As it’s been a while since I released a new product, and I’m still working through the Shapeways material changes, I thought this week I would finish up a project from a few months ago.

Back in February of this year I shared with you my designs for a 3D printed drawbar for my Yosemite Valley Railroad Log Cars, you can find the post here.  The drawbar was fairly simple and the test prints worked well; I just wanted to give them a proper test before I made them available.  Well, they’ve now done lots of miles on our modular exhibition layout, ‘Solent Summit’, so I’m happy to make them available; they can be found here. They can be ordered in either white or black.  This material stains or paints very well, so if you prefer a different colour I recommend getting the white.

As I said in the original post I had wondered if these would be any use for conventional freight cars.  I did some tests using boxcars fitted with N Scale Micro Trains body mounted couplers and right away I ran into a problem with length.  As these were designed to replace Z scale couplings the distance between the mounting holes is too small to use with the N Scale screw holes.  But I think adding 6mm will do the trick so I will be ordering a test set of longer links soon and I’ll share them with you when they arrive.