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Hello all, I would like to share with you my most recent model. It is currently digital, but a physical build will be coming soon (with instructions). UP #844 is one of the most iconic locomotives that has ever graced the main line. Both powerful and elegant, she has captured the attention and imagination of railfans since her delivery to Union Pacific in December of 1944. #844 was the last steam locomotive delivered to UP and the only steam locomotive of any American Class 1 railroad that has never been retired. She has seen revenue and excursion service for over 78 years. During this time, she has had several modifications and upgrades. Some minor, such as a livery change and some major such as a Worthington SA feedwater heater added around 1955. For this build, I wanted to capture her essence and model her as she would have appeared in April of 1949. A careful eye will note several key features: by this time she was modified to be oil burning, a mars light had been installed, she was still using the Sellers exhaust steam injector and she wore the two-tone gray paint scheme in Harbor Mist Gray and Armour Yellow. This model is 8-wide, 1:48 scale and displays #844 as she would have been seen while pulling the Overland Limited, Los Angeles Limited or Portland Rose in April of 1949. #844 represents the absolute apex of duel-service steam and I want this model to represent nothing less. It is powered by two large power function motors with a 3:5 gear ratio so that she has both high tractive effort and can travel at high speed. Next step…building the instructions and ordering parts!
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Took this time some inspiration from @johndrinkin and his art deco/retrofuturistic trains and some existing trains with smooth "bathtub" cowl appearance. Here few versions of it with a slight forward and backward cowl and with standard parts and customs wheels that suits better With custom wheels that are slightly bigger XLL https://www.bricklink.com/v3/studio/design.page?idModel=440333 With standard partlist https://www.bricklink.com/v3/studio/design.page?idModel=439655 Due too similarity of them here some other photos and angels Hoses job (it was painful and full of struggle but I`ve made it! ) Size comparison between desighn with custom wheels and sandart(sorter) Been working on this for way too much time but got a few new ideas and some of them use as improvements for PRR GG1 family Maybe will try to make a "tank version" based on some German/Dutchland streamlined train (if not fall fully insane)
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Maintenance Of Way (MOW) track construction train with steam and diesel locomotives - real world WIP
Murdoch17 posted a topic in LEGO Train Tech
Does you track need to be repaired after a major storm? Want to connect Point A to Point B with a brand new rail-line? Did the Flying Kipper have another accident on the main line? Or maybe you want to upgrade the signaling and double track the line at the same time? Call out the Maintenance Of Way (MOW) train to fix all these problems and more! This train consists of a late-1950's diesel locomotive, or a mid-1930's large eight-driving wheel steam engine and six specialty cars: - a (working!) crane car - depressed-center rail wagon - a (working!) ballast hopper - a tanker car - workman's tool car - caboose The 4-8-4 steam loco is new-to-me, and began life as a 2-8-4 Berkshire type built by Plastic_Goth and purchased from Rebrickable a seen here. To make this steamer, I upped the wheel count of @Plastic_Goth's locomotive by another leading axle, making it into a 4-8-4 Northern-type from the original 2-8-4 as built in the instructions. The new piston / wheel assembly is entirely my own work, as is the completely new 7-wide tender. The inside of the cab features two gauges and the firebox door. This model was originally a ALCO MRS-1 built by @SavaTheAggie, but has been so severely modified that it no longer looks like the prototype loco. So I went searching And found another ALCO locomotive, a RSD-12 that looks like my loco. Both my model and the prototype have the six wheels, and the same basic hood and cab design. The long hood of the loco has been designated the rear with a double red light. This car carries liquid weed killer for use after the track has been laid. This stream crane model was heavily inspired by Whoward69's instructions for a set of crane and match truck train cars. I modified the original model seen here. (sadly, it seems his Flickr profile and pictures has been deleted) I originally meant for the crane to have ropes to move the boom, but it got confusing on which rope went where so for now it's moved by the H.O.G. (Hand Of