"It" comes to life again

Tonight I am not drafting, but I did want to leave a positive note about Sarik Hobbies.

When I first found out that they had the X-List drawings of Curly's designs it piqued my interest, however since I couldn't find much information about them I was a bit skeptical at first.
I ordered a couple of the drawings for the lost designs from them, and lo and behold, I have three sets of drawings now for locomotives I thought lost! Thank you so much Sarik Hobbies!

Here's Ivy now, I've given her some wheels and rods. I'll do the bogie and other fixings soon, I'm not going to rush this stuff anymore like I have.
If I'm not careful I'll have to start wearing maternity pants to safely house this spare stone I might have gained from so much drafting! 

Edited By Dean da Silva on 20/12/2017 20:57:40

You know what happens when a model engineer picks his nose?
He finds bogies!

Bad joke, all the same here's the bogie for this monster.
I'll be doing the cylinders and buffers all in one swipe tomorrow.
My hunch is when it comes time for Ivy Junior that I'll be mashing elements from Dot into the whole equation, still, I think that it will turn out nicely. 
I admit I am kind of excited to do a "same model, multiple scales" draft sometime, I think it could lead to some awesome renders. 

I did read through Britannia, and I think that the front end parts (probably with out the spam can sides) would help give this critter a face lift. In a sense, it really does remind me of an incomplete Britannia as a ten wheeler instead of a pacific. Perhaps that might be the treatment the doctor ordered? 

Edited By Dean da Silva on 21/12/2017 04:03:32

Edited By Dean da Silva on 21/12/2017 04:13:28

I'm not going to say much about this thing- except that these cylinders are going to be the death of me.

At least I am pretty sure.
Through it all though I am actually very pleased with my decision to draft this locomotive, it's the most complex locomotive I'll have drafted to date.
I really hope I can either find drawings for the Duchess of Swindon or how it is made from other designs- it would be really fun to draw.

Re: Duchess of Swindon.

Dean,

Don't know if you are aware of this but the intended 6 part construction series was stopped abruptly after LBSC resigned from writing for Model Engineer. The two parts that were printed got as far as locomotive frame erection, buffers, and coupled-wheels. The design was intended to allow maximum latitude and variability to the prospective builder.

Roy Boulcott built a (possibly unique??) Duchess of Swindon by using previous LBSC designs such as Britannia and Hielan' Lassie. He corresponded with LBSC who drew up the valve-gear specifically for him. This is the example pictured in the book LBSC, His Life and Locomotives, Hollingsworth.

LBSC himself intended that the loco' could be completed as two or four cylinder, piston or slide-valve (with his-own preference being for piston valves), and could be finished off with any superstructure.

The leading bogie was to be similar, albeit with significant differences, to the Schools class.

On two cylinder loco' cylinders were to be similar to Britannia, four cylinder version to have cylinders and valve-gear 'much the same' as the Great Western 'King' class.

Valve gear follows Britannia, but with pole reverser and 'standard' reach-rod with intermediate support.

Coupled wheels as specified for Princess Marina = scale 5' 6".

Boiler taper barrelled with Belpaire firebox with wide grate and combustion chamber. Fitted with multiple element superheater. Two cylinder engine has wide Great Western type chimney, albeit shorter than produced 'in real life'. Multiple jet blast-pipe. Four cylinder version may be fitted with double-chimney.

Boiler to be fitted with a dome containing sliding vale regulator. Safety-valves to be off-centre 'as on Britannia'.

Trailing pony-truck 'follows the Gresley design on old LNER', but similar to Britannia's, but with the spring outside like the usual sort of tender. Same axlebox and spring design to be used on tender.

Steam brake on all coupled wheels.

Tender to be six-wheeled similar to LMS Duchess class, but builders could substitute eight-wheeled Gresley Pacific type or Urie eight-wheeled bogie type - as preferred.

Sorry to drag your Ivy Hall thread off-topic. But, responding to your mention of Duchess od Swindon in your posting immediately above.

Regards,

Phil

No no, I am glad to hear this sir.
I am totally at a loss almost for how I am going to pull off drafting that beast when the time comes, but a four cylinder 4-8-2 does sound like a monster!
Not on the par of a 3.5" gauge Zoe, but still!

