3D printer projects - model railway building

3D printed G-Scale model railway building - weighbridge

My first 3D printed building is based on a weighbridge building on the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway in the UK. This was a new experience for me as it is the largest 3D prints I've done so far. This was originally documented in my blog and so I've included links to the relevant posts with more information.

The building is intended for a G-Scale garden gauge railway. It's actually a little bit smaller in scale and would also be suitable for 16mm or other outdoor model railways / railroads.

Real building near Winchcombe Station in Gloucestershire

The design is based on a real building at Winchcombe Station on the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Steam Railway. It's a small weighbridge building which is little more than a brick shed.

Weighbridge building on the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway

Complete model

The finished model is shown below.

3D printed model railway building

The building includes a smoke generator to provide the effect of smoke coming from the building chimney. This is best seen in the YouTube video:

There is also a version Christmas themed Model railway building.

Design Stages

The first step was in designing a brick wall, which could be used as the basis of the building. This is demonstrated in the video of creating a brick wall in TinkerCAD for 3d printing.

Placing each brick by hand is rather tedious, so to speed this up I used computer code to generator the first four layers of the walls. See video of how to use CodeBlocks to automate brick laying for a 3D model.

Once the main structure of the building was complete then it's a case of creating a doorway, window, roof and chimney. This is included in video of adding door, window, roof and chimney to the 3D print building.

I also added a smoke generator to give the effect of smoke coming out of the chimney

GScale model building being created in TinkerCAD

3D printing the building

Once designed the model has been exported as STL files ready for 3D printing. These are available from Thingiverse:

G-Scale model railway building 3D print files

The main part of the building is printed using FiloAlfa brick coloured PLA. The roof using dark grey PLA and the window frame using white PLA. The drain pipe and door needs to be painted using Acrylic paint. Clear acrylic sheet (perspex) was used to add glass effect to the window. The glass and window frame have been glued into place using superglue gel glue.

The roof has not been glued on, but instead left so that it is possible to access the inside of the building.

There is a hole for a smoke generator in the chimney pot, which is extended as a narrow hole all the way through the chimeny to allow the wires to be run inside. The holes needed to be widened slightly with a drill due to the inaccuracies of the 3D printing. Longer wires had to be soldered on to the smoke generator so that is could reach a suitable power supply.