Big Bertha Build - Cab Interior - Revised Controls

[pcas1986]

After some discussion with my client, we have decided to base Big Bertha's cab interior on the 2-8-0 7F. There are many similarities with Big Bertha and the 7F so this seems a reasonable way to go.

Unfortunately this means discarding some of the controls I was going to use and starting over.

So the new controls will be based on the photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/railsimulator/sets/72157621796286006/with/3752663789/

Rebuilding the regulator was quite easy as all I had to do was add an extra "arm" and an extra handle. This is what the revised regulator looks like in Blender. Note all the pictures show a "solid" view rather than the textured view as the texture in Blender looks nothing like the result in Trainz. The regulator is animated so you can also see the b.r.main lattice, the regulator lattices (which rotates) and the collision box attachment point. Given the regulator has two handles, the collision box attachment point may need to be adjusted.

The first new mesh I had to build is the combined (steam) injector and clack valve housing (manifold). There are two of these in the cab and the one on the left side of the 7F appears to supply steam to the train brake. Since Big Bertha is a right hand drive this means that the train brake will have to be to the left of this housing. I think!

Some of the dimensions of this housing are a guess since the photo site above mostly had shots of the front or just off the front. If anyone has a better photo I'd appreciate the advice. I was rather pleased how this turned out.

This is the left side showing the flange that will mate with the trainbrakelever.

The right side:

The lever is a separate mesh which I cannot post at this time as PhotoBucket has a problem.


This is what the housing looks like on the 7F. http://www.flickr.com/photos/railsimulator/3752663789/in/set-72157621796286006

 

[Edweird]

I think that brake housing looks just the job personally.

I was doing a little number crunching earlier out of curiosity, after having seen a kit for a 00 scale Bertha, I was curious as to how big a scale version of the Lickey incline would be. It comes out as two miles being 42 metres! That doesn't include having a loop or anything at either end. That's big.

 

[pcas1986]

I think that brake housing looks just the job personally.

I was doing a little number crunching earlier out of curiosity, after having seen a kit for a 00 scale Bertha, I was curious as to how big a scale version of the Lickey incline would be. It comes out as two miles being 42 metres! That doesn't include having a loop or anything at either end. That's big.

Was the kit displayed on the web?

I only recently discovered that it is popular, at least in the UK, to have "garden" scale railways. Even in my backyard, which is large for Canberra, such a route would take up much of the perimeter. The locos would need sanders as it was about -6c this morning. One of my bird baths still has ice in it at lunchtime!

 

[captainkman]

I saw a model of Bertha on the internet, I think it was scratchbuilt though. I remember an article in Hornby Magazine which showed some station and line layouts for a model train set. One of these was Bromsgrove and the Lickey. I might see if I can get the magazine, as I get them on loan form a friend.

 

[Edweird]

The link to Bertha's kit is here: http://www.djhmodelloco.co.uk/prodpage.asp?productid=3060

Buying locomotives this way is more expensive, as you have to buy the 'body', motor and wheels separately BUT by god they are so much better. Scratch built locomotives like these kits have metal bodies instead of plastic like Hornby models, making them much heavier and so they run so much more nicely. Smoother, more traction, less vibration. I know a chap that used to make his own freight wagons (covered/full ones like box vans or 5 plank coal trucks with coal in) from solid block of wood for the same reason. One of the big advantages is that you don't need rubber traction tyres on the heavier locomotives, to acceleration and deceleration is less jerky, and if you want to can get some realistic wheel-slip.

They also do a kit of a 7F as well, and you know what? I think Bertha's tender's a 7F tender. I flicked back and forth between the two and they're hard to tell apart if you cover the cab-back of Bertha's tender.

Get these two pictures side by side:
http://www.djhmodelloco.co.uk/products/huge/3060.jpg
http://www.djhmodelloco.co.uk/products/huge/3061.jpg

Whether or not that's accurate in reality I don't know. It could be just the way they've done the kit but given the sheer number of similarities between the two, I have a feeling I might be onto something. The more I read, the more sure I am that Bertha is a 7F v2.0

 

[pcas1986]

Thanks, I agree. When I started looking at the 7F I recognised many similarities although I think the coal bunker on BB may be smaller and BB has the cab tender part as well. While watching the 7F cab ride video I noticed that much of the 7F's tender was different to the one I built and wondered whether I should change anything.

There is a very large collection of hand made model locomotives and rolling stock at the NRM in York that was donated from a private collection. I cannot remember the scale. The original builder made most, if not all, his own parts.

 

[captainkman]

On the subject of hand-made models, a friend of mine used to have an O scale set running in his back yard with a station and yard in a shed. He had a model of Flying Scotsman, still in brass, which he let me drive. His locos were made by a friend of his who was skilled at modelmaking, and he painted the locos as painting was his speciality.

He's sold it all now, so he can build, in OO scale, a narrow gauge branch line, DCC operated with sound. and he was unimpressed with Trainz when I showed him.

I'm still looking for that picture of a scratchbuilt Bertha though, and that kit looks wrong. The boiler looks too long and too narrow in diameter. The Trainz version looks better.

And I really need to get off Multiplayer and continue work on my Matchbox loco!

 

[pcas1986]

.. and he was unimpressed with Trainz when I showed him.

...

That doesn't surprise me although I'd be curious why. The common interest, I guess, is the love of trains. But how you approach this hobby is subject to your own preferences. I rather like building things whether it be Trainz assets, software programs and even real activities such as garden projects and house maintenance. I prefer British railways rather than U.S. or others, but maybe its because I was a BR locospotter when I was about your age - a very long time ago. :hehe:

A casual friend of mine has had a model railway in his garage for at least 30 years and he didn't show much interest in Trainz either!

