As some of you may already be aware, I've been CADing up the A unit of a Gunderson Maxi-III Stack Well Car articulated set (48'). At this point, I felt inclined to share my progress. The finish line is clearly in sight.
Here are some specifics of the task at hand. I've been writing the build code in such a way that I can specify the rendering of a specific unit (A-E) and 99.9% of the CAD is driven by a config file with all the measurements. This has come in particular handy with, of all things, the common end ladder, which necessitated a very slight increase in the common end platform depth. Some of the rendering is also configurable since there are minor differences between the well cars owned by a specific road. Measurements came from the myriad of photos on the net. (Sadly, some things are not visible and I had to make best guesstimates.)
For the common end, remaining are the cat walks and the container locks. There will probably be some minor fix-up along the way.
The most time consuming item thus far was the stirrup under the common end ladder. Everything else has been rather trivial. I try to add one piece of detail per day as time permits.
My goal is to make my own HO-Scale and O-Scale 5 unit Maxi-III. I'm not particularly fond of any of the O-scale version of the Gunderson "All Purpose" well cars. Which is a pity, I have a small army of both Lionel and MTH CSX, TTX, and BNSF well cars.
Anthony
