Best Of The Stephenson Rocket

[randgust]

I'm working with a Shapeways 25-ton body shell in FUD right now.... Max, I feel your pain.   But I've had resin prints shatter as well.    The material is just so brittle, and now they can print even finer scale cross sections, so instead of the .020 min. it's what.... about .010?   I just now that on the Mack AC print I got, the front springs fell apart on touch leaving the axle behind.  Absolutely printed to perfect scale, absolutely impossible to use.  I've about reached the point that I won't buy anything off of Shapeways based on a rendering.    If the designer hasn't taken the time to try to paint and use their own print, that's a red flag to me.

The only thing worse is a 'Rollo' print in UV resin, you know, crunchy on the outside with a soft gooey center?

[nkalanaga]

That's why I've also about given up on 3D printing.  Simply cleaning up the supports has resulted in too many broken parts for me.

If it really is a one-piece, resdy to us, print, that's fine.  But anything requiring much work, I've given up.

Wuttermelon's extended draft gear is one of the few pieces I have no problems with.  Clean, ready to use, and I haven't broken one yet.

[Simon D.]

The very first trainspotters (railfans)

[mmagliaro]

Simon's cartoon, which I enjoyed very much by the way, did make me think of a whole side of this project that I have not mentioned yet, should have, and that is the tale of one unfortunate Member of Parliament (MP) William Huskisson, who was actually run over by Rocket at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830.  He is thus regarded as the first person in history to be run over by a locomotive.  The whole story of his life turns out to be very interesting, at least to me, enough for me to buy the book, "The Last Journey of William Huskisson", by Simon Garfield.  It is a great story about politics, economics, scientific bias and the tussle between modern technology and clinging to the "old ways", especially when those "old ways" are making certain people very rich.  We owe Mr. Huskisson a lot.  He was directly instrumental in getting the L&M built, and he was indirectly crucial to the development of locomotives, which freightened the daylights out of many people in 1829.  It took a lot of political wrangling to get people to accept the whole notion of a train "speeding along" at 20 mph, and using that to replace an ingrained system of canals, barges, and horse-drawn transportation.

[u18b]

An educational hobby.

[mmagliaro]

Well, it has been a long time coming, but finally, as promised months ago, here is a demonstration video of the Rocket in action.
I just have been too busy to get back to it, and then "fuss" with it to fine tune it so it could actually negotiate a real layout.

To my pleasant shock, it very nearly was able to run around my layout on the first evening I tried it.  I only had to "cheat" a little by adding a rear pilot "beam" on the lower rear of the tender, which was not there on the prototype.  That gave me the extra 1.5g of weight over the rear tender driving wheels to get the engine "over the hump" as it were, so it wouldn't just slip out on a few places on my main line.

[peteski]

This is as the say an epic model!  I love it!   I can't believe this thread has not yet been made "the Best of TRW".

[narrowminded]

VERY COOL, Max!!!   Love it!

[John]

As I said in the comments on the video

"Max -- awesome project and execution -- you are pushing the envelope as always ."

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Reiterating my comment from YT: "What, you couldn't get the figures to move?"

Seriously Max, this is truly incredible stuff man. Like, insane, insane, insanely good.

Have you shown the Newman Miniatures guy the video yet? I've still got a Facebook account so I can share it with him there if you want and don't.

https://www.facebook.com/NewmanMiniatures/

[Cajonpassfan]

Max, what they said! Truly amazing work
Otto

[u18b]

Congrats on Best Of.

This is truly amazing.
Thank you for your work.

[mmagliaro]

Reiterating my comment from YT: "What, you couldn't get the figures to move?"

Seriously Max, this is truly incredible stuff man. Like, insane, insane, insanely good.

Have you shown the Newman Miniatures guy the video yet? I've still got a Facebook account so I can share it with him there if you want and don't.

https://www.facebook.com/NewmanMiniatures/

Thank you, Ed.  (And thank you to ALL of you!)
I have sent messages to Newman Miniatures and Stony Smith (who made the main driver) about the video, through Shapeways.  I had been conversing with them through there anyway to get these parts customized.  In the case of Newman, I tried having him produce the Rocket parts in another type of plastic to see if it would be more flexible, stronger, and/or "glue-able".  It was, but the finish was too rough to be acceptable, so I didn't use them.   Stony did the main wheels, and then he had Shapeways do them as brass castings.  They came out AMAZING.  He tried doing them for the smaller wheels as well (tender and the engine pony wheels), but the resolution just isn't good enough and the brass spokes came out too thick and filled-in looking.   But for he one large driver, it worked great.

[thomasjmdavis]

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

I really need to find a "standing ovation" emoji.

[Chris333]

We saw it could run slow, but just getting it to pick-up power and keep doing it going smoothly is the impressive part.