N Scale Little Joe - In Plastic

There are existing recordings of Little Joes and Boxcabs. With and without diesels. There is even Steeplecab sound.

 

Thinking is good! It helps keep you warm in the midst of these cooler days.

 

That's pretty much the basics. Maybe a hydroelectric dam to generate the power

 

Actually that would be a real hoot if someone did it. I'd bet John Allen would be proud of the creative humor.

 

Since this thread has percolated up I can provide a quick status - since adding the trucks to the print file I've had three "rejects" from Shapeways where they had problems with the 3D file. Not too surprising since the trucks have so many interconnected parts and Shapeways is funny on how they should fit together. I think I've got all that worked out but the last reject was for the handrails on the porch. "Too thin" to print - so I beefed them up to printing specs and they look pretty horrible on the render - about 5 scale inches thick. Maybe they won't look so bad when they're in my hands - will let you know provided I don't have anymore rejects. All the railings and grabs should be done with wire for strength and durability anyway so it may be a non-issue.

It's time to get this thing rolling!

Cheers -Mike

 

Mike,
I certainly appreciate all the effort you have gone thru to make this a reality.
One thought: suince this is truely a craftsman kit, why render the railings on the porches to begin with?

Photo-etched brass stanctions and custom bent brass wire will be my handrails all around this motor. If anything, render dimples for placement of stanctions. Horribly out of scale handrails on a model of this fidelity (IMHO) don't belong. I plan to completely superdetail this motor when it's available (and the time to do the work, that is).

*plink, plink*

 

Fair enough question... the railings are actually separate pieces that you can add or leave off. I figured there may be a modelling contingent out there slightly more impatient (like me), they could pop the railings on for quick satisfaction while the fine-detail pieces are being built. The porch will be printed with dimples where the stanchions will mount. It sounds like you've got some excellent plans ahead, I hope you do a build thread so we can see it take shape!!

-Mike

 

I just wish I had the time to build it! In between schoola nd work, family and everything else, there' just little time left... :/
Do you have a WAG for the kit price? Also, have you sorted out a mechanism to work for it? I recall seeing an SD35, but other options were suggested. I know the GG-1 and the Japanese EF-57 or something is wrong, but parts of it might be useful. Have we decided if SD90MAC trucks will work?

 

Well I'm starting to get frustrated with Shapeways. They keep rejecting the model now, each time saying "fix this" - "fix that" and when I fix it, the next upload gets rejected with a whole new set of things to fix. Now they're asking me to fix things which printed fine before. I asked them to override since we've printed the rejected parts and they won't do it. So - what this means is a lot more time will be needed to "fix" what they want but doing it in such a way that it won't compromise the fidelity of the model.

Main shell and trucks are right at 46 bucks. I may be able to shave a dollar off if I omit the ladders and porch rails. The trucks were spaced to fit the SD35 mech, but personally I'm going to go with a home-brew franken-mech thing. Until I get an actual printed model of the trucks in my hands though this development will be delayed as well. My intent is to start with the SD90MAC truck, dissect it, rebuild it in 3D with 4 axles and re-assemble with Kato replacement gears and wheels, then I'll figure out a chasis and motor cradle system to drive the whole thing.

I've had my first print of this shell since October - it's durable enough to easily take normal handling and a derail at low speed without incident. I imagine if it derailed at full throttle and the window pillars rammed into something they may snap, the shell would be fine. And a drop to the floor would likely result in fracture of the shell.

So there's today's status. Hopefully I can get these issues with Shapeways resolved sooner than later - I'm getting impatient!

Cheers,
-Mike

 

Are these "issues" real? Or is someone being nitpicky, trying to squeeze down reject numbers to improve their bottom line?

 

I think the first batch of rejects were legitimate since I had added the truck assemblies, which are very complicated. But once all of those issues were worked out, the additional rejects feel more like they were done by someone "going by the book" and not really analyzing what they're looking at. Like someone in training may do. There are requirements for minimum thickness of walls (supported and unsupported), minimum thickness of wires (again supported and unsupported) but some of the areas flagged aren't wires or walls, but relief details. And as I mentioned earlier, they've printed these particular parts twice before. They have software that runs a check, then the printer (human) scans those results and either overrides the flags or rejects the model. I'm uploading a revised file now and we'll see where this goes...

-Mike

 

UPDATE:

Finally got my print this week. I gave up on including the rails and ladders. After 20 or so rounds of rejects and retries, trying to configure them in a manner they would print I just gave up for the sake of moving forward. We're going to make our own out of brass wire anyway, right? Well I'm very happy with how this shell came out:









The trucks are kind of fuzzy so I'll need to do some cleanup. This material is really hard to photograph:



Up next, final cleaning of the shell and parts, slap on some paint and see what I've got. The pantographs dropped right in their mounts, I was worried about having bad measurements even though I measured about ten times - very happy about that. I should have this model available in the next couple of days on Shapeways for anyone else that wants to get started on their fleet!

Cheers - Mike