Novmber 4th, 2007

I mentioned a couple of articles ago that these days I try to focus on one project until it's finished. Well, almost. Right now I have three going at the same time. Two I've already mentioned, the M10000 and the GM Aerotrain. The third caught me by surprise. It's been languishing here at the shop for a LONG time. All the Milwaukee Road fans out there have been waiting patiently for me to finish up the EP-3 "Quill". I had it started, but just couldn't get rolling on it.

I don't now if the new version of the Rocky Mountain Division inspired me or what. For some reason the Quill became interesting all of a sudden. The things that had tripped me up prior to turned out to have easy solutions. I was able to put some real time into working out the details, including animating the pantographs, wheels and even fudging a respectable looking "quill drive". There are still some bugs, like the flying leap that the cab takes every time it hits rough track, but hey...At least it looks like it's supposed to...

That being said, I spent some time tooling around the Harlowton yards on the new version of the RMD...I got happy with the camera and here are the "artful" results...

I'll start with my favorite...It has that Wayne Campbell / Tim Muir feel to it. #10308 is being turned while the cameraman is sitting in the weeds next to the Harlowton "roundhouse" (a third round at any rate).

The Texaco drum on the section car , the section shed, and all the junk just makes the shot great enough to make you forget the switch tool hanging in midair behind the big electric. You can hardly notice the pantograph is too high for the wire. I used Jerry Sullivans wire height, sorta.

That little shed on the turntable is actually a small passenger shelter, but it looks just fine where it is. The operator (standing under the "P") is at the console that controls the table. You can see him better if you blow the picture up to full size (1600 x 962)

I spent a while on this side of the tracks, learning how to move this monster at crawl speeds. It requires "burping" the throttle in and out of notch 1 and a judicious amount of brake.

This is the roundhouse area from the opposite side of the tracks from the last shot. The Lil' Joe poking its nose out of the stall is just what the doctor ordered. Despite the fact that #10308 looked totally different by the time the Joe's appeared the shot still has a "railroady" look. Especially with the switchstand, sand tower, and 55 gallon drums in the scene.

Way off behind the Quill you can just make out some tri-color Hiawatha equipment. They are kinda beat and look like they're waiting for the torch (or a nice historical society to com and rescue them from obscurity).

The light towers are a bit too modern, even for the EP-4 in the scene (the number looks too low to be a freighter). Some purist may moan, but if they are sticklers they can just retrofit all the shape files to the earlier era. I've been thinking of ways to do that on the Agony Eastern, but here on the RMD, things are just fine the way they are, thank you very much.

The lighting on the Quill is basic, as it probably was in 1919 or there abouts. The only numbers that appear on the early photos are on the headlight and the side of the locomotive. Niceties like number boards and handrails won't appear for another year or so. At this date I'm not even sure the EP-3 has a horn. Considering that a third of her bulk is taken up by steam heating apparatus, she may even have a whistle.

By 1923 her headlights will be mounted high on her roof. The bells will drop to hang off the cab center panels and she'll have a nice new number board over the engineer's window. She'll even have a few more handrails.

10308 is drifting past the Harlowton staion in this view. If you look closely (and lighten the picture) you can make out the "details" of her quill drive. The "quill" is a gear driven tube mounted around the axle. The tube is attached to a "spider" with seven arms sticking out between the spokes of her wheels each arm is attached to the wheel with a coil spring. It sounds a bit round about, but if you think about the jackshafts and other paraphenalia that were in use at this time it's almost simplistic.

The quill drive was effective enough to end up on the Pennsylvania Railroads GG-1 electrics in 1934. Those engines are legends of operation, continuing into service for about eight decades. The EP-3's weren't quite so lucky. Plagued by structural problems though out their service life they just barely made it to the late 50's. Of the 10 purchased in 1919, seven made it to the scrap line by 1957. The others were wrecked and used for parts.

Another favorite, it reminds me of the Pennsylvania State Rail Museaum in Strasburg, PA. All this color, however, would make a Pennsy fan blush. We're used to subdued, perhaps even morose, colors like "Brunswick green" and "tuscan". Compared to those colors, even these old coaches and cabeese seem "tarted up" as they used to say.

Of course, back in 1919, nearly everybody used somber colors. #10308 and her sisters hit the tracks with dark shades of green or black. New Haven, New York Central, Norfolk & Western (and the Pennsy, of course) all dressed their electrics in dark business-like colors. Considering these critters were cutting edge technology in their time, it's quite different from the riot of color EMD would release on the railroading public in the mid 20th century. I think the difference is these locomotives were built by conservative railroad types. The GM diesels were painted by automobile stylists. You know, the type of folks who put tailfins on passenger coaches. Who wants box cabs when you can have a 55 Chevy?

Anyway, I like the character in this shot. Jerry and Lucas stuck all this detail out here where hardly anyone goes. It all look like it belongs here. If more routes looked like this, we wouldn't need MSTS X or KRS. It's about the trains and their setting, not how shiny the water can get.

I love the scale of this picture.  It takes me back to a photo John Allen took of his early Gorre & Daphetid. That little model railroad was only 4 foot by 4 foot square yet the shot he sent to Model Railoader had the same wide open look this one has. It's scenes like this that attracted me to "V-Scale" and will keep me plugging away long after MSTS-X has hit the bargain bin. This is railroading on a scale a person can live with!

I had trouble deciding which of these two I liked better. The right one has a certain something to it, with the big Quill framed by the roundhouse doorway. Yet the left hand picture has a EP-4 in it...That'll make anyone's day. The low angle make the big GE look as enormous as it really is. The contrast with the "plain jane" Quill has a kinda before and after, or march ot time kinda thing happenin'. You can have your AC's and MAC's or whatever...This is power the way it should look...

Finally, we come to another study in scale...An overall view of Harlowton with CAM4 backed out to Goodyear blimp perspective. To model this scene in any other scale would require more than a few basements, maybe a football field would work. I'm not sure if it was Jerry or Lucas who pulled it off, but the freight on Track 7 is NOT a collection of default flats. Those are genuine models and though it probably kills some frame rate on older systems, I like it. I like the whole scene, from the cars next to the station to the stores by the road. It lends just enough credibility to the railroad to make it convincing. I feel that it doesn't have to look real to provide the illusion of being on a full size railroad. Like Tony Koester might say..."It's good enough". Thanks Jerry. Thank you Lucas. Thanks to all those guys who helped make the RMD the perfect setting to run my Quill.

That's about it for now. Thanks for listening.