Modelling Rheneas, Part 1

Today I wanted to post the process of making a steam engine from scratch. For Rheneas I had taken photographs of Rheneas when I had constructed him about two years ago, so here goes:

First I study the engine from the film, as many angles as I can find:

Rheneas from Season 5, with grimy paintwork and metal buffers
From Season 6, at the Depot and with a smile

Both from the television series, from the Railway Series,  and of course from the real locomotive, Dolgoch:

An original photograph of Dolgoch in 1951  (Wikipedia)

Then on my colored card-stock, I lightly trace the sides of the cab, boiler, funnel and dome, etc., so I can cut them and assemble them.

I have been modeling the Skarloey engines as they were in their larger scales, as I like how they looked and worked compared to their smaller scaled versions. But they are also painted in their original red color scheme with blue stripes, as in the Railway Series original books, with more details and parts drawn from the real thing.

This is the front side of the cab, equipped with the firebox and cab controls. I drew in the numbers and dials with black ink pen, the water in the gauges colored using jell pen.

Here's a view of the cab side freestanding. All of the gauges are appropriately colored card-stock paper, glued using both white glue and crazy glue.

Here, the cab sides are fully assembled together and glued on the footplate, on the Lego chassis with extra Lego's for stability and weight. Usually I cut and glue the sides of the underframe, and add the wheel sides with static coupling rods, but as I created Rheneas as a display piece, I made wheel dummies in their place. More on that later.

Stripes are fine strips of paper cut with scissors, then glued on. The gold lettering for the numberplate is gold jell pen. The wood that supports the footplate will be covered later, as they make the frame nice and flat, and durable!

 

Here is the firebox in the cab interior. These models are fragile by nature, but I'm progressively using balsa wood strips with glue to bond sides together, instead of tape.

I still do use tape for seemingly very difficult bending parts, such as the roof. The projecting part on the back of Rheneas is actually the tube cap for filling the tanks with water. As Rheneas is a well tank engine, instead of say a saddle tank, which is wrapped on the boiler, the well tank is underneath the footplate and in the underframe.

Go to Modelling Rheneas, Part 2