This is my 3rd work in progress posts. I have got most of the boiler area finished. I still have to add some hoses that run along rhe side of the boiler, and a kind of cylinder thing near the cabin. The final thing will be the front strut things that go from the front of the boiler to the flat bit in front of the boiler. I don’t know the names of these parts, I hardly know anything about steam trains. I model what I see.

After I finish those details, I’ll finish the front of the train and the inside of the cab. I don’t have any reference photos of the inside of the cab of this kind of train. There is a little detail in the drawings, but not much. I’ll have to go my own way and invent a lot of it myself, or go by some references of photos from other trains so that it isn’t total fantasy.

The wheels will come last. I’ll need to spend some time studying how they work, because I want to be able to animate them. I can make the shapes of the wheels and other parts from the drawings with little trouble, but if I want to animate the movement of the parts, I have to study how to rig it so that if I move one part, such as the main piston, everything else moves as it should without me having to touch it. It will be a big job, but I’ll learn a lot from it.

Here is what I have so far. You’ll see that since last time I have added a lot of detail, such as bolts, some extruded text, a rope and a “donger” for the bell, a light bulb for the light and some glass for the cab (the colour of which may still need to be tweaked). I have added the whistle too.

Click on each image to see the large size.

I modeled the nameplate after this one: