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Santa Fe hi-level coaches


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They will get the correct trucks with ball bearings, and I will sell.

 

The trucks will be designed for NWSL 36" wheelsets and the car bodies will be the correct scale length.

I'm imagining some sort of kit with some parts 3D printed or bring/build your own, but right now I'm working on pricing for the extrusion with and without milling. The price for the extrusion die depends on the design of the profile, which depends on how the car should be assembled, so lots of things need to come together.

The outside of the profile (basically the corrugation) is done, however. B)

 

Jens

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I bet you have seen how my O scale cars are assembled. Slide in floors that everything attaches to. The roof has a t shape protruding to hang the lighting from.

 

I am thinking along those lines, yes.

The trick with extrusion is making the die work for you and build in everything needed for assembling the car.

From the perspective of the extrusion, the hi-levels are a bit tricky, as they have two floor levels, but the utility areas over the trucks are effectively a third floor level. It's not a problem, just a challenge.

 

Right now the design is a little bit on hold while I'm waiting for drawings of the trucks.

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I've been working on the design and ended up with a fixed floor as the body frame for stability.

The profile is almost done. Working on windows and insets - all the milling for the various car types - to see if the profile design holds.

Still waiting for drawings, but I've added wheels to the 3D model just for fun - and for illustration.

 

Jens

 

post-559-0-45035800-1460296556.jpg

 

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  • 1 month later...
 

I get mixed up on which cars these are. I'd like to paint mine for Amtrak, which I believe ended up with these? Even if I'm wrong, it doesn't matter to me. I'd like to make some modern diesels to pull these cars.

Amtrak has new Viewliners:

http://www.cafusa.com/en/productos-servicios/proyectos/proyecto-detalle.php?p=189

 

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1 hour ago, enginear joe said:

Is there any news on this project? I was pondering ordering more Accucraft coaches. I would much rather have these hi level cars. Please stay in touch!

It's a long long way from being anything physical.

I'm working on the truck/skirt/coupler sections. Truck design, truck mounting/yaw/minimum radius, couplers/kinematics and body details must all come together and be assembled in a cheap and easy way. The body is pretty much done, i.e. the extrusion shape is complete - unless the design of the skirts/couplers and truck mounting section calls for changes. The plan is to make the entire end skirt sections 3D printed parts, so the plating details can be included. They'll slide into grooves on the extruded body, but the design is not final. 
I'm currently designing the coupler kinematics and I've managed to make an NEM style coupler dock where a Kadee 907 or 1907 snaps right in. Still don't have the truck drawings, but I'm working on that too. Then when the kinematics and trucks are designed, I'll have a couple of the skirt sections printed and do some test runs. Lots of work still ahead, and even when the design is complete, there's the question of financing.

In summary: Don't wait for these cars.
I'm still working on the design as a labour of love, and I'll see how cheap I can make correct and to-scale models. Eventually it may turn out that even the body without interior is too expensive to be feasible for production.
Maybe the time is just not right and the design should wait until 3D print cost drops - which it does all the time.

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My plan right now is to make the extruded body as a part to be purchased.
All other parts will be 3D printed and available from some service - probably Shapeways, which is the cheapest I've found thus far. So basically the cars will be kits where you buy the parts, and as such they should be so simple to assemble that anyone can do it. That means spending a considerable amount of time on the design choices, which is basically what I'm doing right now.

The twist to this story is that I plan to make the 3D models of the parts - other than the extruded body - available for download, so if anyone has access to a 3D printer, they can print the parts themselves, which may be cheaper than buying them on the web. Or if they want to modify the parts because I've made a mistake or to make it cheaper or to match a particular model at a particular time or whatever.

And this is why I think maybe the time is not ripe and I'm taking my time with the design while I have fun doing it. As I said above, the prices of 3D printing and printers are dropping all the time, and my expectation is that decent quality 3D printers will be pretty common household items in a not so distant future.

It's a spare time project of course, but I do expect to make initial test runs this year - probably some time this summer. I already have the couplers - two sets of Kadee 907 and two sets of 1907 - and I have NWSL wheels on order for four trucks, so I can test for minimum radius and s-curves / crossovers. The result of that test may affect the design of the trucks and the skirt sections. So you know ... slowly but surely moving ahead.

The first goal is to get the design to such a state that I can get a fix on the cost. Then I'll make the call as to what to do next.
I'll show more pics when I have something to show. Stay tuned.

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This is fabulous Jens, How about getting a design out fort the single level budd cars while you are at it, I would be very interested because I want to make a set of Senator cars for my PRR theme. But they could be used on a lot of other roads: NYC, AT&SF, Burlington, SP, GN, ACL, Southern etc. And I am in Europe too.

