A.G.W.I. Oil Refinery Wagons: Now Available to Buy!

I've now had the chance to paint up one of the prototype prints of the A.G.W.I. Oil Refinery flat wagons (see here and here for previous posts) along with painting the Peco oil drums to hide the rather garish plastic colours.

I'm really happy with how these have turned out. Having worked from just four photographs I think the end result looks pretty much spot on. If you want some of your own they are now on sale in sets of four (they seem to have always been used in sets of four and this also made most sense given Shapeways pricing formula) from Penistone Railway Works.

It's All Iain's Fault!

Yes this post is definitely all Iain's fault, but I don't mean that in a bad way.

As you all know I've recently been 3D printing lots of small narrow gauge wagons. In fact I'm now up to five different wagons: an 8ft freelance flat wagon, 3 bar slab wagon, an Aberllefenni Box Wagon, a 4 bar slab wagon, and most recently a Rhosydd rubbish wagon. These models have all been fun to design, print and assemble and Iain has kindly provided lots of useful prototype information for a number of them. I also have a couple of other wagons under development that are proving a little tricky to get right (mostly due to weird issues with the 3D printing process) but I thought I was slowly running out of scale drawings that would cause a distraction from building Canopus (I still haven't bitten the bullet and permanently attached the coupling rods). It was at this point Iain pointed me in the direction of Narrow Gauge and Industrial Railway Modelling Review (which I mentioned in the previous post). More importantly he pointed out that there were some very interesting scale drawings in the free sample magazine available from the website. A quick glance and not only had I subscribed to the magazine but I'd started work on yet another wagon model. So you see this model is definitely Iain's fault; thanks Iain!

Pages 33 to 41 of the magazine cover a multitude of wagons that were all used at Trevor Quarry on the Lleyn Peninsula in North Wales. Interestingly this was a granite quarry rather than the more common slate quarries found in North Wales. The specific wagon that caught me eye in the magazine was the rather odd, 3 sided, breaker wagon; the magazine has a photo and scale drawings on pages 35 to 37. While a 3 sided wagon might not have wide spread use it intrigued me enough that I set about designing a 3D print. I'll start by showing you the finished model and then explain how I got there.

The photo is of course a little misleading as this model is actually just 3.2cm long by 1.85cm wide and 1.35cm tall; in other words not very big at all. The relatively small size of the model also causes a few issues when designing it as some parts were too thin to be printed and some parts I decided might cause a problem when printed. This means that the model is actually a mix of 3D printed resin, brass sheet, and some standard copier paper.

The two problem areas that I identified when designing the model were the metal supports at the open side of the wagon, and the protective strip along the top edge of the side wall. These were problematic for different reasons and due to their shape required different solutions.

The two upright supports were a problem as I can't print parts that thin. The minimum wall thickness is 0.3mm but if I'd printed the parts I would have had to widen the wagon to make them fit and to keep the correct proportions. And of course the parts would have been very fragile and liable to break if knocked about. Fortunately the part isn't a particularly complex shape and so it was easy to cut and fold two small pieces of 0.12mm brass sheet to the required shape which could then be glued to the resin print.

The protective strip along the top of the side wall was a problem for a different reason. While I could have easily included this in the model, I've found that overhanging horizontal features, no matter how small, tend to cause other details to be obscured. This is due to the support material reacting with the printed resin. In this case it could easily have led to the side planks ending up with strange markings and would probably have completely obscured the gaps between the planks. My original intention had been to use brass sheet to add this part as well. Unfortunately, even with the hold-and-fold, I found it impossible to make the U shaped part. In the end I just made the part from 100gms copier paper which was then glued in place.

The final touch, before painting, was to add some rivet detail to the new parts which are simply Archer rivet transfers from sheet AR88025.

Painting was my now standard approach for aged wagons. The whole wagon is given a matt black undercoat. The wooden parts are then roughly painted with khaki (Model Color #988) and then a black wash. Drybrushing of khaki, brown sand (Model Color #876) and dark sand (Model Color #847) then follows, before another thin black wash and final drybrushing with dark sand. The metal parts were then painted black (to cover over paint from the wooden parts) and then dry brushed with London grey (Model Color #836) and dark rust (RailMatch #2405). A few wafts of matt varnish then tone down and seal the paints.

