"It" comes to life again

Thank you for your input and compliments sir!
I concur about it making the Hall class look more purposeful, and rather kind of dull too. Alas, when Curly designed this... creature, his intent was to make it appear to be a British Railways modernised Hall, so it would seem silly to me to leave it green.

Curiously, the one thing I was certain of was the wheels looking very nicely in red.

For what it's worth sir, I haven't even ordered the castings for my first locomotive yet! While this could be the more serious side of my work (CAD) watching my first locomotive unfold could almost rate the playing of the Benny Hill theme song whilst I attempt to piece it together.

Thank you sir, a Kozo shay I'm guessing? The first experience I ever had with a running steam locomotive was in Roaring Camp- a narrow gauge heritage railway in California.

No no, no graffiti of any sorts shall occur

Frances, I must say that I envy you. I have never been to the UK before, let alone even seen a British locomotive up close and personal.

To me they have more beauty, elegance and character than their American counterparts by a large margin.
I have a particular fancy for GWR locomotives, in particular the tender engines they ran. Of course, I will always have a soft spot for narrow gauge locomotives though. I can honestly say I have had a fancy for GWR locomotives before I found out that the English part of my family is from an area that GWR serviced!

One of the most visually stunning locomotives I have ever had the chance to see was a three foot gauge mogul called Glenbrook.

It appears to be high time for an update!

I finished up the blower bits on Ivy, along with the drains.

I wish I could say that those were easy bits to draw, but they were not. The instructions for them were a little bit hard to discern, but I was able to make sense of them.

I also finished up this little bit for a friend who is building a Tich.


I really, really, really hope that the 2.5" gauge designs in general are more... forgiving than this one, if they are ALL this insane in terms of the number of parts that they have, I could find myself in a psychiatric institution very shortly.

The next piece of the puzzle coming up for this locomotive is the mechanical lubricator, I'm not looking forward to that bit at all. For some reason I have a love hate relationship with boilers, but I am certain that it will go better than I am expecting.

Until next time!
-Dean

Nice work Dean

IanT

I will probably get roasted alive for saying this, but why do some of those US locos dress up like a children's birthday party...

Neil

The reasons for that elegance lie in history of railways in Britain.

Firstly the country is densely populated. For perhaps two hundred years before the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened many areas of the UK were criss-crossed by Wagonways, Dramways and Tramways. They were used to shift clay, iron-ore, coal and limestone from mines and quarries to ironworks, potteries, sea-ports or the canal system. There was much slaughter resulting from running unfenced industrial transport through towns and villages. When public railways opened they were obliged to fence the tracks.

Secondly, land is expensive. This meant there were strong financial reasons to minimise the gauge, in this sense the maximum width of the carriages. Tunnels, bridges and curves all conspired to limit the width and height of a train. Also, to attract rich passengers, they put considerable effort into stations - they had platforms and roofs. Fat trains not welcome.

The effect of this is that British engines tend to have all their ugly gubbins hidden away on the inside. At the same time fenced off lines remove the need for British engines to have a bell, headlamp, and cow-catcher. All this leads to a clean good-looking exterior where the designer can indulge his aesthetic talents. It also leads to high maintenance costs - everything is hard to get at.

In the USA and many other countries, land was cheap and there was less concern about mowing down livestock or civilians. Stations didn't have platforms. Having more gauge space made it possible to put the works on the outside of engines making them easier to maintain. On the downside lack of fencing meant the driver needed a headlamp, and a bell, and a cow-catcher to prevent collisions damaging the train.

This is Death Avenue, New York. Here the locomotive has been covered to stop it scaring the horses and a horseman rides in front warning people to get out of the way.

Health and Safety gone mad!

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 14/01/2018 14:52:36

I would roast you if I could have stopped laughing at that!

I dunno, I guess they got rather happy with the pin striping?

This bit will be brief:
I hate this damn lubricator so much its absurd. I am 100% sure that the dimensions on this one are either wrong or I am misreading it. I'm actually debating not even doing the outside bits to it, simply placing the arm on the outside and calling it a day. 

Edited By Dean da Silva on 16/01/2018 02:34:30

This adventure with Ivy Hall has recently identified some serious design issues with the mechanical lubricator.
I am so grateful for the fact that I have a set of drawings from Betty to refer to, which DOES use the same design of mechanical lubricator- however the drawings are more... correct.

Yes! It's like Rowland Emett designs a railway engine!

