The wheels are done. They didn’t take very long, because I only had to make one wheel and then could shift+drag copies. By “shift+drag” I mean I select the wheel with the mouse, hold down the shift key, and drag the wheel to one side with the mouse and I have a copy.

Here is the result (click on the images):

These exact side-on views lose their “3D-ness” where the protruding cylinders look flush with the wheels and joining bars:

A lot of the silver might end up being black. I’ll decide when the train is finished.

The thing I have spent (and wasted) a lot of time on is figuring out how to rig the wheels for animation. “Rigging” means everything should be connected in a way so that I only need to move one thing, and everything else moves where it should, and in the direction(!) it should. I have got some of it done, I have to work out how to rig the valve gear so that the thin rod above the main piston to works with the rest of the rig. At the moment it doesn’t move at all, because I haven’t spent days trying to figure it out yet, like I had to do with the other bit! It should work like this:

Enjoy staring at that for a while – I have to. Any idea what the red dot bouncing around in the wheel represents? This train (and all Baldwin steam locomotives that I have seen so far) uses the Stephenson Valve Gear which fortunately seems to be the least complex valve gear to model. The full range are here: http://www.steamlocomotive.com/appliances/valvegear.php

Here is the wheel rig so far:

Now I have to start work on all the other stuff that goes underneath the train.