I drew up some concept rolling stock.

JonMyrlennBailey

Active member
Questions: who in the world can custom build two standard-gauge steam locomotives based on a 1910 Baldwin logging mallet no longer in existence? I wish I had the skills to content create these pieces of rolling stock in all their exclusive liveries as Trainz traincars. Also, who custom paints rolling stock?
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Most of all who wanna do it needs to have blueprints of the loco. Without blueprints you'll never have it.
 
Hello,

Steam locomotives are extremely complicated and complex to model. You would be better off asking permission to reskin existing models. All you need is a good drawing program such as Gimp (free) or Photoshop (cost money). Good luck.

Jack
 
The steam loco model I have was never authored by anybody for content as far as I know. I don't have the knowledge to build content from scratch. I don't think I have the patience to even learn it.

So, in the real world, where could a billionaire in theory have a brand-new working American standard gauge steam locomotive custom built from scratch based on drawings, blueprints or other historic documentation? There is probably not much call for this in the world market for railway rolling stock. Somebody did have to build those steam engines on the Disneyland railroad.


There are business concerns that custom-build various products from automobiles to airplanes to boats to clothes to boots to guns to motorcycles to houses to ships to trucks to bicycles. I know of not one entity that can whip up a working full-size railroad steam engine made to order if you have millions of American greenbacks to pee away.

Here is a website referencing this 1910 Baldwin dream mallet of mine: ashamedly, this one-off logging engine was scrapped a long time ago; I have never seen a standard-gauge steam locomotive so cute, so handsome, so fashionable or so interesting as this one, this would definitely be the Beauty Queen of Rail Queens for any American excursion train; the UP Big Boy and Norfolk and Western articulated engines are just so dog-bottom ugly:

http://loggingmallets.railfan.net/list/prtlnd2/portland2.htm

My favorite non-articulated side-rod steam engine is the Baldwin consolidation of UP and SP with Vanderbilt oil tenders. Joshua Cowan Lionel's favorite was a NYC Hudson.
 
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Somebody did have to build those steam engines on the Disneyland railroad.

The steam locomotives at Disneyland, according to steamlocomotive.com, were built by either WED Enterprises, which built Disneyland and was owned and financed by Walt Disney himself, or built by Baldwin, and had significant cosmetic changes to them:
#1, a 4-4-0, named Cyrus K. Holliday, was built by WED Enterprises in 1955, and cost Walt Disney himself $40,000
#2, a 4-4-0, named EP Ripley, was built by WED Enterprises in 1955, and cost Walt Disney himself $40,000
#3, a 2-4-4T, named Fred Gurley, was built by Baldwin in 1894, was previously owned by the Godchaux Sugar Company in Louisiana, the cost of restoration was $37,000, and went into service on the Disneyland Railroad on March 28th, 1958
#4, a 2-4-0, named Ernest S. Marsh, was built by Baldwin in 1925, was previously owned by the Pine Creek Railroad, a tourist railway in New Jersey that still exists, the cost of restoration was more then $57,000, and went into service on the Disneyland Railroad on July 25th, 1959
#5, a 2-4-4T, named Ward Kimball, was built by Baldwin in 1902, was previously owned by the theme park Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio and used on their own railroad at their theme park, the Cedar Point & Lake Erie, where it was known as Maud L., Maud L. was traded for a locomotive named Ward Kimball that was too big for Disneyland, but too small for the Magic Kingdom (AKA Walt Disney World),Maud L. was then renamed Ward Kimball, then had a new cab and boiler built, before its restoration was suspended due to budget issues and placed into long-term storage in late 2003. Restoration resumed in 2004, which was outsourced, which included adding new driving wheels, a new smokebox door, and cosmetic features. Ward Kimball was finally completed and entered service on the Disneyland Railroad on June 25th, 2005, just in time for Disneyland's 50th anniversary in July of that year.
The information in this post comes from steamlocomotive.com and the Disneyland Railroad's Wikipedia page.
 
There's no one stopping you from building your own models, but you are better off reskinning existing models including the SD40-2Ts. The chartreuse and black makes the reskinning relatively easy too since there's not a lot of other colors and surfaces to worry about. The simple paint scheme reminds me of the Boston and Maine spartan blue dip scheme they used in the end before Guilford ruined them completely.
 
There's no one stopping you from building your own models, but you are better off reskinning existing models including the SD40-2Ts. The chartreuse and black makes the reskinning relatively easy too since there's not a lot of other colors and surfaces to worry about. The simple paint scheme reminds me of the Boston and Maine spartan blue dip scheme they used in the end before Guilford ruined them completely.

There would be much greater feasibility for me to build these dream trains as physical scale models than try to acquire skills, knowledge and software to create Trainz content versions of these. I don't know where I can take formal classroom training on content creation for Trainz-compatible locomotives. I do envy those persons who do actually possess such knack. Norfolksouthern37 did a bang-up job with that magnificent SP SD40T-2. He seems a master of Trainz Loco Craft.
 
There would be much greater feasibility for me to build these dream trains as physical scale models than try to acquire skills, knowledge and software to create Trainz content versions of these. I don't know where I can take formal classroom training on content creation for Trainz-compatible locomotives. I do envy those persons who do actually possess such knack. Norfolksouthern37 did a bang-up job with that magnificent SP SD40T-2. He seems a master of Trainz Loco Craft.

Learning to make the 3d models is a big part to start with. You can do it through tutorials online or you can take real classes in 3d modeling. A friend of mine works for Autodesk and teaches that or did anyway last I heard. She taught classes and seminars for 3d Studio and later 3ds Max as well as wrote books on modeling.

Learning to create the models, though is a tiny part of the whole package and the rest comes with experience and artistic capabilities and much of this comes with years of experience.

Texturing isn't that bad, but it does take time and experience. In the past, this wasn't too difficult but today with the new PBR textures and normal maps along with everything else complicates the process.
 
Where would one go about finding blank blueprints to draw schemes like these on - or did you draw all these from scratch?
 
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