(with apologies to Dean, your work is excellent)

Edited By David Standing 1 on 16/01/2018 09:42:01

What has been seen cannot be unseen

Little update:

I have found the straw that has broken the proverbial camel's back so to speak.
There is LITERALLY too much going on in the assembly file for Ivy Hall. Which unfortunately means that I have to kill off the animated portion. Too many joints, too many parts, too many position calculations. My computer just can't handle it I'm afraid.

The next update will at least look nice?

Hi Dean,

I'm not used to Fusion, but use Inventor. If they are anything like similar, if you keep number of components in an assembly low, but use more nested assemblies, you make life easier for the program. I'll keep the links as text so as not to disturb your thread.

I have Stephensons working (2 versions in my case, as two authors have had a go, with reverser position and suspension height adjustable) and whilst the version in this video (**LINK**) doesn't have a huge number of components the assembly is now as per this photo (**LINK**) and it still runs fine. I do render the animations rather than run them in real time though, I wonder if that makes the difference?

For what its worth, my assembly tree (not sure of how that should be named) is roughly

• Main Assembly
  • Frames with cylinders. tanks, bunker, smokebox
  • Axle
  • Crank axle
  • Pisons, rods, big ends
  • Valve assembly

That way, the program only has to deal with a few components during the animation phase, even if underneath the individual assemblies are complicated in themselves.

Really enjoying this and your previous locos, all the best!

Your work is amazing sir, I am not worthy!
I am going to try what you mentioned though about a rendered animation, if I can avoid having to deal with the fuss of trying to render this thing in real time it would certainly be ideal.

To expand a little on the comments about British and American practice above, America needed to build track over large distances, which limited the amount that could be spent on each mile of track. So they put more into the design of the suspension. Most American locos had compensated springing, so could run over track that was relatively poorly aligned. This is also why much of their rolling stock used bogies when the British stuck with four wheel wagons. They spent more on the locomotives so that they could get away with spending less on the track.

Also, in the early days, most American locos were burning wood. This is much cleaner stuff to burn than coal, so hence they could have colourful paint schemes and lots of brass. In later days when they started to burn coal, they gave up on colourful paint and were mostly black, either because they were painted that way, or because that is the colour they go when you burn coal.

I rather like the American style of locos from the early days, partly because they are so colourful, and partly because the works are out where you can see them. If you are going to hide all the works inside, it might as well be Diesel, or even electric.

Anyway, to get back on topic, Dean, I think you are doing a great job. I have fiddled with 3D design programs enough to know that this is not trivial stuff.

John

I've decided to take a little pause from Ivy Hall, since the boiler is going to possibly cause some hair loss on this one. During this time, I started working on another one of Curly's toys, curiously it would be the very last article that he would ever publish that the design appeared in.

Thanks to my friend in Australia we'll call the "Aussie Guru" I have almost all of the information that I need to start on Zoe, which is the locomotive I am rather looking forward to at the moment. Due to limited space I have a feeling that could be the first Curly Lawrence locomotive I end up building, in gauge 1, and trying to actually ride behind it- thankfully I am not a large person.

I must admit I am also looking forward to Miss Therm, which I have acquired a lot of information on now that I have purchased quite a few magazines from the 30s.

All the best,
-Dean

PS: If anyone has old issues of Model Engineer (pre-1940) and English Mechanics (again, pre-1940) that they would like to sell, let me know!

Still watching with interest Dean. Keep up the good work.

Dave

I want to apologize for being a bit late on this post- at the same time I do need a break from drafting every once in a while.

In order to accomplish this project I have had to purchase a lot of older issues of Model Engineer (the ones I have focused on mostly at present are the 1930s) and of course, sort through them. The good news is that I have all the information on one of the locomotives I was rather looking forward to drafting, Miss Therm. The bad news is that I am only roughly a quarter of the way through having all the magazines from this era.

Curiously, this little stationary engine has made me think a lot more than I am accustomed to sometimes when I draft- often I put my brain in low power mode and simply draw what the magazine has printed, then make sure it's correct. Simple, but with this little beast the problem rests in what it is- a junk drawer build. The throttle (in bronze on top of the boiler) is actually a drain cock off of Ivy Hall, the engine itself is strikingly similar to a mechanical lubricator- right down to sharing a lot of parts with one.

Now a problem I have found that I have is that I need a design for a "standard" safety valve that I can rescale as needs require, until I have that I am afraid that I am going to have to omit the safety valve on designs that do not have a particular one called for. I may even draw a "proxy" safety valve and call for one that simply meets the requirements of the boiler with the threads called for. Same applies to whistles, however, with back head fittings I feel that there are enough out there to cover my needs in that department with out issue.

Until next time- all the best!
-Dean da Silva