As with the other wagons I've printed recently I'll happily sell you one via Penistone Railway Works. I'm not sure there will be much interest given the rather odd nature of the wagon, but it's available if you want one, along with full instructions for adding the extra details.

Having built the breaker wagon I'm tempted to have a go at the mill wagon on page 38 of the sample issue as it appears to be pretty much the same wagon with some additional parts. Watch this apace!

The Long Road To The Rhosydd Rubbish Tip

This is the fourth post on building a Rhosydd quarry rubbish wagon since I started back in June, but as you can see I've now completed the model. If you remember the first step was to design the 3D printed underframe and figure out how to build the top half from sheet brass. The second step was adding all those rivets before a quick third post with the metal top posed on a 3 bar slab wagon to give a rough idea of the final model. The final piece of the puzzle was actually printing the underframe.

This is the first model I've designed in which I've combined a 3D printed part with parts from another material and I'm really happy with how it's turned out. I could have tried to 3D print the whole model but the upper body would have been way too chunky; I used 0.12mm brass but the thinnest I could have printed the parts would have been 0.3mm and I'd probably have had to have the side walls at 0.6mm as they would have been unsupported during printing.

The use of two materials did leave me wondering if it was worth making the model available to others or not though; painting a 3D printed model is much easier than fabricating half the model from a flat sheet of brass. In the end I've decided that the top is easy enough to make (see my nice detailed instructions) that most people should be able to make up the part without any issues. I've made up quite a few of them now to check the instructions and to find the best order of the folds etc. that I'm fairly certain that anyone with a sharp pair of scissors a modelling knife and something to help make the folds could make the part almost without thinking. So if you fancy a go (just to prove me wrong) then I'll happily sell you an underframe or three.

Three Bars or Four?

You may remember that back in June I designed and 3D printed some small 3 bar slab wagons. These were reasonably well received albeit with some helpful suggestions. When I ordered the Aberllefenni box wagons I also updated the 3 bar slab wagon and printed another set as well as a 4 bar variant. I got side tracked by building Canopus though and so have only just got around to assembling and painting these.

It's difficult to tell from a photo but I do think the 3 bar version looks much better now that I've extended the bars slightly; it really is a very small change but it gives a much better balanced model. The 4 bar variant is of a similar size although it includes some extra details taken from a number of prototype photos etc, again these are kind of difficult to see in the photo. As usual, both are now available via Penistone Railway Works (3 bar, 4 bar) should you fancy a few.

Aberllefenni Box Wagon

Getting the boiler to fit on to Canopus correctly is taking a little longer than expected, and as I received another batch of test 3D prints at the end of last week I thought I'd switch focus and show you my latest piece of 3D printed rolling stock.

While flat wagons and three bar slab wagons are great, most things I'm going to want to portray on a layout set in Yorkshire are (I think) more likely to need to be carried in a wagon with sides, so here we have a simple box shaped wagon. Whilst it may look at home on my layout (whenever I actually get around to building it) the wagon is actually based on wagons that were in common use in the Aberllefenni Slate Quarry in Wales. It is a fairly accurate model (it's ever so slightly too wide so as to accommodate the wheels) as it's based on a scale drawing in the Slate Quarry Album by Gordon and Ann Hatherill.

I was a bit worried that the axle boxes would be too fine to print properly but they have come out really well and the wheels turn really well in them so even unweighted they seem to run along the rails nicely. I definitely think I'll be printing a bunch more of these and if you happen to want any then, as with most of my 3D printed models, head over to Penistone Railway Works where I'll happily sell you some!

A Well Used Wagon

You may remember that my first attempt at designing and 3D printing an OO9 gauge wagon back in May was for a freelance 8ft flat wagon which I painted as if it was fresh from the workshop. While the wagon runs well a number of you suggested that in reality they wouldn't look new for very long. My solution to this was to print multiple wagons so I could have sets representing them at different ages and amounts of abuse. I even got as far as experimenting with how I would paint older looking wood but I never got around to actually painting another set of models.

