototypes that served the city of St. Louis. Aside from a ready to run model, we are considering decals or printed car sides similar to those that came in the old All Nations kits years ago.

Now I would like to tell you about what I think is going to be a paradigm shift that is going to make it easier for people to get into O Scale 2 Rail Model Railroading at a very reasonable cost.

I cannot tell you how happy I am when getting a hold of an all brass model kit. Unfortunately, as time goes on these are going to be become rare because manufacturers are not making and selling these to model railroaders any more. As I see it, or the possibility, kits in the future will be "Kits On A Chip". In other words, modelers who are very independent and open source minded to begin with, will start to develop models, model
parts and components and save their work in GitHub version control as open source.

So take for instance, my YouTube channel features the Florida East Coast Ortner 100 Ton Open Aggregate Hopper car which I built from scratch in brass. I recently recreated the car sides in FreeCAD and did a lot of experimentation with the Prusa printer and achieved excellent results. Now it occurs to me that if 5 or or 6 modelers were to be developing the various parts of this model in collaboration, the stl, gcode files could be
put under version control in a very short cycle time. And, the cost of entry into the scale would be minimal for the amount of enjoyment of assembling a 3D printed kit. Now realize over the lifetime of Ortner production and sales to various railroads there are slight differences from the original to what Trinity makes today.

Thus, while it might be a pipe dream if I were to have a parts list for the model I want to build and select all the various components needed to print the parts for a completed specification, depending on my desired configuration, what I would get back is a nice package of files ready to put on a chip for printing. A parts picklist if you will that retrieves from various Github repositories to aggregate every file one would need to
print the parts as a kit for assembly.

Realize from one car to the next, many model parts are interchangeable for reuse, brake wheels, hand rails,
platforms, grill work, etc.

I will upload my FreeCAD project and files to the Prusa site. The nice part about it if put under version control, the next modeler to come along might further refine my work also making it available to the model railroader community.

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

In the last video we demonstrated developing car sides for the 100 ton hopper car for the FEC. Part of that
discussion was around ideas of how to letter the model. Often times when completing a brass model after the
paint dries, the last task is to decal or letter the model. A typical hang up though is not having the right
decal or in our case O Scale decal to finish the job. Here I present an alternative solution by using the 3D
printer to create a stencil of the Georgetown Railroad (GRR) to be used by simply spray painting the lettering
onto the car. Enjoy!

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

Thanks to all you model makers for following this thread on the forum and taking time to visit my channel. Our group of volunteers have been working to put on the National O Scale 2 Rail convention next year in St. Louis. Last week we released our convention web site so I invite you to have a look: http://sonc2020.com

I have also posted a YouTube video on my channel to announce details. Following the 1 minute announcement is a quick mini-clinic to make some model parts from a brass etched pattern and printing out those parts on the Prusa Printer. I would love to have Joe bring a truck load of  3D Prusa Printers to the show and do some clinics for our mid-western model railroader friends, attendees and model makers alike. Enjoy!

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

Full Circle

Most scratch builders in model railroading in days gone by did not have the luxury of making a prototype, a rendering or approximation in their hands prior to starting a project. Today, with free software tools like FreeCAD we can model a part in 3D space and actually print it out for examination before creating it in brass. Thus why I think of this as coming full circle.

This is not uncommon anymore because early in 3D printing manufacturers would be creating a component in resin or wax for the purpose of burning it out and casting the part in brass, as in Lost Wax Casting. What is now common due to the price of 3D printers coming more affordable for in-house work, is the fact that prototyping is not as cost prohibitive. So why not do it as part of our scratch building journey?

Now some may question why not just print the entire model in plastic, paint, decal it and run? Nothing wrong with doing that except for me personally nothing is better than having a completed brass model in my hand. There is something about brass that for me is missing in plastic. I think it has to do with multiple things such as the weight, the feel, its operation and durability to name a few features for which a plastic version does not match. But, that is my opinion so many will not agree or their interest may be more with getting to a ready to roll model on the layout that looks good.

Creating an approximation or prototype before hand still requires the same amount of research to build a piece. Doing so I think can make us better modelers even if the media is not brass. Modeling in 3 dimensional space can also make it easier to model unique features. A good example might be to model an ALCO S1, S2 up to an S4 as the manufacturer did their various version with improvements over time to meet the demands of their customers. Having the basic shell designed it is not so difficult to do customization that meets up with your particular road for an authentic model.

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

Recently I attended a train show to promote 2 Rail O Scale model railroading and talk up next years National O Scale Convention. The European Train Enthusiasts (ETE) Group or Keystone Chapter had a modular layout setup at the show. I took some video to share it with some of my European friends in the hobby. It was so well done with both railroad, traction and commuter service in HO scale. I hope you enjoy the tour.

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

Oh wow, these look very nice. I would have thought some of those shots and close-ups are real, not models. 

RE: Railroad Model Makers Everywhere

Yes, I am sure that some of what people could see in that last video above was some modeling and 3D printing for such realism.

In some of my YouTube videos people may have noticed the background Railroad Signs, Harolds & Logos. Years ago these came out in Post Cereal boxes for kids to collect. In my journey to learn about 3D Printing I decided to try my hand at replicating some of these because I also like to decorate my work space, layout and shop with these unique icons if you will. Consequently, I decided to share this work by photographing them and putting them in a photo album on my web site. I hope people find them enjoyable to look at and share with your friends. Click on the Gallery to view the collection. I have been very happy with the outcome, the detail and depth for perspective as well as how quickly I learned from it. Probably a quick study because it was so much fun to model. Everything in the albums have been printed on a Prusa Printer.

http://johnwubbel.com/crh/