It's official, Ivy Hall is a challenge in the best possible way for me in some respects, in others- we won't go there.
Take for example, the cylinders. Never have done piston valves before, but so far I am rather impressed by how straight forward they are. Granted, I still made some mistakes with the cylinders and will need to go back and retouch them.



So... I am almost tempted not to post this, but I am. Forgive me, this is something totally abhorred and vile compared to my normal work, but this visual helped me a bit trying to get an idea of what my end goal with my revised version of Ivy Hall would look like. The super structures will *probably* be omitted.

You've been warned.
It's ugly.
**LINK**

So here's a candid sort of behind the scenes look if you will.

Someone told me that I am overly organized, I said false.

To be fair, I have a metric ton of magazines to acquire still.
When I found out that there was 52 issues of ME a year at one point I died inside a little.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

....and I'm not drafting anything until after the New Years is over!

When I come back to it all though its straight into the valve gear on this beast- which I am not really all that thrilled about since some of it is going to require some creativity to get right. Once that is tended to the rest should come together in fairly reasonable order- save for the boiler, I'm not looking forward to the sloped throat sheet on it at all.

If anyone has seen the heinous sketch that I left which in the most rough and tumble manner illustrates my plans for the face lift for Ivy Hall, I have chosen a name for this new version of Ivy. If the revised Ivy Hall is better received, I'll christen my revision with the new name when I have finished drafting the Ivy Hall family.

Immediately after Ivy Hall its original form will come the revised version, followed by Ivy Junior, the gauge 1 version that Curly did design. It's basically a Dot with a twist from what I gather.

Next year I would like to hopefully begin drafting Zoe, and there will be at least one gauge 1 locomotive drawn up for laser cutting as my first LBSC locomotive build- once my lathe is repaired. Next year promises to be a crazy one, I have a lot of old issues of Model Engineer on the way from the UK, hopefully I can start drawing up some really early wild stuff that Curly designed!

Just a thought but as you're finding a fair number of common features in LBSC's engines, are you building a CAD library of standard parts (if any) for reuse on different engines?

For example, Ivy Hall has 6 identical driving wheels, so you can draw one and then copy it. I'm sure that's how you replicate parts for individual engine models, but did LBSC use exactly the same wheels on other engines as well? If so it might be 'quite interesting' and useful to produce a cross-reference. Apart from the intrinsic value of your capturing individual engines in modern form, I'm finding the insights into LBSC's design anatomy and DNA fascinating.

Keep up the good work!

Dave

Dave,
I have noticed that I reused parts a lot when I was working on the 2.5" gauge locomotives- especially things like buffers and smoke box doors. There is an element of this which I wouldn't even want to bother with trying in CAD thanks in large part to the fact that I could glean the information from the articles themselves and start compiling a list of what is shared by what. I do intend to actually develop a list of castings that LBSC's locomotives use- for everything ranging from as small as 0 gauge to as large as 5" gauge.

Now regarding as to what shares what that would not be castings that matter becomes a little more difficult. Sometimes Curly is very straight forward with that sort of thing (like he was with Zoe, he admits out right that Zoe in gauge 1 is using Ayesha's boiler- which would also mean stands to reason if someone was going to make Ayesha in 5" gauge it would use the 3.5" gauge Zoe boiler perhaps?) or sometimes his locomotives are so plainly akin to one another that they were practically separated at birth (Miss Therm and Bass).

To a degree though I do need to be practical with this project, and right now I am kinda pulling back from it and really scratching my head as to how I am going to proceed, especially seeing how I am starting a business this coming year.

Thank you all for your support, it really means a lot to me!
-Dean

PS: Someday I hope to meet some of you all, I do plan on traveling to England with a locomotive in tow (I can only hope)

Hi Dean,

Yes, I agree about the need to keep it real - what you're doing with LBSC is difficult and time consuming. Family and career come first. You don't want the project to take over your life, nor do you want to make yourself sick of it. Now you have a better feel for what's involved, it's a good idea to take stock before having another go.

Only you can decide what's practical. The right answer for you might be 'take a sabbatical, do the whole lot in a year, and finish off with a nervous breakdown', or 'fit the work in around other commitments, don't let it become a chore, and finish happy in 40 years time'. More likely something in between.

