INTERURBAN RAILWAYS: 3D

Showing posts with label 3D. Show all posts

2016/04/10

Yakima Valley Transportation Niles Combine #100

Yakima Valley Transportation Niles Combine #100, HO scale

On suggestion from an interested modeler, I started something small, one of the smallest Interurban Combines, the Yakima Valley Transportation #100, build by Niles.

A really tiny car, but very well proportioned. NWSL Stanton drives will be the motive power.

2016/01/07

Indianapolis Traction Terminal taking shape

Indianapolis Traction Terminal - West Market Street

Indianapolis Traction Terminal - West Market / Illinois Street

Indianapolis Traction Terminal - Illionois Street

Indianapolis Traction Terminal - Main Entrance - Illinois Street

2015/11/25

Relaunching an old project - the Indianapolis Traction Terminal

Indianapolis Traction Terminal, Main Entrance

Indianapolis Traction Terminal, Main Entrance in Illinois Street

Indianapolis Traction Terminal, Illinois Street

Indianapolis Traction Terminal, Illinois and Market Street

Indianapolis Traction Terminal, Illinois and Market Street, with train shed

2014/05/14

Indianapolis Traction Terminal - towards printable 3D drawings

Postponed but not forgotten, the pharaonic project is on track again: this stone structures of the Indianapolis Traction Terminal are all redrawn for 3D printing in H0 scale. The steel structure of the train sheet could be realized in etched brass or laser cut materials.

But as in antiquity, it will take time...

2013/06/05

3D modeling for newsgraphics

You may find that that this blog is a little asleep. But that is only temporary. I am actually absorbed by some seasonal Live Steam acitivites, and with drawings for a video animation for the French railways. This animations will show how the "Modalohr" intermodal railcar works, with his pivoting berths loading semi trailers within the restricted European clearances. This 3D models are destinated to be animated, and are obviously not printable ..

2013/04/18

3D drawing and printing [part 2]: side panel with elliptic window sash

A classic North American Interurban car has some characteristic features : elliptic window sashes, clerestory roofs, rounded ends and big pilots.

This features are not always easy to modelise. The next chapter in my 3D tutorial is about drawing a wooden side panel with an elliptic window sash.

The first step is done in Illustrator. If you are famliar with drawing in your 3D software, you can do it directly.

But I prefer make the basic objects in Illustrator:
1/ The side panel with the window cutout (yellow).
2/ The window moulding (red) and
3/ The elliptic sash window panel (blue).

I draw this 3 elements for the normal paired window and for the small simple window. The paired window panel ist 64" wide.

Saved in file format Illustrator 8, you can open this document in Cinema4D. The best way is to make each element step by step.

The side panel is made first. The flat 2D drawing is "extruded" 4.5" deep and becomes 3D. The lower part of side panel was then adjusted to the full height.

Second object to be extruded is the window moulding, with an offset of prototypical 1 inch. And the the the elliptic window is added, extruded 3.5" deep, or about 1 mm in H0 scale. This is the minimum thickness recommended for most usual materials.

Once this elements assembled and aligned, you have already a basic side panel.

The remaining parts are based on simple cubes and are made native in Cinema4D: the Letterboard, and the lower paired window. Now the basic side panel is finished.

What is still missing are the grooves.

The grooves are "cut" in by a boolean operation. They are drawn first as "positive" long strips (red). Their prototypical width is exagerated to 0.8" and they are spaced 2".

and then multiplied by clooning and carefully placed. The boolean operation engraves the grooves "negative" in the side panel.

2013/04/02

3D drawing and printing [part 1]

Cinema4D interface

In anticipation of my visit of the East Penn Traction Meet early May 2013, and of the "clinic" I will hold there, I will try to explain some details of 3D drawing and modeling. I will explain my personal way. There are many ways to execute a printable 3D drawing.

First of all, you have to chose the software. Maybe, in many cases, your employer makes this choice for you. If you have to use a 3D drawing software at work, using it also for your hobby would be always be a good choice. For my profesionnal work, I have had to learn Cinema4D. This was very painful, but for me it was the question about to stay in my job or to leave it. Many modelers also work on 3ds Max or a CAD software. But even a "low end" 3D software as SketchUp can be used.

Beside Cinema4D for the 3D drawings, I use Adobe Illustrator for for "flat" (2D) drawings. Each of my 3D models are based on a detailed 2D drawing of all main elevations. The making of the first "flat" drawing constitutes often a considerable amount of time, specially when blueprints are not complete or even not available.

Illustrator drawing scale 1:72

But this pays later. Illustrator interfaces easily with Cinema4D, when exporting in AI8 format. So you can prepare complex vector pathes in Illustrator before using them as parts of 3D elements.