 

[captainkman]

I remember another guy saying that he prefers to be able to hold the models.

 

[Edweird]

@ Paul
I'm fairly certain Bertha's tender does have a smaller coal capacity than a normal SDJR 7F (just realised there's 2 different '7F' locomotives) but as the basis on which the alterations were made, I think that might be correct.

I've seen the NRM models many years ago, but I cannot remember for certain the scale, though I think that was OO scale too.

@Kieran
I agree, the model does look a little out of proportion, but bear in mind that OO scale is not a very accurate scale. The rolling stock generally oversized and narrower gauged than it should be.



Some people prefer to have something physical. For those without the money or space there is virtual but, also, some people prefer virtual because if time and patience is put into making the models and layouts more and more detailed to represent real life better (in my case, I've been working on modifying my local area on the Trainz ECML route, it was missing the Cleethorpes Light Railway, several road crossings and the entire Brigg Branch between Kirton Lindsey and Barnetby - this line is almost disused, it has three Northern Rail 144s in each direction on a Saturday plus very occasional freight use - )

 

[pcas1986]

Just letting you guys know I'm still working on the cab. This is really slow going!

Right now I'm working on the revised brake control. Unfortunately I don't have very good pictures, other than the front, so much of the body of the control will be an uneducated guess! While watching the video of the cab ride I noticed the driver pulling on a separate lever while stopping. It seems that this might be part of the braking system as well but I have no images of it.

Just recently I was playing with a button control, partly to help out Trainlover16 with his button and doors animation, but also because I was thinking of using it for controlling the spotlight.

The combined sander and blower control is complete except for the texturing. The sander control on the 7F seems to pass steam to the sandboxes on either side of the cab so I'm not sure exactly how this works. Plus the sander boxes on Big Bertha are outside on the footplate. Perhaps they work differently.

Still to do:

Some adjustment to the water level drain levers.
Relocation of the various dials.
The whistle. I think I will make a simple one like in the 7F.
All the plumbing around the cab. A lot the existing stuff will need to be redone.
All the cab texturing!

 

[Edweird]

The placement of the sand boxes doesn't much affect anything. SDJR 7Fs had six sandboxes and both of the two preserved 7Fs have steam-blast sanding gear. From what I've read here: http://www.sdrt.org/resources/stocklist/88info.htm, there are three types of sanding gear for steam locomotives. Gravity, steam and wet. Gravity seems pretty obvious, mechanical shutters that would allow sand to drop onto the rails. Steam blast systems, it seems, were in fact first implemented by Midland rail too. http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/basic12.htm

 

[pcas1986]

The placement of the sand boxes doesn't much affect anything. SDJR 7Fs had six sandboxes and both of the two preserved 7Fs have steam-blast sanding gear. From what I've read here: http://www.sdrt.org/resources/stocklist/88info.htm, there are three types of sanding gear for steam locomotives. Gravity, steam and wet. Gravity seems pretty obvious, mechanical shutters that would allow sand to drop onto the rails. Steam blast systems, it seems, were in fact first implemented by Midland rail too. http://www.greatwestern.org.uk/basic12.htm

Well spotted and thanks for that. The first page I recall reading at some time but must have missed the sanding bit. The second was new to me.

 

[Edweird]

Well spotted and thanks for that. The first page I recall reading at some time but must have missed the sanding bit. The second was new to me.

You're welcome. I'm glad I can at least be of some use to you.

 

[pcas1986]

Thought it might be time for an update on my progress. I confess I have been distracted by the Tour de France, MotoGP and F1.

After wasting a couple days chasing an odd error with materials the brake lever mechanism is finished. I still have to go back and do the material for that control plus the rest of the cab. Here is how the cab looks at present:

There's no plumbing to speak of except for some around the gauges that you can't see in this shot. After carefully running a tube around the speedometer gauge it still looks like a thin piece of spaghetti so get the size right is a problem. The space between the brake lever and the reverser is rather cramped so I may have to move the brake lever/steam supply combo again or perhaps discard the lever style reverser and build the winding type. The 7F has an additional lever in that space that also appears to be part of the braking system.

Just for fun I decided to add some cab doors and, after carefully working the animation so they worked like bi-fold doors, I realised that the sanding box/seat would obstruct the movement so that needs changing as well.

Here is a shot of the left hand door:

Both doors work well but I ran BB around a curved piece of track and the doors interfere with both the tender cab wall/handrail and even the tender handbrake! So I will have to make the door a little smaller and maybe move the tender handbrake.

 

[Edweird]

It's looking a little bit plain at the moment, but it's looking good. I'm liking the kettle above the firebox doors. As for the reverser: it could be lever or screw, as Bertha had both in her lifetime.
I'm no guru, but I have a feeling the doors are always going to have that problem because of the way trainz vehicles follow their tracks; including some road vehicles where the front wheels turn so tightly they point backwards.

 

[pcas1986]

It's a coffee pot that I used in my first cab. I like coffee!!!

Nothing is textured yet as I was concentrating on the layout. When the plumbing is added it will look a little busier, plus there are the sandboxes/seats to go in and the floor.
I'm amazed how much the tender moves around relative to the loco so perhaps the test track curves are too tight.

 

[pcas1986]

I should add that I am having problems getting the size perspective correct for controls. The 7F cab looks a bit crowded whereas mine looks sparse. I have scaled down the size of a couple of controls because they looked a little big. Maybe I went too far. Unfortunately none of the pictures I am using as reference have anything in them to indicate sizing. This is one of the reasons I have delayed the plumbing.