I love my kids, I really do, but sometimes......
On Thursday afternoon I got a phone call from my soon-to-be 20 year old daughter. She asked if I had an "early 19th century" locomotive model for her college History class.......
1852 was "too late"...
"Can you build me something?"
When do you need it by?
"Tuuuuuesdaaaaaay"..........
The ONLY one that I thought I MIGHT be anywhere near able to finish in a little over 3 days would be Peter Cooper's 1829-30 Tom Thumb.
And only if it was static (at least for now) So I went scrounging. I Found a HLW mini flat to build it from. I had some nylon gears. I knew I could toss together a boiler, coal box, the blower fan, cylinder assembly, and even railings from stuff in the scrapbox.....
From what I've so far found: The 1925 reproduction at the B&O Museum is supposed to actually be larger than the original. The reproduction in a smidge over 14 feet kong, has a 27" dia boiler 66" tall, and a 5" x 27" cylinder. In 1/32 that would be 5-1/4" long, so the HLW flat is actually pretty close. the boiler SHOULD scale out at 13/16" in diameter x 2-1/16 tall... I fudged those numbers a little... ok, a lot.... Since I didn't have much time or any budget.
Yes, this is the very same locomotive that famously lost a race with a horse...
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tomthumb.htm
I actually dare anybody to prove my model "wrong" since no original drawings or pieces of the original survive - historical preservation wasn't in vogue then. The B&O's replica was actually built based on notes and sketches that Peter Cooper drew up in the 1870s - 40+ years after the fact - and with a large dose of Pangborn thrown in!
Anyway, the first order of biz was to marrow the deck on the flatcar. Tom Thumb probably wasn't much wider than the rail gauge.
A boiler was fabbed up from a bit of 1" PVC pipe, some evergreen styrene tube & sheet... and a bunch of escutcheon pins.
I found one LGB spoked wheelset in a drawer... so we were off and running on making it "work"
The crankshaft itself required two slots be cut in the deck. Yes, the main bearing is built up from wood... just like a cheeseburger, it was fast cheap and easy.
The cylinder was more plastruct, wood, and a couple cheesy New Bright pilot wheels
A quick mock-up... I still think the boiler looks an awful lot like a bottle of nail polish. Or maybe White Out....
Another g-scaler sent me this pic of the B&O replica. I spotted 5 things that just didn't belong on the original version right off.
1. While the Salter type spring safety valve was invented in 1770, and the Hackworth direct spring version in 1828, the "pop" type didn't appear until 1873
2. The glass water column was invented in 1829 in England. However many, if not most, American built boilers were still fitted only with trycocks for ay least 15 years after that. (partially due to the patent keeping costs higher, and partly because we were nearly always slow in adopting European inventions during this period, preferring to wait for an American to re-invent it.... often as much as a decade later)
3. The steam whistle wasn't invented until 1833
4,The Bourdon tube pressure gauge wasn't developed until 1849
5. The feedwater injector wasn't invented until 1858
Did you rail historian types get them all?
Anyway, the question then became WHAT should I fit to THIS model? Certainly not an injector or whistle. Probably 4 trycocks in a diagonal line above the firedoor door. I used a weight and lever safety valve simply because it was easy to make The pressure gauge if one was even fitted, was probably similar to the mercury one George Stephenson used on his Rocket the same year. Since I didn't have a lot of extra time to devote. I didn't make one.
As Saturday ended, I knew it would be close... but probably finished in time.
A wooden wheel, and broken clothespin made the blower. A NOS Kalamazoo 4-4-0 connecting rod proved perfect. some 1/8" square plastruct for railing, and by halftime I had this..... (Feetball games are mostly just an excuse to eat hammy sammiches and tater chips, anyway)
By the end of the game it looked like this... pretty much done except for the water barrel and second spoked wheelset that should be coming in Monday's mail.... and paint.
Not bad for 3 days. If I had more time, I'd pretty it up a bit and fit it with a 3v motor and a AAA battery. The B&O replica is basic black all over. The original COULD could have been black. Black lacquer WAS used a lot on carriages.... OTOH all black isn't the color we generally associate with most other "pioneer" locos...... but with post 1900 "frugal" railroads. Just another little mystery never to be solved.
I may paint the deck nutmeg brown for bare wood, and the side sills Hauser green for visual interest.
