The Railway in the Valley of the Mill

[gilfachphil]

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to take any! Hopefully Simon will come through with lots,

Phil

[nlc1072]

The station building is now finished and installed on the railway:

IMG_2747.JPG

The goods shed is temporarily in place to mark its footprint in the station area. All three buildings are set in dry mortar and levelled. I am looking for a damp night tonight. and from the other end:

IMG_2740.JPG

I made the tunnel yesterday, and you can see the its mouth in the distance. The tunnel is made from old bricks, with paving slabs for a roof. I am going to hide the bricks by cladding the entrances with stonework , and extending that to edge the cutting each side of the trackbed.

Finally a low level photo which shows some of the detail:

IMG_2738.JPG

The adverts were printed onto self adhesive photographic paper, mounted on a printed backing, and varnished. Just need some customers to occupy the seats under the veranda.

Trevor

I know it's a while back, but do you have any photos or talks on how you designed and built these station buildings? They're quite incredible.

Sorry to take so long to respond to this. I haven't been on the forum for a while.

I don't really know what I can show you to answer your question about the buildings. I think I have put quite a lot onto the forum about them already - and I don't want to bore everyone by going into copious detail.

At least I can say that things have moved on even in the last 12 months. A new computer has enabled me to use Autocad Fusion, instead of Sketchup to design the buildings. It still involves finding a plan for the original building and inputing it into the CAD software so I can trace it. Because it has to be built in pieces (maximum print size is 250 x 250 mm) the design has to be done with that in mind. In the end it still comes down to laboriously drawing stonework onto the surfaces and then "pulling" the stones out 1mm from the surface - to create the appearance of stonework.

Then it is a matter of printing each component and glueing them together as they are printed. That can take weeks for the bigger buildings. It all seems a bit extreme - and I don't suppose any one else is likely to follow my lead in making these large buildings!

Trevor

Thank you Trevor! I am most likely to follow your lead in making buildings this way, I made a whole N gauge (albeit small) layout from 3D printed bits and pieces. I have also just completed a G scale bogie coach. I have a print bed size of 320mm x 340mm so I should be able to print out some nice modular style buildings with that! I am only using tinkercad at the moment, but I may move on to some other more advanced software when the time comes.

[Trevor Thompson]

Well Tinkered is a good starting point, and buildings are made from solid boxes which are easily drawn in tinkered.

It is a good way to generate buildings and your bed size will lend itself to 16mm scale buildings

Trevor

[ge_rik]

I am only using tinkercad at the moment, but I may move on to some other more advanced software when the time comes.

Nothing wrong with Tinkercad. I've used it to create all my 3D printed locos, stock and accessories. As you can see, so far I've got nearly 1000 items created with Tinkercad .....

Screenshot_2026-05-12-07-39-52-798.jpg (354.71 KiB) Viewed 39 times

Rik

[SimonWood]

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to take any! Hopefully Simon will come through with lots,

Simon took 250+ so there will be a short (ish (hopefully)) intermission while I try to whittle that lot down...