Subject:
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Re: New MOC: Polar Express pics
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Fri, 14 Jul 2006 01:15:48 GMT
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Viewed:
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7372 times
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In lugnet.announce.moc, John Neal wrote:
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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
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Ahh, finally it’s moderated. You and your son made some interesting choices;
our two trains share a lot in common, but have a lot of differences, too.
First and foremost, I can see that you went with the blue and red color scheme
for the cars. I spent a lot of time wrestling with that idea because I thought
it was such a horrid color combination. I was under the impression from the
movie that the cars were a sand green color, and only looked blue because of the
ambient lighting, but the lionel train is blue and red as well, which really
confused me. That is until I saw this picture:
http://www.darkhorizons.com/2004/polar/polar4.jpg
Which to me makes me think the cars are in fact green and red, and just the
ambient blue lighting from the snow and general cold-ness of the scenery made it
look otherwise. Since my train was going to do double duty as a layout train as
well as a Christmas decoration for my wife, the red and green colors worked out
for the best for me.
I also see that you went with a thinner upper roof section on your cars, and
with those brick built, thinner windows, it looks a lot longer than my versions.
As for the locomotive itself, I never looked at the movie. I only looked at the
real Pere Marquette #1225 - simply a personal choice of mine. There are, in
fact, several differences between the real engine and what the makers of the
movie created (grey versus black drive rods, for example). Ross certainly went
into far more detail than I with all the pipes and hoses over the boiler, as
well as the extra hardware around the pistons. How did he overcome the technic
pin on top of the motor under the firebox? Did he use it to attach the motor to
the locomotive?
So how much does it overlap curved rails while it’s running? I’ve been browsing
brickshelf trying to get a glimpse of it and only saw one ‘action’ picture
goirng through a curve. It looks as if the cab swings much more than the nose
of the locomotive.
Anyway - good job! It’s great to finally see it (mostly) finished.
--Anthony
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: New MOC: Polar Express pics
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| In lugnet.trains, Anthony Sava wrote: <snip me> (...) Hey, Anthony-- I was hoping you'd chime in! It is always interesting to see how others tackle the same problem. It was really fun seeing your version (and 8 wide as well:-) and ours. (...) That's (...) (18 years ago, 14-Jul-06, to lugnet.trains, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | New MOC: Polar Express pics
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| 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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