Hi Guys. Getting what one wants is one of the challenges and pleasures of this scale but I feel for the modern modellers who are too few in number to create critical mass for mass produced modern cars. This is supposed to be a builders scale, so scratch building modern cars out of styrene, or making masters for flat cast resin components may yield more results than waiting for a manufacturer to produce it. Modern equipment at least has few rivets and weld lines can be had from Archer decals.
Modellers in other scales, HO, N, Z and even T are designing their own motive power and rolling stock for 3-D printing through Shapeways ( shapeways.com) in the Netherlands. Just for fun I scrolled through their 73 pages of railroad items and found the following: a 64-foot mechanical reefer; a whale belly tank car; Trinity 53 foot gon; a mill gon, a NS high side gon; and a number of modern hopper car designs. In motive power, someone has created a GP-38 body kit, a BQ 23-7 whatever that is, and a Fairmont speeder static model. Other items that caught my interest, although not modern, are Fox trucks, a D-8 Caterpiller tractor, a Scenic Cruiser bus, Leslie rotary snowplough, and machine shop tools. It's also worth looking in Shapeways' vehicles catalogue for such things as late 40s IH trucks and 1:64 sprint cars. Nearly all of what I've mentioned is listed in other scales, but the guy who runs Shapeways has told us (S Scale Workshop) that anything listed can be printed out in S scale. Worst case scenario you have to do some extra detailing, and add ladders, brake gear, trucks, couplers, paint and decals, but hey, it beats starting from scratch. We ordered some double archbar truck frames in S from Shapeways and they're quite presentable, although not too free rolling. Just some thoughts that might be worth exploring. In fact I'm sure there are some computer savvy guys on this list who could be capable of creating their own files for cars that they want. Cheers Jim martin > On September 15, 2013 at 9:36 PM Bob Werre <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > All this talk about more modern stuff in S, was, is and will be a moot > thing---until a market for it is developed from the wider model railroading > community! >
