Episode 7

What's new, 3d Printing and savings other than money!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:26

This is Brian Johnson, and with me as always is Jim Fellows.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

I thought you were gonna say my name then today you caught me off guard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

And we're the Frugal Mago Railroads. And here's podcast number seven. Didn't think we'd make it this far.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

I was wondering if we would ever make it this far. I I I I had my doubts. Not not really my doubts, but I was wondering when we started this if we'd keep keep with it. Um because one of the things we have to do, we don't have to, but we like to get together face to face. And we live about an hour apart, give or take the traffic. Give or take the traffic, yeah. Yeah, so you know, it's uh um, you know, weekends or you know, evenings are tough, but weekends type of thing, and finding time in between stuff, snowstorms.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

No more, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Yeah, it uh it's the end of March, it's the 28th when we're recording this, right? It's the 28th. Um and the sun is shining in uh in New England, so that's a good sign. Um I do have a tiny bit of snow in my backyard, but it should be gone soon. Um so that's that's you know, people might say that's the end of modeling season coming up, but uh I like modeling year-round, so that's that's not an issue for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Well, it's it works because you're a basement modeler, and the basement's gonna be cooler than the hot summer temperatures.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

That is true. I run a dehumidifier down there so it keeps it dry too, so it's it's it's nice down there in the summer, so even when it's hot, I can go down there um and not be uncomfortable. Whereas in the winter it can get kind of chilly down there, and yeah, even if I run a little space heater something where I'm working, it it takes the edge off, but it's it's not a lot of fun. Yeah. Um, but whatever. We deal with it, we all have our own ways of doing things.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Right, exactly. You know, and that's the one of the aspects of the hobby, which is great, you know, if you're just you're not tied into like I must do it this way, right? You can just do it whenever you want.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

That's right, that's right. But I do find the uh the more I do it, the more I get done. So, you know, uh yeah, it is weird that way. That's really annoying. That is uh I got some friends who like to say, you know, do something every day or spend 15 minutes a day on it, which is not a bad idea.

SPEAKER_03 2:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

Uh I wish I was I used to be more disciplined, but now lately, I don't know. Um getting old, you know, tired when I get home from work.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Gotta go home, you know, yeah, take a nap. Take your pre-dinner nap.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, none of that. Um as we normally do, I thought we'd kick off with some new product ideas coming out. I know uh Brian's kind of excited by a couple of them.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Yeah. Um, I'm interested to see the new Walther's Amphleets. Um just kind of curious. You know, they were the classic Walters LED sleds, terrible trucks and whatever, but their new trucks, they're new proto stuff and whatever. Uh they look good from what I've seen. Um and it's nice to see contemporary passenger being released again. Uh Bachman's got theirs and their silver series is great. And I hear, you know, they're coming out with sevens, which means that Bachman will have released uh Amphleets and whatnot in seven faster than Amtrak has.

SPEAKER_02 3:57

Well, that's that's you know, it's easier to paint those little itty bitty cars.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

That's right. Um but uh some competition is good and having some options are good, uh, even though they don't quite match per se. But uh we do need some good competition in the space. That's what helps keep prices down.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

Yeah, yeah, I I think it's definitely uh the the way to go. Um little little competition there is never a bad thing. Um I have some of the old Walther's sleds as you speak of, and uh we're gonna cover some 3D printing later on, and I'm gonna mention what I I did a little work to make those better. Um also uh Repito announced a couple different things, they're gonna do another run of their LRCs, which was made for uh via rail. Yep. Um Amtrak had some released a set or two. Um so they'll be available in both paint schemes. I think you have a little time to check that out. I think they just announced it a couple days ago, so that's interesting. Um for you guys who are a big fan of the uh the model railroad, the Virginia in Ohio, which is not a real railroad, but uh um Alan McClellan. I think so. Yeah, um one of the pioneers in modern railroad operations when it came to staging yards. Yeah, and another one of his things was good enough. You know, it doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be super detailed, but something that looks good running on the layout because again, I think he enjoyed running more than uh super detailing stuff. And so uh Repito's gonna come out with uh in combination with a company called Home Shops, and they're gonna have uh VO painted FAs. There you go. So something a little different. So if you guys like that kind of thing, uh they're coming out with that. I know Home Shops has done some other like railroads too, uh especially on the freight car end. Um you know, Allegheny Midland, the um which is yeah, Tony Custers uh original layout when he was with the RMC before he went and modeled uh the nickel plate more prototypically. But uh that's some that's some neat things, you know, model railroad prototypes.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Yeah. Which, you know, and that used to be quite popular, actually. There was a lot of people who, you know, their home railroad, they would do like runs with Athern or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:22