God) method. The crane can spin around in 360 degrees and lift anywhere up to 90 degrees straight up. (Their is a double set of pins keeping the boom from going too low, as well.) The heavy-duty depressed-center wagon has brick-built arms to secure the cargo of prefabricated railroad track in place. This model was inspired by a coal hopper on an older website called LGauge .com. I turned the old finger hinges into new pin-orientated ones and colored the car yellow to match the MOW paint scheme. The hopper's bottom doors open and can dump 1 x 1 round plates / bricks onto the tracks for ballast. This old passenger car carries the workmen and their tools. The caboose features two ladders (one per side) and more of those fancy printed 2 x 4 tiles. If you like what you see in this topic, check out the home base of the train and assorted other vehicles in this thread here! Thoughts? Comments, Suggestions, & Complaints always welcome! -
4-8-4 Northern-type WFP steam locomotive (grayscale color scheme) with 1930's passenger train
Murdoch17 posted a topic in LEGO Train Tech
This 7-wide steam loco began life as a 2-8-4 Berkshire type built by @Plastic_Goth and purchased from Rebrickable a seen here. This train features an 4-8-4 "Northern" -type steam engine that was purchased and modified a month ago from the link posted above. However, it still hasn't been bought parts-wise IRL. The coaches are just recolored and modified versions of my dark green / black Emerald Express cars, with the rear car having a rounded window instead of a open platform. I upped the wheel count by another leading axle, making it into a 4-8-4 Northern-type from the original 2-8-4 Berkshire. The pistons are entirely my own work, as is the 7-wide tender. I chose the Wabash Frisco and Pacific as the name of the owner of the engine, because the real world ride-on 12-inch gauge railway is re-opening soon (Yay!) and because I felt the shark-nose Baldwin diesel units (plus the passenger train as well) I made in a similar paint scheme could use some company. The coal tender will have the letters W-F-P on the side, standing for Wabash Frisco & Pacific, while the cab will feature the number 2980 on both sides. This is a scrambled homage to real world WFP 4-8-2 engine 928, which is so strong, it's pulled every piece of rolling stock the railroad owns -at one time- with ease! The inside of the cab features two gauges and the firebox door. This combination baggage and passenger car (known as a combine) relies heavily on techniques taken from Retlaw baggage car built by @TJJohn12, as seen here. The three identical coaches have inset doors I designed myself. The streamlined observation car of this train should feature two of these windows in white (which sadly aren't in LDD). -
Sharknose diesel units + 4-8-4 steam engine with Meramec River Runner passenger train
Murdoch17 posted a topic in LEGO Train Tech
The whole Merrimac River Runner passenger train, headed up by Baldwin RF-16 "shark-nose" A +B diesels number 3701 with assistance provided by 4-8-4 "Northern" steam engine number 2980. The name of this train is a play off the Missouri River Runner, a real train that Amtrak runs from Kansas City to St. Louis. The Meramec River is a body of water that runs next to the real world 12-inch gauge Wabash Frisco & Pacific, so I switched the name to the Meramec River Runner. Never mind the fact the Missouri Pacific used to run on the roadbed the WFP now uses up from the 1850's until about the 1940's, when it was rerouted to it's current alignment and abandoned the old one to the eventual WFP use from the late '50's to today. These Baldwin diesel RF-16-like locos were inspired by set 10020, (Santa Fe Super Chief) for most of the basic body work and and fellow Eurobricks user @Legownz for the knife-like Sharknose front end. (Thank you for that ingenious design!) The cab and booster units feature no interior details because I have no need for such items on my layout.. that and retrofitting all my trains with inside details would be quite costly. The rear of each of the locos feature doorways to the next engine compartment, and / or the passenger train itself. This 7-wide steam loco began life as a 2-8-4 Berkshire type built by @Plastic_Goth and purchased from Rebrickable a seen here. I upped the wheel count by another leading axle, making it into a 4-8-4 Northern-type from the original 2-8-4 Berkshire. The pistons are entirely my own work, as is the complete tender. The coal tender will have the letters WFP on the side, standing for Wabash Frisco & Pacific, while the cab will feature the number 2980 on both sides. This is a scrambled homage to real world WFP 4-8-2 engine 928, which is so strong, it's pulled every piece of rolling stock the railroad owns -at one time- with ease! The inside of the cab features two gauges and the firebox door. This is all the interior the whole train features. Combination baggage and passenger car three identical passenger coaches for the train The observation car of the Meramec River Runner. (This car is to become fully enclosed soon, with a wraparound rear window provided by two of this piece.) Any thoughts, comments, or complaints? EDIT 5/11/21: Added 4-8-4 steam loco to this post. Real life pictures coming soon. -