Well I still haven't painted a set, but I have painted one which you can see here alongside one of the original freshly built versions. My approach followed the second of the two approaches I experimented with for the wooden sections. The metalwork was painted black then dry brushed with a little Model Color London Grey (#70.836) and Rail Match Dark Rust. The final touch was a little bit of Flory Models rust weathering wash before a waft of matt varnish was applied to seal everything in place. I'll add the couplings at some point but even without them I'm really happy with how this all turned out. It definitely looks older and more well used without looking badly abused.

If you fancy painting one of these yourself then head on over to Penistone Railway Works and I'll happily sell you some.

Atmospheric Spare Parts

While so far I've only painted one of the 3 bar slab wagons I recently designed, I actually had quite a few more printed; mostly because printing more than once at once is cheaper due to their small size. Given that I had quite a few I thought it would be useful to see what other people thought of the model, and not just through photos, so I posted a couple out to two fellow bloggers. One of those was Iain who has responded with a blog post which is well worth reading, especially for the wonderfully atmospheric shots of the painted model.

All the feedback I've received so far has been positive although it has led to a few changes to the model. Firstly there was a suggestion that the main cross bars weren't quite wide enough as they don't hang out over the wheels as far as they do on the prototype. I think part of the problem here is that the 9mm track is wider than it should be if the wagon is modelled at 4mm to the foot, so even though the wagon might be the right width it won't "look" right. So I've lengthened the bars by a few millimetres to improve the look slightly. The second piece of the feedback was one I should have realised myself; supply spare parts!

As you can see in this photo the sprue containing the four axle retaining clips is tiny. Each of the four clips has to be cut from the sprue and then clipped to the axle. No matter how careful you are there is a good chance that at least one of them will go pinging off across the room never to be seen again. Supplying a spare on the sprue adds almost nothing to the printing cost so the new sprue will contain five clips.

Now I know that not everyone thinks 3D printing is good enough to produce detailed models, and that the only way to get very good results is to hand craft a master which can then be used for casting. While I agree that 3D printing isn't suitable for every model (see below) I think it works well for this one, and for most models that are predominately wooden where graining in the print isn't such an issue. One of the real benefits of this approach is that when changes are necessary they can be made without any additional expense other than my time as there is no master to alter or re-make and no molds that need to be reproduced. From a distance I think many people would be hard pressed to tell you how most models were produced anyway!

Having now successfully proved that this approach to modelling inside framed wagons works well I've started on designing a few more models. In fact I'm currently working on three new wagons. Two of these will be produced in a similar fashion to the slab wagon (all 3D printed with one main piece and axle retaining clips), while the third will require something slightly different as the upper body contains elements that are two fine for 3D printing. My current plan is to 3D print the main frame and axle clips and then to fabricate the upper section from brass sheet which will be an interesting exercise given that the only experience I have of working with it is the few etched kits I've built recently. I'm hoping I can design something that can be just cut out and folded up without requiring etching but we shall see how that goes in a future post.

I am NOT Modelling the Welsh Slate Industry!

I am NOT modelling the Welsh slate industry.
I am NOT modelling the Welsh slate industry.
I am NOT modelling the Welsh slate industry.

Right, now that is out of the way I can show you my latest 3D printed item of rolling stock.... a 3 bar slab wagon as often found in Welsh slate quarries.

I don't have a specific use or back story in mind for this model as I can't think up a good reason why you might find one in a small factory in Yorkshire. My reason for designing and printing this model was so I could have something small, and hence cheap to print, which would allow me to experiment with inside frames.

So far all the wagons I've printed have had the frames and axle boxes on the outside of the wheels. This makes them easy to assemble as the wheels just slot into dimples on the back of the axle boxes. With frames inside the wheels I needed a different approach. I could have just printed the model in one piece but that would have meant removing a wheel from the axle so that I could slide the axle through the model. While this is possible it would mean I would have to get the back-to-back gauge correct when I put the wheel back. Instead I opted to print the model as multiple parts.

Essentially I have the frame separate from the holes the axle will pass through (four of these are printed on a single sprue) which means I can glue the parts together to trap the axles in place. A small amount of the outside of the hole is present on the frame allowing for easy and accurate positioning of the parts. Also, because over half the hole is on the small part they clip over the axle which means they stay nicely in place while the glue dries.

