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Subject: 
Re: PRR T1 #6110
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.trains
Date: 
Tue, 3 Jul 2007 03:12:14 GMT
Viewed: 
6587 times
  
In lugnet.trains, Reinhard “Ben” Beneke wrote:
   Dear Ted,

this engine is amazing for a LDD creation! There are some really well done details on your design. Allthough I am not familiar with US trains, I immediately recognized this engine (prototype pictures must have been on my screen over the past years.)

So what do I like most? The boiler tip rocks! This submarine-like shape is solved perfectly in your LEGO model. I love the detail work on the tender. The top of the rear side ladder (the robot arms). The rounded edges on top, the coal and the face side to the engine.

I also like your nice photograph with the 5 engineers in front of the loco.

Ben, Thank you for your thoughts. Your presentation on “5 Steps to Create Cool Lego Steam Engines” helped immensely when I was designing this MOC (thanks again Tony Sava for linking). I admire the attention to detail in your engines, so I am glad that you liked the details in mine. I used your engines as inspiration to achieve as much accuracy as possible.

http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Ben/presentations/BrickfestPDX2007/brickfest07_steam_engines.pdf


   On the other hand I see a few week spots that may to be improved:

I agree with all of the points you made, as they are the areas where I made some compromises…

   the engine looks to high to me: the real one has the driver wheels slighly hidden on their top edge. The BBB-wheels should nearly touch the yellow stripe. Try to get this done as near as possible (maybe by use of any other technic elements as pivot points).

When I first assembled the engine, I did have the wheels nearly touching the yellow stripe (and it is that way in the LDD file)… however, when testing the engine wheel-sets through the curves, the wheels were rubbing against something that prevented rotation. I could not find the cause.

Another issue was the clearance of the cab ladder piece over the magnet coupler. There was a conflict in curves, and it was restricting the pivot of the last wheel set under the cab. I considered raising the ladder, but I liked the yellow stripe extending all the way back to the very end of the engine... To address both issues, I raised the engine one flat plate in height over the wheels.

In retrospect, the ladder catching the coupler may have been the cause of the drive wheel resistance. It may have caused the drive wheel set to pivot in a way that added resistance to wheel rotation. It is a design area that I plan to revisit and correct (will try raising the ladder piece 1 plate instead and sacrifice the stripe end).


   The cabin might be better done in 5-long. At least for my eyes it looks to long with the compressed design (and the boiler 1 stud too short).

You are absolutely correct. The cabin is a larger scale than the rest of the engine. This was one of my other design compromises... but there is another spot where it is very apparent.

I first noticed this when I decided to review the LDD design with the mindset of using a schematic of the engine as you do. I used key reference points to check the proportions. The key reference point that shows the cabin out-of-scale is where the ‘slope’ for the second tier of the wheel shroud starts (the part in front of the cabin, next to the boiler and above yellow line). That slope piece should start just after the last drive wheel... in the MOC that is where the cabin ends, and the slope is 6 lugs too far forward... so I should probably have shortened the cabin and shroud by 2 lugs each, and extended the boiler 2 lugs...

When I created the cabin, I wanted it to be to scale to the mini-fig inside (he’s a lucky guy). I then considered extending moving the slope back 2 lugs, and the boiler another 4 lugs forward, but I thought the boiler might be out of scale to the wheels. Another thing that was keeping me from shortening the shroud/slope was that there are no black 1x2 flat plates in LDD (only 1x4 and 2x2). You may notice that I did use a 1x2 plate with the ½ lug offset for this (you can see it just before the cab). If I shortened the second tier and cabin, it would move that ½ lug plate to the front (‘first tier’) where I think it is more distracting.

..In the end I decided that I liked the way it looked on its own merits, despite the inaccuracy, so I kept it as it is...


   And I think there should be a possibility to hide the tender wheels. Look at this gallery of Jeremy Rear to get an impression:



Maybe you could live with 2 motors and a wrong count of (anyway hidden) wheels? Or use trucks like this if you don’t want to include 2 motors.

Nicely done. Thank you for linking that. I can see some possibilities there. I will have to experiment... Tony Sava ran into this same issue on his tender for his Streamlined Dreyfuss Hudson.

A few other areas that LDD part selection compromised were: The 2x2 flat plate on the top of the tender, next to the rear ladder. I would have liked to use a 1x2 piece if in black (didn’t want the ½ lug offset piece there). The cabin roof is a little ‘boxy’ and I would ideally use in the 1x3 curve pieces


   But these are only minor critics. I see that you have done a really good work for 6-wide. Maybe you want to give 7-wide a trial next. ;-)

Leg Godt!

I’m not sure what challenge I will tackle next. Maybe something outside of the colors black and red :P. This T1 defintely needs some pasenger cars to pull along, so that may be next on the list.

Thanks again! Ted



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: PRR T1 #6110
 
In lugnet.trains, Ted Andes wrote: SNIP (...) (URL) Dear Ted, this engine is amazing for a LDD creation! There are some really well done details on your design. Allthough I am not familiar with US trains, I immediately recognized this engine (...) (17 years ago, 2-Jul-07, to lugnet.trains, FTX)

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