Vintage City Locomotive

[cjwalas]

Here's another vintage kit. It's labeled as a Paris locomotive and for those of you non-train folk out there, it's of a type that was known in the US as a Steam Dummy. These were small engines for cities that only pulled one or at most two small passenger cars down urban street lines. They were designed in these enclosed housings in an effort not to alarm the horse-drawn traffic of the day. It was felt that if the locomotive were disguised as a standard horse wagon that horses would be much less frightened by these new snorting, steaming noisy things. Wonder if it worked?


Here's the base frame and skirt. These engines wore skirts to disguise the frantic action of the valve movements, again in an effort to avoid equine panic.


The boiler. Here, a simple tube, like many of the prototype. As fuel was plentiful and convenient, there was less need of the typical deep firebox that most steam locomotives sported.


Mounted on the frame with two box supports.


The critical steam dome, where the steam was collected and channeled to the cylinders.


There are no instructions or numbered parts, so the sequence of construction was a bit random. I built the housing separately only because I thought it might be more manageable, which it was.


Here it is mounted in place and fooling horses already, I'm sure.


There are two figures in the kit, but only one is two sided, this one;

I chose not to use the other one because I couldn't find a place to hide his empty side.

For a little more dimension, I glued the wheels to a section of thicker cardboard as a spacer, just so it didn't look like the wheels were glued directly to the skirt. There are markings where the axles should be so I think the intention was that this should be a rolling toy.


Finished.


Charming little thing, at least for train fans like me!
Chris

[Don Boose]

Wow! You're certainly on a vintage roll, Chriss. This is a neat little locomotive with a splendid steam dome.

Marchons! Marchons!

Don

[whulsey]

That's a cool looking little thing.

[rockpaperscissor]

Well done! This one looks like a better design than many of these vintage models. It appears that the fit is excellent all around. The graphics are nice too.

[cjwalas]

Originally Posted by rockpaperscissor

Well done! This one looks like a better design than many of these vintage models. It appears that the fit is excellent all around. The graphics are nice too.

Yes, I meant to mention that the fit on this one was very good. I was pleasantly surprised.
Chris

[Tim Crowe]

Nice little model.

Love the artwork on these vintage kits.

Tim

[Pat_craft]

As you say "charming little thing" !
Thanks to share this build !

[southwestforests]

That's pretty neat!

[patriciaeureka]

hello, you can find a hight definition of this plate here

dec loco mc epinal par pilllpat (agence eureka), sur Flickr
i also make 2 plate for a4 print if you want:
dec loco epinal a | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
dec loco epinal b | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Patricia