Mesa Part 9... Continuing on …......... . Cut foam away until you are happy. Not happy, cut more away or glue some back on! . I put the engines above on the track for the picture but did run them on this track the other day but this is about as far as they can go right now. The track and wiring is done the other way to the hidden staging and to the coal mine and under the mesa top back to hidden staging. The red that was mixed into the spackling and applied above is close to what some of the sandstone looks like here when the first or last sun of the day hits it like in Monument Valley 70 miles southwest of us (can see it from the house). The sandstone rock in the picture will light up like that in the morning and evening light. . If anyone is interested I can post the paint mixing formulas. I did all the final detail painting with the above colors by mixing them. Didn't use the blue of course but it and another blue where used in painting the sky on the backdrop ( HERE ). . . To be continued...... A link to this whole build ( HERE ). Sumner
Retaining Walls... Needed two retaining walls to use at one end of the coal mine's maintenance building so went to work with Fusion 360 …......... . . Love Fusion 360 and feel very lucky that they let us non-commercial people use it free. . . I won't glue the walls to the building until they are painted and the building is painted and weathered. There are also chutes and other buildings that are over the track that haven't been attached yet to the main complex that are printed but not painted and weather yet. I'll leave the maintenance building to the left and the main complex to the right above separate to get to the tracks easier if needed. They fit well together without gluing them and both lift off easily. The retaining walls were printed with an AnyCubic M3 but I could of printed them with the Ender 3 which was used for the buildings and roofs. At this point I'll take a day or two off from the foam work and work on designing and printing some very low and short bridges to be used where creeks and dry washes go under the tracks in this area of the layout by the mine and on the nearby mainline. A link to this whole build ( HERE ). Sumner
That rock color you applied is amazing! I have seen enough photos of the Utah Wasatch range to know that color looks very good.
man o man i love how its all looking. its coming along nicely..... im still messing with fusion 360 but i just cannot figger it out. so i gave up trying....i need to find somebody local that uses it an see if they can let me watch how to use that....my brain just dont get it...... love how the coal veins show in your hill sides . thats very cool.....
Thanks for the input Sid and also to the rest of you guys that have been following along. Maybe try this guys videos.... I've used some of his videos before on specific issues. I watched about half of that one and even learned some new things. I do things somewhat different than he does in that video but with Fusion 360 there are usually multiple ways to get to the same spot. You will develop your own as you go along. He shows how to save your work on their cloud base servers and that is a big concern to a number of people, including myself. You do need to save a file there if you are to the point you need a STL file for a print file. When he gets to where he saves the work he hits the 'save' button. Hit the one just to the left of it and you have a menu with the option to export the file. I use the export and save to my computer every file I've worked on. Set up folders for your project and save/export there and you will always have your work on your computer. When going back to a file I open it from my computer not their storage even if I have a copy saved there. So no one doesn't have to use their storage, something I often read on the internet as a reason people won't use Fusion 360. When I get to the point that I need the STL file I save to both my computer and to their storage. All of those files are in one folder in their cloud storage. Not a problem to me as I never retrieve them from there so I don't keep them organized there like I do on my computer. Once you save there you can use the tab next to the save tab to export the file as another F3D (work file) and export a second time as a STL print file to your computer. The other thing I do now is any time I save/export to my computer I use the same menu and go down to 'capture' and save an image file of the file I just saved. Later when I need to go work on a past project I can go to the project folder on my computer and look at the images to find the file I want to work on. Image file and F3D file will have the same name. It is easier/faster than bringing the files up in Fusion to see if it is the one you want to work on. You should still have my phone number. Call me if I can help while you are on the computer. We could put a simple project on like what he did and start there simultaneously. Sumner
Thanks sumner ill have a look an try it again... i think if i can get one thing from start to finish and printed , i would be able to figger out other stuff. but i just cannot for the life of me even get started. i even tried following a video step by step (IE watch part stop video implement said part then restart video and repeat ) i still could not get it.....ill keep trying . i hate quitting but i hate not being able to get anywhere too......
