April  •  May 2005 • Vol. XXIII No. 4 • An Arnold Publication

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All Aboard for Profit
A Machining Job Shop Turns a Railroading Hobby into a Profitable Fill-in Business.

Story and photos by C. H. Bush, editor

A lot of kids grow up fascinated by trains and model railroads. In fact, if you didn’t have a Lionel electric or perhaps even a windup train riding a circular track in your bedroom when you were a youngster, you probably knew someone who did. But then at some point in your life the interest waned to become a fond memory tucked neatly in the back of your brain.

On the other hand, there are those who carry their passion for trains with them throughout their life. Try a Google search for model railroads and you’ll get more than a quarter of a million hits that take you to every corner of the world. There are even organizations for people who own their own full-size railroad cars. Probably the largest such organization is the American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners (AAPRCO), dedicated to promoting the operation, ownership, and enjoyment of the private passenger railcar. So, if you have a hankering to own and run your own railcar, that’s the place to go.

Somewhere in between the real things and the bedroom models lie the large scale models, trains built to run on 7-1/4” and 7-1/2” wide tracks. Of course, in order to enjoy grown-up toys on this scale, you not only need money to burn, you need a place to run your train or cars. But, in spite of these potential obstacles, there are thousands of enthusiasts willing to pay thousands of dollars to have a large scale, ridable model of their favorite train or car.

“I guess my dad is one of those people,” says Dan F. O’Brien, Jr., partner with his father in D. F. O’Brien & Associates, a Santa Fe Springs, CA job shop founded by Dan O’Brien, Sr. in 1991. “He has always been fascinated by trains and certain railroad cars. He’s a master die designer and maker in the forging trade, which for most of our company’s life has been our bread and butter business, but he also has a great love for his trains, which is why we have turned that love into a sideline business operated under a DBA called Rail Rider Supply.”

Dan Jr., who had spent years learning to run a wide variety of CNC equipment and teaching CAD/CAM programming at several local community colleges, joined his father and and became a partner in D. F. O’Brien & Associates in 1997.

“Prior to my coming on board, my father had been doing his work the old-fashioned way, with manual equipment,” O’Brien recalls. “But then a small shop near us got a CNC mill. We went to Westec and I told dad, ‘Look, if we buy a Haas VF3 and can’t get business for it, we can always use it to build parts for your train cars.’ That did it. We bought the machine.”

When Dan, Jr. joined his father, he branched out into job shop machining and prototyping.

“I had a lot of experience in job shop work and I had experience programming and teaching six or seven different CAD/CAM software packages, so when I came on board, we divided things up. He did what he knew best, and I did what I knew best. Now, after a lot of great years working at his side, I’ve become a competent die maker myself. I’ve also become a real train enthusiast.”

The Fairmont Speeder

In addition to continuing to produce forging dies (currently about 50% of their business), and prototype parts for a variety of customers (the other 50%), the O’Brien father-son team converted their interest in large-gage model railroading into a business that helped them through the tough times of the recent recession.

“My dad has always been involved in his model train hobby,” O’Brien says, “so when things got really slow in the last recession, we decided to make a model to sell to 7-1/4” and 7-1/2” gage hobbyists. In the west these trains run on 7-1/2” tracks mostly. In the east the tracks are 7-1/4” apart. These are trains people actually can ride on , and they can pull as many as four or five cars, depending on their size and power. My dad designed a replica of an old Fairmont speeder, and we decided to produce that.”

O’Brien says that “speeder” was the name given to the little work cars that you used to see riding the rails with guys pumping on handles for power.

“Speeders could carry a crew of four or five guys out to work on the tracks,” he says. “The speeders were light enough so the workers could lift them off the track to let a train go by and then put them back again. They eventually became powered, and a company named Fairmont was the main manufacturer. Today the job is done by high-rail pickup trucks, but among railroad enthusiasts there is still a huge amount of nostalgia for the older speeders.”

There is an amazingly large market for these grown-up toys, according to O’Brien.

“There are more than one-hundred clubs in the U.S. and Canada,” he says. “And, on top of the clubs, a lot of guys live in areas where they have some acreage. They have a private layout and private tracks. We make our speeders fully assembled and in kits, plus we sell spares, wheels, axles, hubs, you name it. We believe our quality is much higher than a lot of other models available. Mainly that’s because we have our own machine shop with good equipment, and we’re accustomed to building parts to very tight tolerances. We got killed along with a lot of other people during the last recession, but the Speeder helped keep us busy and made money for us.”

