Well as we all know, that cheap imitation is NOT the real Batmobile!
The late, great George Barris would have never put his name on that abomination!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-vnF0FbSN0
Overmod Try the headlight opening 'faired' back along the top of the boiler, perhaps with 'streamline moderne' horizontal fins to emphasize the horizontal line. If there's any 'break' at the back of the headlight it looks like the arrangement on the NZR class K as built ... like it's sitting there rather than a part of something more organic. Something to try might be a glassed-over 'teardrop' shaped enclosure high up, perhaps where you have the square opening. The headlight (and here you might try the 7x sealed-beam array that's on some early E units) goes in the top of the teardrop, and the mouth of the air horn(s) goes in the escutcheon underneath ... doesn't the Ingalls unit have a horn arranged like that? What happens if we use illuminated glassed numberboards a la Loewy on the T1 prototype, in the forward upper corners of the stair skirts? Or an illuminated Central oval, or lit script like 'Empire State Express' on 999, on the flank over the illuminated drivers. I'll confess one of the first things I did with this design was to arrange the 'seams' so they don't create a worm or caterpillar appearance. "Slavish devotion to the horizontal line" ... or smoothed contour like the front end of the Kantola Commodore Vanderbilt shroud on parts of the front, are beneficial. I also confess, although I was influenced by correspondence with Otto Kuhler at the time, that I brought the curve of the steps out deeper toward the front, and put trim brightwork on their forward edges... this being similar to one of the LV engine designs. Handrail gets modified at the front accordingly. I detailed the paint on the drivers differently, to give sparkle when the drivers are turning, and considered putting lights or reflectors on the rods to illuminate the complex motion...
Try the headlight opening 'faired' back along the top of the boiler, perhaps with 'streamline moderne' horizontal fins to emphasize the horizontal line. If there's any 'break' at the back of the headlight it looks like the arrangement on the NZR class K as built ... like it's sitting there rather than a part of something more organic.
Something to try might be a glassed-over 'teardrop' shaped enclosure high up, perhaps where you have the square opening. The headlight (and here you might try the 7x sealed-beam array that's on some early E units) goes in the top of the teardrop, and the mouth of the air horn(s) goes in the escutcheon underneath ... doesn't the Ingalls unit have a horn arranged like that?
What happens if we use illuminated glassed numberboards a la Loewy on the T1 prototype, in the forward upper corners of the stair skirts? Or an illuminated Central oval, or lit script like 'Empire State Express' on 999, on the flank over the illuminated drivers.
I'll confess one of the first things I did with this design was to arrange the 'seams' so they don't create a worm or caterpillar appearance. "Slavish devotion to the horizontal line" ... or smoothed contour like the front end of the Kantola Commodore Vanderbilt shroud on parts of the front, are beneficial. I also confess, although I was influenced by correspondence with Otto Kuhler at the time, that I brought the curve of the steps out deeper toward the front, and put trim brightwork on their forward edges... this being similar to one of the LV engine designs. Handrail gets modified at the front accordingly.
I detailed the paint on the drivers differently, to give sparkle when the drivers are turning, and considered putting lights or reflectors on the rods to illuminate the complex motion...
I love your ideas and suggestions, I wish my photoshop skill is good enough to present them all. I would open a new thread to show them when I have time to further editing the Mercury engine. Compared to other steam-streamliner engines, the front-end or the "face" of the streamlined NYC K5b "big-boned" sister was very long and wide, plus NYCRR or Dreyfuss probably didn't want to use a complicated paint scheme on the engine to enhance the look, just like the trick that Otto Kuhler used on the MILW F-7s, it really requires more than just changing the spot of the headlight to make them look better.
I like the idea of "Otto Kuhler-ize" the engine, I want to do it on PRR S1 too (but not the step), just like how Sunset Model did on their O gauge S1. The sliver stripes of the front-end skirt on the model is so thick that it reminds me of the streamlined Black Diamond 4-6-2 engine of the Lehigh Valley! It looks much better than the real engine, to be honest, I also love the pointy front-end skirt which is much pointier than the real thing.
Flintlock76 Interesting efforts Mr. Jones! Ummmm... Number One looks weird. Number Two looks weirder. Number Three? Ah, there you go, third time's the charm! Not bad at all! Good save of a streamlining style that was kind of weird to begin with!
Interesting efforts Mr. Jones! Ummmm...
Number One looks weird.
Number Two looks weirder.
Number Three? Ah, there you go, third time's the charm! Not bad at all!
Good save of a streamlining style that was kind of weird to begin with!
Thanks for that, Wayne. I don't like the first two as well, just made them to see what would have looked like.
Penny Trains Those locos always remind me of the Batmobile's armor plating.
Those locos always remind me of the Batmobile's armor plating.
A Bat-train was the first thing came to my mind when I was watching the movie, and I didn't know that there was really a Bat-train in the comic, powered by a 2-4-2!
Jones 3D Modeling Club https://www.youtube.com/Jones3DModelingClub
Both the Kantola 'Commodore Vanderbilt' and the 'Mercury' scheme appear to have been marked by the 'simple industrial' kind of design ethic that is characteristic of early '30s, after the excesses of "Art Deco" and before the excesses of "Streamline Moderne" The train for the LBE is from this general school of design -- relatively drab paint, a minimum of fancy striping, no wings and mechanism to make them flap, etc.
Note that there are pictures of the Commodore Vanderbilt in black-and-white with filters used that show a clear tonal difference between the paint on the cab (as set off by the scalloped stripe) and that on the 'rest' of the shroud adjacent to it. I have not yet seen an explanation of why that is so -- perhaps it's only different paint type. I do think that a simple stripe down the tender, matching that at the bottom of the cab, dramatically increases the 'streamline' effect, even without more carefully shrouding the tender. (And that Mercury-style lighting of the drivers and lead truck radically adds to the good effect of the Kantola streamlining!)