Good luck with starting a business - very exciting!

Dave

I hope that everyone had a merry Christmas and has an equally happy New Years!

I did devise the much-needed plan for this project (which it was sorely lacking) so that I do not end up burning out on this.

I will start with the newest designs of LBSC’s and work my way back to the oldest that are missing, starting with Model Engineer then moving on over to English Mechanics and other publications. This is not a hard and fast rule, if I don’t have sufficient information I will skip a design until I have the information I need, and some designs I particularly fancy might be drawn earlier than intended.

I’ve also begun sorting the designs that I do have on hand into three classes:

1. Complete designs: any stand-alone design (or variant of a stand-alone design) which is fully and completely described in the magazine it was published in.
2. Incomplete designs: any stand-alone design (or variant of a stand-alone design) which is not fully completed and described in the magazine it was published in, e.g. Myrtle.
3. Supplementary designs: a partial design which is intended for one locomotive as a variant in some form, e.g. the Beyer-Garratt which uses Sir Morris frames and running gear, or Pansy in 2.5” gauge.

The designs which take the most priority to me are the first two types, the last not so much. Curiously I have drawn a couple of incomplete designs already- which is especially true of Myrtle. If there are multiple variants of the same design, I will draft the one that is the best described or the one that I am going to build in some cases. 

For now, I am drafting only the designs which literally have nothing on the market for them in any gauge. Of course, there will be some designs I draft because I feel like it. For added entertainment value- watching me attempting badly to machine my first locomotive. I have a feeling that this will be on par with watching a traffic collision in slow motion. What could possibly go wrong?

Edited By Dean da Silva on 30/12/2017 06:05:33

Here is the list of the designs of Curly's that I will be drafting. Some I have drafted. The bold face designs are the ones that I still do not have any information about or need more information on. There are a few designs which are not lost of Curly's that I will be drawing to send off to the laser cutter.

There will also probably be designs that show up somewhere that aren't even Curly's, and in at least one or two cases I can think of coming up not even from the UK! 
 

Edited By Dean da Silva on 30/12/2017 06:16:33

Hi Dean. glad to see you are still working on this huge labour of love. well done and a happy New Year . sent you a PM. bk

After some hiatus for the holidays (which were quite lovely, especially since no one asked me to cook) I've returned to drafting Ivy Hall once more. The similarities between this design and Lifford Hall are rather alarming, save for the frame and a few other components.

There has been some frustration with the cylinders and guide brackets, however I must admit I am rather enjoying this locomotive.



This serial is rather long, don't be surprised if I draft something of Curly's that falls into the toy category at some point during this process as an intermission of sorts. I did after all skip the last design of his that was ever published- the "Mini Steam Plant". On that note, I do care about Curly's non-locomotive designs, thus when I categorized his designs the sixth group is the toys, with the seventh group being other sundries.

On a lighter note, Curly always seemed to have a penchant for the Anglo-American styling. Curiously some of his first designs were American locomotives, and he had lived in the US for a time.
I never thought that I would find an actual Anglo-American locomotive save perhaps for "Lyn" on the Lynton and Barnstaple which still looked American while being in the UK or the inverse in the US. That was until I found this:



I must admit, I never thought removing the buffers, adding a bell, cow catcher and headlight would make such a difference with the over all aesthetic of a locomotive- or have such a pleasing appearance as this one does. That is, at least in my opinion.

In the next bit I will have the cross head on, along with the pistons and valves as well.
I must confess I am not looking forward to the valve gear on this one- I have yet to successfully animate a Stephenson's valve.

I would also like to take this time to thank everyone that has supported me, donated materials to me, allowed me to harangue them about Curly, live steam or what not. I truly appreciate the support, kind words and knowing that people do enjoy what I am doing. It truly does play a pivotal role in motivating me forward with this endeavor.

-Dean

PS: I will LITERALLY pay top dollar (pound?) for magazines covering Bass and Miss Therm. I have a particular soft spot for narrow gauge locomotives for some reason. 

Edited By Dean da Silva on 03/01/2018 05:33:52

Better view of the guides and support bracket.

This stuff really amazes me. I'm really not into live steam nor 3D renderings but this thread always draws my full attention. This is really top shelf modelling to me!

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoy my work!