I think Train Miniature used to do a lot of those too before Walters bought them out. Yeah, um, but uh I think too, it was a good reason back before there was so many things available now, um, that you know, modeling a specific railroad was difficult. Yeah, but you could make a freelance railroad and you could pick and choose what was available out on the marketplace, so um, which makes sense. Uh, I'm I'm a good way to go, and there's still people doing it, and some beautiful layouts like that. Um so that that's a couple of things they're coming out with. Um, and kind of in relationship to that is uh scale trains. I was listening to a uh a discussion with uh one of the gentlemen from Scale Trains. I don't know if it's an owner or one of the principals or what it was of, but uh they're doing a series of business cars. They've got a theater car out used by I think it I think it's based off one that Conrail had, and then it's now with CSX, but I think other railroads have similar ones, so they're painting them in like that. But one thing they did, which I thought was really cool, was they contacted Rapido. So when they did the Conrail version in the green business car scheme, they used the same paint to match the green that uh Rapido uses on their E8, executive E8. So I was like, well, that's cool, so they'll match. So I like to see that intercompany relationship.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Yeah, and that's that's really good, and it shows that they're willing to not be a hundred percent proprietary, you know, being able to share that stuff just uh because you said that uh we were chatting about this earlier. You said that you know Rapido was not planning on releasing that car, like you know, we're not gonna make that car.

SPEAKER_02 8:04

Yeah, that's kind of again, it's a one-off car where you know a railroad would own one, and so how many you're gonna sell? It's not like a coach or something like that where you might sell somebody 10 or 15 of them, even.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

Um a willingness to share, you know, paint data and whatnot, that's that's good.

SPEAKER_02 8:21

Yeah, because uh I know some of the complaints over the years have been you buy the passenger cars from one company and you buy the locomotives from another, and or even buying passenger cars, same passenger cars from different from different and the colors don't match. I remember one in particular, Northern Pacific green is one of those that seems to have issues. Um that people were you know complain that this guy's there no one, you know, a little different. You can say, well, you know, cars do fade differently and stuff over time, but yeah, after drastically, it's it's it's hard to see. Um, you know, and then I know Rapido is coming out with uh some reruns of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

And um didn't you say they were doing some heritage units?

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Yeah, the P32s, which is the uh Metro North Metro North. Uh Amtrak used them too. They they have third rail equipment so they can run into Penn Station in New York. Uh yeah. Yeah. To New York. The Grand Central Station, thank you. I was gonna say New York Central Station. Yes, that's not right. Grand Central Station, um, under electric, under third rail power. And they're gonna be doing, you know, the typical Metro North and Amtrak units, but they're also doing some of the uh uh heritage units. I know there's at least uh two different um New Haven, right? New Haven, yeah, both the Green, which is a newer one, and a McGuinness that they've done a while, um, that Metro North has done for a while. So uh they're doing those. Uh there might be even be a New York Central one, I'm not a hundred percent sure.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

I'm I'm excited about this because you know, one of the railroads that I collect model is the MBTA here in the Boston area. And they um recently released a bunch of heritage units. So there's a there's a McGuinness, New Haven, there's a uh New York Central, there's a Boston and Maine, and then the like the original T scheme. So there's like four of them out there right now. So it would be nice to be able to get those, you know, speaking from a purely collector standpoint.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

Yeah, that's kind of neat. That is kind of neat. I like I like that because uh gives you some throwback. And then if you wanted to be that guy that said, Well, the Boston of Maine survived into the 2000s, that's right. I can run that. And hey, nothing wrong with that.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Um those schemes really do look good on the P32s and the F-40s, uh, especially the New Haven McGuinness on that. Yeah, they translate well.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

It's it's surprising. Um one interesting thing uh about this is I think some of these look better because I think the paints and materials used are so much better than when these locomotives were originally painted or the the original painting schemes came out in the 50s and 60s. Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

So uh you know, I think they look very sharp, uh the heritage units on uh running around here. Um what else we got? Um, repeat I will continue. Uh the LRCs.

