Is there any trick to searching shapeways? I am having trouble. For example, I type "HO locomotive" and get HO scale dumpsters, a water tanker, a slag car--all sorts of unrelated things. Help? Please?
The search in Shapeways does not really work. As you have discovered, it is pretty random. There have been threads discussing this, and changes that we would like made but nothing has happened yet. An example thread is this one https://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&&th=1 2589&goto=60925#msg_60925 In practice you might be better off using Google try typing HO Locomotives and Shapeways and see what you get...
Use google, use 'site:' to restrict the search to shapeways and '-search' to avoid returns from shapeways' own search engine. So:- site:www.shapeways.com HO loco -search -- brings up 52 results.