JayWizzleHizzle

Pretty suspicious timing, eh? Well jokes on you, I'd been working on these models on and off for years before Rapido's announcement- 2017 at the earliest when I was only 18 going on 19. So before I show off my current models I thought I'd share the history of them. I was inspired to make these models after seeing just how small the actual engines were, and just how out of scale the Bachmann and Hornby Bill and Ben models were. The ERTL Bill and Ben toys were a better fit, but didn't have the proper proportions. So I opened up sketchup and wikipedia, and after quite some time I had the first prototypes. I used my college 3d printers to make one of the earliest prototype bodies in my first semester. However, those were filament printers, and they turned out rather poorly. After a few years in 2020, I got my first resin printer gor my birthday and after some experimentation I got to this point. The cab was a seperately fitted piece to the body to allow for easier painting and detailing, which is still the case today. My post-print curing and washing process needed some work, since some cured alcahol was visible even under primer, but I was very happy. Taking inspiration from RailwayMania's own model of Bill, I bought some spare parts of an L&Y pug to make a chassis, which worked well enough. However, I'd already worked so hard on getting the body right (I hadn't found work drawings of the engines yet and was eyeballing everything based on what few measurements I had) that just slapping an already-existing chassis underneath didn't feel right, so I set about making my own. This was the first time I'd ever done so, and I was woefully unaware of things like photo-etching, proper gearboxes, and more that I could have used. With much trial and error I'd gotten a decently running test job, but the ordinary resin I was using to make the chassis didn't give great results, so I continued redesigning the chassis and gears, designing my own wheel inserts for the pug, designing my own pug crankpins since I'd lost one of them, and working on these quietly in the background. Just when everything seemed like it was coming together: Rapido kicked the door down and revealed theirs. I really only have myself to blame- I submitted Alfred and Judy as suggestions a while back and encouraged others to do the same. So here we are. I've got a lot to think about but even when- not if- I buy the rapido models for myself, I'll hopefully have my own done by that point.

Alright Rapido, you win. I'd been toiling away at Alfred and Judy in OO on my own for the last few years on and off, doing what I can in my limited resources and budget. I get a second wind recently- designing a gear train, chassis, and etched brass rods and details, getting help with finding a good pre-existing chassis just in case- and what do you do? You only go and show off these beautiful prototypes: DCC ready, immaculately detailed, thoroughly researched twins with a variety of liveries, flywheel motor, hook and loop connections, white metal chassis, and more. And I'm rather proud of them! That's bad enough, but you know what's worse? Even if I can finish my designs in a reasonable time frame before yours release, I'm still gonna throw down my hard earned Ameribucks on two of your finest Alfreds for my Sodor China Clay engines, because you know that I know that I just can't compete with factory-quality fabrication and injection molding. And y'all are smarter than that- you knew exactly who to paint in yellow to maintain Railway Series Accuracy (TM) for goons like me and my 4 other freinds that have pre-ordered two of them. I don't know if it was Corbs that suggested it or if someone else, but whoever it was deserves a raise because they know just how to make us part with our money and do it with a smile on our faces. The J70's were the first step, now Alfred and Judy. What's next- LBSCR E2's? You might as well, I'm sure they'd be beautiful and Hornby sure isn't doing anything with their molds worthwhile. Heck, go whole hog and make GWR Trojan (or whatever Percy is closest to being idk) as well and completely own our wallets. I'll stand there applauding and throwing my money at you, but I'll do it knowing that you know that I know exactly what you're doing. ... So jokes aside- I and my friend group have been fiending for these ever since we saw them this morning. For just being 3d printed the prototypes are downright gorgeous, and the renders have got me fantasizing of when we can see moving prototypes in action and what the mechanism will look like. I'm guessing these are going to be Q4 2024 at a minimum considering everything else revealed today as well as what's already in the works, but I'll be counting the days believe you me.

Truth be told, I only used a Peppercorn A1 since it and the ROD were at the same angle in the Bachmann pictures. Plus, I wanted to make a photoshop that was at a different angle from the usual side-on pictures I do. And you are right that 8F or 7F boilers would probably be for the best. Again though, I mostly thought an A1 boiler conversion would be neat, not to mention different from what Corbs has done before.

