Train Tuesday P77: Dueling Engines

Good news  – you’ve made it to another Train Tuesday! And believe it or not, this is our 77th entry for all things Hovertrains. We’re pretty proud that we’ve been able to keep those engines a hoverin’, so let’s get to know our newest addition!

With so many 3D-printed Hovertrain DnD blog entries under our belts, we’re getting to do more “extra” content that just makes this new and exciting campaign setting for The Forgotten Rails that much juicier. We’re really expanding our imaginations now that we’ve got all “the dirty work” done, and that’s exciting!

Today, we’re cracking the champagne bottle on another locomotive to accompany our inaugural engine, which we released waaaaay back in September 2024. It was our very first 3D print on this amazing ride, and thankfully, we were lucky enough to get Laughing Bear Games to color it up for us.

We’re pretty stoked to have options when selecting our lead engine for a new DnD encounter, and we’re not even done, as Aether Studios has several more to choose from – living the dream, y’all…living the dream.

So, once again, our 3D printing pal Aether Studios provides all the FDM tools we need to expand our steampunk rail lines. This thunderous engine is from their slick Onasan Line set. This particular Hovertrain batch of STLs is a must-own.

A nervous DM Ben picked up a brush and some Army Painter Speedpaints and was shoved up to the painting plate by his teammates. Arkansas Adam from Laughing Bear Games is a professional, so go easy on poor DM Ben here. He tried his best and wanted to get this Dwarven Locomotive into service as quickly as possible. Arm’s length rule for the win. 😉

He really likes to convey what a messy business Hovertrains can be, as their raw power makes it a dirty job, but someone’s got to pull it. Right?! At least, that’s his excuse whenever he notices some less-than-perfect paint lines.

We really liked the idea of doing some stark contrast here by utilizing Basilicanum Grey (Citadel Contrast) and Flesh Tearers Red (Citadel Contrast). This color combo has such a great intimidation vibe to it! Plus, we always use Google Images as inspiration, and we saw some cool locomotives with this same sorta color scheme.

Then we just utilized Army Painter Enchanted Steel Speedpaint for the added armor plating, then dropped in some Fanatic True Chrom for the engines and True Copper for some subtle accents. Lastly, the underbelly is our go-to DecoArt Black Pearl silver-ish color from our original paint tests. We always like to add a few dry brush streaks of that Fantatic True Chrome to help illustrate the raw power of its engines.

This creative Hovertrain engine also has this fun observation perch for its cool Construct Driver, who guides our mighty train to its next destination. Aether Studios constantly innovates and crafts new, subtle features like this to help immerse the players in the setting.

Here’s the best part: now that we have two mighty locomotives in our Hovertrain fleet, we must name ’em, right?! Besides, nicknames are such darn fun.

So, let’s talk buzz words:

• Inaugural
• Freedom
• Powerful
• Mighty
• Fast
• Exploration

And we’ve got some catch-up work here as we need to name both engines, so we’re firing on all cylinders for our campaign.

We’ll call the initial locomotive “Horizon,” and our newest creation will be dubbed “Velocity.” Those buzzwords describe our mighty engines rather well and should be memorable for our players.

Here are the other engine names we put on the 3DRPG Studios’ whiteboard.

• The Navigator
• Velocity
• Wayfinder
• Lumina
• The Starlight Express
• Celestial Skimmer
• The Iron Wanderer
• Pegasus

It’s a pretty good mix, right? We definitely plan to print another Hovertrain engine or two, so it’s nice to have these runner-up names in our back pocket.

Until next time!