SPEAKER_02 11:21

We yeah, we mentioned those. Oh, that's all right, never mind. That's all right. They're also doing a re-release of FL9s, yes. Um, and with that, they're gonna do the New Haven repainted, I think at least eight units over time because they needed painting. Yeah. Um, and there are some variations on that. So if that floats your boat, that's good. You know, they're minor. I mean, if you took a quick glance, you might not notice it. Well, one thing that isn't minor, it's a different color red. It's a little darker. Um, it is noticeable. Probably if you if you didn't have them next to each other, you'd say they look the same, but if you put them next to each other, they're they're different. I don't know why. I don't know if they had a better deal on paint, whatever. Whatever. You know, um the New Haven was broke at the time, so I have no idea.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

What color red you got there? Oh, I got some of this left over. Oh, we'll take it.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

Yeah, you know, so I I don't quite know the the full story on that. But uh, you know, again, variation is cool, it's fun.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

Um Walthers recently re-released some CP rail F7s uh with the nice winterization hatches and everything intact, but they released a uh an A B set, and some of you may remember an old movie, it was called Silver Streak, starring Gene Wilder and uh Richard Pryor. And uh they released it and they released the number that they used that F7 to convert into the AMROAD. So it's like it's 4077 or something like that, but they haven't released the other A unit that was used, so uh you can't quite convert that consist over. Um, but I think it was funny. A friend of mine who's really wanted to model that for a while, and uh is like, yeah, you only released one, I want two.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

And that's another funny collector series because uh again, another arrow that didn't really exist, only in a movie. Yep. Um they use Canadian equipment to model an American train.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

That's because Amtrak said no.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

Yeah, well, you know, when you're gonna crash a train, maybe you don't want them to use your stuff. I I can't I can't say that they're wrong. Yeah. Um but uh believe it or not, Rapido ran a whole set of this back when they first did the Canadian.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

And that was back in the 2000s sometime.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

I always wonder if they ever actually got permission because they they apparently really didn't advertise it. It was, you know, so but we know people with a full set of it, and it looks really good. Uh, but uh yeah, trying to get that set now it's like thousands and thousands of dollars. Yeah, even if you ever see it.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

It's kind of one of those oddball collector items, you know. Again, if it's into it's the thing you're into, that's great. Yep. Um, so I think that's all I got for new stuff this week. I can't think of anything else.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Kind of what I'm what I'm interested in seeing coming down the pipe.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

Yep. Now, Brian's been playing around with his new 3D printer. Um, so we're gonna do an adventures in 3D printing little segment here. Yeah. Tell you what he's been working on, and maybe even supposed some pictures to the website. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

TFMRR.com. Uh so my company uh recently bought a Prusa P1S uh 3D printer. Now I've been doing tinkering with 3D printing for like well over a decade now, and it it really stuns me how good they are now. Um we unpacked it out of the box, we hit the calibration, which took about 15-20 minutes, and then we were printing like within minutes of that. Um it just it is literally, it works out of the box, and that's just stunning, you know. Uh so I wanted to do an experiment with it to go, all right, well, what's the fidelity on this you know, 3D printer now?

SPEAKER_02 15:19

Let me stop you here for a second. Now, what kind of printer is this? Is this a filament or a resin or so it is a filament printer.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Now, that's a printer that basically lays down layers of plastic. Um, so it's pretty good for rough details usually. Like if you wanted to print uh, say, uh a railroad station or an industry or something like that, uh, it would work very well. Um but getting more details like say, oh, I don't know, an ampleet, uh is a little harder. But I I gave it a try anyway, and it turns out that it's remarkably good. Um if I put a smaller nozzle on it, it'd probably be even better. But from your your standard three-foot distance, right, the the layer lines, which is the layers of plastic, kind of vanish. Uh, you really have to bring it within about a foot to see them and know, you know, kind of where what you're looking for. So I suspect on a on a boxcar it might be a little more noticeable because those are big flat areas.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Um so there are some difficulties, there's some stuff, you know, that didn't print correctly and stuff like that. But I was really pleasantly surprised at how uh A, easy it was, uh, and B, how well it comes out in the fidelity that's out there now. Um so I'm still kind of playing around with that. Uh there's some stuff that just didn't print correctly, but uh we're definitely seeing you know consumer ready equipment coming down the pipe.

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Yeah, that that's uh now can I ask you what's what's the cost of a unit like this?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Um I think we got ours for about 300 bucks.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Okay, that's that's doesn't sound bad at all.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

No. Uh you know, they regularly you know go on sale and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. Um and this is you know one of their entry-level printers, and it has a bunch of add-ons you can put on it, right? Like, for example, uh you could set it up with a filament changer. So you can print uh and can load up to I believe eight different filaments. Now, some of that maybe just want a different filament because it's a different quality, it's a different texture, stuff like that. But what you can also do is change the color of the filament. So you can print in full color.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

You know, now it's not the gradients that you're gonna be able to get. They don't like mix the the plastic or whatever, but if you want to go from painting, you know, you've got a uh a like a passenger car with a simple scheme, like we'll take the amphleet, right? I could load it up with you know, silver, red, white, blue, and print that amphleet in those colors.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Well, that's interesting because um it would make for a pretty bulletproof car, you know. Yeah, you couldn't, you know, you wouldn't damage the the quote unquote paint job on it if you did something like that.

