Hello and thanks for the welcome.
LZ certainly builds a compelling model.
I thought perhaps it would be of some interest to describe my process in a bit more detail....
Starting out, I picked the USRA 060 switch engine as my first subject for several reasons, I had fairly good drawings of it, it was reasonably simple (for a steam engine) and being much used by many railroads, it was fairly easy to find images of the operational machine and its components. The 060 is a switch or yard engine generally used at slow speeds to organize cars into trains and to break up trains and deliver cars to individual sidings. As a slow speed smaller engine it needs neither leading pilot wheels nor trailing wheels to support the firebox, hence the 060 designation – 0 pilot wheels, 6 drive wheels and 0 trailing wheels.
Not being sure how much data Sketchup, 3dMax or my computer could handle or how big the model would become were also reasons to start with a smaller project. I decided I would stick to externally visible features and would attempt to model all the principal external systems and hoped to provide sufficient information to make a credible model. Nothing internal is modeled such as pistons, boiler details or even cab controls and gages.
…so starting from the ground up there are wheels.
The wheels fit into a frame and tender trucks which also include the suspension elements and end pilot beams, couplers, foot boards and so on.
Running gear modeled includes the cylinders, valves, drive rods, valve gear and power reverse equipment. As with the remainder of the model, connecting bolts, nuts, washers, keys, wedges and so on are typically either simplified or omitted.
The model includes representations of the boiler, smoke box (silver front with the smoke stack), steam dome, two sand domes, the fire box and the ash pan at the back.
The brake system is represented with air pumps, air tanks, break cylinders, brake linkages and driving wheel brake shoes. I’ve omitted brake shoes on the tender wheels.
Rounding out the equipment, I’ve modeled foot boards, hand rails, a boiler water injection system, headlights and generator and of course, the bell and whistle.
Of course a cab and body for the tender….
All coming together to complete the model switch engine.
Which 3dMax sees this way….
I found the process at once a struggle and rewarding in its results. The layer system used to organize the model turned out to be fairly complicated but coming from a CAD background I didn’t find the results either too useful or successful. In subsequent models I’ve worked to maintain and increase the level of detail but generally use components rather than layers to manage the work. As a result, they are easier to manage but can’t be broken apart visually as neatly as my little 060.
Jim
