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Hi All,
Well, after at least 8 months of on-again off-again effort, I’ve finally
finished up my 4-8-4 Northern Steam Engine:
The most amazing thing to me was the sheer size of the engine; I stayed true to
a minifig-compatible scale of a little bit more than 1 foot per stud, and the
resulting locomotive is a monstrosity! You can see a side-by-side comparison of
it and my Hudson engine (which had been my largest engine):
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/sullis3/Trains/Northern/484northern19compare.jpg
Features include:
(1) Working pistons; as with the Hudson, there are two per side - the drive
piston and the valve piston. The pistons here actually have the least friction
of any of my designs to date - on straightaways they work brilliantly! On the
curves, the drive wheels do not ride on the rails of the track, so the pistons
do not move.
(2) Lower-angle variation on the robot-arm cowcatcher design.
(3) A working front light
(4) For the first time, I have a steam engine that is *pulled* by a motor in
addition to being pushed by the tender! This was practical due to the enormous
size of the engine - for once, the standard LEGO train motor was the right scale
to be in the leading truck.
(5) The second large “smokestack” coming off the main steam cylinder is easily
removable. Beneath it there is one of those large aqua-colored Fabuland
buckets. I don’t know if it will work, but sometime I’d like to drop some
pieces of Dry Ice in the bucket and see if any “Steam” escapes through the
stack. My main concern is that the cold temperatures might induce cracking in
the bucket ...
(6) One of my favorite features is the use of 1x2 panels and 1x1 corner panels,
mounted horizontally, to produce the “ledge” that runs the length of the
cylinder. I first experimented with this on the 0-4-0 Yard Goat, but I’m
particularly happy with how it came out here.
The main downside to the design, as it stands right now, is that it cannot
really handle corners. However, the challenge isn’t at all what I expected;
when going around a curve, the engine leans out a bit, since it is no longer
supported by the drive wheels (Which have slid inside the outer rail of the
track). Once the engine starts coming out of the curve, the outside drive
wheels are below the level of the rails due to the tilt, and rub against the
inside of the rails instead of riding up on top of them. Evantually, as the
engine continues to come out of the curve, the rubber drive wheels bind against
the rail altogether, bringing the engine to a stop. I haven’t relaly spent much
time thinking about this yet, so any ideas are welcome!
Also, I have to apologize for the coloration of the photos. Some of them came
out looking quite interestingly pleasant, while others just look yellow or
orange. The natural lighting today was strange, with heavy cloud cover and
snow. Ahhh well, maybe more pics will come once a sunny day peeks in.
Anyway, please let me know what you think!
-s
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Message has 12 Replies:
 | | Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
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| (...) Pretty nifty. A little oversize in my view (whether it's to scale or not) but we're used to that from you by now. I'd love to see what this looks like with BBB wheels instead of those tyres. Can you elaborate on where the dry ice bucket is? I (...) (21 years ago, 3-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
| | | Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
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| Very good model! I think that it is very "real" looking and I have tried putting dry ice on LEGOs and dry ice will not crack or damage your LEGOs if you put cotton under it. All together a good model> Erik Bush (21 years ago, 3-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
| | | Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
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| (...) Hi Shaun Another great creation from SLCO (Shaun Locomotive Company)!! I can clearly see it is a development from the previous Hudson, but this new Northern looks much better. You have got the proportions absolutely right now when the engine (...) (21 years ago, 3-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
| | | Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
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| Hi Shaun, Congratulations to your latest steamer and welcome in the real scale for LEGO model steam engines. And don't worry about the problems with driving curves. That all reminds me on the Big Boy. Being pushed slowly, it can handle curves, but (...) (21 years ago, 3-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
| | | Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
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| (...) Once again, you manage to blow me away with your engines. This is beautiful. Now the question is if Jeroen will make another poster (I hope). I still have your 4-6-4 poster sitting on my desk. (21 years ago, 3-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
| | | Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
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| Hey, Like I said earlier I really like your model and I was wundering if you will be posting any mpg's or avi's of your model moving so that we can see all the moving parts? Anyway that was just a thought. Erik Bush (21 years ago, 3-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
| | | Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
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| Shawn, i gotta say you've got one of the BEST looking Steamers here! I'd LOVE to build that well! I've allways wanted a 2-10-0... But YEESH! Its just, amazing! Josh (21 years ago, 3-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
| | | Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
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| (...) Aw, man. That's really spiffy. And from experience with the Hudson, I know it looks even better in person than it does in photographs (black being the hard to photograph hue it is). Not to worry about the scale--the locomotive is a work of art (...) (21 years ago, 4-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
| | | Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
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| (...) Snip. Shawn... you have done it again! I love how you always try to stick to real minifig scale and cover your MOCs with countless little details. About the dry ice: Isolating the dry ice with any material like felt or cotton should protect (...) (21 years ago, 5-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
| | | Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
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| (...) Shaun, that thing's huge! Lovely detailing though. For dry ice, how about fitting a pneumatic pump inside, piped through a pneumatic directional brick, to blow air up and over the dry ice. You may be able to get the fog to blow upwards. As an (...) (21 years ago, 6-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
| | | Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
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| (...) snippage Yeah know, I'm not much of a train person, but WOW! I love your work Shaun. You amaze me. It's more like sculptures on a train track than anything :) -Anne (21 years ago, 8-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
| | | Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
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| (...) Excellent model - you're a man after my own heart! Great to see someone else building to 8mm:1ft scale or thereabouts! (...) Could you try adding Walschaert's valve gear, as I did with my British Class 9F 2-10-0 and LMS Garratt 2-6-0+0-6-2? (...) (21 years ago, 9-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
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