(moc) Rebuilt Battle of Britain Class 34111 'Princess Royal' 4-6-2

[SteamSewnEmpire]

Real thing:

Model:

'Kay, no more British locomotives. Those freaking crazily-angled fireboxes are giving me hives. 

Edited February 8, 2020 by SteamSewnEmpire

[SteamSewnEmpire]

So, I have a question. Normally, I would go flanged-flangeless-flanged on the tender wheels. Currently, I have it (front to rear) flangeless-flange-flange (this is to for the purposes of making the side frame as robust as possible. I also double-articulated the trailing truck of the loco to assist with the 'overhanging' forward wheelset of the tender.

Will this arrangement work? Or do I need to retool the tender to F-NF-F? 

*Edit* The other thing I wanted to ask is: to anyone's knowledge, is there a vendor that sells the Bulleid style boxpok drivers in XXL? 

Edited February 9, 2020 by SteamSewnEmpire

[zephyr1934]

That is a great looking engine. Just staring at the nose I keep seeing more and more detailing oozing forth. There is just one thing that doesn't look right to my eye, how the cab roof meets the windows. In the prototype it comes in at a sharp angle, while the 1x2x4/3 curved bricks don't capture that same feeling with the continuous curve. Even this is just a small quibble though. It has all the right details in all the right places.

[ColletArrow]

Doesn't she look fantastic! The level of detail around the whole engine is frankly insane, especially between the smokebox and bufferbeam

As for wheels, I'd say you need at least (and for standard R40 curves, at most) 2 flanged axles fixed to the main engine; with only one flanged axle fixed and the rest blind or pivoted, there's nothing to stop the whole thing turning on the spot and instantly derailing. The best way to figure these things out is to build a simple, skeletal mock-up of your chassis, with all the wheels and pivot points you expect to use; fine-tune that skeleton until you're happy with how it runs through your desired curves, and then design your loco on top.

You're turning out these magnificent machines at an alarming rate. As you're building digitally, do you check part colour availability, or just use whatever looks best?And I'll be disappointed if you don't look at British locos in the future. I can't remember seeing an LMS Beyer-Garratt, LMS "Big Bertha", or Gresley W1 "Hush-Hush" in LEGO form yet, and by the looks of things you've got the skills to make that happen... 

[SteamSewnEmpire]

1 hour ago, ColletArrow said:

Doesn't she look fantastic! The level of detail around the whole engine is frankly insane, especially between the smokebox and bufferbeam

As for wheels, I'd say you need at least (and for standard R40 curves, at most) 2 flanged axles fixed to the main engine; with only one flanged axle fixed and the rest blind or pivoted, there's nothing to stop the whole thing turning on the spot and instantly derailing. The best way to figure these things out is to build a simple, skeletal mock-up of your chassis, with all the wheels and pivot points you expect to use; fine-tune that skeleton until you're happy with how it runs through your desired curves, and then design your loco on top.

You're turning out these magnificent machines at an alarming rate. As you're building digitally, do you check part colour availability, or just use whatever looks best?And I'll be disappointed if you don't look at British locos in the future. I can't remember seeing an LMS Beyer-Garratt, LMS "Big Bertha", or Gresley W1 "Hush-Hush" in LEGO form yet, and by the looks of things you've got the skills to make that happen... 

Yes, I do try to check color availability - this one, at least, does appear quite doable (I was worried, because dark green is a newer color).

I've toyed with doing the hush hush, and am going to mull it over. She's the ultimate mess of sloped pieces, so it's appealing from that standpoint.

[SteamSewnEmpire]

9 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

That is a great looking engine. Just staring at the nose I keep seeing more and more detailing oozing forth. There is just one thing that doesn't look right to my eye, how the cab roof meets the windows. In the prototype it comes in at a sharp angle, while the 1x2x4/3 curved bricks don't capture that same feeling with the continuous curve. Even this is just a small quibble though. It has all the right details in all the right places.

Yeah, that was just my initial effort. I tend to spend like 6-7 hours straight designing the things, and then - exhausted by that point - post what I have, and then go to bed. I had already 'redone' that portion of it before you even said anything. Unfortunately, it's STILL not to my satisfaction:

For one thing, the little pizza slice would require gluing to work in that spot, so that's not satisfactory. Second, it doesn't even come in dark green, so I'd likely have to use tiny stickers on it (since I seriously doubt I am going to be able to find dark green dye in the right shade). So, all in all, that's still a mess - I plan to attack it a third time in a few minutes, but am totally open to suggestions. Unrelatedly, I also completely redid the front:

[SteamSewnEmpire]

Redid the tender so it has the proper in-slope on the bottom. I'm still thinking about the cab angling.

Edited February 9, 2020 by SteamSewnEmpire

[SteamSewnEmpire]

In terms of raw shape, I think this is the closest Lego is going to come in this scale:

Stickers will be required, and glue for the little pizza slices... but that's really about as close as it's going to get. It cramps the living daylights out of the cab having the roof dropped that low, but I am willing to suffer it to achieve the shape necessary.