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They could indeed :)

I've been doing a lot of research on the hi-level cars, and along the way I've ran across a lot of other information. The three main builders of lightweight streamliners were Budd, Pullman Standard and American Car & Foundry. Where I have previously thought that US passenger cars were a mixed and non-standardised bunch, it seems that with only five or six extrusion dies, almost the entire classic streamliner market is within range at a reasonable cost of the tools, just by varying the milling.

I certainly see the business opportunity. The hi-levels are the proving ground. Time will show ... ;)

Now, should I succeed with making the hi-levels, I will of course need a transition car.

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Amtrak 9993, a former Santa Fe baggage-dorm modified to match hi-level coaches on the El Capitan at Barstow California in 1983 by Tangled Bank, on Flickr

 

It has not escaped my attention that some of these transition cars have a Budd profile, which is the same as practically all the coaches of the California Zephyr, and others have the Pullman profile, which is identical to all the coaches of the Super Chief. I haven't dived into the Senator, but a quick search showed those cars seem to have a slightly different Budd profile, but still a common one which - as you say - could be used for a lot of different models.

Jens

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Just to give you an impression of what I'm working on ...

Basically the cars have horizontal features making them suitable for extrusion, but the skirts around the trucks are different. They are made from plate sections that are lined with vertical "corrugation" (in lack of a better word). After a few detours I've ended up with a design where the entire body section around the trucks is made from 3D printed parts, which makes the milling of the extruded body much simpler. Here's a picture of the design:

skirts.jpeg

The two parts will be fairly complex, as they have several jobs:

  • Support the truck mountings and thus carry the entire car body
  • Handle coupler pulling force
  • Mount snug to the extruded body and align with the extruded corrugation
  • Provide guidance for the coupler kinematics
  • Look gorgeous

The first four items are a matter of design, and that's what I'm working on fitting together.

The last item is different. The corrugation and other details on the skirts call for one of the materials that Shapeways call "frosted detail". These material is fairly brittle and relatively expensive. A cheaper option is called "strong and flexible", but that doesn't offer the required level of detail. So - I've split the parts into a skirt frame carrier made from strong and flexible and plating parts made from frosted detail. This has the advantage that the largest parts are made from the cheapest material.
The material name 'strong and flexible' raises some concern about whether the 3D printed part will carry a car body without deforming. The parts will have the body weighing down at the edges and the trucks pushing upwards at the center. I don't trust that, so the plan is to reinforce the skirt frame parts with a piece of brass where the trucks are mounted, so the brass will do the carrying.

The grey box that seems to be floating in mid air is a dock for a Kadee coupler, which is supposed to be mounted in a kinematic mechanism so that the cars will handle S-curves and small radii. How small remains to be seen. Once I arrive at a design I believe in I'll print some test parts and do some 'real world' tests.

Here's the plating parts with the details. They're not finished, but the basic pattern is OK now.
Just like the real thing B)

skirts2.jpeg

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  • 1 month later...
 

I've found one online service capable of 3D printing an entire 1:32 scale car body, but the price is ridiculous, and right now you don't get size, strength and detail in the same package. Both cost and detail of 3D print are improving fast, though, but right now I still think the majority of the body should be extruded. I'm currently working on a redesign of the corrugation after I found some closeups of the Sky Lounge now used as the Pacific Parlour car in the modern day Coast Starlight.
The redesign looks better and should be easier to manufacture. One thing is making an exact design, making a manufacturable design is quite another. Production tools have tolerances that don't scale well :D

I'm sure there is a market for interiors as they discuss on that O gauge forum, but I'm not even close to doing that yet. I don't think it's a problem doing it, but the cost will be an issue.

Incidentally I think I've figured out how to make correct interior lighting in the cars - both the coaches and the sky lounge. More when I get to that.

Jens

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21 hours ago, SteamPower4ever said:

I've found one online service capable of 3D printing an entire 1:32 scale car body, but the price is ridiculous, and right now you don't get size, strength and detail in the same package. Both cost and detail of 3D print are improving fast, though, but right now I still think the majority of the body should be extruded. I'm currently working on a redesign of the corrugation after I found some closeups of the Sky Lounge now used as the Pacific Parlour car in the modern day Coast Starlight.
The redesign looks better and should be easier to manufacture. One thing is making an exact design, making a manufacturable design is quite another. Production tools have tolerances that don't scale well :D

I'm sure there is a market for interiors as they discuss on that O gauge forum, but I'm not even close to doing that yet. I don't think it's a problem doing it, but the cost will be an issue.

Incidentally I think I've figured out how to make correct interior lighting in the cars - both the coaches and the sky lounge. More when I get to that.

Jens

I don't believe 3D printing is available to the masses in a quality form yet. Like some other forms of producing stuff, I believe it has great potential. I think right now, Jens is going at it the correct way. Dabbling with some third party printer that charges no matter if the part fails or is defective, makes it prohibitive to dabble with. I look forward to a sturdy well thought out product. I hope I can obtain some when the time comes.

