3D Resin Printing 00 Model Trains #20
3D Resin Printing 00 Model Trains #20
Warhammer style trains. Or Battlemallet style trains, if you're scared of copyright Infringement. I couldn't care less.
The Story
I wanted to stay away from war or violent themes with my designs as much as possible. Killing is fun, but creatively I find the designs boring. Especially with trains since they have such annoying limitations.
While looking for inspiration in unique designs, I came across a picture of a Warhammer styled train and thought it would be a worthy challenge. I don’t know anything about Warhammer but guess I’m going to war.
Here’s a link to the design I found. It’s mirrored on a few sites and free to download.
This design appears to have been made for static display so would need a lot of work to make it feasible for a model railway.
Minor details I would change include removing caps from the smoke stacks and adding some form of banding details to the buffers.
Major details would include removal of the cow catcher (train term?) underneath. With that in place there’s no room for the hooking mechanism to grab on to other stock. This also means the bogies need moving further apart, closer to the end of the train, potentially leaving a lot of undesirable space underneath?
Or I could have the cow catcher as a separate printable object? Then people could add or remove at will.
All sets of top and mid turrets should also be rotatable. That could be tricky. I don’t want them falling out.
It also needs to be scaled correctly. Which is a case of selecting everything then using the scale tool. 5 second task. Hopefully.
Shouldn’t be too much work so long as the model was put together intelligently. Spoiler… not a chance.
The Problem
As with almost every 3D model available for download, this was bodged together with little care or thought towards future designs. It’s free so you can’t expect much, but it would be nice to download a model and have it immediately usable. Just once.
Objects like the smoke stacks and barrels will need to be split from the main mesh. It would be nearly impossible to paint these areas and their proximity would create anomalies when printed.
I’ll rip such objects off then add guide holes so they can be glued on later. The holes will also reduce the weight of the mesh and provider additional drain holes for resin.
A lot of the cylindrical and circular areas are too low poly for my liking. Some of them are stylistic choices, others are low because? If it’s a static mesh that won’t be used in a game then why the low poly areas? Gaming is the only reason to keep poly counts down.
So there are improvements to be made. Scaling up areas and ripping off pieces isn’t much work. However, my problem with the mesh is the lack of symmetry.
Anyone can throw together a single use model, but why not put the effort in to make it reusable? If everything was aligned correctly, had consistent scaling, placement was identical across all axes, then it could be copy/pasted in segments to create more designs.
There were so many inconsistencies and anomalies in this download that it was quicker to start from scratch. The design helped me conceive the final print, but none of it was reused. Everything you see below is 100% my own work.
Don’t pay too much attention to the bogies. They’re a Warhammer style, but I haven’t finished them. My existing designs didn’t fit the theme at all so I quickly threw something together.
Model #01 - Double Turrets
This is what I came up with. It has a fair few differences from the original design, though it’s also very similar.
Key points:
Top turrets have a full 360 degree rotation with locking mechanism so they won’t fall off easily.
Middle turrets are removable and rotate left/right.
Buffers were lowered so they align with existing production designs. Not that I’d expect it to be used on a real world layout.
I preferred the higher buffers, but they looked out of place against my production stock.
Lowering the buffers meant redesigning the lights and view port, which I’ve grown to like.
Bogie mounts were moved closer to the ends, which created a large void under the mesh. I filled this in with an angled block in the middle.
Bogie is a 2 axle design.
I used my single bogie hooks from previous designs. They work and are reliable.
With everything removed, the core of the design looks like this:
Additional objects to print include 4 top turrets, 4 mid turrets, 6 smoke stacks, 8 barrels and 2 bogies.
I made sure everything was aligned, scaled and mirrored correctly. Now if I wanted to… extend the model so there are 3 turrets per side, it should take a fraction of the time.
This is the only one out of all these designs I tried printing. Just to make sure it does print and scaling looks right before starting on the variants.
There was a huge problem; weight. This thing is seriously heavy. I dropped it a few times and eventually the bogey hooks snapped off. Not before a bogey was broken in half by falling on it. I then threw it in a box for a few months and 1 of the buffers for a snapped off. Yeah it’s taken me a while to write this up. I have a job!
The weight is a relatively easy fix. The inside of the mesh is hollow, to reduce weight, but the walls are still far too thick. I left them that way to prevent warping but it’s not necessary. The internal supports do a good job of holding everything together. For future prints I need to thin out the insides a little more.
Model #02 - Triple Turrets
Modular. Took a fraction of the time to throw together. Barely an hour.
This design felt a little too long, but my designs get longer! Also shorter.
Fundamentally the same as model 1 but with a lot more pieces to print. 37 objects in total. Plus 2 bogeys.
It felt a little vacant underneath, so I changed the 2 axle bogeys to triple axles. This pulls them further in to the mesh and takes up more space. Looks bulkier but the bogies still rotate freely.
Model #03 - Single Turrets Offset
How about a smaller version of the initial design?
Bogies have been removed in favour of single fixed axles. Instead of having the turrets centered, I offset each to the left, creating a staggered turret design.
This design is as small as I’d like to go. I think any further reductions would look comical.
A 30 second variant would be to mirror the chassis. Making the turrets offset to the right instead of left.
Model #04 - Double Turrets Centered
It’s a little more effort moving the turrets to a central position and splitting out the smoke stacks to be either side.
Less effort than building the whole thing from scratch.
Model #05 - Double Turrets Compressed
How about compressing the original design to the point where there are just 4 turrets and no smoke stack?
To Summarise
Hopefully this highlights the benefits of planning a model out before making it. Especially if you intend to upload it to the Internet. It doesn’t even need to be planned in all honesty. Spending a few hours polishing welding vertices and cutting faces can save you hours or days later on.
You may draw something which looks good, but if it’s for a portfolio or a product to sell you might want to put in some effort.
With garbage applications like Blender, anyone can throw a few objects together and call themselves a 3D modeller. I don’t consider myself one, but am just as offended as the professionals when I download something which looks good and turns out to be worthless.
Going Forward
I have a few more Warhammer designs to show of. A couple of turrets and some less war orientated Warhammer styled stuff.