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Subject: 
Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.trains
Date: 
Sun, 4 Jan 2004 20:13:53 GMT
Viewed: 
1756 times
  
In lugnet.trains, Lindsay Frederick Braun wrote:
In lugnet.trains, Shaun Sullivan wrote:
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:

<http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=67693
<http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/sullis3/Trains/Northern/484northern00.jpg>>

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!

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 in itself, and just because you chose not to compress it
selectively doesn't mean that you can't adapt the trainworks and stations to
it.  Just make sure to jack up those foundations...;)

A question, related to the one asked about the locomotive moving:  It looks
roughly twice as heavy as the Hudson, so I wonder if two motors are enough to
overcome the Hudson's problem with proximity to a regulator.  I recall the
engine being too heavy for its one motor when the voltage was attenuated!
Does the Northern have the same issue?  Sure, it's a display model, but
nothing was quite so cool as seeing the Hudson actually {running}.


Hiya Lyndsay!

Great to hear from you ... in answer to your question, I'm not exactly sure.  I
only had it set up on a relatively small loop (exactly one dining-room-table in
size), so I'd suspect it will have many of the same problems when it gets too
far from the power source.  Actually, the Hudson did have two motors in its
tender, though they were both pushing, whereas the Northern has one tender motor
pushing and a leading-truck motor pulling.  Another advantage that goes to the
Northern is that I made it hollow, figuring it would have enough weight to
ensure good rubber-tire-to-track contact anyway (whereas I filled the Hudson).
Lifting them each, the Northern is still definitely heavier, but not by as much
as you might think.  Maybe 20-30%?


So how long did you have to tinker with this one to get it into a shape you
were happy with, and how much time was saved with your prior experience with
the Hudson?

Well, as Joe C. can attest to, the general shape was done within about a month
of starting - at that point, it looked like a boring long tube.  Since then,
it's all been tinkering and experimentation with the greebling, with time off
for other projects and good weather :P  There really was a tremendous amount of
carry-over from the Hudson, though - the piston rod system is a derivative of
the same design, as are the cylinders.  If I had to put rough numbers on it, I'd
say that the amount of design effort that went into this engine was only about
50% of what went into the Hudson, even though it took about 3 times longer.
There weren't any design elements that held me up for more than a day or two -
it was usually motivation and competing draws on my time that stretched out the
contrsuction process.


Boy, is that ever cool.  I third, or fourth, the call for Jeroen to crank out
a new poster.

Unfortunately, it's never Jeroen that is the choke-point in poster development!
He turns around designs so quickly, and they always look beautiful.  Instead,
the hold-up is always me putting the .dat file together, and then responding to
his prompt e-mails in a timely fashion.  I'll take it under advisement, but I
wouldn't expect a .dat file (and the resulting poster) for quite a while :)

Thanks for the comments and questions!

-s



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
 
"Shaun Sullivan" <shaun_sullivan@irco.com> wrote in message news:HqzEv5.1F6M@lugnet.com... (...) you (...) with (...) month (...) I, Joe Comeau, here do by attest that Shaun's 4-8-4 Northern started off as boooorriiiiiing. But, damn, it's come a (...) (20 years ago, 10-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: New MOC: 4-8-4 Northern
 
(...) 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 (...) (20 years ago, 4-Jan-04, to lugnet.trains, FTX)

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