But before drawing, you must fix an essential point: in what scale you want to draw? After trials in H0 scale (1:87) and 1:100, I switched to a basic scale of 1:72 for my flat drawings.

This scale makes it easy to handle imperial measures as 1 pixel represents 1 inch. To simplify a little, all measures are calculated in decimal inch, rounded to half an inch, somtimes a quarter of an inch.

Setting export scale to 87

And when exported to Cinema4D, this scale of 1:72 is easy to transform to full scale. Yes, my 3D drawings have no scale.

They are drawn in 1:1. Only the exported print files are downscaled to 87 and converted to millimeters.

2012/12/21

Season Greetings

Stay on the tracks and keep on rolling

2012/10/11

Baldwin truck frames for the H0 wooden combine

Terre Haute, Indianapolis & Eastern Traction combine, front end with Baldwin truck

The Terre Haute wooden combines were equipped with Baldwin MCB trucks. The wheelbase was to be about 6'6" or 6'10", the sources are contradictory. I choose 6'10", or in fact 7", making the truckframes matching on a NWSL Stanton drive. Anyway, the difference would be invisible in scale H0.

2012/08/30

Traction Terminal Waiting Room, new renderings

2012/08/03

Doors for the THI&E Wooden Combine

Front view of Interurban wooden combine

After a short summer break, it is time to resume work on the big 61 foot wooden combine. I gave him rear passenger folding doors and baggage sliding doors in the front. Buffers were added also.

To pain the modeler, the Cincinnati Car master mechanics has given the front and rear end a different curvature radius. So you need to model all panels and complex end roofs twice and you can not "copy and paste".

The ovale window in the passenger departement was also punched out of the side. And then I tested if this version would be "waterproof" for 3D resin printing - and it is ! But it will be still a long way from the virtual 3D drawing to the real H0 model: the pilot, rear steps and underbody parts, all this is not yet made.

The first version I want to finish would be those from the Terre Haute Indianapolis & Eastern Traction. They had rear folding doors, but in this case I need to built new Baldwin truck frames. The Standard C80P frames matching for the Ohio Electric version, but then the rear door must be a swinging door at floor height.

Rear part of Interurban wooden combine

2012/07/07

Interurban Wooden Combine project

Terre Haute, Indianapolis & Eastern Traction Company, wooden combine

In 1907, the Cincinnati Car Company built a number of wooden combine Interurban cars for the Terre Haute, Indianapolis & Eastern Traction Company.

This cars, built to the classic midewstern 61'6"diagram, were considered as the nec plus ultra of wooden Interurban construction.

Similar cars went to several Ohio lines. The Northern Indiana Railway recieved eight cars with only a slightly different side window arrangement.

This classic wooden combine will be the subject of my next drawing session.

2012/06/08

Ohio Electric boxcar is going 3D

Ohio Electric Interurban Freight Trailer, H0 scale

Preparation is under way to make the 3D file "water proof" for resin printing.

The "kit" will be composed of two parts, the body and a floor ready for Kadee trucks and home build radial couplers. Some basic underbody parts as the brake cylinder are modeled.

The parts marked fluo green in the second image must be added, same as brake wheel and handlers.

2012/03/05

The big tuscan red box trailer

Railroad roof Interurban Box Car

It takes me some time to understand how the clerestory roof of this car was really made. Not so easy as it could seem, because the upper roof is not flat, but slightly rounded.

2012/02/13

C&LE arched roof Freight Trailer

Work in progress. The letterboard was lowered, the arched roof build higher. Improved handrails and new underframe.

Still missing : Brakes, brake chains, air pipes, footsteps, door hooks, ...

2012/01/16

Indiana Railroad RPO

Indiana Railroad RPO car 375-377

Work in progress.

2011/12/01

Cincinnati & Lake Erie Interurban Freight Trailer (update)

C&LE Freight Trailer

"If you don't have enough time for your projects, start a new one".

So I did this "fine scale" 3D model of an interurban freight trailer, in the colours of the Cincinnati & Lake Erie Railroad.

~~This may be a trailer build following CERA standards (Central Electric Railway Association)~~. (Edit : This is not a CERA Trailer)

If I found the appropriate colors, I could create a version with other roadnames.

This 3D-model is based on a diagram from the Jack Keenan book, "Cincinnati & Lake Erie Railroad - Ohios Great Interurban System", page 220, diagram made by Mark Hood.

Update dec 1 : Added some handrails, a higher roof and the roadname.

Still missing : hand brake, brake pipes, steps, trailer number ...