Garden Railway Forum

Some photos of my recently completed Brandbright premier panelled coaches. The livery copies early GWR coach livery with brown swapped for blue. The gold lining was added with a Uni paint marker, using the overlay as a template temporarily held in place, before finally attaching with Deluxe Materials Glue n Glaze and spayed over with a gloss lacquer. Interior lighting from 12v grain of wheat bulbs powered by a 9v battery to give a soft orangey glow. Passengers are 3d prints (files acquired from here https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/art/retro-people) and painted using Citadel contrast paints. The door vents are also 3d prints to my own design. Droplight frames are cut from vinyl as I thought the wood frames in the kit looked a little too heavy. These are excellent kits and, with a bit of time and effort, make into very attractive models.

Hi and welcome to the forum.
You've made a lovely job of those coaches, thanks for sharing. How about a bit of an intro and description of your line, if its up to the same standard as these, it will be well worth seeing.

Thanks for the Cults link as well, at last a paid for link that actually looks as though it could be worth it!

Excellent work. Each coach looks wonderful.
Not cheap but the range of figures on the link looks well worthwhile. It's not easy to find figures in period costumes.

Rik
PS And welcome to the forum.

Top class work there, you must have many years of experience to produce such high standards so we would love to see more please.
A valued new member to the Forum.... welcome.

Very impressive indeed! That's a lovely livery.

SVLR Andrew

Thanks for the welcome and the kind comments. I’ll post a proper introduction in the appropriate place later.

Regarding the passengers, this is the other set I have acquired from the same source: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/art/pas ... rerpaydi-3
The same digital sculptor also offers seated people in 1940s/1950s attire as well as railroad staff (American style) which some may find useful. They are nicely detailed models that print well at larger scales on a resin 3d printer. I have no affiliation, just sharing as a satisfied customer!

Close up of my first class passengers:

That's an impressive first post. I'm particularly susceptible as I plan to mainline on Brandbright 4/6 wheel stock for my passenger coaches for my [new] line. I've been having a hard think about colours and liveries - yours (IMHO) works well and I like the way you've made the lining work. I'm thinking about eras but am currently inclined to go with an Edwardian timescale, so thanks for the link to the 3D files.

Plus one for requests on more posts/information on your line/stock...

Durley wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2024 8:08 am Thanks for the welcome and the kind comments. I’ll post a proper introduction in the appropriate place later.

Regarding the passengers, this is the other set I have acquired from the same source: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/art/pas ... rerpaydi-3
The same digital sculptor also offers seated people in 1940s/1950s attire as well as railroad staff (American style) which some may find useful. They are nicely detailed models that print well at larger scales on a resin 3d printer. I have no affiliation, just sharing as a satisfied customer!

Close up of my first class passengers:
IMG_4440.jpeg

Fine models, beautifully painted

Rik

Wow! Both the rolling stock and figures are very impressively finished. You've set a high standard there which I can only aspire to.

Durley wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2024 8:08 am
Regarding the passengers, this is the other set I have acquired from the same source: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/art/pas ... rerpaydi-3
The same digital sculptor also offers seated people in 1940s/1950s attire as well as railroad staff (American style) which some may find useful.

I've just had time to take a good look at his stuff. To say he is amazing is an unbelievable understatement!!

1.2K models spread over 28 pages of thumbnails covering just about every subject imagineable.
https://cults3d.com/en/users/3Dimontis/3d-models

philipy wrote: ↑Tue Nov 05, 2024 9:15 am I've just had time to take a good look at his stuff. To say he is amazing is an unbelievable understatement!!

1.2K models spread over 28 pages of thumbnails covering just about every subject imagineable.
https://cults3d.com/en/users/3Dimontis/3d-models

Agreed, and being digital sculpts rather than 3D scans of people means the detail is retained when printed at larger scales. It’s so much easier to paint figures with crisp detail rather than the smoothed out features you tend to get with scaled up 3D scans.

Even the upholstery is picked out, superb.

The finish is four or five coats of shellac sanding sealer, applied with a rag and lightly smoothed with fine wire wool between coats. I then primed with Citadel white acrylic spray primer, followed by cream (Wratihbone) and blue (Army painter Deep Blue). After sticking on the framework overlay which had been sprayed in Citadel Black, the whole body was given two coats of Wheel Lacquer. I find the Citadel sprays give a consistently smooth finish and dry really quickly, within a few minutes. The wheel lacquer is best I have found from a spray can to avoid orange peel effect.


