America's First Railway Locomotive "Stourbridge Lion" 1829 NEW KIT.

[Fozzy The Bear]

Originally Posted by SCEtoAUX

That looks neat as h-e-double hockey sticks! Those early mechanical machines have always fascinated me, the way they show the gear and lever trains. There is some sort of elegance in the design and visual presentation.

I agree completely. It's from an age when engineering had a functionally designed elegance that it simply doesn't have any more.

The real difficulty with this model, is not in designing the finished item (although I've no doubt I'll hit a few snags along the way) but with the research. It's from an age when there were no cameras, and age when newspaper reports were significantly less accurate than they are even today and when documentary records and good engineering drawings simply no longer exist.

The incomplete locomotive parts held by the "Smithsonian" for this engine, are as far as I can tell from my research, not actually from the locomotive they purport to be from. That is to say that they seem to me to be from one of the other two locomotives that Foster Rastrick shipped over to the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company, later in 1829 and in early 1830. Those two locomotives (incidentally believed to be named "Delaware" and "Hudson") had some very significant differences.

We are fortunate that a similar locomotive using many of the same parts, has survived complete, "The Agenoria" which was either built at the same time as "Stourbridge Lion" or within a very few months of it. It does have some vast differences in frame and wheel design and some smaller changes to the mechanical layout, but the castings and parts used on it can be taken as very representative of those used on "Lion"

So far just to get to this stage, has taken months of research. Even though I've always had an interest in early locomotives like "Lion" and collected a lot of technical detail, pulling it all together to create an accurately representative model has been a nightmare.

So that's a bit of the history and a bit of the history behind this model design as well.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[Fozzy The Bear]

Hi Guys.... Heres a good photograph of the "Agenoria" which gives a good general impression of the layout of "Stourbridge Lion"



There are some differences.... The wheels, which on Lion were wooden, and the chassis, which on lion is much simpler and lighter. These changes were mostly due to the insistence of the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company, regarding the weight of the locomotive.

I'll be doing a first test build of the front wheels this weekend. once I've done that I'll be posting the front wheels as a free download, so you can have a go, if you want to, and tell me how you get on with them.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[George b]

Very nice subject Julian, but I am confused by one thing. Where does the Saturn V connect to it?...and there are no railings or stairs or swingarms and it's not red. Oh that's right, there ARE other models out there in the world. I need to get out of the shop more often.

All kidding aside, I'm always amazed by what you guys design, and the quality that is produced is so impressive. I do the easy part.....build.

Regards,
George

[Fozzy The Bear]

Originally Posted by George b

All kidding aside, I'm always amazed by what you guys design, and the quality that is produced is so impressive. I do the easy part.....build.

To be very honest George, You'd find designing no more difficult than building, given your skills. Just look at how many parts of the LUT you've re-designed to make them more realistic. I love your work, as do many other people here.

I hope that you might even consider building this model when I release it. I know it's not a spacecraft, but look at it this way; If they hadn't done the engineering on these early pioneer machines, there wouldn't be any spacecraft.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[milenio3]

You've got a very strong point there, Julian!

Please, go on with the design, and let us know your efforts. Thank you!

[Fozzy The Bear]

Originally Posted by milenio3

You've got a very strong point there, Julian!

Please, go on with the design, and let us know your efforts. Thank you!

Will do milenio. Hopefully within a few days I should have the first set of parts sheets ready for people to try building the front wheels. I'm working on the prototype ones right now and I'll be publishing some build photographs and the basis of the kit instructions directly into this thread.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)

[whulsey]

Would have preferred 1/25 myself since that's most of my plastic (can I say that here) car stuff. But still will enjoy following the project along since I'm new to the paper model world and figure it will be a good learning experience. Thanks

[Scrootch]

Hello Julian,

I'm looking forward for more. That's a very interesting project. At the 1-16 scale that will be a very nice model. If it will be possible to scale the finished project on 1-87 scale?

I keep my finger crossed for that project.

Best regards

Scrootch

[CharlieC]

Hi Guys.... Heres a good photograph of the "Agenoria" which gives a good general impression of the layout of "Stourbridge Lion"

I know nothing about trains so this might be dumb question of the week....

I can see that the driving cylinders are mounted vertically behind the rear wheels but what is the small cylinder mounted behind the front wheels?

Regards,

Charlie

[Fozzy The Bear]

Originally Posted by CharlieC

I can see that the driving cylinders are mounted vertically behind the rear wheels but what is the small cylinder mounted behind the front wheels?

Hello Charlie,
It's a pump cylinder that pumps water into the boiler as the engine moves. There is one mounted on each side of the locomotive.

Originally Posted by Scrootch

If it will be possible to scale the finished project on 1-87 scale?

I think it would be impossible due to the large number of small parts on this model. It could be re-designed for 1/87 Scale but it would be a much simpler model.

Originally Posted by whulsey

Would have preferred 1/25 myself since that's most of my plastic (can I say that here) car stuff. But still will enjoy following the project along since I'm new to the paper model world and figure it will be a good learning experience.

I tried it at 1/25 scale and it was actually too small a model. I also tried it at 1/12 scale and it was way too large for me.... I settled on 1/16 scale because it's an easy to work with scale in relation to imperial (inch) measurements and produced a nice size model.

There would of course be no reason why you couldn't re-scale it to 1/25 yourself if you wished to do so.

Best Regards,
Julian (Fozzy The Bear)