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Nothing new to show, but much going on behind the curtains.

As I indicated in the post above, the corrugation ribs have been quite a job to get right. I've been looking at pictures and drawings over and over to get the number of ribs right in the various sections of the car body, and I think I'm pretty darn close. The one thing I couldn't figure out was the number of ribs on the roof between the two larger ribs. Using the rib size and spacing that I'd arrived at, I ended up with 27 ribs on the center part of the roof.

Then one day I came across a video on YouTube, where someone has recorded a trip with the Coast Starlight in 2015.
Around 7:38 in the video there's a shot from one of the Superliners out over the roof of the Pacific Parlour car, which - as we all know - really is one of the Sky Lounges from the 1956 El Capitan. The number (26) and shape of the ribs are clearly visible, and a redesign was needed.

Not that I didn't know that I needed the redesign, but I'd been waiting for more information, and that was it. I'm quite happy with what I've arrived at now, and I think it's much more production friendly with rounded corners and correct angles on the surfaces, however small those surfaces may be. That's the curse of the CAD programs (and large scale models as it were) - you can zoom in way too much and get really obsessive about a tiny detail that will never show.

So now the outside of the extruded part of the car body is done and I'm moving inside to see if my idea for the lighting will work.

Jens

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Jens, I had a problem making a vent on a Pullman Standard car that was curved and fit the curvature of the roof, so instead of making a program for my mill to fit the curvature, I machined it flat out of aluminum.  I then laid up some resin and some very light glass cloth and then when it was about 75 percent cured, took it off of the mold and then laid it on the curvature of the roof and there it was a perfect shape for the roof when it fully cured.  My point is, it might be possible to machine the ribs on a flat surface, lay it up and then lay it on the correct curve of the roof.  This would only be a pattern for a mold, but it will work. I don't work with 3d printers, for many reasons.  I work with a router, a mill and now that I have built a 48 by 48 in. router, it makes things easier.  I took a look at the video and saw the roof ribs that have to be modeled and was thinking how I would make those ribs.  I will give it some thought.  What machines do you have at your disposal? What are you making the pattern out of?  Do you hope for this to be an aluminum extrusion or resin? Bob.

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7 hours ago, rbrown7713 said:

Jens, I had a problem making a vent on a Pullman Standard car that was curved and fit the curvature of the roof, so instead of making a program for my mill to fit the curvature, I machined it flat out of aluminum.  I then laid up some resin and some very light glass cloth and then when it was about 75 percent cured, took it off of the mold and then laid it on the curvature of the roof and there it was a perfect shape for the roof when it fully cured.  My point is, it might be possible to machine the ribs on a flat surface, lay it up and then lay it on the correct curve of the roof. 

Earlier on I have been thinking along those lines - milling the ribs on some kind of flat plastic and shaping it on a warm metal tube or whatever, yes.
But for now I'm going a different route.

 

7 hours ago, rbrown7713 said:

What machines do you have at your disposal?

None.
Unless my computer counts as a machine :D

 

7 hours ago, rbrown7713 said:

What are you making the pattern out of?  Do you hope for this to be an aluminum extrusion or resin?

As the plan is now, the body will be an aluminium extrusion (see this post above), so the pattern or extrusion die will probably be some kind of hardened steel.
I have a manufacturer who is willing to make sufficiently small batches, but to spread the cost of the die evenly I do need some volume, so if this pans out, we're looking at - say - 100 parts and upwards. The beauty of extrusion is that once the minimum volume is reached and the die is paid for, the following extrusion batches can be as low as 40 - 50 parts.

Surely there could be a market for that kind of volume, even if they're kits.
But right now the primary goal is getting a fix for the overall cost, so I can evaluate how to proceed. I still need milling of the extruded parts and you still need the 3D printed parts to complete a car.
Of course, if anyone is interested in making a mold of something - like the interior or the truck areas, based on a 3D printed prototype - or whatever - I'm completely fine with that.

I am considering opening (parts of) the design to the public - on an open source license or whatever - so anyone may contribute. The only thing I don't want to share is the aluminium extrusion, because competition on that particular part will kill the project. As for any other part of the design, the cheaper it can be made, the better.

 

Jens

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At the time that I made this Pullman observation, I had no machines either, just a hand held router.  For the fluting, I built a jig with the round shape for the boattail and spacers, two different thicknesses, and made passes to make the fluting.  The pattern for the roof was cut on a bandsaw at 1 inch sections and then glued together, my point is, the fluting could be done out of wood or bondo, just for the pattern or prototype. After the pattern was made, I then made an epoxy mold for the sides and the roof.  Bob.

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