DSB MY 1146, Blender model

Created by Darren Wilden (dwinnovation.dk) · Version 1.0 · November 2026 · Licence: CC BY 4.0 (commercial use allowed, credit required)

A detailed, real-scale model of the Danish State Railways NOHAB diesel locomotive MY 1146, in the red and black DSB livery it carried in 1989. It is made for close-up rendering in Blender Cycles: both cabs are furnished inside, every window is real glass, and the bogies, underframe, roof fans and front ends are modelled part by part.

What is in this archive

The real locomotive

Model specifications

How the model is built

• Body: one continuous subdivision-surface shell for the noses, cabs and engine room, with crisp cut openings for the windscreens, cab windows, doors, lamps, grilles and fan bays.
• Front ends: the top headlight in its housing, the two lower headlights in their pods, the red tail lamps with chrome rings, the headstocks with buffers, screw couplings, brake hoses with their cocks and brackets and the hazard stripes, and the snowploughs.
• Glazing: real glass in every window, with the dark window rubbers.
• Cab steps: the grab rails and the step ladders under the cab doors.
• Engine-room sides: the side beads, the portholes, the grilles with their mesh and inner frames, the hatches and the door fittings.
• Bogies: two (A1A) bogies with frames, transoms, wheelsets, axleboxes, equalisers, traction motors with gear cases on the outer axles, brake gear with hangers and cylinders, sanding gear and the plough mounts.
• Frame and underframe: the sole bars, main frame, centre pivots, brake levers, hoses and main air pipe, motor ducts, side skirts, the equipment box and the fuel tank with its steps.
• Roof: the lift-off roof panels with their seams, bolts and lifting eyes, the two radiator-fan bays with fans and guards, the centre beam and the cab-roof fittings (antenna, horn and boxes).
• Livery: the red cabs, black engine room and roof, the white DSB lettering and running numbers, the builder’s plates and the small yellow labels.
• Cab interior (both cabs): the grey driver’s desk with its instruments, the controller pedestal with the timetable tray, the Knorr brake valve with the sanding valve, the green leather driver’s seat, the second man’s cabinet with two fire extinguishers, the teak side-window frames, the floor with its hatches, and the back wall with the door to the engine room.
• Cutters: a hidden helper object (CUT_BodyShell) that the Boolean modifier of the body uses. Do not delete it, or the openings will close.

Using the model

• Rendering: press F12 in Blender to render the active camera. CAM_Cab_A looks into the A cab from behind the driver’s seat.
• Moving or posing: select everything and move it as one. Keep CUT_BodyShell in the same place relative to the body.
• The paint moves with the model. The red and black boundaries are computed from each point’s position in object coordinates, so they stay exact on every part. Move the parts together (select all, or parent them to an empty); a single part moved on its own takes its colours with it.
• Lights: the lamp glass and bulbs are separate materials (MY_Bulb, MY_TailGlass), so you can add emission to light them, as in the dusk render.
• Other software: use the FBX or GLB in the export folder. In both exports all modifiers are applied and the hidden helper objects are left out. The livery colours are baked into a vertex colour (ExportColor) and the glass becomes a transmissive material. The lettering and the cab lining, which are finely tessellated to follow the curved body, are simplified in the exports by merging flat triangles, with no visible change.
• Game engines: the model is made for rendering. For real-time use, reduce detail as needed, for example on the cab interiors, the bogies and the underframe.

Accuracy and known simplifications

The model was measured on a dimensioned side drawing of the class and checked against photographs of the real locomotives, including camera-matched photos of MY 1146, 1135, 1156 and 1159. Details that could not be measured are reasoned estimates:

• The cab interior follows photos of a museum MY with the original grey desk. The interior photos have no scale, so the desk instruments are scaled from the speedometer and the pedestal, seat, brake valve and fittings are estimates of the right size.
• The engine-room door in the cab back wall sits on the second man’s side; no photo shows it, so its size is an estimate.
• The small labels and the builder’s plate text are stand-ins of the right size and colour, because they are not legible in any photo.
• The lettering uses the Liberation Sans typeface as a stand-in for the original DSB lettering.

Source scripts

source_scripts/ contains the Blender Python scripts that generated the model, numbered in build order (00_setup.py to 14_cab_interior.py, with mylib.py as the shared helper library). 15_cinematic.py builds the farmland scene for the renders from the author’s Vectron scene and renders the cinematic shots. They are included so you can study and reuse the techniques. They were written for the author’s own folders and reference images, which are not included, so they will not run unchanged. You do not need them to use the model.

Credits and licence

• Model, renders and scripts: Darren Wilden, dwinnovation.dk.
• Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You may use, change and sell work made with this model, including commercially, as long as you credit the author. Suggested credit: “DSB MY 1146 model by Darren Wilden (dwinnovation.dk), CC BY 4.0”, with a link to https://dwinnovation.dk where possible.
• The DSB name, lettering and livery are trademarks of their owner and are not covered by this licence. See NOTICES.txt.