Bridges/Culverts & Roadbed... Been working with Fusion 360 to design some bridges and culverts that can be used where tracks cross small streams or in my case a dry wash, which are numerous in the west. I see a lot of short girder bridges across dry washes here in Utah. Hard to see but the resin printer was able to print the rivets on the bridge also. The bridge is wide enough plus just a bit to place cork roadbed on it and ballast it. If you already have the road bed in place there are also print files where the bridge can be printed as two sides. Then dig out under the roadbed a ways from each side and insert them as is shown with one of the culverts below. Since concrete culverts are also numerous in the west I designed two sizes to use (10 ft and 13 ft wide at the mouth (13 ft above). I marked where the foam needed to be dug out and ... ….. cut it out with an X-Acto knife and a hot wire foam knife. I haven't added water to the paver sand at this point to set it up (it has its own adhesive) as the culvert still needs to be painted. The other culvert on the far side will be installed the same way. Having only one side of the culvert printed allows you to use culverts with different retaining wall angles on each side and to also cross one or multiple tracks. In the area above I'll probably use the 10 foot wide culverts. Three different options for each size can be printed. One has both the retaining walls at the same angle and the other two angle the retaining walls off to either the left or the right depending on the direction the waterway approaches the culvert or leaves it. I'll also put up bridge files for a single span and two span girder bridge along with only one side of the single and double span girder. Use the single sides if you want to install under existing roadbed or if there is more than one track. Spent a little time and added roadbed to the upper level above. One track coming off the bridge (left) proceeds through the tunnel to the left and around the other side of the backdrop where there will be a sawmill. Past the sawmill the track will come back through the tunnel to the right and back to the bridge and cross it and after crossing leave the first track and go to the far side of the layout. So some imagination is needed to see that the high bridge is actually two separate bridges with one being further along the main. The scene above will also represent a summit with a siding where helper engines could be left for the next train going down if that is the case. Next a rasp will be used to flatten the cork and knock down the shoulders. Then Spackle will be applied and the roadbed sanded (will take about 30-45 minutes to do that). More on using the rasp and spackling ( HERE ). Then I'll add the rock and other landscape main features in front of and behind the track to the backdrop. I will post a link to the print files when they are up. A link to this whole build ( HERE ). Sumner
A few more pictures on how to use the plate girder bridge halves if you print them instead of the complete bridge with the deck. If you don't have road bed down printing the complete bridge might be easier but....if you need more than a single track or if the road bed is down using the separate bridge sides can be of benefit. I carved out a piece of 1” foam board for this example. If the track it in place work in from both sides. You probably don't have to make a cut all the way through if you can't see under the bridge when it is installed. . I haven't progressed with the final landscaping since this was a piece of scrap foam and not the layout. Above is the double span bridge. You can also print the side files for the single span and do the same. I will post a link to the print files here when they are up. A link to this whole build ( HERE ). Sumner
Those bridges are culverts turned out really nice. I like that idea for printing the parts in halves to allow for various spacing.
105 Ft. N Scale Plate Girder Bridge --- Pt. 1... Used a rasp to flatten and ….. …. knock the shoulders down on the roadbed I had laid down. Then spent a couple minutes after that with an 80 grit sanding block. Finished up putting down spackling. I really like the nice flat surface you end up with doing this. Makes the track go down really nice. Also fills any voids between the cork strips and larger ones where the cork is cut for turnouts. You don't need to be quite as accurate with the cork there. Also fills the seam at the bottom of the cork where it is glued to the foam board. Knocks off all those cork edges, loose cork and high spots that can be a problem when laying the track. All in all well worth the 45 minutes it took to do the above. Next I got side-tracked from the scenery in the mesa area. I needed another plate girder bridge on the upper level on the side of the layout where I've been working on the scenery. I thought I could do this fairly quickly as I had a shorter bridge already designed when I was designing plated girder bridge sections for the other side of the layout for a high bridge there. I had designed a bridge that was 10 N scale feet high but a little shorter than what I needed here. Didn't take to long to make that one longer. Pretty much maxed out what I could print with the Photon M3 resin printer. Got this on sale for a little over $200 and love how it has been printing. I've only been using Siraya Tech Build Sonic Gray resin so far and love it also. It is tough, somewhat flexible on thin parts and I can print detail down to right around one N scale inch with it. Adjusting the bridge length went quickly and the print was about a 9 hour print. Then things slowed down as I needed abutments to hold the bridge up. I had made some a while back for my double track girder bridge (more info and print file links HERE ) but …. I got off to a bad start on designing these and spent most of a day on.... ….. the design above and was going to pint that the next day but woke up at 2 am and laid there a couple hours and realized I wasn't going about it in the right way. . Got up at 6 and made new templates (shown above) and.... …. used the template and the bridge to make a new drawing. I'll now take the drawing and go back into Fusion 360 and try again. Shouldn't take much time after learning a few new tricks in yesterdays effort. To be continued...... A link to this whole build ( HERE ). Sumner