I will say that my idea of the NWR is a fair bit more industrialized than what we see in the books, mostly as an excuse to have as many engines as it does. As for the island itself, it's a very hill island. @RhysBDavies on twitter provided a very in-depth elevation map of the main line of the railway, which will hopefully fit in RMWeb's file limits. The Sodor main line itself is about 82 miles including the trek to Barrow-In-Furness. You also gotta take multiple sources into account. The island has a regular fish train to Manchester, the Flying Kipper. It has an aluminum works which, although has a specialised branch run by electric engines, has to be transported elsewhere, and I can't imagine aluminum trains being lightweight. Not to mention the alumina for these works is brought from Tidmouth on the west coast, far beyond the electrified branch's limits. The island also has a stone quarry, a china clay pit, ballast trains that serve the island and other lines off the island, slate from the mountains, cattle trucks, tankers, and many private industries that the island serves. In addition, although I myself have a hard time believing this, Wilbert Awdry has said that the NWR owns at least 80 engines as of the 1980's, most of which go unseen in the books. Most of those, as per the books, are probably diesels or other standard types. But if nothing else, it makes as a fun opportunity to think of excuses for what engine would be needed and why. It's why Corbs does it (and does it well if you ask me,) it's something the Awdrys did, it it's something I do. Not to mention, it gives opportunity to make up fictional engines like the first 6 engines are to an extent. I'm aware how tiring it must be for yall to always hear about Sodor and Thomas and all that, I totally get it. Every time I watch a video about a british engine and some 9 year-old needs to tell people in the comments what TTTE character it is or looks like, I roll my eyes just as hard as you all do.

A bit late to the Sodor talk, but anywho- In my fictional NWR, a few ROD 2-8-0's were purchased after WW1 for heavy freight, although they'd eventually be supplemented by other heavy goods engines. I originally had the idea of them remaining unmodified and being scrapped sometime in the 1950's. However, I really want to employ standardization to the railway, and boiler types are a top priority in that effort. The railway's Gresley A1, Gorton, is the only one whose boiler I couldn't think of being given to any other engines without major modifications. Now I'd imagine the railway wouldn't mind the one-off boiler for its premier express engine, but I also want to give another engine type that boiler, cause I think it'd be neat. That's when I had the idea of the RODs being given A1 boilers in a bid to boost their efficiency. As I worried, though, the A1 boiler was too long and would give the RODs a massive rear overhang, the same problem I had with other ideas for my A1 boiler conversions. I bit the bullet and made the ROD into a 2-8-2, in addition to giving the ROD a double chimney and modifying the splashers by the firebox. The smokebox was also lengthened slightly so the boiler wouldn't be too far forward so as to interfere with the wheels. It looks undeniably wonky, and I wish I'd enlarged the front cab windows among other things, but I like the concept if nothing else. As for the boiler diameter, I compared them in a rather half-assed way by scaling the engines up in photoshop to the correct sizes amongst one other and went from there. I also am aware that this is a Peppercorn A1 and not a Gresley A1, but I wanted basis that were at the same angle, so just pretend.

From the wiki: "The railway was originally built in 1870 as an industrial line, running along the coast between Crosby and Suddery, with an intermediate station at Wellsworth. It was run by four 0-6-0 tank engines. It eventually developed a considerable passenger clientèle, and served an unspecified number of lead and zinc mines along its route." "...which resulted in the railway extending south along the coast to Brendam in the early 1900s..." This is something I realize now eventually brought the line to about 25 miles if my map notes are correct. This information I'm re-reading gives me a few ideas. I think the K classes could still be feasible, if only because the contractors may have sold them some of their engines, or maybe got them in contact with MW to buy some engines. You could also call it the sunk cost fallacy since I already bought a Hattons P Class to use for its chassis. Still, if it was mostly contractor builds, Sharp Stewart or Beyer Peacock would be likelier options. I'll have to look into what they both offer in regards to 0-6-0 tanks.

I'm currently trying to model a fictional railway from a certain book series. Pretty much all known about the engines is that they were 0-6-0 designs- we don't know what kind of tanks they had, who built them, or anything like that. Since information regarding the railway is scarce, so I have to make some assumptions about it and go from there. I feel confident in saying the railway, formed in 1870, was a steam railway from day 1 given the distance the line spanned (roughly 15 miles) and the amount of traffic it catered. Thusly, I place the engines at being built in or before 1870. (Perhaps the line used engines owned by the contractors that built it till it had its own engines, but we're never told.) The railway was a small one so it can also be assumed that the engines would have been purchased from a manufacturer in England rather than built on site.. My question then is what possible 0-6-0 designs would be the most likely candidates for the railway to be running? I'm trying to look through a list of early private locomotive builders in England, but the list is massive and the information for all but the more well-known companies (Sharp, Stewart & Co., Robert Stephenson & Co., Fletcher Jennings, Hunslet, etc.) is minimal at best. At present, my best guess is a Manning-Wardle K class. Manning Wardle is based in West Yorkshire, not too far from where the railway would be located, and produced plenty of engines by this time already. I'm already designing a body to be 3d modeled and printed going off this assumption. Specifically, I'm basing it off Sharpthorn at the Bluebell Railway, built in 1877. Snazzy, eh? But here's where things get agonizing interesting. Information regarding Manning Wardle designs are scarce at best, and I can't find anything regarding whether or not the K classes are older than 1877 or not. MW definitely made engines prior to 1870, but all I can find were 0-4-0s. So if not a Manning Wardle K class, or even a MW at all, what would be a good candidate for these engines given these constraints?

