Train Tuesday Part 109: Trunk Trickery

Greetings, traingoers! Hop aboard another weekly installment of Train Tuesday and let’s see what The Forgotten Rails has added to its library of mechanized goodness. We think you’ll like what you see!

The holidays are beloved here at 3DRPG Studios in sunny Chandler, AZ, where the weather has just been exceptional. These yuletide tidings give us a chance to take a breath and get caught up on some critical painting tasks. It’s just the perfect time of year to attack one’s pile of shame! We’re going to feature a couple of recently painted STLs that we believe belong in your Construct library.

Longtime readers might recall that Waterdeep’s Omin Dran wanted to ensure The Forgotten Rails passenger routes had plenty of “did you see that” moments, so he asked the Hovertrain’s founders to build some mighty mechanical beasts that could be strategically placed along the rail lines. Dran is no fool – he knows people will talk about the fantastic creatures spotted in the wild. However, they’ll be placed in a way that makes it tricky to tell they’re not Corederite-powered.

This Hovertrain beautification directive introduces our first featured print: the Clockwork Elephant by the immensely talented mz4250. This lumbering mech is a free download, and it’s our favorite animatronic animal to date! We plan to try the living-and-breathing version as well (but those solid, smooth surfaces give us pause for painting).

DM Ben wanted to try coloring this 3D print, as he had a few ideas for what Elephant grey could look like. Plus, it’s a larger 3D print, and those are always much more forgiving for trying new schemes.

Here are his paint steps:

• Base P1: layer on GSW Slate Grey.
• Base P2: drybrush GSW Grey Mist Dipping Ink.
• Base P3: drybrush GSW Skull White Dipping Ink.
• Ears: FAN Barbarian Flesh
• Feet: GSW Temple Ochre and FAN Bashee Brown.
• Wash: Brown wash was so-so. Dark wash was a no. Next time, we’ll FAN Strong Tone.
• Finish with a very light drybrush of a grey.

You can also use soft metallics, such as ASP Enchanted Steel, on tusks, gears, and the tail to create a more mechanical look.

Let’s briefly recap all our mechanical animals that The Forgotten Rails will camouflage in the wild to look like real creatures to curious onlookers from their Hovertrain window seats.

• Clockwork Owl Bear
• Clockwork Tiger
• Construct Cows
• Clockwork Oxen
• with more to come!

Most of these geared creatures are the vision of mz4250, who has made all sorts of Construct creatures to choose from. DM Ben is considering a fun stampede encounter in which these mechs malfunction and suddenly panic. 🙂

The other 3D-printed miniature we want to share today is our previously featured Copper Construct (heavy hitters), and a Constable mech (ranged shooter). We initially produced only one of each because we weren’t sure how these would turn out. DM Ben loved what he saw and definitely wanted more of ’em!

In general, we have what we call our “Rule of Five” here, which means when it comes to exceptional enemy minis, we want to have at least five of them for encounter battles. And these last couple of holiday breaks in December give us much-needed paint time to knock out more of these fun monster mobs for future RPG gameplay.

We think these police patrols will look soooo fricken good within our train station scatter terrain by Aether Studios. DM Ben envisions numerous security-style scenarios in which these imposing types of 3D-printed miniatures will play a significant role. Besides, who doesn’t love running from the law in their TTRPG games, right?!

Publishing note: And that’s a wrap on 2025! We’ll be taking New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day off, but will be back at the keyboard on 1-2-26 (boy, that’s wild to type) with another DnD 3D print-post! Thank you to our tireless team and especially to all the readers out there who are following along – y’all are the best!

Until next time!