Murdoch17

4-10-4 type steam locomotive "Red Demon" + Pan-American Limited - real world train MOC

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The 4-10-4 (four leading, ten driving, four trailing) "Rainhill" wheel arrangement was so named after the Rainhill Trials of October 1829 in Rainhill, England of which the famous Rocket was the only entrant to complete the Trials. The Rainhill type was designed in 1927 and built in early 1928, though it was originally called the "Gigantic" type, but the planned Centenary of Steam celebration sealed the deal on the naming of the type. (Unfortunately, the plans for the potential celebration were postponed in July 1928 and finally cancelled one day before the Stock Market Crash of 1929.)

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The steam locomotive prototype of the 4-10-4 Rainhill type was painted a dark red and gray color-scheme with a light gay box on the tender and was sold by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1928 to Brick Railway Systems, but due to technical teething troubles and because of it's unusual color scheme was nicknamed the Red Demon. The engine worked the trans-continental route on the "pan-American Limited" passenger train from New York to Los Angeles, with the Red Devil or one of it's type worked the portion west from St. Louis to Las Vegas. The Red Demon original engine (number 7957) worked this route from 1930 until being bumped to freight duties in early 1958. The engine then worked freights with it's thirty-nine brother's  in diminishing numbers until this one was sidelined in 1971, the last of it's kind. The Red Demon was pulled out of the mothballs in 1973 for potential use on the 1976 American Bicentennial train but politics intervened and Texas and Pacific 2-10-4 number 610 got the job instead. After that, the engine's future looked bleak until the "Save the Red Demon 7957" Committee was formed which raised enough money to restore the engine to working order by 1978 and has kept the engine indoors and in tip-top shape ever since under the Red Demon Incorporated moniker. This company uses five former Brick Railway Systems-styled coaches on fan trips, but they are wholly owned by Red Demon Inc.

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The tender features the name of the railroad (Brick Railway Systems) on it's side, with a light at the rear and a ladder to the top deck.

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In reality, there was no 4-10-4 type of steam locomotive. It was strangely skipped over in the age of steam... none of this wheel arrangement were ever built. The name Red Demon was chosen because the 4-14-4 type of Soviet Russia was the closest analogy to my loco... except mine works fine, while the Russian one never did much as it spread the track, ruined switches and pulled the freight cars' couplings apart due to it's raw power. The second reason for the name is the Red Devil, a heavily modified South African 4-8-4 engine with a gas producing combustion system and many modern improvements. That cape gauge engine worked beautifully, but was mothballed in 2003. As of 2018, however, the Red Devil is again puling fan trip trains in South Africa!

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The three regular coaches, all in the same color scheme as the engine.

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The Pan-American Limited's observation car.

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The whole train. Comments, Questions, Complaints, and Suggestions for the future are always welcome!

EDIT: 12/8/22: There really is a prototype for everything!

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I designed a 4-10-4 steam locomotive in 2019, thinking it was a complete work of fiction, as no class had been built to that wheel arrangement. Turns out, I was partially wrong - no class had been built, but one had been designed by Baldwin Locomotive Works, as seen in their online archives! It was a three-cylinder beast drawn up for a road called The Monon (otherwise known as the Chicago, Indianapolis, and Louisville Railroad) back in 1928 - not very far off my fictionalized backstory year of 1927 as written by me in 2019.... spooky, right?

Edited by Murdoch17

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4 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

That's a beast of a locomotive, and such a nice, clean looking design also! :thumbup:

Thanks! I just added a expanded history of the loco and it's type to the main post, I hope you like it.

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The finding and ordering of parts for the behemoth 4-10-4 steam locomotive named "Red Devil" has begun. I've decided to use 4.5v / 12v era wheels for the tender, as there are no 9v / PF era wheels in red except for the steamer wheels with rubber bands. This will be my longest loco yet, and as such it won't fit in my train shed. (the cowcatcher sticks out by about four studs too much.) Also, the ten red drivers cost about $40 dollars, (OUCH!) but since I have the red 12v train wheels and small flanged loco wheels I think it dragged down the cost a lot to a more reasonable $170 for the remaining parts not seen above.

Any thoughts?

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On 24.11.2017 at 6:35 PM, Murdoch17 said:

[...] I've decided to use 4.5v / 12v era wheels for the tender, as there are no 9v / PF era wheels in red except for the steamer wheels with rubber bands. [...]

That's actually not true! The Winter Village train has red wheels in "standard size" for the front Bogie. There's 4 of them in the set. 

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13 minutes ago, McWaffel said:

That's actually not true! The Winter Village train has red wheels in "standard size" for the front Bogie. There's 4 of them in the set. 

I don't think these wheels exist in red @McWaffel...

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The other wheels involve too much friction.

Also, in other news...

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The project is almost done, as I just need some final boiler-top parts, the cowcatcher and the 30-some odd letters for the tender! Here we see the engine maneuvering through some tight switch track.

Edited by Murdoch17

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Sorry for the BUMP, but the locomotive is finally done, and with a streamlined passenger train as well.

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See the first post for more details and real life pictures!

Edited by Murdoch17

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On 12/22/2017 at 5:47 PM, Digger of Bricks said:

That rear observation car looks really nice! :thumbup: :classic:

Thank you, buying those trans-clear macaroni bricks a was a pain, but it was worth it!

