Tuesday, February 15, 2011

New Source for HOn30 Kits?

Some of you may know about Shapeways.com, an internet site that will print 3D models from 3D image file uploaded to the website. The Shapeways company provides the website, the order taking, payment collection and the printing services, but individuals upload their own designs to the website and offer them for sales in exchange for a "royalty" for each item sold.

I have ordered 2 locomotive kits and expect them tomorrow. I'll evaluate and post pics of the kits once I get them. I'll also evaluate the service.

I would recommend checking out Teebee's shop. Tom has several HOn30 kits there. Here's the url: http://www.shapeways.com/gallery?mg[search][shop_name_search]=Tebee%20Models

I have no financial connection to Shapeways or Tom. I mention this because it could hold some promise for HOn30 modelers.

Railbus Update

First of all my apologies for not posting for several months. I am back and plan to post once a month.

Here's a current photo of the Aru Models railbus. Still on the to do list:
add another coat of green, paint handles brass , add conductor and passengers, add decals and weather it lightly.

Also on the work bench are components for a powered box car. The chassis is Tomix/Tomeytec model KD-25. It is an N scale street car chassis. It has 2 advantages: it is easy to shorten or extend the length and it has several sets of truck sideframes options. The white strips on the chassis are reinforcements added to extend the wheel base to match the HOn30 Weidner resin box car body in the background. The sound decoder is a Soundtraxx DSD-101LC light steam decoder.

This third picture shows a stock chassis and all three extension strips added to lengthen the chassis. The stock chassis really is too short for the box car though in appears to be the right length in this picture. The perspective is distorting this a little.

Also note the brass strips added to lengthen the sliver pickup strips for the trucks.

This chassis only has one power truck so it won't be a great puller but it does pickup on all eight wheels.