HO Scale Surfliner - 3D print and finish

[@CoasterFan2105]

Wow, that's really impressive, especially for a 3D printed model! Maybe that will finally be an option for getting HO scale Surfliner cars. Thanks for the video!

[@HybridHobby]

Great video, thank you for sharing! Hopefully 2021 will be the renaissance for contemporary Amtrak models in HO Scale!

[@colesrc1618]

Very cool project and great work! I really hope Kato releases these cars someday, I am also very glad that they are doing the viewliner car soon!

[@sdrailproductions]

Very nice work, love your Amtrak Pacific Surfliner and looks very nice with the SC44!!!

[@galahad6334]

That is just amazing! Im not really a fan of american trains, but watching you putting that coach together was very enjoyable! you did a great job!

[@Iron_Rails]

Great video and work! It is a travesty that we have not gotten Amcal or surfliner cars in ho scale. These manufacturers need to pony up!

[@terrellhoward5231]

Beautiful, I really wish that one of the major manufacturers would step up to the plate, I would love to have the actual California cars, but that car you have done is awesome.

[@ThePeninsulaRailfan]

Lets pray Rapido

[@darkraidersgaming7761]

@@ThePeninsulaRailfan Good news! Athearn's making them!

[@ThePeninsulaRailfan]

@@darkraidersgaming7761 odc about the surfliner cars

[@modeltrains1507]

A couple quick updates: I just heard back from Kato and they too offer their GS70 trucks for $15 on their parts website. (Rapido is $25). Also they expect to be taking preorders later this year (not necessarily delivering), so it's possible we won't have Viewliner II bags in hand until 2022. There is a kit already out there for the bag car, (Imperial Hobby Products for $70-80), but I will look into what it would cost to do a print of those too. I'm guessing I can't do them for much cheaper than that as a kit.

[@804titan]

great video .. great work... love the seat covers... i need them

[@ElevationStationProductions]

That’s absolutely stunning! I think these are a much more realistic option for modelers in SoCal compared to brass or just about anything else

[@blakrootz]

This entire video was incredible.👍🏾👍🏾👏🏾👏🏾

[@unionpacificshermanhillinn4076]

Looks fantastic, need this for n scale too

[@trainliker100]

Impressive work. But I suppose most now know that Athearn is coming out with what looks like a decent representation. I know the feeling of having made my own set (for a layout at a museum) and then now have it obsoleted by Athearn. I guess that's actually good. I had taken the Walthers cars that were Superliner 1 cars painted with the Surfliner color scheme like the three prototype cars like that running on Surfliners. Amazingly, the prototypes don't even have the big "Surfliner" logo lettering on the sides. And the blue only goes up to the top of the side, not part way up the curve of the roof. The Walthers cars are actually correct. I got Surfliner decals from Union Station Products and slapped the big "Surfliner" name on the sides. The more difficult part of the project was to modify the end of one coach to be a cab car and then install lights and sound. But the cab car looks great coming at you with those flashing ditch lights with the horn. That was my way of making an affordable HO version the easiest way (no painting, for example). Various HO modelers visiting the museum asked "where did you get that?" We even had an engineer on the real Surfliner say it looked pretty good (the train passes by our museum.) And from some KZbins I have seen, I'm not the only one to take that approach. But when the Athearn ones arrives, we will probably upgrade to it. My "hand carved" Surfliner looks pretty good, but the Athearn one will probably look better.

[@areakt]

On the contrary I plan to use my prints to make coast daylight variants of the cars that athearn will never do. Got to innovate or be out of business in this world so here we go. Lol. Last time I had a coast daylight for sale it was very popular so I think there may be some life yet in this immense investment in time and effort.

[@trainliker100]

@@areakt You have a point. I was in business for a long time and believed in the saying, "If you don't obsolete your own product, somebody else will". When you say "Coast Daylight" I don't know if you mean the SP Daylight or perhaps the Amtrak Coast Starlight. I have some reasonably good familiarity with the BLI SP Daylight cars, and how to make MANY fixes to make them better (most notably, making the articulated joints permanent).

