Welcome to our website
We hope that you find what you need here. If not, feel free to ask a question. No guarantee that we can answer your question, but perhaps we could steer you in the right direction. You can access the complete news article by clicking the 'Read More' link.
As you will see, we specialize in many different things. First our products are meant to enhance your railroad experience by adding details that cannot be found elsewhere. Next, if you cannot find what you need, we can dip into our bag of tricks and see if we can pull out anything. We are experienced in 3D CAD modeling, so we can do the model for you or we can help you do your own. We use a free service that is cloud based. In other words, it is available wherever the web is available. The URL is www.onshape.com.
You will have to register to use the site but that is quick and easy. There are many videos to help you learn about onshape and we urge you to make use of those if you choose this method. It is our experience in teaching beginning CAD users that there are certain terms that might lead to confusion. Like “rotate about an axis”. What axis? Or “extrude from the face”. What face and what am I extruding? But first, please take a look in our Products section and see if we already have what you need.
What about photography and video? We are not the traditional photography and video makers or producers. We look at using existing, low cost electronics to build what we are looking for. There is a wide variety of things that you can do like using different lenses, building the camera into the locomotive body so the lens is barely visible, using machine learning to navigate the layout and of course, transmit directly to your phone or tablet or computer. This all may sound complicated but it really isn't, with a little work.
For metalworking we use a wide variety of tools and techniques. Some of the tools are quite inexpensive; some are not. You will have to many to choose from. We make jigs and molds for many of our projects and we will gladly share what we have learned. We do a lot of work with tinplate. That is the material that you can get from old paint thinner cans that you get at the local big box store. It forms and solders easily.
3D printing has been around for a long time. The cost has come down and we are near the bottom of the price curve for certain types of printers. Other types of printers are also coming down as well. These have higher resolution, better parts and more options of printing materials. We make use of many of these enhanced attributes that I have been writing about in the Garden Railways Magazine on 3D printers look for High-tech modeling for garden railroaders.
The things that you can do with electronics and software are endless. Low cost processors, with very low power consumption make animation and automation much easier. You can also Integrate solar cells and get rid of those wires that get dug up every time we garden. Lighting can bring magic to your railways at night time!! Custom lighting is easy to do and with a 3D printer, you can make custom enclosures. In the future we plan to create detailed videos giving descriptions of how it works, how to use it and discussing the many finished products that we have.
This is going to be fun!