Modeling Trains - learning Sketchup
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I think for the moment, it's time to suspend SU modeling and begin assembling parts in 3DMax.
Here's where things stand this evening.
The station has a partial interior; floors, partitions and doors so I hope to be able to apply some useful interior lighting.
Cheers, Jim
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This is great. They certainly built a good size depot for the middle of nowhere. Is is possible to go in or look inside the building today?
Railroads really put a lot into building up the fantasy of the west, along with many depots that were fine buildings in their own right.
Great job on the tile roof. Did you have any plugins or methods that helped in that, or just brute force?
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Hello,
The depo still exists pretty much dead in the middle of no where. The rail road abandoned use of it in 1985 and subequently sold it to the National Park Service in 1992.
It is now fully, and very nicely, restored inside and out and serves as the visitor center at the Mojave National Preserve which is a 2,500 square mile preserve. A park larger than either the state of Deleware or Rhode Island. If you look at Google images of Kelso Depo, you can see how well done it is.
And yes, the tile work was strictly brute force. I wasn't sure I could pull it off but it wasn't too difficult and seems to have worked pretty well.
Jim
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jim if you want, you can share your work in the 3dWarehouse.
Pullman Buildings look very nice ,too
i have seen in this week a movie about the time around the May/10/1869
The Golden Spike ceremony held at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869. Photograph by Andrew J. Russell.
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The building looks great!
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Hello folks,
Here are a couple renderings including my Kelso Depo model.
The backround mountains are images I made on site two weeks ago, the trees are free models from Xfrog.
The third image is an enlarged detail showing roof tiles, awnings and double hung windows, gutter and downspout detail and decorative bandsawn rafter tails.
I hope you enjoy, thanks for looking.
Jim
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Hello all,
My latest project is nearing completion... this time the small but fairly fussy B&O depot at Point of Rocks, Maryland.
It was modeled from the photos and drawings found in the Historic American Engineering Record Survey housed on-line at the Library of Congress. I have also consulted other on-line images of the building which still is in use.
Jim
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Sweet. Yes fussy. Extra decoration or contrivances seem to be features of depots--almost like follies. As if the small building needs extra help to express how fine the destination is. We had many small historical depots in our area that are gone now. Swept away with the public transport. Now a new train is going in and a new depot near our house with it's own idiosyncrasies.
Very cool model. Would like to see rendering and close-ups. Thanks for sharing!
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Oh I missed your depot renderings of the UP desert depot. Very well done!. Good colors on the tile and all. I like the desert mountains in the background. I had expected the trains to be along a platform at the back.
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Hello pbacot,
Thanks for the comments.
Kelso is a bit of an odd depot, not really serving traditional depo functions. For example it has minimal ticketing and baggage support and no waiting room or platform. I gather that in the days before air conditioning waiting in the shade under the arcade was the best option.
The depo served two customers: there was a dinner operated 24-7 for passengers on trains without dinning cars and recreational facilities and housing for the railway workers who ran the water / refuel stop and the helper engines that pushed trains over the hill to Los Vegas.
I've started on the material tweaking and environment for renderings of the Point of Rocks depot, but it will be a while before I have much to post.
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Another fine model.
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It's been a while since I posted anything, partly from my need to earn a living, partly because I needed to work out the shingles on the station and partly due to inertia.
In any case, I've finally completed a few renderings of the Point of Rocks, Baltimore and Ohio train station in Maryland. The model is geo-located on terrain extracted from Google.
An overall view... working out the curving track was one of the challenges.
A bit of a detail. The paving, brickwork and stone bands are textures, the slate shingles have been modeled, painfully, one at a time with the coursing and patterns as close to the photos of the actual station as possible.
...and of course we need one of my extra dark images, imagining what it would look like arriving late at night.
I hope you enjoy.
Jim
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The night shot is perfect.
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Good evening,
Just finished another project, a model of a 70 ton 2 bay covered hopper.
The model is based on a fairly schematic engineering drawing and a collection of photographs of the actual cars. This type of car carried various granulated or powdered industrial materials.
This model of car was used by a number of railroads in the 1950s with minor variations. I picked the Norfolk Western version because I liked the inverted V cut in the side between the hoppers and like the pale gray color they used.
Here’s a three view composite from 3DMax. As you can see little additional color / texture work was needed moving it into Max, mostly adding more realistic metal surfaces.
I really like hoppers because I can expose a fair amount of detail in the open ends. In this view in addition to a lot of piping, you can see the reserve air tank and below that the brake valve mechanism.
On the other side of the car, you can see brake cylinder and the levers used to actuate the brakes.
Here’s the 70 ton hopper coupled into my switch train.
And finally, the switch train crossing the Gloucester River draw bridge on a sunny summer afternoon.
As usual, I had a lot of fun building this little car.
Jim -
I made it to the Kelso Depot last year. Your images are totally right on with the original. Nice work! -
Hi,
Way out in the middle of nowhere isn't it? The building is well preserved and makes for an interesting visit if you're passing through.
In doing the model I worked from some really nice drawings and photographs from the Historic American Buildings Survey that I downloaded from the Library of Congress. They show it before it was fully restored. In doing my model I tried to scrub out changes made to convert it to a modern visitor center.
I also visited the building (a day's drive from home) to photograph it and the surrounding landscape but you got better sky images. It was cloudless blue when I was there.
Thanks for the feedback.
Jim
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Top notch models as always!
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Hi, has anyone used Sketch Up (SU) to design open frame scenic railway boards made of shaped ply? I was at my model railway club in London, UK, and another member recommended SU as I was inspired by this efforts on this N (UK 1:148) layout below.
I think mostly I will be taking a lot of time to look at the basics tutorials to get myself out of some jams I'm in. This might be considered the easiest 3D app to use, but it seems like the trickiest new app I've tried so progress is slow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVyPN2QyIjI -
@lostboy30a said:
Hi, has anyone used Sketch Up (SU) to design open frame scenic railway boards made of shaped ply? I was at my model railway club in London, UK, and another member recommended SU as I was inspired by this efforts on this N (UK 1:148) layout below.
I think mostly I will be taking a lot of time to look at the basics tutorials to get myself out of some jams I'm in. This might be considered the easiest 3D app to use, but it seems like the trickiest new app I've tried so progress is slow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVyPN2QyIjIThere are a lot of tutorials here* and on YouTube, but they are scattered around. SketchUp should be perfect for what you want to do.
The best thing is just keep at it and it will all make sense eventually. 3D is hard to begin with, but SketchUp is by far the easiest to learn. (to which I first said "This is easy?!")
Also consider plug ins. There are a huge number of plug-ins that make modeling easier.
- https://sketchucation.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=18 <- click here for SketchUcation tutorials
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In any case, i think you've made a good decision. Sketchup is an easy, although not foolproof, system and can do remarkable modeling. It's definitely the easiest system I've used.
It is easier to do rectangular shapes but at least initially the plywood components of your model should be pretty near 2d and fairly straightforward. Arcs and circles are not bad as well.
If you're working with modular track elements things should also be pretty simple. Once you get to spline curves (i.e. flex track,) and topography things get a bit trickier.
I recommend showing us your progress, perhaps opening a thread devoted to your progress and problems. I'm sure you'll get a lot of good advice.
Jim
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