Monday, January 17, 2011

Steam Locomotives

This is Gran -
We're planning for our appearance in the Enid train show coming up on April 9th, 2011.  I want to build, with LEGO, a steam powered train and have been searching for plans and photos.

I came across a good plan on Railbricks that I like.  Tim Gould posted the plan for a western train locomotive that was originally posted on Brickshelf.  I sat yesterday afternoon building from the instructions - although I was missing some of the parts needed. There were a few times I had difficulty figuring out where a piece needed to go, but with help managed to finally get the hang of it. Here's my "finished" piece, with odd colors - or nothing - for the missing correct pieces.

Now don't laugh yourself silly at my attempt.  We'll order wheels and unusual parts this week and I should soon have a completed engine.  I didn't build the tender or the cars yet.  Those will wait until I have all the parts.  Tim does a good job with his parts list and I only had trouble one time with what may have been an error on his part or a misunderstanding on mine.

I am building from Tim's plan, but already know that I want to modify this train.  I plan to build others so looked for photos of steam locomotives and found RailServe.  This particular link gives a long list of links for various websites that show steam locomotives.  These are some of the photos I found:

And there is this fabulous picture which does't show any detail but is wonderful to look at!

When I was a teenager - a thousand years ago - my family vacationed in Colorado and we rode the Durango to Silverton train.  That was my first steam locomotive train ride (although not my first train ride) and a life-changing trip. I rode outside on the back platform all the way up into the mountain and back down again. Several years ago I rode a steam locomotive train in the Brecon mountains in Wales - another lovely trip as I stood outside on the platform.

Back to the LEGO train - below is a photo of the one I plan to build after I've finished the one started above.  It will be without instruction, but I should have an idea by then what I'm doing.



Saturday, December 25, 2010

Mountain from 2010 Enid train show

This is our mountain from the 2010 Enid train show; it is about 2 1/2 feet tall. We guess that it has 2 to 3 thousand bricks in it.

We have travelled to Enid for 2 years and plan to be there again in 2011.