N scale modelling inspiration and resources
Here they are… the parts of my first 3D printed tanktainer.
I got a little carried away and painted the tank and tank ends before remembering to take photographs.
Read on for a review of this model.
Continue reading “Review Of My First 3D Printed Tanktainer”I’ve always been fascinated by the seemingly endless design variety and livery variation of tank containers.
VOTG 2CT6 by Col André Kritzinger – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, from Wikimedia Commons, View Image
So I decided it was finally time to have a go at creating some CAD models and produce my first 3D prints…
Most of us probably understand that 1 measurement unit in our N scale model world is the equivalent to 160 measurement units in the real world. I use the term measurement unit because it could be feet, metres, inches, centimetres, millimetres etc. I prefer to use metric units so as an example 160 real world centimetres would be 1 centimetre in N scale.
Scale ruler by filmingilman – Own work, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, View Image
All pretty straight-forward but what happens when we’re making a model of an object like the Derwent Way swing bridge and we don’t have access to the prototype to take measurements?
Well, aside from accepting you’re unlikely to be 100% accurate we’ll need to convert the measurements on the drawing, satellite images or if we’re really lucky, the plan of the real World object we want to build to N scale.
Read on to find out how to do that…
Now things are settling down after the house move I’ll soon have the space I need to actually start making some model structures so I thought I’d do a quick post on some of the techniques and materials that I intend to use when scratchbuilding structures.
Plan and tools by Ian Robins – Own work, CC BY-NC 2.0, View Image
I’ve built some simple structures from styrene in the past but I’ve been following a thread by grahame over on RMWeb forum that discusses card and styrene structure scratchbuilding; after seeing the amazing results he achieves, incredibly quickly too, I know I’d like to give card building a go.
Continue reading “Scratchbuilding With Card, Styrene and Texture Sheets”