SPEAKER_01 18:21

I don't know how great it would look, but now obviously, you know, paint matching is probably not going to happen, right? Right. So you you know you're not gonna get the exact red, you're not gonna get the exact colors. But I've seen some people who have been printing some heavyweight cars that have those, you know, stripe schemes and whatnot um with a uh a filament changer, and it's been coming out pretty well. Um and so uh yeah, that's another kind of option, especially, you know, and we buy uh roughly a kilogram of filament, uh, because the filament's measured in in grams. Um you can get it, you know, good quality filament for about you know 15 to 20 dollars.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

A kilogram. A kilogram. That's about two and a half pounds, so it seems like a fairly decent amount.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

And for an example, the amphete took about 150 grams of that. So 150 out of a thousand?

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Okay, a little over ten percent, fifteen percent.

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Um so you know, do that math. Call it 20% for easy math out of 20.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

That's five cars.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Yeah, you know, five bucks a car, four bucks a car, whatever. Math is a good thing. Um you know, and is it perfect? No. Um, could we, you know, if you printed it in resin, which is the more higher detailed printing what you can get, which has also gotten pretty good. Um, yeah, it would be even better. But if you're looking to knock out, you know, structures and and you know, boxcards and whatnot, um you can you know sand them down or hit them with filler primer, you know, those lines are gonna go away.

SPEAKER_02 20:07

Yeah, I I could see it for for uh structures, and I think you know, again the multi-filament, you could do one color for brick, another color for windows and doors, and uh in a different color for the roof or something, or you know, um, even if you painted it afterwards, at least it would uh um especially if you're using it for a stand-in temporarily, or even if you don't get around to painting it right away, you'd have something that looked halfway decent.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Yeah, exactly. Um you know, so when you're looking at things like Lance Mindham uh doing his photo uh shots, this photo buildings, yes, you know, so he just constructs them out of foam core, you know, attaches photos to them, yep. Um, which is another way. So I I do think that 3D printing, because the number of the files for the 3D printing are called STL files for the most part, and you can just download them off the internet, you know, maybe like the Am fleet I purchased for I think it was ten dollars.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Um and there were many places and they're starting to get more and more, you know, H-O-N-O, whatever, right? Uh and when you compare the price of the car, so this Ampleet had an interior chassis, the sh and the shell and the diaphragms. The diaphragms, you know, move separately. You can actually even spring them if you want. Um, and it's you know, the the interior is good enough, you know. It's like you're uh if you wanted to go full detail, you could go full detail on them by adding whatever you wanted. But all you had to do was add a couple of Walters Proto trucks and some couplers, and you were done.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

And so the price of the Anthlete um would be about call it ten dollars a filament, plus the cost of some Katie's and the cost of some like Walter's Prototypes.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Yeah, the trucks would be the most expensive.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Honestly, it would be the most expensive. So is it good enough? Yes. Is it, would I take it to a Proto meet? No. No, I would not. But the possibility that we're getting into now, talking about, you know, making Model Railroad affordable, right? Is that you're looking at the strong possibility of getting an AM fleet for about $30 to $40.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

Yeah, and new passenger cars these days are hitting 100.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Yeah. So if you're again, the difficulty with American railroading is the number of cars you need to simulate a modern train or even an old school train. My friend jokingly calls it the X40 problem, you know, after the X40 class boxcar. Because you need about 40 cars to make a train. Now, if you're well on a small layout, you need a lot less. But when you're looking at wanting to run full scale or close to full scale length trains on a larger layout, these cars are getting expensive. And the filament and everything you're you're working on, if you did a boxcar, it would be well below it. Now you're now you're looking at you know twenty to twenty-five dollars. So it just keeps getting cheaper.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

Yeah, yeah. Um and again, depending on what you want to do with that boxcar, if you want to paint it and all that good stuff afterwards, which which would probably be recommended, you know, it it does bring back the modeling skills back in too. So it's it's kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

And the the the CAD programs that are used to design these models uh are free. You can use something like TinkerCAD or other stuff.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

Yeah, I've played around with fusion. I have the great advantage of my uh my son is um graduate of a degree in architecture, so he's very good at CAD, so he can help me on some of the stuff. Um and he's got me. I I designed some, like I said, I had some of the old Walther sleds, and I made a very basic truck, used the original, the same stuff, wheel test that came with it, and uh uh made it so A, if you they don't fall out, which some of the original ones did because they just used that spring clip for the lighting to hold them in. Um and they're not prototypical looking, very you know, if you looked at them, you're like, yeah, it's not quite right, but I tell you what, you put them on a train, you get them moving, and uh they'll they'll pull a train. You can get a train moving. I ran this at the my the original one trucks I ran at the North Shore Monerito Club, and I had a Rapido F-40 in five cars. Yeah, very typical train, wouldn't make it up the worst grades.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Yeah, yeah, I remember that. Um that should. Yeah, and if you're getting the point where you're gonna print your own like trucks, right? Um that knocks the cost down even more because now you're not paying for you know the Walther's premium.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

