O Scale Cincinnati Union Terminal

The late Chester Holley (who was owner of Chester Holley Model Railroad, located in the Palma Ceia area of Tampa, Florida) scratch built an O scale model of CUT out of wood when he was a young man.  After he had had a large metal building built (that literally engulfed the original concrete block store) the model went on display on top of the roof of the old store.  It could be seen when one entered the South Himes Avenue entrance.  After Chester passed away, his daughter Diane, continued to run the business until she closed it, I believe in the early 2000s.

Sadly, Diane passed away a couple of years ago, however had started to dispose of her dad's huge collection of tinplate trains.  Since I didn't purchase anything out of Chester's collection, I don't know the disposition of the wood model of CUT, however, I'll ask some friends of mine, who like me, were not only customers but very good friends of the family.  Perhaps one of them will know what happened to Chester's beautiful hand built model of CUT.

Note: OGR featured a three part artical about Chester and his collection which can be found in Run 119, 120, and 121.  Chester also ran regular ads in the dealer directory of OGR which read: Chester Holley, The Most, which included the address and phone number.  He was known internationally and sold and shipped trains around the world.  Today there isn't a train shop anywhere in the Tampa Bay area that can come close to Chester's magic world of toy trains which, in my opinion it was, when you entered the store.

@carl552 posted:

The design is being done in about n-scale because that is what will fit in Tinkercad.com.  I use Meshmixer to scale the design up and to cut it into printable pieces.  There are several improvements I want to make before printing the one I want on my layout.  One of the improvements is better versions of the reliefs.  If you send me an email request I will send the n-scale sections of the design.  

Thank you for the prompt response and your generosity to share the model! Is the best email to reach you by the AOL one in your profile? Thanks again, this is much appreciated. 

My aol email is the best one to contact me.

I asked a good friend who was close to the Holley Clan and he said Chester's daughter Diane started to sell off the not-so-rare trains that was in her dad's collection after he passed away.   A big sell off of the regular inventory that remained when she closed the store was held, however, the rare tinplate which was on display in the family's residence went to an auction house in Mass.  Not sure if the wood model of CUT went to New England or not.  I imagine it did.

Carl

I see your STL files in the 3D repository and I was wondering if you have any plans to post the sectioned files? I have been struggling with Meshmixer and getting manifold errors while trying to partition them myself. Asking Meshmixer to fix them results in mangled files (I am just competent enough to run and fine tune a printer, but not very experienced at CAD or other tools).

Thank you

Meshmixer is a challenge to slice a design.  I had similar problems to yours. If I remember correctly I would do a slice and then save and try to do as few slices as possible to get a printable section.  I sliced on very set lines so I could always start with the complete design and just slice out one section at a time.  I was disappointed in Meshmixer but didn't want to go up the learning curve on another tool.

Carl

Just thought you guys would like to see this photo from this week...not my picture, my wife found it on the interwebs but it's beautiful!

There is a fantastic model of the terminal at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville NC this season. The Biltmore Garden RR is located in Antler Village and will be open through February this year. The exhibit is of famous American RR Stations and has some beauties all constructed of native organic materials.

Sam we need to see more. How about another thread so this one doesn't get hijacked.

Carl,

Have you made any progress on the CUT project?

@carl552 posted:

I have always admired the beautiful Cincinnati Union Terminal, CUT.  It is the train terminal that I have wanted for the layout I am designing.

There are no commercially available CUT O scale models that I could find.  My wife gave me a Prussa  3D printer for Christmas and I decided to build my own model and print it.  My 3D model was scaled down so only 4 sections needed to be printed to build a small CUT model.  The small model is 9" wide, 4 3/4" tall and 6" deep.  I am using the small model to evaluate my design.  An O scale model without the side wings is about 50" wide and 27" tall.  Before I cut the O scale model into sections that can be printed (It will probably take about 10 days to print the parts and $50-100 worth of plastic) I wanted to get suggestions or comments.  I hope to use a real clock, the side reliefs still need some work and I will use inserts for the entrance doors and windows.  The small printed model is shown in the following pictures.

Carl

Great photos very well done! Just shows why the world of parts is changing for the better. The need for “molds” to build parts is over.

@ThatGuy posted:

Great photos very well done! Just shows why the world of parts is changing for the better. The need for “molds” to build parts is over.

Except for mass production.  3D printing is much too slow for larger volumes, as it has been for the entire time since it was first introduced in the early 1980's (called stereolithography at the time).

Excellent for prototyping, and small volumes then; even better now due to cost efficiencies inherent in the newer machines.

Mike

@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:

Except for mass production.  3D printing is much too slow for larger volumes, as it has been for the entire time since it was first introduced in the early 1980's (called stereolithography at the time).

Excellent for prototyping, and small volumes then; even better now due to cost efficiencies inherent in the newer machines.

Mike

Very true, they have come a long way.

3D printing high volume large models is very hard to do.  You need a printer farm.

it's unfortunate that we can't link up all printers that OGRR forumites have to create a "remote" printer farm.

The my original design was slightly bigger than S scale even then the height of the model was slightly more than 2 feet and that was as big as I wanted for my layout.  However, I did not like the scale of the entrance level.  The entrance level was redesigned to be O scale height and the doors were made O Scale width.  I have printed those parts but have not assembled them yet.  As Alan commented it takes about 2-3 weeks to print all the parts.  For cutting the design into printable size parts the Prusa cutting option in the its slicer was used instead of Meshmixer.  I am still trying to design reliefs that I am satisfied with.  The .STL designs of the original model are in the 3D print repository.  https://readycloud.netgear.com...dings%20by%20Carl%20(carl552)/Cincinnati%20Union%20Terminal.

Carl