Edited February 9, 2020 by SteamSewnEmpire

[zephyr1934]

22 hours ago, SteamSewnEmpire said:

 

So I was looking at the above image and seeing a sharp angle right above the cab window. That might be one of those details that gets sacrificed (I set out to do a PCC car and the one thing I wanted to get right was the windshield... the build turned out great but I never did get the windshield right)

2 hours ago, SteamSewnEmpire said:

 

So here, maybe try black cheese with studs outward? (probably raising the cab windows one plate). I like the roof hatch, but another variant you might want to try is 1x3 curved slopes in place of the 2x2's (this bit seems like an even trade on features, both are good, but can't have both). I'm not sure either of these ideas would improve the situation, but they might be worth checking.

[SteamSewnEmpire]

7 minutes ago, zephyr1934 said:

So I was looking at the above image and seeing a sharp angle right above the cab window. That might be one of those details that gets sacrificed (I set out to do a PCC car and the one thing I wanted to get right was the windshield... the build turned out great but I never did get the windshield right)

So here, maybe try black cheese with studs outward? (probably raising the cab windows one plate). I like the roof hatch, but another variant you might want to try is 1x3 curved slopes in place of the 2x2's (this bit seems like an even trade on features, both are good, but can't have both). I'm not sure either of these ideas would improve the situation, but they might be worth checking.

I'm going to try SNOTing that whole section in a bit and see what I get.

[SteamSewnEmpire]

1 hour ago, zephyr1934 said:

So I was looking at the above image and seeing a sharp angle right above the cab window. That might be one of those details that gets sacrificed (I set out to do a PCC car and the one thing I wanted to get right was the windshield... the build turned out great but I never did get the windshield right)

So here, maybe try black cheese with studs outward? (probably raising the cab windows one plate). I like the roof hatch, but another variant you might want to try is 1x3 curved slopes in place of the 2x2's (this bit seems like an even trade on features, both are good, but can't have both). I'm not sure either of these ideas would improve the situation, but they might be worth checking.

I think we're just going to have to conclude that that exact shape simply isn't possible to achieve in Lego at this scale. I've looked around the web, and this locomotive has been MOC'd more than a few times - most people either make no effort to achieve any contours on that part of the locomotive, or, if they do, they default to custom parts (like actually cutting Lego and gluing it). For example, this (really good) model of the P2 warps a bucket handle to make a similar window:

I'm not going to go to that length. 

[zephyr1934]

Oh, I meant where the roof meets the side windows, not the front window. Getting the front window any better than you already have it would be darn near impossible. But yes, it is impossible to get all the angles, no matter what your (virtual) build is impressive.

[SteamSewnEmpire]

Does anyone have any thoughts on this (as opposed to the green)?:

Before you thumb your nose, British Railways did paint a fair number of steam locomotives into a scheme called "experimental purple" for a while. None of the Rebuilt BoB locomotives were painted in this color, but their very close sisters - the rebuild Merchant Navy Class - were. I've gone down the parts list, and while using this color would require some swapping, it looks to be very doable. 

I have to say that, to my eye, this is more attractive than the green, but that may be just me, and this is a massive eyesore to everyone else. Looking for opinions.

[Murdoch17]

It looks good to me @SteamSewnEmpire!

[ColletArrow]

The.. wha...heh? I didn't even know BR had an 'experimental purple' livery, but so they did! It also seems no-one quite knows exactly what hue it was...

Personally, I'm not a fan; I'd stick to BR Brunswick Green, she looked very tidy to me with the gold details. Although I do think both liveries would look better with the red/dark red stripes, even though they're difficult to impossible to achieve in brick with the boiler construction you've used. Perhaps try dark blue or dark red if you're really not a fan of the green?

But ultimately of course it's your model & money, I can't make you do anything!

[zephyr1934]

If you like the purple go with the purple. If you are trying to be as historically accurate as possible then stick with one of the standard colors. I don't think you could go wrong either way, just be true to yourself or it stops being fun.

[Rustie86]

On 3/4/2020 at 2:40 PM, SteamSewnEmpire said:

Does anyone have any thoughts on this (as opposed to the green)?:

Before you thumb your nose, British Railways did paint a fair number of steam locomotives into a scheme called "experimental purple" for a while. None of the Rebuilt BoB locomotives were painted in this color, but their very close sisters - the rebuild Merchant Navy Class - were. I've gone down the parts list, and while using this color would require some swapping, it looks to be very doable. 

I have to say that, to my eye, this is more attractive than the green, but that may be just me, and this is a massive eyesore to everyone else. Looking for opinions.

Would this be a different scheme from the early 'Express Blue' applied to some of the Gresley A4s and GWR Kings?

[SteamSewnEmpire]

3 hours ago, Rustie86 said:

Would this be a different scheme from the early 'Express Blue' applied to some of the Gresley A4s and GWR Kings?

Yeah. Just google "BR Experimental Purple." There are a few photos of engines in various versions of it.