Yeah, you just need the uh the wheel sets the wheel sets, which are dirt cheap.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

So now you're down to you know maybe ten bucks a filament, two KDs and and four wheels. Yeah. Yeah. So now you're looking at like twelve dollars a car. So uh definitely something to you know keep an eye on. And I really do think that um with the production of of other people building these STLs, you know, other people building these files for and selling them for you know, comparatively relatively cheap, right? Because you buy the file once and then you print as many as you want.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

Yeah, exactly. I I think that's where the gap is right now is finding the file you want if you're not capable of designing one yourself, because yes, you can get cheap CAD systems, but the it doesn't matter which one you use, they all have a fairly steep learning curve, um, especially once you start getting into details and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

I I wouldn't say people are going to be designing their own stuff, right? But what they can do relatively easily once you kind of learn how to you know poke around in it, is take somebody else's file and make the changes you want. So, you know, it's it's not that hard to like put a new ladder on it or something like that, right? Yeah, exactly. Or change the ends from you know dreadnought to whatever, right? Yeah, change the roof design. Um, but we're gonna see this more and more, and on the flip side, you're also gonna start seeing, like we saw at the show, the big Amherst show, people who are just printing, you know, good resin uh cars, you know, going back to making affordable kits again.

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Yeah, resin cars or just the parts you need to customize your cars. I'm in the midst of building a bunch of uh reefers, and uh basically for the base, I'm using Intermountain R2340s, which is a pretty basic reefer kit. Um, but I can change the ends and the roof and a little bit of side detail, and we'll be you know making different cars out of that.

SPEAKER_00 27:11

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

And you know, it's relatively cheap and such. So I I think it's the way of the wave of the future to some degree.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Yes, for some for some value, either buying other people's 3D printed product, and there's there was a lot of that at the show. I think I saw a good solid dozen vendors selling either resin-printed parts or entire cars, yeah, or detail parts parts and stuff like that. Um and uh or you know, designing your own or downloading somebody else's work. There's a lot of people out there really pushing hard on kind of state of the art. And since the printing is now, like I said, it's out of the box. You know, yeah, I set it up, ran it, whatever. Um it doesn't have the problems of of previous printing of like, oh, I didn't calibrate it right, or the print head didn't work, or whatever. We've just been printing for you know well over a month now, and I haven't had to like recalibrate it or had any problems. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

Yeah, I I have one of the typical early beginner ones, and it took a while to get it set up, and you know, you gotta make sure the bed's level and all this stuff, and it's all manual adjustments, so it takes some time.

SPEAKER_01 28:35

Um yeah, that's all that's all but uh it's all pretty much gone now if you're buying like either Prusa or any cubic um for the filament printers. Um, and Eligu is another manufacturer that's more on the resin side.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

I I keep looking at the resin ones and I keep talking myself out of it because it's a it's a it's a whole nother learning curve.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Uh it's it's also, believe it or not, more dangerous. Oh, yeah. Uh the resin printer, the res it's the fumes are toxic. And so you have to have full ventilation. Uh otherwise you get a room full of death. So don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

Yeah, no. So yeah, I I also know that I don't have the time to devote to learn it, so I won't. I I talk myself out of it.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

One of the things every time. Yeah, every time. Yep. Um I had one for a while and I sold it because it's it's just it was messy and and whatever. Uh one of the things, however, I'm disappointed to find out because of various, you know, world reasons of costs. Um, there used to be, or there still are, many services that will be basically print on demand, right? So you send them the file and they print it for you. Yep. Which is a great way to get around, I don't want to deal with the printer, um, or I don't whatever. But the costs have basically doubled uh in this past in roughly the past year, um, for you know, reasons that we're all aware of.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Yeah, yeah. Especially uh if you're in the United States and getting stuff brought in what used to, you know, fly under the radar because it was relatively inexpensive, you wouldn't get tacked on with any uh extra charges now you do. Uh I can't speak for outside uh the United States, but I know things just aren't quite as simple as they used to be.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

We live in a much more complicated world. Yes. Um put it mildly. Uh yeah. So the the the online printing stuff used to be able to send it out. Like I had some stuff printed, it was like in South America, like Brazil or something like that, and it was shipped over, and it was you know cheaper than the people who were you know doing it in the United States. Now it's all normalized itself, well, normal, um, and increased because of the various you know, shipping costs and stuff like that. So hopefully this will come back to where we can get some you know mass market printing and knock the cost down so you don't have to mess with it.

