Great Northern Sand Tower


twforeman

twforeman

Certified Great Northern Nut
The Great Northern had a very distinctive sand tower design. It was mostly made of 3/8" 3" x 3" angle iron and a lot of straps.



As far as I know, there only exists a limited brass run of these towers because the parts are so small.

Luckily for me, the Great Northern Railway Historical Society published a reference sheet on these towers (#398) that has a full set of drawings in it.

One of the reasons I purchased a 3D resin printer was because I wanted to make these towers. It took me quite a while to make the 3D model, but it's done, including the 1000's of .012" diameter rivet heads.

I got my first mostly successful print last night. I need to tweak the tower a little bit and add some more supports for printing, but I think this is going to turn out great when it's done.

This is the tower structure - note there are still printing supports attached.


This is the bottom of the tank (it's upside down in this picture). I tweaked the light levels a bit to bring out the rivets.


This is the top of the tank. It's not a great photo.


And here is the frame that goes on the top of the tank. Still has the printing supports on it as well.


I still need to finish up a few parts - the sanding nozzles and some others. But I'm excited about this project.
 
Its amazing what I have seen on line for 3D printed parts now. I considered a 3D train station from Gold Rush Bay at a steal of a price, but was too western feel for my train station I wanted, but would luv to have gotten my hands on it to see how much overspray sanding would have had to be done.
www.goldrushbay.com

Gold Rush Bay Victorian Train Miniatures HO Scale

Train Railroad Layout designs meant for modelers and miniature train enthusiasts. HO Scale, 1/87 scale, miniature dollhouse models. San Francisco Victorians. Italianate, Stick Style and Queen Anne houses and buildings. Theme is Gold Rush western United States during the Turn of the Century.
www.goldrushbay.com
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I wish the pictures were bigger, but I think those are FDM printed. You see a lot more layer lines with FDM vs. resin.
 
Here are the four parts I currently have modeled assembled.


I have a new tower and upper frame printing that I hope will turn out a little better, but I'm pretty happy with how it looks so far.
 
That is incredibly awesome! Holy cow! How long did it take to print?

I bet if ya share that with the historical society some people may want to buy them from ya?

Job well done I cannot wait to see it painted and weathered!

Great job!
 
What did you use to figure out? I mean there's a program that comes with the printer. If so do you have a screen shot with your calculations etc.
George
 
Alcomotive said:
That is incredibly awesome! Holy cow! How long did it take to print?

I bet if ya share that with the historical society some people may want to buy them from ya?

Job well done I cannot wait to see it painted and weathered!

Great job!
Click to expand...
It takes about 22 hours to print the tall tower.

I'm planning on selling them - I expect the GNRHS people will like them. :)

I'm still tweaking the design a little to make the prints come out like I want them and then I need to figure out the piping and such, but it's close.
NYC_George said:
What did you use to figure out? I mean there's a program that comes with the printer. If so do you have a screen shot with your calculations etc.
Click to expand...

I used the Fusion360 CAD package to make a solid model of the parts. I used the drawings from the GNRHS reference sheet.

The program that comes with the printer is really just for turning the solid model into the code to print it. You can do some rudimentary design in some of the printer programs but I would not attempt this model.
 
I ordered some "engineering" resin that is supposed to be less brittle, so we'll see how that goes when it gets here.

I just assembled the parts that I have and hit them with some aluminum spray paint and ho-lee-cow does it look good, if I do say so myself.

Adding the 100's of tiny rivets was totally worth the effort because the paint makes them POP on the model. I can't wait to take some photos in the morning to show you.

I'm really chuffed, as the British say.
 
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