[@truebras]

Nicely done! Second best to OMI cars. These OMI cars came first in 1999 and I saw at 2000 NMRA convention in San Jose. I was hooked since then. I've seen OMI F59PHi, but had no idea that OMI was releasing Amtrak California cars. During the show, they were taking orders and I could see that even back then they were highly desirabe. I believe that the price of each car was $275. I started to look for the Amtrak California F59PHi and cars. Initially, the price went slightly up due to interest in new items and hobby store mark up. My LHS at time had a couple of F59PHi and a couple of cars that sat there for more than a year. Going forward a couple of years in the early days of EB, I started to notice that there were frequent offers of those Amtrak California OMI cars. What I think is that most buyers bought only 2 or 3 of them upon the release and decided to buy more cars later or expected OMI make later runs, which never happened. With patience, I was able scavenge mostly over there. Surprisingly , most were actually at OMI price or even bellow. By buying and selling, I was able to make a correct Amtrak California set. The last 2, I tracked down in a store in Hong Kong. Then by 2005 on wards, prices just kept climbing. it look the sky is the limit for pricing these days. I was very fortunate to find those cars in the right time. I am glad that you found a great solution for the Surfliners thru that Chinese company. I used Shapeways and I m disappointed with their printing quality. Last time I ordered a pair of F59PHi tank cladding for Amtrak Cascades F40 NPCU. It came warped due to not careful removing of printing table. I think for printing HO stuff, they are not there yet. And it is pricey. Regarding your project, I suggest to add a proper space and floor opening for installation of TSU sound car and good size speaker in special in the cab car. You can use also the Soundcar decoder to control lighting. Last, can you make a video of your build up Walthers LAPUT?

[@summerfield858]

Great work! I know this is an older video, but have you looked into the resin 3d printers they have now? It is starting to look like you can do all of this at home now at reasonable cost. I am saving up to buy the Elegoo Saturn 2 next month, I plan on making DODX nuclear flask cars, rail grinders, Maintenace of way, and other stuff as kits. I am focusing on stuff no one else is doing and to see how it works out. I am also a highly experienced 3D Modeler so no problem there. Thanks for the great video!

[@RocktCityTim]

Beautiful result, thanks for sharing. I did notice that the SunPe model was resin printed at an angle to get it to fit on the print bad. Have you revisited this in light of modern, larger capacity resin printers? I would be interested in seeing if we've now moved into a realm for getting a reliably consistent print from a consumer printer like the Anycubic Mono X 6Ks ($239 06/24).

[@areakt]

Hi I now have a Galaxy 1 and while it can print several models level the time it takes to clean and remove supports makes it still attractive to have them printed in China where the labor costs are lower.

[@berkeleygang1834]

Very impressive. Not my era, but inspirational.

[@cacline72]

Athearn has just recently announced that they're going to be doing Surfliner cars in HO scale as part of their Genesis line, you can either buy each car individually or get them as a 5 car set with lights and/or sound.

[@areakt]

No offense but I think everybody knows that. I’m no longer offering printed surfliners for that reason.

[@Vman7757]

Thank you for sharing. Can I get more information about Sun Pe? Shape way is why I went out an bought a 3D printer. I can print up to 12 inch tall objects. But I like hearing what you said about Sun Pe.

[@modeltrains1507]

Yeah, not sure I can post the link here but you can google them. They have basically one print res suitable for our type of projects and once you email them they will assign you a rep. When you send them your files they will send you an invoice which you can pay with Paypal and then typically within a week of payment you should have your print(s). They use DHL for shipping which starts at around fifty dollars, but as I mentioned in the video the printing is so reasonable it makes up for the shipping costs making it much cheaper than shapeways. I'd love to see shapeways get competitive with their pricing though. I appreciate businesses trying to make it in America.

[@UPES2018]

Amazing!

[@drewzdrew27]

and now i'm more jealous, lol. Great work! P.S. I keep bugging Rapido about these, all are welcome to also bombard them.

[@pwhite73]

I keep bugging Rapido too! I think they would do the best job of good, detailed, accurate, and still functional models of these trains! I hope they take on this project. I want several more sets because my layout is themed around the current era from LA Union Station to San Clemente. I still have my set of the Overland Surfliner, I just need to get some track down and more models to go with them. I’ve already got two 3-car sets and 2 F59PH’s of there’s on order too.

[@osmanpasha_diy]

Great story!

[@northlanderdude]

Very Cool you got a link for this Sun Pe? changing out the trucks on your brass cars might help them roll lighter.

[@metromainline]

Very Inspiring

[@heidihobear]

Ok definitely want these cars

[@DO_NOT_HUMP]

Where did you hear about the Kati view liner II baggage cars?

[@modeltrains1507]

It was announced Dec. 8, 2020 on their Kato USA Facebook page. With the heading: "Coming to HO late 2021".

[@DO_NOT_HUMP]

@@modeltrains1507 thank you

[@mrm10199]

There’s been a rumor floating around that Athearn may do the Surfliner cars. It’s been floating around for about a year now.