SPEAKER_02 31:04

Yeah, that would be good because um again, a lot of people don't want to be bothered learning a new skill like that. And it is it's quite a bit, even if you're not doing the design work, even if you're just printing it, it you know, well, why jeez, why didn't that work? Or why isn't that brace there? It there's so much.

SPEAKER_01 31:21

Yeah, like the Amtrak, you know, the Amfleet, you know, file that I used, it was the printer uh software went, I can't print that, so it deleted the entire section of the car. Oops. Um, so I had to go figure that out, right? So it's I say it's consumer ready to a point, you know, um, as long as you're not, you know, doing complicated stuff, but it is leaps and bounds over what it used to be 10 years ago. So it's it's definitely something I think a lot of people should start looking into, even if they don't buy a printer, but understanding how 3D printing has impacted the hobby.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

I I think it's pretty fantastic. Um, sometimes it's just the the the manufacturers that are doing the injection molded stuff still, um, their prototypes of stuff, they'll 3D print and take a look at and say, is this are these files correct that we're gonna cut molds from? Exactly. And say, you know, something doesn't look right, that curve is off or something, something you can't see in a drawing necessarily. So, you know, um a lot of prototyping is done that way. Um, you know, I've worked in a couple in various manufacturing industries, and you know, the 3D printing really does you can sample out stuff and say, oh yeah, that's gonna work well, that works, or you can even use it for some uh one place I worked, we use it for temporary tooling. We would be, you know, we need this to plug in here to protect it while we're working on the rest of the stuff, and then we take it out right and either throw it out or use it again on the next one we build, you know.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

And the manufacturers nowadays are using those same 3D models to test their uh flow of the plastic into the injection molding machine so they can digitally test it before actually cutting the mold. So they can see, oh, nope, this isn't gonna work, half that boxcar vanished.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Yeah, exactly. Or, you know, we're gonna have you know a gap here or or some weird thing over here.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

So pretty much any modern product has been designed in CAD.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Oh yeah, in CAD, and then oftentimes using uh 3D printing to look at the prototype to see if to see if it functions correctly or is the right shape or what what have you.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

Um so you know it's been it's been fun. It was definitely a learning curve for me a bit, uh, seeing what failed and what succeeded, but I was pleasantly surprised, and I think that um uh I could definitely kind of tweak the the file, fix the problems, and print a good looking anthleet.

SPEAKER_02 33:58

Yeah, and you can use this for a lot more than model railroading, too, as we talked about. You know, what other other kind of products you have? Re uh repairing things, replacing things, making little gadgets for around the house.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Somebody designed a little widget that goes in my 3D printer to change the angle of the camera that's inside that looks at the print bed to make it you more useful. And it's like, yep, there you go. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Um, you know, and even stuff around the layout, you know, throttle holders, cup holders, tool holders, uh I've got a few things that hold glute bottles so you don't knock them over. Yep, you know, things like that, you know.

SPEAKER_01 34:37

Uh paint holders or you know, paint bottles, very, very common. Uh so yeah. Uh if you haven't looked into it, uh definitely I think now is the time to start at least learning about it, get your head wrapped around it.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

Yeah, because uh I know when I first read about it and looked at it, and I'm like, this can't be real. This uh, you know, it was uh called stereolithography when it started. Yeah. Um if you know anything what lithography means, this has nothing to do with lithography, so I don't know where they picked up that term. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

Look, when I first we encountered 3D printing, the one of the first 3D printers I encountered was uh what they called a uh sintered resin. It was a powdery resin material that was made solid with laser. And so the laser would would solidify every layer. Okay. But it could also inject a dye at the same time. So it was a way to get a full color prototype uh just by you know by printing, uh, which I thought was pretty wild. It didn't have great fidelity, you know, everything was rough, but you know, that's pretty cool. That is, and that was like a good oh lord, uh 11 years ago, somewhere around there.

SPEAKER_02 35:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:57

So leaps and bounds.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

Yep, yep. You know, and again, just like any other tool, it takes time to master. Yep. Um another thing, you know, we call ourselves the frugal model roaders, and I I joke, I said now sometimes that's a big fat lie because we've been known to spend some money on things, but uh one thing is is frugality can mean more than money, it can mean time. Yeah, how much time do you have? You know, if you're working full-time, if you got a family, um, you know, that takes up a lot of time. Uh got a house to maintain, uh, things like that. Um, depending on where you are in your career, you may be very busy at work. Um, you know, what have you got young families? Um, you know, I used to do lots of stuff, go to you know, coach Little League and all that good things, and and I would easily forego monorailroading things to do those things because I also knew those were finite, you know. Yeah, I'm only gonna coach little league for so many years and then uh move on.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

