Shapeways Model Trains

I have purchased several things through Shapeways such as 2 bay East Broad Top hoppers, the EBT M-1 (I actually bought two of those because the design was updated and is much better), and passenger cars in both Nn3 and Z scale. The upside to Shapeways is you can get designs that are not available elsewhere, the downside is the process makes a somewhat grainy textured product that is quite fragile in some cases. There are some tricks to reduce the fragility, and in my opinion the bonus of being able to get what you want overshadows the drawbacks.

One of the complaints I had about the Shapeways site was having to perform several searches to find the products I wanted. Apparently Shapeways became aware of the problem, and I'm happy to say they solved it by making a dedicated model train page.

I think model railroading has a bright future in 3D printing, and I'm excited to see Shapeways leading the charge.

(Note to the FTC, I write this post as a satisfied consumer and did not get paid for it in any way, so bugger off.)