3d Printing and Railroad Models

I've experimented a lot with 3d printing for model railroads. My vasonabranch blog shares some of my stories about projects, the benefits and pitfalls of 3d printing, and the sheer fun of being able to print models I wouldn't be able to make otherwise.

Here, though, I'll give a quick summary of other resources for 3d printing.

• I gave a talk on mass-producing freight cars at home at the 2017 NMRA Pacific Coast Region Convention in Bakersfield. I've shared my slides from the talk. Much of the content of that talk came from a blog article sharing my lessons learned about using a hobby 3d printer to make commercial models.
• I use SketchUp, an architectural sketching program, to make the 3d models for all the items I print. Here are some of my hints for using SketchUp for HO models.
• If you're curious what a realistic 3d model looks like for an HO freight car, I've shared the 3d model (with Sketchup file) for a Southern Pacific CS-35 36 foot flat car on thingiverse.com, a web site for sharing 3d models.. The SP never actually made this car; the 40 foot CS-35A apparently won the design competition in the freight car engineering offices that year.