More Posters on the HONGZ Forum?

There just didn't seem to be much interest in HO over here, which is understandable given the primary focus is O scale. But if there is interest, here are some recent photos of what I have been up to:

3D Printed HO scale tank cars, and structures:

I utilize Fusion 360 for my design, and use a Prusa Mini FDM type (filament) printer.

The tank car is a 4000 gallon ACF Sharon built tank car. Plans came from the 1994 "Model Railroader". Both cars are stenciled "Vegetable Oil Only".

Here is a photo of a car when I started production of seven additional cars. The top complete car is my prototype, and makes eight cars. The bottom tank and underframe were for production car #1. I'm giving away six of these cars to model railroad buddies that either work on my railroad, or have done nice things for me that were modeling related. I'm going to make more for some other good friends. Grey parts and tan turnbuckles are Tichy Train Group parts, off-white parts are designed and printed by me, white parts are Evergreen strip and rond stock. I did all the assembly, painting, decaling, and weathering. Trucks are Tichy, wheels are Intermountain, couplers are Kadee #153.

This crane is designed off of a Dean Freitag article in the April and May 2009 "Model Railroader". There were no plans, only a couple of shots with rough dimensions. I designed the crane full size, and because I needed a smaller crane for my tractor plant, I printed a smaller one at 61.74% size, except for the operator cab, and the walkway details that are Tichy parts left over from a oil storage tank kit. The white part of the crane still needs to be painted safety yellow. Oh, and I finished the scenery around the crane too.

Back to Freitag Foundry, here is a couple photos of the in-process structure on display when I did a presentation on my 3D printing activities for our local NMRA division. Everything in this photo was designed and 3D printed by me. This whole scene will not utilize ANY commercial parts, as I'm using this project to improve my Fusion 360 design knowledge.