Three-D Modelling for Railways

Preston Corporation Tramways opened the first electrified lines in 1904, and in the same year opened a new depot on Deepdale Road, not far from the football ground. The tram system closed in 1935, but the depot is still standing, now used for buses. As you can see from the photo, the back of it is quite a different design. I believe this was the original structure built in 1904, with the stone frontage built ten years later. I have just modelled the frontage. It is a complex model because there is a lot to it, though there was no specific feature that was that difficult. I left the turrets to last, expecting them to be tricky, but it went smoothly. The bricks were done by using a "curve" modifier on a Bezier curve, and sometimes they can be a real pain to do, but this just worked, with just tweaking the size of the wall. Turned out pretty well!

Available on cults3d ! Helping out on a layout at a show last week, the owner of the layout said he wanted a storage tank with a  set of spiral steps to get to the top. I realised that would be pretty easy to do with geometry nodes , just create one step, and then have it repeat in a circle, but as well as rotating, also increase the z-location. The tank itself is just a cylinder with a flattened hemisphere on top. I did one without steps, and also a bridge to link them. Here they are primed, but not printed, from about the same angle. I am - one day - going to build a "vignette" of a chemical site, and will use these, and will paint them accordingly when I do.

The 3d printer vat has a transparent film on the bottom through which UV light shines to form a layer; the model is then prised from the film before the next layer is formed. This film is a consumable, and the first one lasted me about two months, but the second lasted over two years. I had some issues with prints failing part way through, and could see resin on the screen when the vbat was removed, but the film appeared to be fine. I replaced the screen protector, but got more failures, and the screen was dirty almost immediately, so I am fairly sure I have a hole. As the film gets stretched during each cycle, a pinprick hole could get enlarged during the process, but be very hard to spot. So I replaced the film. I followed the Elegoo video , and there is no point me repeating it. This is the state of the film, not that bad after 2 years: The screen protector, after just two weeks: I had recently replaced it (see here ), and that was my last one. The cheap ones I ordered are coming fr...