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Sorry for the big bump, but I'm planning on adding a brick of height to all the passenger cars to make them match the rest of my rolling stock. This means I'll need to order two more trans-clear macaroni bricks and many taller trans-clear panels, among other things. Until I upload the updated pictures, enjoy this "1950's vintage" photograph of my loco on the Eads bridge:

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It must have been a really bad day when this photographer took this picture, as the fog blankets this photo like strait-jacket. The 4-10-4 steam engine number 7957 is with east-bound version of the "Spirit of the West" passenger train bound for Chicago from Los Angeles with just-concluded stopover in St. Louis' Union Station, among a few other places further out west. Here we see the train on the 1874-vintage Eads bridge, heading out of St. Louis city, which means the photographer is standing on the four lane, no-shoulder, 1951 Veterans Bridge (Known as the MLK memorial bridge nowadays) which is a very dangerous position to be in in such foggy conditions to be sure!

(In reality, the two real-world bridges are visible from each other in good weather, but not in fog this dense. Also, the warning about the lanes was true at that time in the 50's, and has been fixed a bit by now by removing one lane.)

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"so close, yet so far!"

The train's revised observation car is missing two trans-clear macaroni bricks that I thought I had extra of, but I actually don't.

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Thus I had to place another Brick-Link order late last week for those final two parts while the rest of the train's upgrade parts arrived that very same day... so the entire five car train + steam loco sits waiting at 98% complete for the very last two parts, which should be here by this time next week. In essence this sentence just about sums it up:

..and I would've gotten away with it too if it weren't for you two meddling pieces!

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2 hours ago, Murdoch17 said:

Brick-Link order [...] for those final two parts

Got me curious: given shipping costs - was it only for two parts? :)

I haven't made yet any reasonably big MOC in my life, just gotta wonder how large percentage of costs are shipping costs...

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3 hours ago, Bartosz said:

Got me curious: given shipping costs - was it only for two parts? :)

I haven't made yet any reasonably big MOC in my life, just gotta wonder how large percentage of costs are shipping costs...

 

I threw in a Indiana Jones crystal skull to get me over the store's minimum purchase limit as the third part. My order total was 2.50, plus a penalty of a single (1) dollar because I was less than the store's average lot limit, and about 2.70 shipping and handling, so around 6.15 (US currency) all said and done. I usually stick to the lower 48 states of the USA, as S&H from Alaska & Hawaii is $$$ and so is international customs. (Though I have done orders to other countries, though only custom digital instructions) it realluy depends on what country you live in @Bartosz !

A bit of advice: Every Brick-Link store is different, and every transactions is different, even if you have come back to the same store before. Prices can also fluctuate wildly or stay reasonable, depending on what it is and how "hot" it is.... if it's rare, ok, but if it comes out in a new set it's value will drop. Just ask the formerly $200 (each) Maersk blue helmet, which is now worth only $2.00, so keep your eyes peeled for new releases of old or updated parts! :classic: Any other questions?

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On 7/22/2018 at 3:37 PM, Bartosz said:

Got me curious: given shipping costs - was it only for two parts? :)

I haven't made yet any reasonably big MOC in my life, just gotta wonder how large percentage of costs are shipping costs...

 

It all depends on the store ... Sometimes its worth paying .11 for the brick as opposed to .02 because of the sellers S&H price. There is a particular store I order large orders from in germany and its about 10- 17 shipped but im spending 50 -80 dollars in parts and pieces ... And they always split my orders into smaller boxes for me to keep the costs down and usually customs doesnt question. Oddly its 7-12 for my average US order and 15-20 for Canadian .... And thats to northern Indiana ... I dont think Ive ever ordered less than 30 parts at a time lol

My orders from Germany take 12 days.  My Canadian take 14-17. My US take 2-7 days on average. 

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Slight bump: main post reformatted, pictures replaced with new ones and text updated. Enjoy!

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BUMP:

The first post has been updated with new dark red train cars and the re-colored steam engine. Let's see how the Red Demon had progressed over the last two years to it's current version: 

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original version - (late 2017)

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remake number one - revised boiler with new tender lining and boiler top - (mid-2018)

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remake number two - complete recolor to dark red / light bluish gray with black wheels and third new boiler top - (early 2019) - CURRENT

As for how I'd gotten here to the idea of dark red: Since the last parts draft at the my local LUG meeting last month, I'd been been gathering more dark red parts from BrickLink to finish this five-car passenger train in real life. The 40 or so 2 x 2 curved slopes I'm using from the parts draft really helped to boost me to the final total of 70 I needed to complete the boiler, along with the two 4x3 wedge bricks on top of the boiler (many more are unused in a bin from the picking session), plus several 1x1 bricks with a single side stud and around 30 or so extra 1x4 plates.

Well, what do you think of it? Does it look better this way?

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Nice looking locomotive! It's neat to see how the detailing has progressed over time. My only suggestion would be to see how some piping might look along the boiler, as American engines tend to be more "greebled" than their British counterparts.  The dark red livery looks great!

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They look good. I prefer the dark red as well. But with the tender configuration of the first or second version.

Nice to see the evolution of the design.

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(sorry for the bump, but I thoguht this was too cool to not share, and I didn't want to make an ew thread!)

There really is a prototype for everything!

52551342973_7237c82679_z.jpg

I designed a 4-10-4 steam locomotive in 2019, thinking it was a complete work of fiction, as no class had been built to that wheel arrangement. Turns out, I was partially wrong - no class had been built, but one had been designed by Baldwin Locomotive Works, as seen in their online archives! It was a three-cylinder beast drawn up for a road called The Monon (otherwise known as the Chicago, Indianapolis, and Louisville Railroad) back in 1928 - not very far off my fictionalized backstory year of 1927 as written by me in 2019.... spooky, right?

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