[@areakt]

Yes I heard that rumor too. While possible the rumor began when they were developing the charger which was scuttled when Bachmann came out with their model first. So I suspect there is some bad blood now between the two companies and athearn may very well no longer want to do a model that compliments a competitor. But that’s just my supposition and we haven’t heard any hints on the original rumor in over a year now. Either way I’m not waiting since these prints are nearly as good as just about whatever we can expect from athearn or other manufacturers.

[@mrm10199]

@@areakt Athearn broke the news that they are doing there next run of Bombardier cars right when Rapido broke the news they are doing them. The war between the two is going to get very interesting since for the very fist time ever Athearn is doing the Metrolink cab cars with the correct single window and Rapidos version of the Bombardiers will be much more highly detailed.

[@mrm10199]

@@areakt Update they are doing the Surfliner Cars.

[@SwiftSystems1]

Great Video! Can you make Hyundai Rotem Cab Car in HO?

[@zobayer1]

Where can I get the trucks, boogies and wheels best for this kit. Is there anyone making actual sprung boogies for HO scale? Finishing looks fantastic.

[@areakt]

The best bet for GS70 trucks right now is rapido. They roll great. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a spring mounted truck for passenger cars only freight. The Kato ones do have rolling bearings tho.

[@360VideoNetwork]

Excellent video - do you think current 3D printers have advanced to the point that you would do this project at home?

[@areakt]

Hi I’ve tried it and while it is possible with my new printer it ends up being a ton of clean up so I would still use a company just to handle the cleanup and removing print supports without breaking stuff. I’m always breaking stuff when I remove supports! Lol

[@360VideoNetwork]

@@areakt Thanks - that’s helpful to know. I wondered whether a multicolour printer like the BambuLab A1 would be a good solution that would save the need to paint models, but it maybe the technology is still not there yet.

[@fredrick5152]

Athearn is releasing surfliner cars in august of 2022!

[@cooperreed254]

If Electrobook is watching this and he sees the full bridge rectifier he would comment good job.

[@AmtrakFlareon]

Must’ve taken a lot of skill and patience to make one car! I’m surprised.

[@fabianot44]

How do you hide the grooves between layers of 3d printing?

[@areakt]

Printing diagonally seems to hide the lines pretty well. It doesn’t show in the video or photos rally but it’s not as smooth as a traditionally manufactured car.

[@wolfyfloof4701]

If you were to print and paint the cars how much would you sell them for. Since the brass are really out of my budget.

[@nesmandan1037]

I’m sorry the chrome came out the way it did. Try adding a flat black first prior to the chrome for a more natural reflective new weathered look.

[@modeltrains1507]

You want a gloss black not a flat black. Flat black will leave a dull chrome look. Is that what you mean? A shiny new finish is what I was going for.

[@sidewaysonhighways]

I definitely wouldn’t invest in the original brass Surfliner cars. I do have some of the now discontinued Budd Coach body shells from Detail Associates; meant for Santa Fe, and I found one on eBay with all the body frame parts, and was going to send it off to shapeways for reproduction until you mentioned how expensive and subpar their work can be on these parts. I often hear that it would be more economical to just buy a 3D printer and DIY the parts at home. I guess it depends on how much one is willing to spend on one. I would be concerned that I would have to get a new computer that will accept the printer and software to run it. However someone needs to do something about all these discontinued models and parts. My thought would be to do the cars in the same shade of blue and silver as the new Siemens charger “Pacific Surfliner” as well as matching font and Amtrak logo.

[@boiseeas237]

If I had a 3d printer I will make this

[@regisbrooks8064]

Do ebay have Amtrak passengers Surfliner brass or Amazon let me know

[@CraftyFoxeMC]

That's crazy

[@michal_king478]

You sound exactly like the guy who owns the "The 8-bit guy" channel

[@louisl.8724]

What do you do about weight, isn't a 3D printed car to light, will you have to add weight.

[@areakt]

Hi yes I add two lug nuts one on each end over the trucks and the cars come out plenty heavy.

[@regisbrooks8064]

How much is Amtrak brass

[@FloridaAV-GEEK]

Is it for sale?

[@ThePeninsulaRailfan]

i choked when i saw the thumbnail

[@linesided]

Great video and was wondering why you didn't home print just before you said you were looking at a kit release. BTW - that background music is super annoying and not necessary IMO - I was enjoying your narration a lot more and actually left the video early because of the muZak. Otherwise really super@!

[@regisbrooks8064]

God blessed your families

[@amtrakpepsiproduct1605]

I honestly don't know why it's taking model train companies this long to make California cars. At least Athearn is making some, and hopefully they won't be limited runs.

[@Mr524Baja]

Reach out to me at Earnest Trains I would be interesting in printing these!

[@804titan]

where are you on Facebook

[@willberestartingthischanne9984]

Amazing!