On Thursday afternoon I got a phone call from my soon-to-be 20 year old daughter. She asked if I had an "early 19th century" locomotive model for her college History class.......
1852 was "too late"...
"Can you build me something?"
When do you need it by?
"Tuuuuuesdaaaaaay"..........
The ONLY one that I thought I MIGHT be anywhere near able to finish in a little over 3 days would be Peter Cooper's 1829-30 Tom Thumb.
And only if it was static (at least for now) So I went scrounging. I Found a HLW mini flat to build it from. I had some nylon gears. I knew I could toss together a boiler, coal box, the blower fan, cylinder assembly, and even railings from stuff in the scrapbox.....
From what I've so far found: The 1925 reproduction at the B&O Museum is supposed to actually be larger than the original. The reproduction in a smidge over 14 feet kong, has a 27" dia boiler 66" tall, and a 5" x 27" cylinder. In 1/32 that would be 5-1/4" long, so the HLW flat is actually pretty close. the boiler SHOULD scale out at 13/16" in diameter x 2-1/16 tall... I fudged those numbers a little... ok, a lot.... Since I didn't have much time or any budget.
Yes, this is the very same locomotive that famously lost a race with a horse...
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tomthumb.htm
I actually dare anybody to prove my model "wrong" since no original drawings or pieces of the original survive - historical preservation wasn't in vogue then. The B&O's replica was actually built based on notes and sketches that Peter Cooper drew up in the 1870s - 40+ years after the fact - and with a large dose of Pangborn thrown in!
Anyway, the first order of biz was to marrow the deck on the flatcar. Tom Thumb probably wasn't much wider than the rail gauge.
A boiler was fabbed up from a bit of 1" PVC pipe, some evergreen styrene tube & sheet... and a bunch of escutcheon pins.
I found one LGB spoked wheelset in a drawer... so we were off and running on making it "work"
The crankshaft itself required two slots be cut in the deck. Yes, the main bearing is built up from wood... just like a cheeseburger, it was fast cheap and easy.
The cylinder was more plastruct, wood, and a couple cheesy New Bright pilot wheels
A quick mock-up... I still think the boiler looks an awful lot like a bottle of nail polish. Or maybe White Out....
Another g-scaler sent me this pic of the B&O replica. I spotted 5 things that just didn't belong on the original version right off.
1. While the Salter type spring safety valve was invented in 1770, and the Hackworth direct spring version in 1828, the "pop" type didn't appear until 1873
2. The glass water column was invented in 1829 in England. However many, if not most, American built boilers were still fitted only with trycocks for ay least 15 years after that. (partially due to the patent keeping costs higher, and partly because we were nearly always slow in adopting European inventions during this period, preferring to wait for an American to re-invent it.... often as much as a decade later)
3. The steam whistle wasn't invented until 1833
4,The Bourdon tube pressure gauge wasn't developed until 1849
5. The feedwater injector wasn't invented until 1858
Did you rail historian types get them all?
Anyway, the question then became WHAT should I fit to THIS model? Certainly not an injector or whistle. Probably 4 trycocks in a diagonal line above the firedoor door. I used a weight and lever safety valve simply because it was easy to make The pressure gauge if one was even fitted, was probably similar to the mercury one George Stephenson used on his Rocket the same year. Since I didn't have a lot of extra time to devote. I didn't make one.
As Saturday ended, I knew it would be close... but probably finished in time.
A wooden wheel, and broken clothespin made the blower. A NOS Kalamazoo 4-4-0 connecting rod proved perfect. some 1/8" square plastruct for railing, and by halftime I had this..... (Feetball games are mostly just an excuse to eat hammy sammiches and tater chips, anyway)
By the end of the game it looked like this... pretty much done except for the water barrel and second spoked wheelset that should be coming in Monday's mail.... and paint.
Not bad for 3 days. If I had more time, I'd pretty it up a bit and fit it with a 3v motor and a AAA battery. The B&O replica is basic black all over. The original COULD could have been black. Black lacquer WAS used a lot on carriages.... OTOH all black isn't the color we generally associate with most other "pioneer" locos...... but with post 1900 "frugal" railroads. Just another little mystery never to be solved.
I may paint the deck nutmeg brown for bare wood, and the side sills Hauser green for visual interest.