Spirit of Legoredo streamlined train with 4-8-4 "Red Dragon" steam locomotive
Murdoch17 posted a topic in LEGO Train Tech
The Spirit of Legoredo was my one of my first big trains, and was built in 2011 with a baggage car, three passenger coaches, and observation car. It looked good to me at first, in nearly all black with a red stripe at the base, but over the years was quietly forgotten about, as it was quite dull-looking to others and hard to take pictures of. Then I switched magnet types to the newer ones, and it became even harder show off as it didn't match the rest of my newer train fleet. That is, until I added a new locomotive to the head end and one more passenger car. (changing the colors up a bit from mainly black to mostly red doesn't hurt much either!) In reality, this 7-wide loco began life as a 2-8-4 Berkshire type built by @Plastic_Goth and purchased from Rebrickable a seen here. I upped the wheel count by another leading axle, (making it into a 4-8-4 Northern-type) and I then decided to imitate the famous South African Railways 'Red Devil' in color-scheme. The pistons are entirely my own work, as is the tender. More details can be seen here on the SAR Red Devil locomotive. The rear of the engine has a slightly changed coal bunker side walls compared to the 2-8-4 Berkshire MOD I posted earlier in the week. The baggage car. These cars were all inspired by The Santa Fe Super Chief cars (10022 and 10025) and the Emerald Night's coach. (10194) The four streamlined coaches of the train. Each car on this train is 28 studs long, which is longer than my usual 24 studs long standard. Observation car of the Spirit of Legoredo passenger train. The original way these cars were styled had them all black and with a red base stripe, but I have added dark bluish gray fluting and a lot more red to the mix to make them easier to take pictures of. Comments, questions, and complaints are always welcome! EDIT 4/23/21: Added a different steam loco to the fist post. -
Southern Pacific 4460 - the Forgotten Daylight - version 3
Murdoch17 posted a topic in LEGO Train Tech
In keeping with my revamps of Museum of Transportation vehicles, I present to you this updated 4-8-4 steam engine modeled after 4460: the Forgotten Daylight. Real world background info on this type: During World War II, the US Government controlled the railway locomotive builders, one of which was Lima. Southern Pacific submitted a order to Lima Locomotive Works for 16 new 4-8-4 steam engines, (known as Daylights) which was turned down. Southern Pacific reworked the blueprints to have little streamlining, and not feature the Daylight's color scheme of orange, red and black. These new engines were painted in silver and black, and were also smaller. Lima finally green-lighted the order in 1943, but with one condition: Six engines would be taken from the order and given to the power-starved Western Pacific Railroad. Because of their smaller size and the fact they were built during WWII gave these engine the names "Baby Daylights" and "War Babies". Officially, they were called GS-6 and numbered 4460 - 4469. (GS meaning General Service or Golden State, and 6 because they were the sixth batch of engines.) Only one of the GS-6 type survives: 4460, often referred to as the Forgotten Daylight when compared to it's famous GS-4 cousin 4449. This model of the engine will be built as soon as funds allow, as it costs $170 US from five Bricklink sellers. This time the engine has new pistons derived from 4-8-0 Mastodon making this engine into a true 4-8-4 instead of having a two wheel pony truck at the front with two small wheels before the drivers but on the same frame. (this technically made it into a 2-10-4 before I fixed it.) Speaking of 2-10-4's, this engine is made to be the same size as that type, making them shed mates on my layout. As usual, the tender is the same one as before because if it ain't broke, don't fix it. The engine will have "SOUTHERN PACIFIC" in printed tiles on the tender sides, with "4460" on the cab sides and tender rear. Here is the steam engine 4460 waiting for orders sometime in it's working life. (Picture from the Facebook page of the National Railway Historical Society, St Louis Chapter) It is NOT my photo! Quoting Jan Snyder (who posted to my original MOCpage