The accuracy of the 3D printing process means that the parts are a perfect fit, and amazingly everything runs nice and freely and having filed down the pointy ends of the axles I think it looks quite good, although I'm not entirely convinced by the paint job. The only problem with the model is that there is no where to add extra weight so it is too light to use. The solution to this would of course be to add weight by adding a nice slab of slate, but unfortunately that isn't something I can easily source locally, well not without buying a huge bag from the garden centre.

As usual with my 3D printed items, if you happen to want a 3 bar slab wagon then they are available via Penistone Railway Works.

8ft Freelance Flat Wagon

So having designed and had printed some simple flat wagons for use on the new layout the next step was to paint them. So far I've just done one of the three I had printed due to a mishap with the primer which has required the other two to be stripped back. Anyway here is how the first one turned out.

The light in the second picture makes it look a lot more yellow than it really is, the first photo is a more accurate depiction of the colouring. When painting I'm usually happiest with big blocks of a single colour but I new I couldn't get away with that for the wood this time. I'll blog about how I actually produced the effect separately but I have to say I'm quite happy with how it has turned out. As I said in the previous post, if you happen to want one I'll happily sell you as many as you want!

Something to Pull

Having taken delivery of his shiny new locomotive the factory owner had really enjoyed running it backwards and forwards along the short line he had had laid within the confines of the factory. While seriously fun to drive, he was aware that he had, at least partially, bought the locomotive to be useful and to help move things around the factory. Unfortunately there wasn't much room in the cab to carry things so he needed some wagons. He didn't need anything fancy, at least to start with, just a few flat wagons that boxes and sacks could be stacked on so he made a visit to the factories workshops.

The friendly engineer who ran the workshops was fairly certain he could build a wagon or two for the bosses new toy, but he wasn't sure about the wheels so he ordered some from a Scottish company he'd done business with in the past. Once the wheels, all 20 pairs on axles, had arrived the engineer set about measuring things. First he measured the wheels, then he measured the locomotive and the track, then he set about drawing a design for a wagon; something the lads who worked for him could bodge together from the timber laying around and a few metal parts. A few days of sawing, bolting, and general work later and the engineer had three completed wagons in front of him that just needed a lick of paint before the wheels could be slotted into place.

Okay so now that the backstory behind 77 Box Lane has been fleshed out a little further we can return to reality. Now I'm sure I could have bought kits to make appropriate wagons but I decided to have a go at doing some 3D printing. As some of you will know I've had plenty of success with 3D printing OO gauge models, although last time I tried to print something to run on 9mm gauge track, an N scale wagon, I didn't have quite so much luck. Having recently used 3D printing to fix my fridge, I thought I'd have another crack at creating a model to run on 9mm track, but with the added advantage of modelling at 4mm scale where the supporting structures would be twice as thick as when I tried the same in N gauge.

On previous occasions I've created models based on what I think looks right rather than how I think it would have actually gone together. This works okay but doesn't give you any real insights into how you might actually have built the original item, or how you might build a similar model from modelling materials. This time I took a slightly different approach. I created the separate parts (planks, bolts, brackets, etc.) and then duplicated them as needed to essentially build a virtual kit of parts which I then assembled into the final 3D model. I'm not sure if this is a better approach or not, but it seems to have worked in this instance.

Yesterday's rather abstract post showed the three wagons (I grouped three into a single model for printing purposes as it was more economical than printing separate wagons) being cleaned. The models are printed in what is known as Frosted Ultra Detail material which is always covered in the remains of the oily support material when it arrives and this has to be removed before you can paint the models. I've found that soaking them in warm lightly diluted washing up liquid works well. I've checked and the 5.1mm wheels I ordered fit perfectly, but I'll hold of showing you them fitted until I've painted one.

I am, however, happy enough with how they have turned out to make them available via Penistone Railway Works, so if you fancy a simple, reasonably priced, wagon or three you know where to go!

(At Least) One Satisfied Customer

At 7:38pm on the 5th of August someone bought one of my models that I have on sale on Shapeways under the Penistone Railway Works banner. Specifically they bought an OO gauge model of the LNWR, Diagram 103, 1 plank open goods wagon.

The downside of selling models via Shapeways is that I have no contact with the buyers; I don't even know who they are. On one hand this is great as Shapeways deals with all the billing and shipping etc., but it does mean that unless a buyer specifically contacts me I have no way of finding out what they think of the models they have bought.

