nscale4x8

Reboot of my first N Scale railroad and my first layout in 20+ years

View the Project on GitHub nscale4by8/nscale4x8

The Turret Apartments

The “Turret Apartments” structure was designed from scratch, 3D printed, painted, and assembled over the course of three evenings and a Saturday morning. I needed a medium relief structure to populate a street along an edge of my layout.

Model Rendered in Blender Printed & Assembled
Model Printed

A Future Home on the Layout

In the Neighborhood

The structure next door is St. Rita’s. There is a brief article about designing and printing St. Rita’s.

Inspiration

I usually find inspiration from the structures I see around me. Sometimes, I fall into a Internet rabbit hole searching for architecture that suits my layout. This time, my search popped up the web site of a kindred spirit. The Railroad Connection sells 3D printed models in various scales. I was inspired by The Railroad Connection “Brownstone Building Brooklyn NY”

Design

I create my own designs tailored for specific locations on my layout and the capabilities of my 3D printer. I use the free SketchUp2017 program for most aspects of the design and use the free Blender program for final processing and export as a .STL file that can be printed.

Screen Shot of SketchUp Model

Row of Apartments

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