for this engine's first version): "I remember, very well, the 'funeral' held for the 4460--the last run of the SP steam engines. At the time, I was an 12 year old Boy Scout bugler who was asked to play taps. They had me stand on the engine, at the left front side, and the crowd of people seemed massive for a kid my age. A photo, published in the next morning's Oakland Tribune, recently turned up on a collection. That photo hangs on my office wall with fond memories." LDD file: http://www.mocpages....1437838341m.lxf Also, there are two parts missing from the pictures but are in the LDD file: the connecting rods that go into the pistons. These were giving me trouble so I put them next to the model. EDIT: And here is the locomotive in real life! Here is the side of the locomotive. (dang it - I just realized I put the the wheels on rear bogie of the engine too far apart!) This picture shows how much overhang (not much, really) the engine has in standard LEGO curves. This picture is slightly out of focus. Sorry! ...and as a bonus, here is a picture of the engine sitting with it's Lego counterpart: Today, the engine sits in a off-limits area (I received permission to take this photo from museum staff) and is barely visible to visitors, only by knowing where to look in the Roberts Shed and leaning over a railing can you see the beauty that is 4460. -
I have been wanting to build this locomotive for almost 8 years. It is a Reading T-1 Northern 4-8-4. It ran excursions for the Chessie System in 1977 and 1978. I first started designing it in MLCAD in late 2007. Since then I have redesigned it several times and even started building it in brick in 2011. However, I got stuck, became discouraged and didn't get too far. I have never built a large steam engine before so the thought of it was quite overwhelming because I knew it wouldn't be easy. On top of that, because all of the other great LEGO steam locomotives out there, I set my expectations very high for what I wanted it to look like. I am still far from being done after about two months work, but I am far enough along that I am finally ready to share. I have started working on the tender also, but it is a very rough draft right now. I don't claim very many techniques used as my own. I took inspiration from many other MOC's. Mostly Tony Sava for his #4449 Northern. A lot of the pilot truck and cylinder construction is based on his model. After serveral failed attempts trying to figure it out on my own, it was time for help. Here is picture of the real thing For fun I started a blog where I am going to document my LEGO builds. Right now there is a little history of the first 8 years I spent on this engine: John's Blog Thanks, John
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full gallery I am pleased to present my rendition of the preserved GN S2 class 4-8-4 northern, #2584. This locomotive has been on my to do list for quite some time. I was waiting for the cheese slopes to come out in sand green and then it was only a matter of time. I first saw this engine many years ago while taking Amtrak through Havre, Montana where she is on static display. How bold to paint a steam engine such a bright green. Sure, she was an oil burner, but still, imagine the work to keep that boiler looking clean. The US railroads loved to do this sort of thing and fought to keep their equipment clean (remember, these trains were the equivalent of today's business class on transcontinental flights, heck, the NYC's 20th Century limited is where the phrase "roll out the red carpet" originated, but I digress). Delivered in 1930, the engine arrived in the Glacier Park paint scheme and the fleet of S1 and S2's were used to pull the finest passenger trains on the Great Northern. By early 1950's they were reassigned to freight and repainted black. The 2584 was retired Dec 1957 and stored. GN decided to preserve this locomotive and after restoring it, put it on display in 1964 (more details can be found here). When I saw it, it still had "no trepassing, BN Ry" signs on the fence. So presumably it has been under railroad ownership throughout. When I started building the custom valve gear parts, I knew it was time to build this engine. It took a few months, but here's my model. I must say, building in rare color like sand green is extra fun. Let's take a tour from the front to the back. On the nose I had to have the air compressors, and here was the first collision with the limited parts availability in sand green. I almost gave an arm and a leg to solve it but in the end I managed to keep the arm. Getting all of the snot for the smoke box working was an exercise in multi-dimensional optimization. On the side the stairs up to the running boards turned out well (I'm not sure if I came up with that