|Solidworks Assembly 2013|
The Steam Locomotive was invented in Great Britain in 1804 by Richard Trevithick. The first practical steam locomotive, the famous Rocket, was built in 1825 by the inventor Robert Stephenson, who’s innovations were used on almost all locomotives through the early 20th century.
The Stephenson’s Patent Locomotive, a 2-2-2 type, was built in 1836 for the London and Birmingham Railway as a “contractor’s locomotive”, used to haul earth excavated when building the railway. She produced about 77 horsepower, and was capable of hauling up to 220 tons at 14 miles per hour on level track, and forty tons at 35 miles per hour. Stephenson incorporated many important inventions in this design, including his “Gab valve Gear”, hence the name Patent.
The SolidWorks™ CAD model, consisting of over a hundred highly detailed parts and assemblies, was reverse-engineered from exceptional line drawings created by Thomas Tredgold in 1838 and published as The Steam Engine: its Invention and Progressive Improvement, at the request of Queen Victoria as a treatise defining the State of the Art of locomotive engineering at the time.
An original of this ground-breaking treatise is in the Archive Collection of Stanford University (USA), and reprinted by Glenwood Publishers in 1967. It is representative of my museum quality work in the field of Industrial Archeology (IA).
This historically accurate and highly detailed full scale (1:1) locomotive would be an ideal addition to early 19th Century set design and imaging, and is suitable for extreme close-ups and rendering.
All moving parts are individually modeled, (which I mated in SolidWorks to prove it would “work”), to allow for appropriate animation. The period correct track section of cast rail, keepers and limestone blocks are one “part”, individually color mapped, and would allow for copying to extend the length. Parts such as nuts, bolts and cotters are modeled in the solid to reduce parts and poly count. The last shown “sectioned cut-away” image is not included in the model- it is only shown to indicate the level of detail included.
The rendered images depict a typical color scheme for the period, as no accurate records exist as to the correct scheme. An optional color scheme is to replace the yellow paint and wood boiler wrapper with green, a scheme used on an almost identical Stephenson locomotive, the German “Der Adler”. You can see these in “downloads”.
The high resolution model contains 2,362,122 polys. All parts and/or surfaces are UV mapped.
The SolidWorks™ model was converted into the .obj format using SymLab Composer. Rendering is in KeyShot2 from Luxion.
The accuracy, modeling quality and high resolution defines the Stephenson Patent Locomotive as a definitive statement of the historical record, and is reflected by the price.
Please see also my other projects by clicking on the Gould Studios link at the top of the page.