I am designing a freelance mining style layout in HOn30. I ready to scratch build some loco units using the N scale Kato Motorized Chassis 11-105, which I already have. I’m another one those back to the hobby after 50 years and all of my old parts are long gone so I’m looking for HO steam loco parts. Shells, details, etc. I’ve looked on eBay, Thingiverse, Shapeways, and Etsy. So far, either not very realistic and/or way too expensive for the amount of useable parts. And ideas for where I can find steam loco detail parts? I don’t mind spending $50 to $100 if I can get enough detail parts to make a couple of locos. Thank you, David
Aside from Shapeways, no ideas. I have been watching there, and anyplace else, for an HOn30 diesel critter end cab I can adapt to a bash project- which is stalled. All that I find are steam loco cabs and European style diesel shells. There seems to be a steadily growing number of folks who now their own printers, so maybe there is some hope....
Some of the old sources of castings are still available: https://www.precisionscaleco.com/all-catalogs/ There are others, just can't recall the names right now. However, modeling them in CAD and 3D printing is really not that hard a thing to do. My first such part was an air compressor, really just a stack of cylinders and cubes: and here's the printed part, oh-so-poorly glued onto the boiler:
