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During the second World War, the US Government controlled the railway locomotive builders, one of which was Lima Locomotive Works. The Southern Pacific railroad submitted a order to this builder for 16 new 4-8-4 steam engines, (known to the railroad as 'Daylights') which was turned down due to them being passenger-only engines. Southern Pacific reworked the blueprints to have little streamlining, and not feature the Daylight's color scheme of orange, red and black. These new dual-mode engines were painted in silver and black, and were also smaller. Lima finally built 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, the Southern Pacific engines 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 surviving GS-4 cousin 4449. This last GS-6 pulled the final steam-hauled SP train in October 1958, before being donated to the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, Missouri, where it resides today. You can read more about the engine on it's Wikipedia page. This LEGO steam loco model is the third iteration of this Southern Pacific engine that I've made. It was originally built over a decade ago in eight wide, then was slimmed down a year later in 2016 to 6 wide, and now has been completely torn down and revised to 7 studs wide in 2026, retaining only a scant few ideas from the original MOC. These includes the letters / numbers, streamlined nosecone, and a few other small things - the rest is totally new. As a side note: this engine's original version was the second loco I made from the museum's collection of artifacts, only beaten by the GM Aerotrain MOC from 2014 - nowadays I've got over 30 vehicles made from this location, and I'm starting to run out of things to build that I feel are worthy of inclusion or under-represented in LEGO. The rear of the engine. The ladder to the tender deck should be on the left and right sides, not the rear as has been constructed. I didn't realize this until it was too late in the design process. (Oh well!) Baggage / coach. (NOTE: This car and the rest of the train that follows below are not based on any specific Daylight passenger cars. I just built what looked good with the loco. Also, these 6-stud wide passenger cars are based off ones from when the engine was in revenue service - they are not from the Museum of Transportation!) Two (identical) passenger cars. The dome car. And finally, the observation car. EDIT: Just for comparison purposes, here is the real-world steam loco, as seen back in 2015. Thoughts? -
[ full gallery] I am pleased to present my MOC of the Northern Pacific streamlined Vista Dome North Coast Limited. The North Coast Limited ran between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest (the train split and went to Portland and Seattle). Much of the attractiveness of this build is simply due to the prototype, designed by Raymond Loewy. More info on the actual train can be found here. One of the unusual features on this train was the full sleeper domes (as opposed to the dome-observation sleeper cars found on several trains). More info on the domes can be found here. I have been working on this MOC for over two years and it remains a work in progress. The initial assembly occurred about two years ago and it has been displayed a few times. However, without the lettering, I considered it far from complete. I just applied the decals this past weekend and uploaded the photos to brickshelf. The cars are 42 studs long plus diaphragms (another stud total), to strike a balance between realistic scaled length at 6 wide (more like 52 studs) and the operational constraints of lego curves. The cars have a real vestibule on the door end (set off from the interior) like the prototypes. They also feature close coupling for display, with the diaphragms connecting, while with the insertion of an extra magnet allows for sufficient clearance to take a curve. The domes were my focal point. The use of the 3x6x1 curved windscreens was one of my favorite features, but there is a lot of snot in the domes themselves to get the right shape and form. I used transparent headlight bricks so in principle one could see through the dome, but in practice only a bright light can make it through all of that plastic. Still it does a good job reflecting the ambient light so the design worked, just not as originally intended. There are lots of subtle features to be picked out, including the detailed under-frame (no great shots at the moment) and the half plate vents on the side of the dome cars, e.g., as seen below the dome here. Throughout the cars I used an unconventional approach. Sand green plates are way expensive. So the lateral strength of the cars comes from white 6x plates between the sand green and dark green layers. This has the added bonus of making the windows much more apparent than they would have been without the reflective color on the inside. I did seek bonus points for the use of a large unruly piece for the roof of the observation car. I had to leave out several cars (including the RPO/dorm; travelers rest lounge; several coaches and sleepers; and a sleeper dome). The locomotives have a lot of subtle features going on, e.g., the louvered openings between the porthole windows and the much more complicated snotted nose. Unfortunately for me, the NP was one of the few railroads to actually paint over the chrome upper grills on the F-units, still, I took the liberty to use chrome lego grill tiles since they are typical of most F-units and dark green grills would not show up well. The train is powered by a pair of PF train motors in the b-unit, which also houses a rechargeable battery, IR receiver, and extra weight for traction. I've made a few small changes to the build over the years, e.g., swapping out 1x2 grilled cheese for 1x2x2/3 curved slopes on the nose of the locomotives. The train runs fine around standard lego curves, but it looks a little awkward, It looks REALLY sharp on the wide radius curves, e.g., on PennLUG's layout (videos can be found here) All of the photos thus far are from before applying the decals. Here are few shots with the custom decals applied, Many more shots are in the full gallery. Enjoy the ride, questions and comments welcome, [ full gallery]