One of the great joys to me in receiving things you’ve designed and had 3D printed is also one of the great sources of frustration, finding out if you are as smart as you think you are in how your design actually prints and comes together. Since my introductory post on the 3D printed Business Car Nova Scotia here, I’ve made a lot of progress in the intervening weeks. I’ve cleaned the parts, primered them, added detail parts and even painted some of the parts.
Nova Scotia in grey primer, showing the little details that are hard to see in unpainted 3D printed material.
One of the things that has become progressively harder is finding detail parts. For this project, I basically left the 3D printed underbody as a blank slate and am adding all the detail with commercial parts. While this saves me the hassle of designing my own parts, it creates the hassle of finding parts. There is also the limits on 3D printing, i don’t think I’d want to do the Queensposts and Tension Rods on this wood bodied car as part of the 3D print, i don’t think they’d be strong enough. I am blessed by having not one, but two full service model railroad only stores approximately 1/2 an hour drive in either direction from my house in Credit Valley Model Railroad and George’s Trains, and several general hobby shops before i get to them, but even i have a hard time finding detail parts. After clearing out the physical stores of what i need, i still have to resort to Ebay or online sellers, or begging friends for parts (Thanks Trevor!). For Nova Scotia, there is a variety of underbody tanks, battery/ice boxes and the brake system. Even though i have access to the car and a fair number of photographs, on this first version, I’m not getting pedantic with the parts being 100% perfect, as long as the underbody looks right when compared to pictures of the car, I’m going to be satisfied, but even this goal has proven difficult. As it seems from what people who work at the stores tell me, there is less and less demand for detail parts, which i guess is a symptom of the improved quality of RTR locomotives and cars (and i know some will argue people don’t build models anymore which is why parts don’t sell).
This post was actually delayed and i never noticed it didn’t post. I’m posting it now, but the project has advanced since this was drafted and I’ll have more on the Nova Scotia soon.
Musings on my Model Railroading Addiction 
Keep in mind that many “unobtainable” parts are simple combinations of cylinders, spheres, rectangles, and strips. Some can be easy builds with a bit of styrene and wire!
Steve Lucas
Absolutely true. I gave up on finding battery and other boxes as nothing had the right size or look. When my next post on this project goes up, you’ll see an underbody that has salvaged bits from commercial rtr cars, brass castings, and home made styrene bits. It’s a balancing act between finding commercial parts to ease figuring out what complex parts should look like, vs building your own details on a project like this.
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