In this case, however, the someone turned out to be a user called pinddle who left me a comment to say that it was an "excellent model". More interestingly he also included the following photo of his completed model which I'm showing here alongside an old photo I used during development of the 3D model.

I deliberately haven't included a photo of the model I painted as it is no where near as good as this one, and I think you'll all agree that he has done a very good job of replicating the original.

So I can now state that Penistone Railway Works has (at least) one satisfied customer!

Modelling With Lasers

One of the reasons I like using 3D printing to help produce models and parts for railway modelling is that I can spend hours tweaking a model on the computer, knowing that I can easily revert back to a previous version. Once I'm happy I can then print as many copies of the model as I want, safe in the knowledge that each will be identical; not something I could guarantee if I was building the model from a kit as my modelling skills aren't that accurate. For the same reasons I've been thinking about using laser cutting for a number of projects. In a future blog post you'll see what I was actually wanting to create, but here I want to show you what I did with the off-cut of acrylic.

When I opened Penistone Railway Works I designed the logo to follow in the age old railway tradition of makers plates. These were usually made from brass and bolted to the cab side of each locomotive to record when and where it was made (very useful for knowing who to contact for spare parts) and the tradition lives on with many modellers producing etched brass versions for their models. So turning the logo for Penistone Railway Works into a physical item seemed like a good use of the spare corner of acrylic. It's difficult to judge the size from the photo but it measures 5.4cm across and I had acrylic left over as the online service I used, RazorLAB, offer each of their materials in one of three sizes; 7, 15 or 31 inches square. I was using the smallest size but I didn't need the entire sheet, hence the makers plate.

I had used InkScape to draw the original logo as an SVG file so that I could easily scale it to produce different sized versions (SVG does stand for Scalable Vector Graphics after all), and RazorLAB uses SVG files to guide the laser cutter so it was the work of only a few minutes to tweak the logo for cutting. Just as with Shapeways, for 3D printing, the process is very simple; upload the file, select the material, pay, and then wait for the postman. I choose to use the 3mm black acrylic as it fit perfectly with my main usage (which will get blogged about at some point), but they will also cut corrugated card, felt, mountboard, plywood, and MDF with many of the materials available in different colours and thicknesses which would open up a range of interesting possibilities.

A Penn'orth of Coal

Railway companies didn't really like moving empty wagons around, as an empty wagon didn't make them any money; the locomotive would be burning coal, the driver and fireman would need to be paid, but no one was paying the company to transport their goods. As such it would be rare to see an entire train of empty wagons, yet most models wagons are sold empty, including those I sell through Penistone Railway Works. Fortunately filling up a wagon is easy.

Firstly, I'm assuming that you will want to be able to easily remove the load, and that for weight and cost reasons you won’t actually want to completely fill the wagon. The solution is to use cardboard to build a base to which we stick just the top of the mound that would fill the wagon.

Building wagon loads in this way is a messy process that involves cling film and watered down PVA glue, but the result is quite convincing. For this example I used coal lumps from Woodland Scenics. It's fairly straightforward to measure a wagon and cut the cardboard to size, but if you are wanting to add a load to a Penistone Railway Works wagon then I've provided free downloadable templates and instructions; for example here is how to build a load for an 8 plank wagon.

The reason I referred to a penn'orth of coal in the title of this post, is that I buried a penny in the middle of the mound. Recently minted pennies have a steel core and hence stick to magnets. This means that I can use a suitably strong magnet to help lift the load out of the wagon and the penny also adds a little bit of bulk to the centre of the mound to ensure that it isn't all at the same level.

Printing Money

Penistone Railway Works has officially been open for less than a month and today I made my first sale! At 10:02 this morning someone bought a spark arrestor for the L&YR "Pug". If you go back through Shapeways live feed you might still be able to see the sale for yourself -- if not you'll have to trust that I didn't doctor the screenshot.

In a way I'm really happy that the first item I sold was a spark arrestor as this is the object that initially got me interested in 3D printing, and which led to me setting up Penistone Railway Works.

Now I know one sale doesn't make a successful shop but it's a start.

Fencing From Just €0.15 A Metre!

