Three-D Modelling for Railways

This is a little project that brings together several of the models I have created in the last couple of years, and will be exhibited at the N Gauge Society North West Group on Saturday. I work in the chemical industry, and wanted to do something that reflects that. Hexagons are used a lot as logos in the chemical industry because of benzene and its derivative, hence Hexagon Chemicals. I started this months ago but only got as far as putting together a box and painting it white. The next stage was the back scene - an image I found on the internet with the colours toned down. Then the track was glued down. Stage two, the bridge that forms the scenic break. Ballasting. The structures at the back in place. The pipe bridge has now been painted and additional pipework put in place. Added a second storage tank and a scrubber unit at the front. And with transfers, greenery and other details added.

There are two libraries in South Ribble that are almost identical; one in Bamber Bridge and one in Penwortham. This is the Penwortham one. And this the Bamber Bridge one. A third can be found in Carnforth. They were built in 1936, and I wonder if others existed at one time. Built with money from the Carnegie Trust. It is not a very attractive building, and the windows at the front seem too low, but the doorway is quite fancy. The Penwortham Library is now an art centre, after closing in 2016, and standing empty for about four years. While the Bamber Bridge example has a coat of arms over the door, the other two do not. I found something online saying it is the crest of Walton-le-Dale council, but it does not match the crests I found. Another difference is Carnforth and Penwortham libraries have a slate roof, while Bamber Bridge has tiles. I wonder if one has had the roof replaced. I assume the ramps were added later. Quite a straightforward model. The trickiest parts were the afore...

There is a square in Prague called the Malostranská quartier, just west of the famous bridge.  On the east side, there is a rather fancy building. Not sure if it has a name; cannot see one on Google maps. Looking at old maps, looks like it was built second half of the eighteenth century - but quite possible this building replaced the original that stood there. I thought it would be an interesting challenge... In particular, those spirals above the roof line, the rooves of the towers and the pantiles. The pantiles actually turned out to be not so hard. I took a cube, subdivided the top in one direction, then arranged the nodes to give a wave. Unlike tiles, pantiles are not staggered, and that makes them much easier to use once you have one of them. Turned out to be too big for my printer, so I have done it 90% of N gauge size, and in low relief. Here it is before painting. And after painting...

One of my post popular downloads on Cults3d is my basic office building, available here . Since May/24, it has had 81 downloads, and undoubtedly a major reason for that is that it is free! It was pretty simple to construct, and I am happy to offer things that only take a few hours for free to build interest. I hope one day to go to an exhibition and find it on a layout. It is available in various forms - one or two story, and full or low relief. New Version! I have recently produced a new version, featuring some decorative panels and an art deco style entrance, based on a building in Winkley Street, in Preston (see here ). Also available for free on Cultsd3 ! I have had five downloads already in less than 24 hours.

I created this in response to a challenge, rather than any actual need for one. The basic construction is pretty simple. The base is a flat cube with beveled corners. Everything else is cylinders. For the corners, the cylinders are extended and re-sized to give the right shape. To give it a slightly deflated look, I used a lattice modifier. Available for free on Cults3d .

Blender 5 came out about a week ago, and the noticeable difference for what I do is with the Array modifier. I think it is a big improvement, but there is still an "Array (Legacy)" option if you want to stick with the old (and when opening files made in earlier versions, they will still use the legacy version). The new version has more options, and options that were previously available, but hard to find or do have become much more accessible. For example, you can rotate and scale now. And to support this, the UI has handles on your object. So in this simple example, the basic cube is on the left, and the two generated by the modifier are centre and right. The first copy, in the centre, has handles you can use to move, rotate and scale that instance, and that gets applied to the modifier. The old version has a tickbox so you could turn off relative offset and turn on absolute offset. They have realised no one does both in the same modifier, so now we have radio buttons for th...