Links to items used:
https://www.toolstation.com/natural-pal ... lsrc=aw.ds

https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/plp?productType=paint

https://e-tech.uk.com/e-tech-alloy-wheel-lacquer-400ml

I forgot to mention, the varnished wood window frames were painted over the cream using Citadel contrast paints in a colour called Gore-grunts Fur. These paints are deliberately semi translucent so leave brush marks that can replicate wood grain.

https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/Go ... 1979e31d60

Ha ha I just had to comment. I use Citadel paints to finish my little passenger figures. There is no hobby shop anymore in my small city in Canada, but there is still a gaming store and they sell Citadel paints. They are excellent paints for painting little people, but I get a good laugh out of the silly names they have for colours.

Imagine this nebbishy little bloke and his missus, riding the train to town on Sunday, wearing colours like “Vomit Brown” and “Scab Red”, “Death Guard Green”, “Nauseating Blue” and “Elf Flesh”.

Thank you very much. I will chew and digest all of this.

Durley wrote: ↑Thu Nov 21, 2024 3:04 pm The finish is four or five coats of shellac sanding sealer, applied with a rag and lightly smoothed with fine wire wool between coats. I then primed with Citadel white acrylic spray primer, followed by cream (Wratihbone) and blue (Macragge Blue). After sticking on the framework overlay which had been sprayed in Citadel Black, the whole body was given two coats of Wheel Lacquer. I find the Citadel sprays give a consistently smooth finish and dry really quickly, within a few minutes. The wheel lacquer is best I have found from a spray can to avoid orange peel effect.


Links to items used:
https://www.toolstation.com/natural-pal ... lsrc=aw.ds

https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/plp?productType=paint

https://e-tech.uk.com/e-tech-alloy-wheel-lacquer-400ml

These are fabulous figures. As a “know nothing” regarding 3d printing, I’m assuming you pay your thirty odd quid which allows you to download and have unlimited access to the files? So, if I modelled in 7mm and 16mm scales I could print a figure in both?

As I don’t have a printer, and probably don’t have room for one at the moment, I would presume that there are companies that could print figures on request? Has anyone used such a service?

If I can find space, can anyone recommend a printer suitable for a beginner that would produce these figures in sufficient quality?

Apologies for so many questions!

Thanks,
Gary

Gary_16mm wrote: ↑Sun Dec 29, 2024 9:21 am These are fabulous figures. As a “know nothing” regarding 3d printing, I’m assuming you pay your thirty odd quid which allows you to download and have unlimited access to the files? So, if I modelled in 7mm and 16mm scales I could print a figure in both?

As I don’t have a printer, and probably don’t have room for one at the moment, I would presume that there are companies that could print figures on request? Has anyone used such a service?

If I can find space, can anyone recommend a printer suitable for a beginner that would produce these figures in sufficient quality?

Apologies for so many questions!,

Hi Gary,
Great to see your first post!

To answer some of your questions ( no need to apologise for them, that's what the forum is all about):

1) Yes, once you have paid for and downloaded the .stl files, you should be able to scale them in the slicer software to whatever size you want and print as many copies as you want.

2) Space might not be as a big a problem as you imagine, unless you are REALLY restricted. My little Anycubic Photon S resin printer ( which is several years old and 'obsolete' although it still works perfectly), is approx 230x210x 400 high. Although it is limited as to what it can print because the print volume is small, it would be fine for figures and anything that can be printed as parts which can be glued together subsequently.

3) Yes there are loads of commercial 3d printing companies. I've never used them myself though so can't recommend one, personally. I'm not sure how copyright might apply if you obtained the files from one company and then had them printed by another company, there might be a 'personal use only' condition attached to the download, you'd have to check.

4) In terms of a recommendation, that gets tricky, although as a rule of thumb you want to get the biggest one that your space and bank balance will allow. Most people have started with a filament printer and then moved on to resin subsequently but that is at least in part due to the fact that filament m/c were available some years before resin. For printing figures, to get the best results you really need to do them in resin. My own attempts at doing them in filament were never totally satisfactory and once I got a resin printer I never tried to do them in filament again.

If you haven't done so already, you might want to take a look through our 3D printing sections. it might give you more of an insight as to potential problems and solutions as well as showing what can be achieved.

Hi Philip,

Not my first post but I have been away from the site for quite some time!

Many, many thanks for your comprehensive reply. I certainly had concerns about passing the files to a third party for printing so will look into buying a compact, economical resin printer and see how it goes. I will also have a browse through the 3d printing topics on the forum.

The figures are about the best I have seen…and I have a fair few carriages to populate.

Thanks again,
Gary