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Subject: 
Re: New MOC: Polar Express pics
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.trains
Date: 
Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:52:25 GMT
Viewed: 
4890 times
  
In lugnet.announce.moc, John Neal wrote:
   A great time was had by all at the NMRA show this past weekend, but more on that elsewhere. At the show, my son Ross and I unveiled our latest (and I think greatest) MOC: our version of the train from the book (and motion picture) The Polar Express.

We painstakingly perused the movie, often stop-framing in order to detect the finer details, and I believe it has paid off:



I haven’t had time to properly photograph the train or create and apply decals, so these pics are just ones I snapped off at the show. More to come later. Some more notes about the MOC:

This was a truly collaborative effort; Ross built the locomotive and I built the cars, with lots of input from Ross. For example, the coach doorways employ lots of tasty schleim served up by Ross:-d

The loco is a Berkshire (2-8-4), from right out of the movie. Ross built directly from schematics in our Steam Locomotive Cyclopedia (This book, along with its Steam counterpart are must haves for serious American locomotive builders).

The car coloration was an issue: do I go with sand blue or medium blue? Since the book takes place entirely at night, we never actually see the Polar Express in the daylight. So sand blue was the initial choice. But sand blue is too gray for this particular application IMO and so I finally decided to go with medium blue instead. HERE you can see a color comparison between sand blue and medium blue where I had to use sand blue because the element doesn’t come in medium blue.

I went with trans yellow windows because it implies the yellow light cast from the cars at night. That was an unexpected bonus as I didn’t think that that color brick was widely available (I needed about 200 of them). The number of windows in each car corresponds exactly with the number of windows in the movie. The total number of coaches in our PE is four.

Though Ross still needs a few more elements in black to finish off the loco (thanks to all who brought requested elements to the show:-) I think it looks stunning, and is the best looking LEGO steam loco I’ve ever seen. BTW, I had no input into his design:-) It employs Big Ben drivers, which means that it actually runs! The coach truck design is a new one based on some ideas from John Gerlach of the GMLTC (Hi, J-1!) More on that later when I can better document it with pics.

Can’t think of anything more to say, except that I’ll be taking better quality pics to show off more detail in the near future. But for the time being, enjoy these, and get ready for some dark red Hogwarts Express ones coming soon:-)

JOHN

A locomotive here in Michigan was used as a model for the locomotive in movie: Pere Marquette #1225, which is owned by the Michigan State Trust for Railway Preservation, Inc. in Owosso, MI (see http://www.mstrp.com).

This locomotive will be pulling an excursion train during next year’s NMRA convention in Detroit (see http://www.nmra.org/2007).



Message is in Reply To:
  New MOC: Polar Express pics
 
A great time was had by all at the NMRA show this past weekend, but more on that elsewhere. At the show, my son Ross and I unveiled our latest (and I think greatest) MOC: our version of the train from the book (and motion picture) The Polar Express. (...) (18 years ago, 12-Jul-06, to lugnet.announce.moc, lugnet.trains, FTX) !! 

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