continuing on with the bridge... I printed both abutments in one print but the bottom one failed on one side. Doesn't happen often but can happen. I usually don't add any supports to what Chitubox puts in automatically but before printing that abutment again I did add more supports to that side. It is easy and fast to add or delete supports. Click on where you want one and Chitubox does the rest. The next one printed fine. On a 64 ft. girder bridge I designed and printed with the Ender 3 Pro filament printer I printed the bridge shoes separate. This time I took those and combined them with the new abutments and they printed fine and are right where they are needed. Later I'll paint the bridge and abutments and then glue them together and put them in place as a unit. Earlier I had designed the different plate girder spans shown above along with one that has 10 foot side plates that was 80 feet long which I didn't use. I took that one and extended it to 104 feet for this one. I'm not sure how tall a real bridge's side plates are for a double track bridge that is 100 feet long. I'm going to research this more and maybe change it to a bridge with 8 foot side plates. Appreciate if anyone can point me to some info on that. Those openings in the walkway are a N scale 2” x 4 “ and the metal that makes up the grate is just a tad over 1 scale inch. That is all really small in N Scale. From the side of the layout you can't really see that the grating is open but still fun to print it and see what the printer can do. . . I'll leave this at this stage and come back to it later as I need to keep working on the landscape near the coal mine. Thought I'd share this... …. Dottie and I drove 50 miles south onto the Navajo Nation (reservation) to visit an area that I use to go to when I still had the Purple Sage Trading Post open. I bought Navajo folk art from the people there. It was toys that the Navajo would make for their kids out of mud and wood to play with since there wasn't money to go to town and buy toys. Later they made it and found they could sell it to the trading posts in the area which would then sell it to tourists. After going down a few times they started driving to the store to sell to me so the trips pretty much stopped going into the back country there (Sweetwater). I've driven near the Sweetwater area and can see the main mesa there from the house but hadn't driven back into there for a lot of years. The trip was down memory lane and one of the many views was of the tall ridge shown above. Would like to model that formation but it would take some time. A link to this whole build ( HERE ). Sumner
I've put the print files up on my thingiverse.com account for the plate girder bridge above. Info on the print files and a link to them here.... https://1fatgmc.com/RailRoad/3D-Printer-2/page-64.html Sumner
Sawmill Scenery --- Pt. 1... In order to finish the initial scenery on the other side of the backdrop (see next image) I needed to run at least the roadbed through the short tunnels that go through the backdrop. That meant I also need to be able to put down the road bed on this side at least past the tunnel portals on this side. There will hopefully be a sawmill scene on this side that will take up most of the upper level above the hidden staging tracks here. I also wanted to be able to remove part of the upper level fairly easily so work could be done on the staging below it if needed. It would also be easier to build a lot of the sawmill scene if I had it down on my car-lift workbench. I decide to figure out how far the 'high' scenery (low mesa/hill) would extend our past the backdrop and cut the upper level there. The narrower scenery section at the backdrop would connect to the backdrop including the track just past the tunnel portals on both ends of the backdrop. I cut the first level of foam board that goes along the backdrop from side to side. Above you can see the initial pieces of foam at the tunnel portals on both sides but I cut all of them, form tunnel to tunnel (forgot to take a picture). Then a cut mark was made about an inch past where the foam will be side to side. I was thankful that I hadn't glued the foam to the plywood on this section as I could remove it and cut the foam and then cut the plywood. The upper level was easy to remove and have had it removed for some time while working on the staging tracks. It is held on with screws that driven into it from the bottom of the supports at the backdrop and the uprights to the right. I attach almost all the layout pieces from the bottom so that after scenery is added I can still get to the screws and they aren't covered up with scenery. I was able to cut most of the length of the foam board with the band saw with help from Dottie. Work was started on attaching and... ….. leveling the smaller section of the upper level before calling it quits for the day. A link to this whole build ( HERE ). Sumner
.... continuing on .... . . . . . . . . to be continued........... A link to this whole build ( HERE ). Sumner
First finishing up with the removable section of the layout.... . Mesa -- Pt. 10 Back to working on the mesa and scenery near the coal mine complex. . . . . . . to be continued........... A link to this whole build ( HERE ). Sumner