The industry knows this gap. So, you know, you start as kids with you know the Brio, wooden layout, chugging 10, Thomas the Tank, and you know, whatever, right? And then that falls off as other interests happen, you know, uh be it Little League or whatever. This is where the the kids themselves. Cars, girls, girls, men, boys, whatever. Um and it's a known fall-off because it happens right around 14, 15 years old. Yes. But if you start with it, then then you know, they know you go through family and you know you don't have the time. Um, but then the interest was kindled and then comes back when they when their kids start, you know, growing up going away or whatever, and you get that time back. And so the question is, what do you do with it? Um you and I have talked about kind of that 15-minute concept, you know, just like I'm just gonna do 15 minutes of work a day or whatever. Um, but it's also you know, being able to use those time management skills that hopefully you learned from your job, um to you know, make sure you've got the time set aside. But there's the trade-off of time versus money, and that's where you know, uh that's a for a lot of our hobby is what do you want to do? Because if you don't have time, but you have money, then yeah, you can go and buy what you need.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

Yeah, you can do do a lot of it uh ready-to-run equipment. You can uh all the way up to the fact that you could have professionals design your layout, and you can have professionals build your layout now. There's not a lot of people doing that, but it is an option out there.

SPEAKER_01 38:49

Yeah, I've got a couple of my social medias, one up in Vermont, one out in California, that they build. The guy in California, in fact, built a layout for an a uh energy company that showcased and he built custom structures of like, oh yeah, this is our our gas processing facility, this is you know, our windmills, here's our solar facility, and just a simple loop of track, but it was all designed to be portable so they could take it to shows, right? But he got paid well to do that, to make that that layout. So, you know, that's something you want to get into.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

An interesting thing, I side on that, there's a book out called Playing with Trains. It was written by a former F1 car racer, believe it or not. Really? Yeah, I want to say his name was Sam Posey. He also did broadcast work, but he also built model railroads for people. Right. And he also toured different layouts around it. It's an interesting book, and it he talked to different people that uh different philosophies on model railroading, and and some thought the the guys that took it prototype real seriously were ruining the hobby for the rest of the people that just want to have fun with it. But you know, it was an interesting story and a good read. Um, well written. Yep. Um, I'd recommend it. I I have it somewhere, but what was it called? Playing with trains.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

Playing with trains. Yep, yep. All right, I'll go take a look.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

Yeah, so you know, again, it's it's it's when all the ready-to-run stuff came out. I was one of the people that said, Well, this is just ruining the hobby, you know, this is this is model railroading, not buying railroading. Well, um, I if I had to build everything that I want to build to make the layout I want, I'd never, I'd never get there.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Like 50% or whatever, right? Yeah. I am all for model railroading being a lifetime hobby, but I don't want to spend my lifetime doing it, building it. Right.

SPEAKER_02 40:52

Yeah, I want to I wanna I want to get to a certain point where I can have fun with it. I can just enjoy it. Yeah. Now, there are some projects that I know most likely will never be buy it and never take it out of the box. You never see the light of day. So there's plenty of those that you can keep yourself busy with. Yeah. And if you still like building kits and stuff like that, they're still available, and you can go to shows and you can buy kits galore at a good price.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Oh. So I I gotta we gotta look this up, we gotta find the map again. There was a a gentleman there from Virginia who was selling kits that originally cost when they came out, like what, $15 or something like that?

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Yeah, now you can only get them ready to run for $40.

SPEAKER_01 41:36

This guy was selling these kits for like seven, seven to eight dollars a kit in today's money. And I'm like, okay, well, can I buy it all? Didn't have the money to buy it all, but you know, that's a situation where you're looking at one-fifth of the cost of a of a modern boxcar. And these were still good kits, they were they were Acura Scale, Intermountain. Um, so that's again that kind of money versus time situation. I would definitely throw money at that, um, and then just have the time to put them together, weather them, you know, things like that.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

Yeah, now I know if you haven't built uh an Intermountain kit, they can look a little intimidating when you first start, but uh you get a couple under your belt and uh they're they're not bad to build. It was like the branch line Pullman's when they came out as kits.

SPEAKER_01 42:26

Um not like we're asking you to build a Campbell's, you know, Craftsman wood kit, um, which I've I've seen some folks doing recently, and they're like, you know, it the end result is beautiful, but um, you know, the process is painful.