As I mentioned in a previous post, when I place an order with Shapeways for 3D printed items, the order usually contains a number of items. The last order, as well as containing the test print of the 7 plank wagon, contained a new item to add to the range available through Penistone Railway Works: concrete fence posts.

So far the items I've designed for Penistone Railway Works have all been based off photos or measurements made by other people. Whilst this makes life easy, I decided that I wanted to try modelling something from scratch. When I walk to the train station one thing I pass a lot of are concrete fence posts. There are actually quite a few different designs that vary in height and shape. I might, in the future, model some of the other forms, but for now I'm focusing on the 5 foot tall posts. I chose these for two reasons; firstly they aren't just square posts, and secondly they contain a braced variant giving me something extra to model.

So on a cold day at the end of November last year (when on the way to the shops to buy lunch) I took a tape measure, a camera, a notepad, and a pencil and set out to take detailed measurements of the two fence posts. Whilst I did get a few funny looks from people walking past, I came home with copious drawings (not very good ones) and lots of helpful measurements.

After refreshing my memory of trigonometry I proceeded to turn the measurements into a 3D model. Fortunately for a shape as relatively simple as a fence post this isn't actually very difficult. The most difficult decisions relate to balancing a desire to produce an accurate model with producing a model that can be both printed and is useful. Hopefully I've managed to achieve that balance with this model.

Because printing a single fence post seems rather daft, I've actually strung 21 normal fence posts together on a simple sprue. The sprue isn't, however, simply waste plastic as I've added holes to it that act as a guide for drilling 1mm holes for the fence posts at the suggested distance apart (5cm on the model which matches the average real life spacing between posts). Given the recommended distance between posts, this means a single sprue will allow you to build a fence a metre long on your model; which at a scale of 1/76 results in being able to model 76 metres of fence. At the current price for printing this equates to approximately €0.15 to model a metre of real fencing.

The second sprue contains four of the braced posts, and again contains guide holes, this time for drilling the extra hole needed for the braced leg. These posts are needed where a fence ends or where it turns a sharp corner; a sharp corner usually consists of two fences ending at the some place.

Having now handled the test print, and checked that I can actually thread wire (I'm recommending 0.125mm enammeld copper wire from Maplin) through the holes, I'm really happy with how they've turned out. At some point I'll actually fit them to a test track so I can take a photo of them "in use". Given that I'm happy with how they've turned out they are now available from Penistone Railway Works, so if you should be in need of 4mm to the foot scale concrete fence posts you know where to go!

Just Because I Could

About a month ago I blogged about the Train Protection Warning System (TPWS) grids I'd had 3D printed in order to hide the light sensors I use as part of my scale speed trap. While these are tiny items (their bounding box is just 9mm x 13.12mm x 1mm), I decided, just because I could, to design a set of the smaller TPWS grids. These smaller grids are fitted to sidings, where the low speeds involved aren't conducive to the use of the full size grids (you get interference).

These mini buffer stop grids are really really small; their bounding box is just 9mm x 8.05mm x 1mm! Fortunately the tiny size isn't an issue for the 3D printing process involved and my test print was delivered today.

Those of you who have browsed around Penistone Railway Works, may well have been able to predict this blog post, as I'd listed these grids as "Coming Soon". Now that I've actually handled the printed model, if you are in need of some small TPWS grids, I'll happily sell you a set of four for a very reasonable price.

Penistone Railway Works: Open For Business

As you may remember I've recently become a convert to the wonders of 3D printing. First I printed a spark arrestor for an L&YR "Pug", and more recently I printed up a set of four Train Protection Warning System grids to hide the sensors for my scale speed trap. What I learnt from this was that, firstly, I'm better at building 3D models than I thought I was, and more importantly, that the results are actually usable. This has really got my creative juices flowing and I now have a bunch more ideas that I'm working on that will hopefully turn into more printed objects.

It seems a shame though to keep these models to myself -- I don't know if anyone else will find them useful but I won't know unless I make them available. So as of today Penistone Railway Works is officially open for business! Essentially this is just a shop front as Shapeways handles all the transactions, however, it provides a nice focus point and will allow me to branch out in the future to use other printers or manufacturing processes. Feel free to have a browse, and let me know if you spot any problems that need ironing out.