Norfolk and Western John Henry Steam Turbine

Recently I've been very interested in many of the steam turbines that were used by many of the east coast railways of the United States. One in particular is the Norfolk and Western's John Henry (Jawn Henry). I figured that I model it myself but if there is a model already in the works then I'll wait. I heard from Trainman7616 that worksim is already working on the model, but I can't find anything on here on the forums. This is one of the few pictures that I could find of the John Henry (Jawn Henry).

He (Worksim) has started on one, but I haven't heard from him in a LONG time. Although last time that happened, we got a free Royal Hudson. So I really don't know what to tell you. :wave:

Well if push comes to shove, I could always commission the locomotive through K&L Trainz. I honestly haven't tried modeling with anything yet. All I have is blender and supposedly it not completely supported by Trainz.

Here's the page where worksim showed some pics of the mesh for the Jawn Henry back in Dec. 2014.

That's a pretty old post. Though I don't think that it will be coming out any time soon. Most likely the virtual train got scrapped just like her real world counterpart.

AppleDash22 said:

That's a pretty old post. Though I don't think that it will be coming out any time soon. Most likely the virtual train got scrapped just like her real world counterpart.

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It was just 5 months ago, which isn't an unusually long time for someone to have a complex modeling project under construction, especially if it's only being worked on in one's spare time.

Why don't you send him a PM and ask him about it?

I could actually make the suggestion, if you have the tools and the time, just build one. There will be 2x H-8 Alleghenies available once Gawpo's is out, K&L has made J-3 Hudsons that already existed, and I won't even go into the Multiples between RRmods, JR, and SPorBust/N8phu, each with their own strengths & Weaknesses.....

If you want to see something you don't currently see in the hobby, and can or want to build it, just do it. I will also say that, though Worksim's work is top notch.... He took over 3 years to produce that Hudson. Some of that I know was him feeling stuck for finishing it until BDneal stepped in to help, and IDK how much of it that was, but we never know when a creator is or is not going to release something. An announced project today could be vaporware tomorrow. And even if both projects are released, so what? Both will be popular to different people for different reasons......

-Falcus

Tne one and only N&W Class TE1 locomotive "Jawn Henry" would be an interesting, but fairly challenging project. I know of only one set of actual scale drawings that were ever compiled, and those were printed in Model Railroad Craftsman (MRC) back in Oct. 1976, so first you'd need to track down a copy of those drawings. There are some N&W diagrams , but they're only good getting basic dimensions. They're not scale drawings.

The RMC drawings are decent, but they lack many details. For example, you'd need to track down photos of the trucks to guess-ta-mate how thick the frames were, and to get an idea of how the truck's pieces (they're shown from side elevation only) fit together. Further complicating things, the drawing show Jawn Henry "as delivered." Within a short time, the N&W revised its coal bunker and redid Jawn Henry's tender (pics below), completely enclosing the tender's special chemical tank that was used to purify the water used in Jawn Henry's boiler, and made other several other changes to the locomotive. The RMC drawings show none of the details of appendages that sat atop Jawn Henry's roof. The N&W also soon added an auxiliary tender behind Jawn, since he'd developed a terrible habit of running out of water too quickly.

To build a good model, you'd need to buy as many (large) photos as you could find of the locomotive, which you're not going find those online for free. N&W HS has some and there are probably other sources if you search around. In general, the drawings just don't provide all of or enough details. You'll also need a schematic that labels Jawn's components, otherwise you'd probably spend some time trying to figure out some of the holes in Jawn's roof actually are for, since few things look like anything found on a "normal" steam locomotive.

And you'd need to figure out what Jawn Henry sounded like. Originally, Jawn Henry was fitted with a standard "hooter" whistle, but with a boiler pressure of 600 psi, the whistle was annoyingly high pitched, so the N&W replaced the whistle with a Nathan M5R24 air horn. And being a steam turbine, Jawn didn't go "choo-choo".


The tender's special water treatment tank was exposed originally "as delivered", but later enclosed (see 2nd pic)...

Friends, with respect to the quote

AppleDash22 said:

...<snippage>... All I have is blender and supposedly it not completely supported by Trainz.

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it should be noted that the only 3D software presently "completely supported" by Trainz is the 2012 version of 3DSMax. In a post in the content creator's subforum some time back, Chris (Windwalkr) wrote

WindWalkr said:

Gmax is not an N3V product. It was developed by the 3DS MAX guys as an experiment in introducing people to MAX who would normally be locked out because of the pricing, etc. It was intended that games developers (for example, us) would bundle Gmax with the game and provide a special exporter authorised by them to allow Gmax files to be written out into game format. There were obvious upsides for everybody, except that apparently they decided that it wasn't working out for them (change of corporate direction? stats showing that Gmax was actually lowering sales of MAX instead of increasing them? who knows..)

Net results:

* Gmax has not been supported for years. I have no idea if it runs properly on Windows Vista, 7 or 8, and nobody has any idea if it will run on Windows 9.
* Nobody is authorised to create new exporters. If we change our game format, Gmax won't work be able to create in-game models. If we add features, Gmax users probably won't be able to use them. If we fix bugs, Gmax users will be stuck with the bugs.

Gmax is already well behind the capabilities of the (supported) MAX exporters. There are features which you can't use from Gmax, and there are features which require a lot of non-standard (and possibly illegal) hacking in order to access. In the not-entirely-distant future, Gmax is going to break completely in one way or another. At that point, everybody still using Gmax will either need to go through an overnight upgrade, or they'll stop being a Trainz content creator. We want as few people as possible to have to make that decision.


Edit: I should add, MAX is not the only possible upgrade path. MAX is probably the simplest option for Gmax users, but it's also the expensive option. For creators who value their wallet more than their time, I'd strongly recommend investigating Blender.

kind regards,

chris

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I put this forth as a statement of Windwalkr's personal opinion, and not necessarily an official position of N3V. But the summary is that N3V supports Blender to the same extent as they support GMAX. Subsequent posts by GMAX users seem to suggest that GMAX still works under Windows 8; so, if you've already some competency in GMAX, by all means make content with GMAX. If you're fixing to start learning, Blender costs the same, and is still actively being supported (unlike GMAX, which has not been supported for about a dozen years).

ns