Getting off the STMFC topic a little, but I did locate at 1943 report titled "The Life of Rail" at the PA state archives last May. It was to inform various wartime regulators of the need to support higher rail replacement rates than was being allocated based on war-time material restrictions.

It includes the following for PRR mainline track:

Total miles of mainline: 15,787
Miles of 152 lb rail: 628
Miles of 131 lb rail: 2,155
Miles of 130 lb rail: 6,336
Miles of 112 lb and lighter: 6,668

So it appears that most of the heavy rail must have been laid post-war, since the PRR was expecting to get only about 50% of the new rail they felt was necessary in 1944 to maintain overall rail conditions.

Dave Evans

Walther HO model 53' 6" GSC flatcar, in PRR paint is a 70 ton car, in ATSF
paint only a 50 ton car. Is that determined by the trucks it sits on?
Thank you
Steve Shaffer

Anyone know of any HO or N scale decals that contain a Watch Your Step warning in white? I had a set of old Walthers with this for a caboose but naturally ruined one of the decals. Many of the decal providers don't have photos.

I think some of the Microscale decal sets have this. This was common wording above the pilot steps on many locomotives.

Sure would be nice to have an ALPS printer, or something like it (that can print white), to whip up something like this when you need it.

Arved Grass
Fleming Island, Florida

Well, for some reason I had no trouble enlarging the images, and the tank cars were as follows:

DNCXX 5509 8K gal. AC&F Type 11

TRNX 12001 16K gal. Santa Fe Tk-M built by GATC in 1942

DNCXX 2719 10K gal. Pennsylvania Tank Car Co. built in 1923

MTSX 107 8K gal. Standard Tank Car Co.mid-1920s

ECMX 502 8k Gal. AC&F Type 11

Richard Hendrickson

Tim O'Connor wrote:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/111007867594
http://www.ebay.com/itm/121060850109
http://www.ebay.com/itm/111007867635
http://www.ebay.com/itm/111007866997
http://www.ebay.com/itm/111007867546

Since bidding has ended, or the item sold, in all five cases, you can no longer click to enlarge. Not many of us can identify much in the little thumbnails provided for buyers to look at.

Tony Thompson

http://www.123dapp.com
There's a browser app and a desktop version.

There's also Inventor Fusion, which apparently is more targeted to mechanical work:
http://labs.autodesk.com/technologies/fusion

It seems like there's a lot of crossover between them, though!

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "Rob Kirkham" wrote:

I've not heard of it. Say more please . . .

Rob

I've not heard of it. Say more please . . .

Rob

well, I can't disagree with you Dennis.

To answer the "other software" question, I use two programs - both free - to
convert and scale a Sketchup file. So first I export a sketchup file as a
3d model. Then I import the 3d model file into Meshlab, open it and export
it as an STL file. Then in Accutrans I open the STL file and scale it. I
know there are less clunky ways but I learned this in the early days of
Shapeways services, when Rene Gourley was the only one I knew who had tried
it. He put me onto these softwares - they were specifically recommended by
Shapeways. They work, so I haven't learned a better way - which I know
others on this list have done.

Rob

--------------------------------------------------
From: "soolinehistory"
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2013 7:46 PM
To:
Subject: [STMFC] Re: 3D printing challenges etc.

--- In STMFC@yahoogroups.com, "Rob Kirkham" wrote:

yes - but if using Sketchup to scale the drawing to HO, you can also run
into the 6 decimal place rounding problem if you are not careful.
Dividing
most large numbers by 87.1 seldom produces neat 6 (or fewer) digit
quotients. Using other software to scale a full size drawing allows one
to
get around that problem. But drawing with the rounding problem in mind
from the get-go is also worth some effort.

Rob Kirkham

I think Rob's problem lies elsewhere.

Let me preface this comment with the confession that I am by no means an
expert on Sketchup... In fact, I've never used the software, and all I
know I've learned from poking around in their help files and discussion
lists, looking for answers to Rob's questions.

That said, the problem lies not in what scale the object is drawn in, or
how many decimal places entered points are calculated to. If one were to
draw the gusseted end of a hat section brace as a portion of an ellipse,
or a NURBS curve, extrude that profile to give it some thickness, lay it
over modeled sheathing with V groove edges, and preform the Boolean union
operation to attempt to make them one solid, the software is going to
preform all kinds of calculations to the limit of its precision, no matter
if the original data was entered to three place precision, two place
precision, or limited to whole numbers.

The problem is that while software operating with solids as the native
environment will either do the operation, or choke right then and there.
Sketchup, on the other hand, will happily trim all the surfaces and
display them, without any indication that the different surfaces that
define what you assume to be a solid do not have concurrent boundaries,
and you won't learn that until thousands of operations later, when you try
to convert the file to STL format. You end up with something that Sketchup
calls "leaky solids", which is basically the software development team's
admission that their product can't reliably calculate boundaries with all
points within the internal margin of error for concurrent points. It is
basically the difference between freeware, and software that will set you
back multiple thousands of dollars.



Dennis



------------------------------------

Yahoo! Groups Links

Anyone know of any HO or N scale decals that contain a Watch Your Step warning in white? I had a set of old Walthers with this for a caboose but naturally ruined one of the decals. Many of the decal providers don't have photos.

Thanks,
George Courtney