Got the main (air) reservoir and piping laid out and the traction motor blocked in the truck model in addition to adding more detail to the truck. I'm searching for a couple of more details for the brake lever below that connect to the brake shoes.

The pipe fitting are fictional and just comprised of a couple of circles one of which is a six sided hexagon.

Looks great. Is this for work, pleasure or both?

Thanks L i am.

Well the truck alone is less than 9 MB and the locotmotive is about 15 MB. Not too bad so far. I've had architectural models well over 150 MB alone. Some of these landscape elements like a Wisteria vine can by around half a gigabyte.

Found more details thanks to a video from ccrx6700 on Youtube. Need to add the traction motor and brake system and modify it for a later version of the Flexicoil trucks. Looking like a restomod truck for now but that's part of the fun. Rendered with Thea Render.

On a side note. Grainger has 3D models for fasteners, bolts, etc. The lock bolt for example was downloaded as an stl file and converted to an obj file and imported into Sketchup. Needs some cleanup if you're going to use them a lot of times.

The blue is using metal flakes (car paint) from Thea. I won't use that for the final renderings of the SD45. Usually the railroad companies just spray everything with a single color and in the case of this example it's a silver paint. I just do this to keep me awake.

Looking good Mike. I hear you about hot weather although we don't get that kind of humidity in Denver and it did cool down. Either way without AC it gets really taxing on the old body and cuts down on any kind of productivity.

Thanks everyone!

We've got wheels. OK, they're not precise but it's a start. Also added a bunch of brake system cranks and a sand dispenser system. I'm probably getting carried away with the level of detail but I need the practice. It's forcing me to model a bunch of intricate parts I'm not familiar with.

Broken shortcuts? I don't understand because Sketchup 2022 Pro is working just fine.

Thanks Rich.

The snap feature looks very useful. Don't really need pretty new icons and it's just a stumbling block for work flow although I do prefer to use keyboard shortcuts instead. Releasing 2023.1 with a copy and past/paste in place bug is kind of incompetent but I'm pretty sure they can fix that fast as long as it doesn't become a "Windows issue." I'll keep using Sketchup 2022 Pro until time runs out.

Thanks Dave.

Here's the latest. Working on the trucks. Got the plans from Norfolk & Western Historical Society for $30. Hard to find this level of detail anywhere.

This is an earlier version of the EMD truck but it's easily modified to the correct version. Short of my obsession with details.

It's an interesting idea but I don't think Trimble is that kind of corporation. Their customer base is largely around infrastructure, agriculture, railroads, construction, etc. They do have the student, higher ed, and non-profit subscriptions. Outside of that and you end up being in no man's land.

Maybe you can set up a 501(c)(3).

More parts! Started the trucks and ordered a plan of the trucks from Norfolk & Western Historical Society. This shows the Hyatt journal box, brake cylinder and a part of the truck frame which is really cast steel and was usually painted silver for Union Pacific SD45's. I like the color yellow but it probably looks like Caterpillar equipment here.

@joe wood said:

That fixed it, thanks for that Gus! And everyone else, for the hand holding!

Happy to help.

You can ignore those registry backups.

Sometimes in Windows when I'm not able to uninstall a program because something got messed up along the way I just reinstall the program I want to uninstall and then uninstall it with "Add or Remove Programs."

Yeah the "%appdata%" acts like a wild card and explorer should find it. Otherwise you can click through in Explorer under c:\users...

I found another post and it said to go to %appdata%\SketchUp\SketchUp 2023\SketchUp and delete login_session.dat.

Replace 2023 with 2022 if that's what you're using.

Try this.

Thanks guys!

Can't run a railroad without a Type E couple. I was going to use someone else's 3D but decided to give it a shot in Sketchup. The majority of rounded edges is varying degrees of beveling applied in Thea Render. Some of the other larger fillets were impossible to model at this time.

What looks like machine boring isn't really necessary although it does keep me motivated on the craftsmanship. It's not 100 percent accurate.

What it looks like in raw SU and another rendered view.

Update! Breaking the rules here with the final lights and such since it bogs down rendering times. This is done in Thea Render. Found a lot of good reference photos for the headlamp at Worth Point.