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The window sashes (left) were too thin for the 3-D printer and were laser-cut. The bag- gage door was also laser-cut at the same time. The body-mounted handrails (above) include a support that loops underneath, out of the way of passengers’ knuckles. They were formed by first soldering the loop to a straight piece of wire, then bending the wire to form the handrail. Before laser cut- ting the window sashes (middle), a hand- made styrene sash was tried. The interior partition was printed with the body. The scratchbuilt roof details (bottom) include the toilet vents, lamp vents, smokestacks and Baker heater expansion tanks. The Bak- er heater was modeled after an earlier ver- sion and was later replaced on the model with one that matched the prototype.


the concave curves at the ends. I decid- ed that I might as well print those, too, and save all that filing and fitting. Then, as I was idly spinning the roof RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN


and letterboards around on the com- puter screen, I asked myself how much work it would be to simply render the rest of the car. After all, with the let-


terboards being molded together with the roof, I would have to mask them to paint the roof, so there was no benefit in breaking the model beneath them. A few hours later the whole car was roughed in, and I was drafting ever-fin- er details, such as door handles and flag holders. Finally, I uploaded my computer model to the printing company I chose, Shapeways.com, and clicked “buy it.” Ten days later UPS dropped off most of my passenger car. The stereolithography 3-D printing process is not perfect. Since it builds up the model one layer at a time, I ex- pected to have to sand the roof smooth. However, I also found that I had to sand the sides a little. Due to slight er- rors in registration as the model built up, the sides were wavy. For the most part, that was easy to correct, however. (As noted, there are other processes in this field, and they can produce a dif- ferent level of surface finish.) Sadly, the stereolithography process does not facilitate very thin sections, so the window sashes could not be print- ed. However, because I had a computer model, it was a simple matter to create a pattern for a laser cutter. I asked my friend Brian Rudko to cut these out by machine. The grooves where the real sashes ride were included in the model, and the laser-cut sashes ride in these grooves as per the prototype. They are, however, fixed in place.


For a while I thought I would leave one of the baggage compartment doors open on the model, and to support the 55


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