Backdating Bachmann's Thomas the Tank Engine

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Looking good T-man. I have wondered how difficult it might be designing and creating for a 3D print so its nice for me to watch your progress.

Despite having ever so minor differences few would be likely to notice, I think I already prefer this over the Bachmann body (along with all the other issues you pointed out). Strange how you already changed him to blue when he'd most likely be painted after printing (unless you somehow found the exact match in Tinkercad). Assuming it works like in SketchUp, you could perhaps try placing temporary cylinders between the cab ends and then erase them, which should hopefully cut out the portholes on both ends equally. Otherwise, poke or drill them out on the physical version instead. Now that you've switched to 3D, do you think you'd be able to resize the parts for your upcoming Gauge 1 replica (or a British N scale version) to make things easier? In programs like Mine-imator and ModelBench, I've found out components don't stay where they were before rescaling, so I hope Tinkercad doesn't have that.

Thanks! The body is only blue because every shape has different colors, and when you combine them, they turn into that color. I think when it's uploaded to ShapeWays it just turns into that translucent white (for the Smooth Detail Plastic). And last night, I worked on it a little bit more and was able to get the windows cut out. I'm not sure that I could resize it to N Scale without having problems with the cab thickness. As far as Gauge 1, I might still use plasticard for that because it's easier to file and adjust it when it's a really big piece.

I got most of the running board done today:

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Are you enjoying your designing time on the computer T-Man?

Yeah! I like it because I can actually see where this is going for once, rather than just having a bunch of cut up pieces of plastic that I hope will get to what I want.

Thanks for explaining why you're not going to use the plasticard running board from the previous page (even though it already had wheel spaces on one side and both bufferbeams). I thought the 3D body was just made to help with symmetry and strength and the physical one would be half-and-half (like the cardboard Henry for my TOMY Spencer which uses wood for the running board). You said something about using Bachmann James splashers earlier, but I bet they will be 3D as well at this rate. Shame so few customers bother to build their own one of a kind iterations of items like this just because they exist. Totally awesome work.

Thank you! I'll measure James's splashers again before deciding what to do with those.

I got the running plate finished today! Now I just need to make holes for the wheels (these ones are just a guide and will be deleted). I also got the main body hollowed out, and put in 3D splashers.

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Wow, you are really getting good at that 3D software T-Man.