When you start kitbashing and never stop

Great Northern's (Unintentionally!) Familiar-Looking Rebuild What you see above is Gresley's Great Northern in an alternate 1945, still rebuilt as an A1/1, but with a different designer, or at least a difference in Thompson's ideology. Now a four cylinder design with valve gear not unlike that of a Duchess. As fate would have it, another A1 with a similar design would debut in 1945, albeit in children's print. (And it'd take another year for it to actually look like itself!) Anyone here remember my Sodor Castle class on this topic? Probably not! This idea actually started out as experimentally redesigning them to fit an A1 boiler, as I figured that since they and the A1's are in similar power classes and do similar work it'd make sense. A little bit of standardizing almost never hurt anyone. In trying to keep the Castle's 4 cylinders, I extended the foot plate and front end to make room for the larger boiler and realized I'd basically made a Railway Series Gordon, Fowler tender and all! Please believe me, I didn't do that on purpose. It was then that I had a thought about Gordon's rebuild in the books, and how it somewhat parallels Great Northern's own rebuild/ redesign. In the books, Gordon was sent to Crewe in 1939 to be rebuilt as a 2-cylinder due to issues with his conjugated valve gear. In real life, this was an issue that appeared more and more due to wartime conditions, which Gordon fortuitously never had to experience. It was a problem Thompson sought to fix on Great Northern as well. I've thought about changes I'd make to this after the fact. Changing the height of the foot plate to give extra space for the inside cylinders, for one. Even so, if/ when I model this as Gordon I'll make a few extra changes in addition to these as I see fit, as I'm trying to standardize some of Sodor's many one-off buys without outright scrapping any. Thompson and I could at least agree on the benefits of standarizing!

I certainly wouldn’t mind tilting the model to prevent this. The only problem is 45 degrees would massively increase print time. Do you think 22.5 degrees would suffice? Or would 45 degrees be the only sure fire way?

I've done plenty of small prints before while testing out my OO Scale Port of Par Alfred and Judy shells. Their small size meant I never had many problems with distortions, but now that I'm trying to print a significantly larger model, I've found that the boiler is coming out more of an oval shape. I slice my models in ZSuite and print on an Anycubic Photon. I print primarily with clear resin, at a layer thickness of 0.05 mm and a 10 second exposure time. The walls that make up the model are 1mm thick, from the boiler to the cab to the runningboard. I add supports only on the inside of the boiler, not the outside. I've also attached pictures from the slicing software itself so people see how I'm adding supports. If anyone has had similar problems and managed to fix them, any help would be greatly appreciated!

Still rather new here- what's rule 1? Fun comes first or something like that?

What I'd like to see is people taking one engineer's design and reimagining it to be by someone else. For example, what if Bulleid had been installed as CME after Gresley died instead of Thompson- how would he have gone about standardising and rebuilding the LNER's fleet? "Oh but Bulleid was the SOUTHERN railway's CME you big idiot, not the LNER's!" Yeah, well, so what? This is for funsies, we're having fun here. Fun is mandatory. Imagine it- Bullied's A1/1 class. He'd likely be seen as the villain many see Thompson as today.

Ah, I see! Thanks for the info, I'll be changing that.

For my own AU of the Island of Sodor, I'd created a 4-6-0 as a mixed-traffic class, the NWR Castles. They were built at Crewe by the LMS, as it was too big of a job for the Crovan's Gate workshops, for the sake of tackling Sodor's many hills. Ulfstead Castle was the first to be named, followed by Thorkell, Suddery, Arlesdale, Tidmouth, Hawin Doorey, and Callan Castle. Based on the 4-cylindered GWR Kings, it has Gresley A1 outside cylinders, valve gear, and dome, a slightly modified Black 5 cab, and a B17 tender. Although depicted here in blue, I later revised my coloring scheme that all mixed-traffic engines would be red with black lining. Edit: I originally had them as the "Landmark Class" since I'd assumed the GWR held the rights to the term "Castles," but BernardTPM corrected me on that.