SPEAKER_02 42:43

Yeah, it's a pile of strip wood and wire.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. But uh yeah, no, um, everybody has to choose where they're gonna fall on that time versus money line. Um, but the more organized you can get, that means that you're maximizing the the result, the productivity of your time. Um and therefore, hopefully getting yourself to the fun part, or you know, building kits is your fun part, um, better. As opposed to, oh, I want to go work on my model railroad. Where's all my stuff? Yeah, where are my tools? Where's the kit? Where's you know, all my workbench is completely covered in other kits.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

Exactly. Or the layout has been now every horizontal service has become a collection area of stuff. Uh I'm infamous for that.

SPEAKER_01 43:35

Yep. It's it's nature abhors a vacuum, and the top of a model railroad is absolutely a vacuum. Yes. Um so that's kind of what we're talking about of being frugal with your time. Is making the most of it, you know, being organized and and knowing, okay, I'm gonna go spend a half an hour to build this boxcar or weather this boxcar or what have you.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Yeah. And and finding the things you like to do. Yeah. Um you know, I for one really like building models and kit bashing. Uh I do not enjoy wiring. I absolutely abhor it and will find somebody to help me because they'll push me along instead of me saying, Screw it, I'll go do something else.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

And that's another thing about kind of being time frugal. If you can find people to co-work with, uh, this is probably in but our more younger listeners, um, but hopping on a uh a voice server like Discord or whatever, uh, and being able to chat with each other as you're working is really, you know, A, it's fun, and B, it helps the productivity because you're you know, you're just kind of sitting there chatting with folks while you're while you're doing the work you want to do. Yep. Um and so and there are even like you know, co-working like servers and stuff like that. Um so that's another thing. It's just like you know, use your time uh and and figure out what's worth your time and what's worth your money.

SPEAKER_02 45:10

Yeah, that's and it's a balancing act for sure.

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Yep. Um what else we got?

SPEAKER_02 45:18

Um again, some things coming down the pike. We still want to do the future. We want to do a still thinking about doing a challenge um with a a money limit to build a module. We haven't quite hammered out the details. It'll probably be just, I mean, if you certainly want to build one, go right ahead, but probably just more of a theoretical you know, I'll spend X amount on some lumber, some wire, some track, what can I buy? And a locomotive for things of that nature. We might give you a couple givens, maybe you already own a locomotive and a couple freight cars, something like that.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

But um, maybe design it in SCARM or something like that, whatever you know, layout design software you've got. And the idea is to build a relatively you know functional layout. Most of this is going to be like a switching layout. Uh, if people have a want to do a room-size layout, they can. But they you want to be as frugal as possible. So, where are you getting your track? Where are you getting your locomotives? Where are you getting your cars, where are you getting your structures, how are you doing that? Um, and this is a sponsor, there's been people who have done it, but the most recent one I saw was over in the UK, where everything is cheaper. Um did a ch the one I saw recently, but they they did a a what effectively came out to be like a thirty dollar challenge. And that thirty dollar challenge, and they had a checklist of like, oh, it has to be accurate, the cars have to, you know, match, you know, this and the correct they're all have to be the same era and whatever, right? But thirty bucks to get a functional locomotive, DC, um, and like three or four cars.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

That is a challenge.

SPEAKER_01 46:57

But over in the UK, it's not as hard as you might think because they have uh several people who resell stuff and they have bins of just seven, eight dollar cars, right?

SPEAKER_02 47:10

Well, if you do you do the shows here in the States, I think you can find the same thing to some degree.

SPEAKER_01 47:17

Um so the idea is that you know, go and like uh get those, you know, those kits, right? Uh well, we're talking about the seven, eight dollar, you know, kits and whatever. So I think it's possible. Right now we're kind of looking at uh $250. Uh we might play around to three or something like that. Um, of being able to build a layout that kind of works. Could be a module, um, but like a switching layout or or whatever. What see what people can come up with creatively for that $250.

SPEAKER_02 47:51

Yeah, I I think that's a good challenge. Yeah. Uh we'll come up with some more details before our next podcast.

SPEAKER_01 47:58

Yep. Uh and the other thing we're looking at is getting some folks on the podcast to chat with them about what they're doing. Uh so if you have any suggestions for that.

SPEAKER_02 48:08

Yeah, I we've got one or two lined up. Uh, we'll make it a surprise though.

unknown 48:12

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

And uh we just gotta go and set up that email link. So yeah, that would be good. That would be good. Um so we'll figure that out. Uh and we'll go from there. So the website is TFMRR for the Frugalmodel Railroads.com. And we upload our podcast, links to the podcast, some other you know, articles and whatnot, and you'll be able to reach us through there as well.

SPEAKER_02 48:40

Sounds good. I think that's it for today. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 48:44

Thank you all for listening. Hopefully, you've listened for the entire time. Thank you for sticking around, and we'll see you in about a month.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

See you later.