Staying on Track with SurfCam

When Dan O’Brien, Jr. joined his father in 1997, he not only brought with him a desire to go CNC and expand the shop’s services, he also had to make a decision about which software would best serve the company’s long-term goals.

“Actually, when I first joined dad, I was teaching beginning and advanced classes in another major software package at Orange Coast college,” O’Brien recalls. “But because our shop was heavy into forging dies and moldmaking, I felt we needed a CAD/CAM system that would easily handle the complex surfacing needs we had doing mold and die work. I really didn’t have to go out and study the various software packages, because I had used and taught a lot of them. I decided on SurfCam because, at the time, it offered the most advantages for doing complex surfacing. I also knew we wanted to branch out to do complex prototyping work, and the software package would have to allow me to write lots of new programs fast. My experience with SurfCam told me it would do everything we needed.”

According to O’Brien, SurfCam provides a lot of different ways to avoid gouging when doing surfacing.

“A lot of the other systems might give you one method of gouge avoidance. SurfCam gives you four,” he says. “Back in ‘97 SurfCam had a huge jump in surfacing over the others. When other systems had trouble running on the earlier PCs, SurfCam ran smoothly. The software was also far faster in creating tool paths for surfacing applications. Where another package might take an hour to produce a really complex multiple surfacing path, SurfCam would do it in five minutes. Which was great, because, if you found you made a mistake, you didn’t have to wait another hour to correct it.”

User Friendly Menuing

O’Brien, who still teaches CAD/CAM at the college level (now it’s SurfCam), says another reason he liked SurfCam then and now, is the way it handles its menuing.

“SurfCam is very good at putting on the screen only what you need to see,” he explains. “They don’t put a whole bunch of things you don't need to see. A lot of the CAD/CAM systems you see now now have a ton of icons along the top. One package has page after page of icons and is very difficult to navigate. SurfCam, on the other hand, gives you three ways to get to a menu. One, you can use hot keys, which most systems have now. That’s the fastest way to navigate. SurfCam lets you type the first letter of a command and you’re there. Two you can use the mouse to pick, which is the slowest. Or you can type in a command once you know the key strokes. My students like the way it works because with SurfCam they’re only looking at what they need to see. They don’t have to pick and choose and make decision about a menu full of things they don’t need to handle the current task. SurfCam even puts the least used menus on the last page. That way, if you don’t need to change anything, you’ll never clutter your brain with them. This has the effect of speeding your decision making and programming.”

Staying Up to Date

O’Brien has stuck with SurfCam over the years, buying all updates via the company’s maintenance program.

“I’ve never had to look at another package,” he says, “because they’re constantly adding new capabilities. I still use their Z-Rough capability to quickly rough out my molds, but I also use their Surface Reduction Milling (SRM) routine, which is designed for mold and die cavities, too. SRM takes a series of cutters and it machines in a series of steps. It changes cutters and then cuts the steps it made into a series of smaller steps, and so on. When it’s done, you have a nicely finished cavity. It’s also very fast.”

There is a technology battle going on between the various makers of CAD/CAM software, according to O’Brien.

“One minute one of the packages has something the other ones don’t,” he says, “but pretty soon they’re all caught up and then another package will jump ahead. I’ve stayed with SurfCam, because they’ve never left me behind in technology very long, if at all, and they’re often ahead. They’re a very innovative company, but in spite of their advances, they have retained the simplicity of their interface. My students still like it for that reason, and for its programming power.”

As cases in point, O’Brien points to SurfCam’s new verification capability called Machine Works and its new Velocity introduced at Westec 2005.

“Velocity allows you to dynamically manage tool loads,” he explains. “It allows you to produce smoother cuts and boost productivity on any existing CNC. They’ve added a new toolpath engine that precisely controls the tool’s engagement with the material. In turn, that let’s you be much more aggressive with your machining parameters. The bottom line is you cut cycle times. I can’t wait to get that upgrade. I’m looking forward to it.”

Where do O’Brien and his father plan to go with their company in the future?

“We’re comfortable at our current size,” he says. “We have four good employees. We’re staying busy and making money, and we’re happy. Oh, and of course, we’ll keep making Speeders and maybe even add another model or two somewhere down the track."

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