As promised in last week’s post I have a replacement part to share with you for one of Rio Grande Southern’s famous pieces of rolling stock.

The ‘Galloping Goose’ is one of those items that Con-Cor made, and made very well, which you just fall in love with. Even though the prototype was a narrow gauge rail car and this model runs on standard N Scale track it’s a great piece of modeling, particularly because it’s so small.

This ‘Goose’ is very highly detailed and on the front is the classic cow catcher or pilot and it’s this part that I was asked to make by a fellow modeller who’s missing one.

As supplied by Con-Cor the pilot comes in two forms; as shown above and with a snow plow, shown below.

The plow is a separate part which simply clips onto the pilot.

For this replacement part only the pilot section was required, so I removed the plow and measured up the pilot.  The verticals are very thin on the original injection-molded part so the replacement can’t be exactly the same: having such thin 3D printed parts would be very weak.  This can be overcome by increasing the depth of the verticals and making the sections larger, however all the main visible areas and mounting points will look correct.  As usual I produced a rendered image of the 3D model and below you can see the pilot from several angles.

The two pegs protruding horizontally from the cross beam are all that hold the pilot to the front of the ‘Goose’.  The two bars that slope upwards are purely cosmetic although on the real thing they are a part of the pilot mounting.

I will be ordering a test pice of this pilot in the next week or so. However you can order one already from the Shapeways site.

It is available as a single pilot here.

Or as a pack of two here.

The pilot has been designed to be printed in Shapeways Frosted Ultra Detail (FUD) and Frosted Extreme Detail (FXD) materials so the best detail can be obtained; after all, this part is only 10mm wide and 6mm high.

I can also make the snow plow available if anybody wants one although I expect it will not be a separate part but an entire replacement pilot with the plow permanently attached.

Next week I’ll have another small replacement part to share with you which will help step things up a gear.

With all my recent time being focused on my C-855 project, several of the smaller jobs have been overshadowed, but not forgotten.  So in the next few posts I’m going to share with you some of some of the small 3D printed parts that I have been asked to do over the last few months.

To start with in this week’s post we have some replacement N Gauge bolster pins for Graham Farish coaches and bogied wagons.  The bolster pin, sometimes refered to as a truck pin or bogie pin, holds the truck or bogie onto the chassis.  The pin allows it to rotate and navigate corners.  The pin has to be a tight fit into the chassis so it won’t fall out but still allow the truck or bogie to rotate freely.  This is achieved through the hole in the chassis being exactly the same size as the pin.  This creates a friction grip as the pin is pushed into the hole.   The friction grip is a stronger force than normal gravity and vibration can provide to remove it.

As always, I start with a 3D computer model.  This model is simple but it was important to get the measurements accurate so the peg won’t be too tight or too loose in the chassis hole.

Because these will be printed in Shapeways’ Black Strong & Flexible material and they charge by the part, I have arranged twenty pegs all connected to one sprue.

The printed parts came out as expected; I had already removed two before I remembered to take a photo.

Below are a pair of the injection molded pegs as supplied by Graham Farish.

And here is a photo of one of my 3D printed pegs next to an original.

The Black Strong & Flexible material does have a grainy finish but this is of little consequence as the pin is never seen once the rolling stock is on the track.  The material is also fairly flexible, as the name suggests, and this helps with ensuring a good fit into the chassis hole.

As a test, the pegs on a standard Graham Farish Mk1 coach were swapped out for the new 3D printed ones, which fitted perfectly.

The injection molded original has the same finish as the truck; as you can see below.

The 3D printed peg, apart from the finish, is exactly the same.  You can see from the shadow there is a slight gap between the bogie or truck and the head of the peg.  It’s the gap that allows the bogie or truck to move.  If you look closely you can see that the couplings have also been replaced with my 3D printed short Rapido replacements.

The pack of 20 replacement Graham Farish bolster pins are available here.

In next week’s post I will have a replacement 3D printed part to share with you for one of Rio Grande Southern’s more famous pieces of rolling stock.

As promised earlier this week in my usual Monday night post, I am adding this extra post to let you know that the N Scale Alco C-855 kit is now available on Shapeways.  I have finished all the etched brass testing and everything fits perfectly.

You can get the Alco C-855 kit here.  Don’t for get the chassis extenders and the etched brass Additions.

So now it’s back to the drawing board for the C-855B.