In my previous post, I wrote that I needed to make a model of one of the longer-boilered ‘Stars’, to see if it made a better comparison with the photograph taken at Cheltenham shed around 1850.

 

According to the RCTS booklet Part Two, two ‘Stars’ were built with boilers that were 2 feet longer than the others – these were ‘Rising Star’ and ‘Bright Star’. We are very fortunate that E.T. Lane not only made several sketches of ‘Rising Star’, including end-elevations, but also produced a finished and very detailed drawing of the same engine.

 

E.T. Lane

I have made considerable use of sketches by E.T. Lane in my blog posts, so I thought I should find out a little more about him. It proved to be a far from easy search but I eventually found information on the ‘Ancestry’ website.

 

Edward Theophilus Lane, to give his full name, was one of two sons of the engraver and lithographer Richard James Lane. Both sons died young.

 

 

Richard James Lane, was born at Berkeley Castle in 1800, He became a Royal Academician and, in 1829, he drew a well-known portrait of the young Princess Victoria, later to become Queen. In lithography, he is reputed to have attained a delicacy and refinement which have never been surpassed.

 

In addition, Edward’s grandmother was a niece of the celebrated painter Gainsborough, so there was a history of artistic talent running in the family.

 

 

With that background, it is hardly surprising that Edward should have developed his own artistic talent, with which he chose to provide us with a remarkable series of sketches and drawings of engines and other rolling stock at Swindon, up to his early death at the age of 20. In addition to sketch books, he left 41 sketches of locomotives, carriages, and wagons on separate sheets.

 

It seems likely that he succumbed to one of the many epidemics that plagued ‘New Swindon’ in those years, including outbreaks of cholera and smallpox. He must have returned home to London, where he was buried at St. Pancras in 1850.

 

His elegant drawing of ‘Rising Star’ stands as a fine example of his art:

 

Finished drawing of ‘Rising Star’ by Edward Lane, dated April 25, 1849

 

 

My 3D-model of Rising Star

I created my model by modifying the drawings of ‘Evening Star’, described in my previous post. I lengthened the frames by inserting an additional 8 mm (scale 2 feet) between the leading and driving wheels and, similarly, I extended the boiler length by 2 feet. I created a new firebox. which had a reported case length of 5 feet, as opposed to 4’ 10” on ‘Evening Star’. I also created a new ‘haycock’ top, to the profile shown in the Lane drawing. On the sketches by Lane, the smokebox is shown as 1” longer than ‘Evening Star’, while the trailing wheels have only 14 spokes compared with 16 spokes on the leading wheels. (this last is a characteristic shared with his sketch of ‘Vulcan’ and applied to my model of that engine.

 

My 3D-model created by reference to Lane’s drawing

 

These various minor differences demonstrate the way in which each of these early engines was ‘hand made’, with various small discrepancies between one engine and the next, apart from any significant design changes. As I pointed out in my earlier post ‘From the Stars to Firefly’, the great innovation by Gooch was to ensure that all his Firefly-class engines were built to standard templates, so that components were interchangeable between different members of the class.

 

My 3D-model of Rising Star

 

My two models of ‘Evening Star’ and ‘Rising Star’, rendered in ‘Fusion 360’, appear together below. These are not ‘finished’ models but are intended simply to show the more obvious differences between members of the same class. Neither Lane’s drawing nor his sketches of ‘Rising Star’ show a manhole cover on the ‘haycock’, so I have not included one in my model, although I strongly suspect that one was, in fact, present on the prototype.

 

My 3D-models of ‘Evening Star’ (left) and ‘Rising Star’

 

My next ‘test’ is to see how my model of ‘Rising Star’ compares with the engine in the photograph taken at Cheltenham:

 

My model of ‘Rising Star’ compared with Cheltenham photo

 

Of course the match is not perfect. It is, in fact, rather difficult to adjust all the display parameters, so that the ‘Fusion 360’ model has the same perspective as the photograph. I do believe though that the longer boiler matches the photo rather well and that the firebox is more appropriate than the one on Lane’s sketch of ‘Evening Star’. Without more information about the photograph, which is probably lost in the mists of time, I can’t take matters any further.

 

Expanding the Galaxy

There is another finished drawing by Edward Lane of the last of the Stars, ‘Royal Star’, delivered in November 1841, four years after the first of the class – the famous ‘North Star’ – and some time after many of Gooch’s own Firefly-class had entered service.

 

‘Royal Star’ reverted to the shorter (8’) boiler used on ‘Evening Star’ and the most obvious difference from the earlier engine lay in the shape of the firebox casing. This was shorter (4’ 6” length) and taller, with wood-lagged sides in the shape of a ‘Gothic arch’ up to the high-mounted safety valve casing.

 

I made a ‘haycock’ top some years ago by a rather convoluted method.  With more knowledge of the tools in ‘Fusion 360’, I tried a simpler method but it was soon obvious that adding the wooden lagging to the curved sides of the ‘Gothic’ box was going to be a new modelling challenge!

 

To create the Gothic box, I first made a cuboid box and then drew the ‘Gothic’ profile on one side. I then used the ‘push-pull’ tool in Fusion 360 to produce the ‘Gothic’ arch in one direction. After that, I rotated the box though 90 degrees and repeated the ‘push pull’, to create the second, orthogonal arched profile. A diagram helps:

 

Creating ‘Gothic’ Firebox in Fusion 360

 

That proved to be a very straightforward method but adding the planked lagging needed more thought. I eventually found a solution from watching this video on YouTube..

 

For this solution, I created a new body by extruding from the inner outline I had already sketched, as shown in the diagrams above. I then slid this body through the firebox body – fortunately, this is allowed in the virtual world, where bodies pass freely through one another! Next, I had to cut the arched faces of this new body to match the profile of the firebox itself. Again, a diagram helps:

 

Creating the Lagging on Firebox Sides

 

The finishing touch was to represent the planks of the wooden lagging To do this, I made a single horizontal slot near the bottom of a lagged side. I then used the ‘pattern on path’ command in ‘Fusion 360‘ to repeat this feature upwards, along a path following the profile of the side of the firebox. This procedure almost magically created the feature that I wanted.

 

My 3D-model of a Gothic Firebox for Royal Star

 

All that remained was for me to place this firebox into my model of ‘Royal Star’, which was mainly just a copy of ‘Evening Star’:

 

My 3D-model of Royal Star

 

Later Re-builds

Most of the ‘Stars’ were converted into Tank engines during the 1850s. The conversion included replacement of the leading 4’ diameter wheels by pairs of 3’ 6” diameter wheels and lengthening of the boiler to 10 feet, where this had not already been done.

 

Since I now had the ‘bit between the teeth’, I thought I would illustrate this later development by modifying my model of ‘Rising Star’, which already had a 10’ boiler. The re-design was generally straight-forward: just adding a saddle-tank and bunker. These parts were similar to those I have previously designed for my model of ‘Leo’.  The most difficult modification was to redesign the front end of the frames to accommodate the paired wheels. It didn’t take very long, however, before I had a 3D-model, which I have named ‘Red Star’

 

My 3D-model of ‘Red Star’

 

One again, I should point out that these are not ‘finished’ models but are only intended to indicate the different characteristics of the various members of the ‘Star-class’. I hope I have shown that not all GWR engines look the same!

 

My Galaxy of Stars

 

There’s a lot more work needed before any of these become printable models but that means I have plenty of material to keep me going through the coming winter months 🙂

 

Mike