3D Printed HO Scale Train Water Tower Diorama

This is just one of those projects I made to see if I could do it.  I wanted to test the limits of printing with a .25 nozzle to see what kind of detail and how small of parts someone can make with an FDM printer. I then took it even one step further and printed all of the wood pieces in actual wood fill filament. That was a bit of a printing challenge with the .25 nozzle and I did have to redo a few parts because of clogging. The water tower started out as just something to design and I don’t own a train set so I turned it into a diorama.

The finish on all of the wood printed parts is actually wood stain and then distressed by dry brushing on black acrylic paint.

Some details like the water height measuring stick where hand painted.

I used some sewing thread for the ropes (the ropes are actually fed through the pulleys too) and little pieces of raw filament for the counter weights.

This was the design of the pulley in CAD…

…and this is how well it printed on an FDM printer even though it’s that tiny.

After printing that tiny pulley I decided to try and test some other tiny parts. Not owning a train set I figured a hand pump cart would be the next best thing and easy enough to design.

This is actually made up of about 12-14 pieces and was printed in yellow PLA and then hand painted and distressed. The pump handles are actually just extruded plastic straight out of the .25 nozzle.

The silver parts were all printed in PLA and the wood parts printed in Hatchbox woodfill.  I designed this to be assembled just like a model and the overall design was taken from some plans I found on the internet.

I also printed a version in all PLA too just to see what kind of detail could be printed. The roof on this one was printed in a single piece.

This one was airbrushed brown before being distressed again with a dry brush black.

Again the pulley and rope detail as well as the level gauge.

The single piece roof detail can be seen here. The ladders print much easier in PLA too.

The tracks were also printed, the ties are wood filament but the rails are PLA. Once the ties where printed the print was paused and the filament changed over to PLA to finish the rails.

While the base was printed the detail texture of the base was not. Texture is beyond my abilities to CAD.

I added the ground texture by coating the base with spot gazing putty and patting it with a crunched up paper towel.

This added a nice rough texture simulating ground.

It was then airbrushed a light brown and shading was added with a darker brown to give more depth.

The gravel for the tracks was actually made by applying glue to the base and sprinkling sugar over it.

Once the glue was dry the excess is dumped off and the sugar was airbrushed gray.

The track were then glued in place.

I added some spare ties and a rail for a little more detail. I planned on adding a tree and some other landscaping but I ended up sending this off to Makergear so they could use it for marketing during a big trade show they had in Germany. I’m not sure if they used it or not but I just told them to keep it as I didn’t know what I’d ever do with it.  I do still have another tower so I might make another one of these some day…. just because I guess.

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