solution on my own or if I first saw it on another model). Also note the hand rails, a refined design from my earlier northern's. Within the boiler, the framework is largely unchanged from my J, and later used on two other northern's. The design is solid for operating at shows with uneven tracks- the drivers are pulled from the pilot truck and the boiler itself rides on just two trucks. This has the added feature of keeping the swing within reason on curves. Allowing me to put the tender foot plate at the cab foot plate (with the aid of a few wedge plates). I must say, when building a locomotive for tight curves, you come to understand why the rear corners of the cab roofs and top corners of the tenders were cut off. The frame is also strong enough that you can put two or three of the northerns on the point of a heavy train and pull through the front couplers. While viewing the second image above, note the sloped front to the cab borrowed from my NP northern, the mud ring on the bottom of the firebox borrowed from my Milw northern, the cab roof details borrowed from my SP pacific. I think the vent hatches look particularly good in dark red. You will also see one of the design elements that I'm quite pleased with, the sand green ladder above the running board. I'm getting ahead of myself on this tour. Jumping back to the drivers for a moment, I used my custom rods and valve gear bars for the drivers, including modeling the Walschaerts valve gear. Meanwhile, up top, I managed to sneak in a 1/2 plate offset for the green boiler jacket (visible in the very first photo in this post, where the gray smokebox transitions to the green boiler). Now moving to the rear, this oil burner had a Vanderbilt tender. I knew that wouldn't be much of a problem since I had already built one packed with PF equipment for my SP pacific. I had to build the complete engine first, so that I could figure out the clearance for the tender. This time it wound up being almost entirely snotted. Since I did not have to worry about putting anything in the tender, I could get the proportions better than the SP tender. I even included a rounded bottom (though no good photos yet exist). I've got to say that Vanderbilt tenders are hard to photograph and I'm not completely satisfied with the quality of the photos of the tender, but this one should give you an idea, If you look closely, you will also see my Indiana Jones moment. I was faced with figuring out how to get the ladder on the front of the tender. On curves, the couplers swing out to 6 wide. So there wasn't enough room to get any design I liked in there. Seeing the man waving a pair of machetes at me, I dropped my whip and picked up my six shooter. Voila, as I slip another rung down the lego purity slope, the custom ladder was born. They looked so good, I decided to hang another pair off the back of the tender (I'll post more about the ladders soon). Now returning to the prototype for a moment. The Havre locomotive looks striking in its green paint, but while I was digging up reference material for this model, I quickly learned that it was the wrong color. From everything I've read, the Glacier Park paint scheme was commonly used on passenger locomotives, but it was never an official scheme. For the curious, click the small image below for the best color example of the scheme that I'm aware of. Also note the herald on the engineer's side, the goat is facing to the right. The closest lego color to the original green would probably be dark green. Still, I like sand green as the prototype is currently and I didn't want this to look like a Emerald Night MOD. Still, it has gotten me wondering why the prototype is the wrong color. GN preserved this engine and then BN, so it is not like some misguided town repainted it in the faded color after years of neglect. full gallery
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Long Steam Locomotives (x-8-x) and Regular Curve Track
LEGO Guy Bri posted a topic in LEGO Train Tech
Since the Train Tech Questions thread is on the downslope, I thought I'd go on and start up a brief discussion regarding a potential problem regarding larger steam locomotives. I have a couple 10194 E. Nights that I would like to combine to make a larger steam loco, along the lines of a x-8-x set up. My questions are, how does this type set of wheel setup handle regular curves and switch points? And if this is a problem, is there a solution, or just something I will have to deal with? I cannot test this as all of my track and spare E. Night are buried in storage. A side note: I would like to have each set of wheels attached to the same rods. I am more concerned about the aesthetics rather than it's ability to run on a curve, if it comes down to that. Any advice is appreciated!
