Tim goes off on another tangent....

[wunwinglow]

Hi Dan,

the colour used was not that dissimilar to the Crimson Lake colour used on LMS (London Midland and Scottish) railway locomotives. There has always been a healthy rivalry between the Great Western Railway (GWR) and the LMS, so to see a GWR locomotive (a Hall class) which should be resplendant in its GRW Green and Black scheme, in something that looked vaguely LMS, was a bit of shock! So I was taking a tiny little pop at the LMS......

That said, it could have been a historical fact. The LMS were so impressed with the performance of the Castle class locos, they wanted to buy 50 of them, but the deal never came off. The LMS designed their own near-equivilant, the Class 5, which was a very impressive and capable loco, and they made over 800 of them; more than 5 times the number of Castles built!

It is true though that GWR engineering standards set the level for British railways; other factories made new locos with tolerances at the same level where a GWR loco parts would be scrapped. This meant that wear and tear was much less of a problem and GWR locos generally spent far more time working and much less time being repaired.

So many other factors had an impact on loco design and performance; GWR had access to Welsh coal which was much better for loco boilers than that used by other railways, for example. There are loads of good books on the subject, but the one I mentioned above (British Steam Since 1900 by W A Tupin) is a good primer on the subject; it turns up on eBay quite frequently.

Tim

[wunwinglow]

Hi chaps, a few more pics of progress so far:







More to do on the inside motion frame, then its on to the other frames, footplate frames and so on.

Tim

[Fozzy The Bear]

Originally Posted by wunwinglow

Hi chaps, a few more pics of progress so far:

Very nice work..... This is going to be a huge part count.

I can see from the 3D you're working card layering into the basic design to get the plate thickness. That'll kind of mean that the part count will exceed the part count on an actual locomotive OUCH! I'm kind of guessing that this is a long term project. It's looking very good so far.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Gharbad]

Originally Posted by Fozzy The Bear

That'll kind of mean that the part count will exceed the part count on an actual locomotive OUCH!

Let's hope the nuts and bolts aren't included :D

[The-EDSEL]

With all of this detail, How large/ what scale is this going to be??

[wunwinglow]

Haven't decide yet....... but probably 1:25th to match the other printed ones on the market.

Tim

[Zathros]

Wunwinglow, what version Rhino are you using? I'm still on 2.0 but just found I can upgrade to the latest for not too much money. I am saving my pennies. Your modeling is exquisite like always.

[wunwinglow]

Hi Zathros, thanks for the compliment! I'm using v4, if you can upgrade I would, there are many, many improvements over v2, although as far as the user is concerned it functions in exactly the same way. Certainly this project could be done perfectly well in v2 or 3. For paper modellers, the unfold routine has been hugely improved, and it will unfold a developable set of surfaces giving you the choice to take off each surface seperately, or, as we would wish, open them all out in sequence; exactly like a paper model! No tabs yet, but they are easy to add.

More pics shortly,

Tim

[Zathros]

Thanks! That would make things easier. John (Bowdenja) is helping finalize the ESKA 2 Ekranoplan so maybe I will finally have something to offer. I visited the other site of yours and judging by you work there I would say you are "slumming" here, (fortunately for us), really fantastic stuff!!