Passenger cars

Three of the four Shapeways passenger cars; two coaches and a baggage car. The combine was, unfortunately, destroyed by my rough handling. These cars are fragile!

They are smaller than the converted Bachmann cars I have, they aren't as tall and have no letterboard. Part of this is due, I think, to the RLW roof I have on Coach 24. I should have trimmed off some of the Bachmann's letterboard, in comparison to the Shapeways car it looks encephalitic.

Parlor car 20 has the original Bachmann roof so it isn't as bad, but it is still taller than the Shapeways cars. The picture is a bit blurry because the camera chose to focus on the background (one day I'll have to learn to use the settings instead of the automatic functions), but it shows the difference in car heights. (Yes, I know, I need to put battens on the parlor car under the window trim. Yes, I know, the center window isn't actually on center on one side of the prototype. It's an N scale model, give me a break.)

One thing I should have done and didn't is put "glass" in the Shapeways cars. I didn't think it would make a big difference, but it definitely does. Clear plastic from the coupler packages would have filled the bill quite nicely. I will do this in the future, but the roofs are glued on these cars and they would be destroyed if I tried to remove them, so they are going to stay the way they are.

In conclusion, the Shapeways cars are a quick and easy (and inexpensive) way to expand your varnish fleet, they are easy to assemble and the results are good. Just be careful with them and they should do fine.

Shapeways

As expected the Shapeways cars arrived just in time for the trip to Florida.

When I got back I was able to get them painted up and I have assembled one of the three bay cars. Unfortunately one end platform on each of the two bay cars have been damaged, so I will have to rebuild them before I can put them together.

The cars are much easier and therefore quicker to build than the RLW ones because the end platforms are already built. For this initial evaluation I didn't bother building anything else up, but the cars can be detailed with brass wire grab irons, styrene brake platforms, and brass brake wheels like the RLW cars would be and should look pretty good when they are done.
 

First impressions of the three bay cars: They are roughly the same size as the RLW cars, as they should be. The RLW cars have a white metal bottom which the Shapeways car lacks, so the Shapeways car is lighter. This will likely cause problems with running them, but the good news is you can pull more of them.

Also nice is the trucks. For the first time ever the proper Vulcan trucks can be had. I had been using Z scale Bettendorfs, which worked but weren't quite right. Now they are right.

The trucks are available separately, so I will be putting them on the rest of my hopper fleet as well.

I also built up some of the passenger cars from Shapeways as well. They are pretty nice little cars, but they are fragile, I got the coaches done but I destroyed the combine while I was putting it together. I'll have to get another one to complete the set. The baggage car arrived without trucks, so I'll be using MicroTrains trucks on it when I put it together.  Pictures will be up soon.

Prep Work

I finally have the bell and pilot ordered for the 4-4-0, and while I was on an ordering kick I ordered the end rails I need for these, one set each of these, and the wheelsets and couplers required for all of them.

I'm expecting them all to arrive sometime next week, just in time for me to go to Florida and help Pop-In-Law to clean out his garage and not get a chance to do anything with them.

Stay tuned!