I'm still influenced by the idea that the ACL R1 streamlining was two-tone green, not black, silver, and gray as current 'reality' has it. This is the same basic idea, with the herald as good 'punctuation' on the extended line. Note that any of the necessary grays for a more 'tonal' scheme, if not related to passenger schemes 'yet', can certainly be developed with little more than a mixing formula from black and white stock...
Jones1945... I didn't know that there was really a Bat-train in the comic, powered by a 2-4-2!
I greatly prefer Superman's, even if much of it came to a somewhat bad end...
This picture was taken in my home town of Burlington. I never thought I would ever see a picture of Pennsy passenger equipment in Burlington, NYC yes, but never Pennsy.
The caption reads:
Anybody care to fill in the story? Was this from a museum heading to another museum? Obviously the Pennsy did not exist in 2010.
2) An optical illusion! C'mon at first you thought what the? .. a centre depressed flatcar with a load of dirt!
3) The NYC put the Commodore Vanderbilt in Grand Central?! Wow!
I suppose they just towed it in, not in steam right? ..no?
4) We just talked about the NYC train X and their colour scheme over on the Trains Forum. Well here it is in blue, or purple? , well after its 15 minutes of fame.
Overmod Both the Kantola 'Commodore Vanderbilt' and the 'Mercury' scheme appear to have been marked by the 'simple industrial' kind of design ethic that is characteristic of early '30s, after the excesses of "Art Deco" and before the excesses of "Streamline Moderne" The train for the LBE is from this general school of design -- relatively drab paint, a minimum of fancy striping, no wings and mechanism to make them flap, etc.
Otto Kuhler's wings on the MILW F-7s were fabulous, which probably inspired PRR to put a wing with the Keystone logo on it above the headlight of 3768. If the Commodore Vanderbilt engine had the same level of beauty treatment as MILW's Hiawatha, the engine would have been as famous as MILW's steam-streamliner. I practically dislike the bulgy headlight on the Kantola 'Commodore Vanderbilt', which looks out of place, but at least the engine had the two-tone gray treatment, unlike the Mercury. BLI (Broadway Limited Import) has been trying to bring the 'Commodore Vanderbilt' back in HO scale but after maybe 5 years, not enough pre-orders were received.
Overmod Note that there are pictures of the Commodore Vanderbilt in black-and-white with filters used that show a clear tonal difference between the paint on the cab (as set off by the scalloped stripe) and that on the 'rest' of the shroud adjacent to it. I have not yet seen an explanation of why that is so -- perhaps it's only different paint type. I do think that a simple stripe down the tender, matching that at the bottom of the cab, dramatically increases the 'streamline' effect, even without more carefully shrouding the tender. (And that Mercury-style lighting of the drivers and lead truck radically adds to the good effect of the Kantola streamlining!)
Key Import's HO Brass Commodore Vanderbilt was factory painted in two-tone gray. Illuminated driver was a feature that not only fit on many early streamlined steam engines but passenger cars as well... 12-wheel streamlined dining cars and sleepers with lit-up white-wall wheels would look great. Some small decorative marker lights on the streamlining skirt would be cool as weel. For postwar steam-streamliners like the production PRR T1, lit-up drivers would look very unnecessary due to the change of styling and "fashion", but there are other things that could have been illuminated for the sake of decoration.
Overmod I'm still influenced by the idea that the ACL R1 streamlining was two-tone green, not black, silver, and gray as current 'reality' has it. This is the same basic idea, with the herald as good 'punctuation' on the extended line. Note that any of the necessary grays for a more 'tonal' scheme, if not related to passenger schemes 'yet', can certainly be developed with little more than a mixing formula from black and white stock...
Is there any drawing of the proposed two-tone green streamlining of ACL R1? Baldwin's streamlining design was conventional, but a colorful painting scheme could have made the engine at least more interesting but not necessarily equal to good looking, take ATSF's #3460 as an example.
Overmod Jones1945 ... I didn't know that there was really a Bat-train in the comic, powered by a 2-4-2! I greatly prefer Superman's, even if much of it came to a somewhat bad end...
Jones1945 ... I didn't know that there was really a Bat-train in the comic, powered by a 2-4-2!
I can see no private train of Superman but he really saved a lot of trains; not the railroading industry though... Today he probably can't stop the coronavirus from spreading but at least can bring us TP supply at light speed on a daily basis.
Miningman 3) The NYC put the Commodore Vanderbilt in Grand Central?! Wow! I suppose they just towed it in, not in steam right? ..no?
This is the same location, probably the same platform where the Mercury engine (and probably the trainset) was displayed in June 1936. Yes, another "inverted bathtub" after the Commodore Vanderbilt! Reception of the Mercury train was great though, even the whole trainset was rebuilt from commuter rolling stock. The interior of the train was so carefully design and decorated, overall it was a successful project by Dreyfuss.
Miningman 4) We just talked about the NYC train X and their colour scheme over on the Trains Forum. Well here it is in blue, or purple? , well after its 15 minutes of fame.
The original scheme (imagine the strips on the bumper was the lips... eww!):
http://streamlinermemories.info/?p=2287
From the website:
"This advertisement brags that the Xplorer can go 120 mph. But the New York Central didn’t have the signalling required for such fast trains, so the train was limited to 79 mph. Higher speeds probably just would have induced motion sickness in more passengers"
I guess people at the time still remember the top speed of express steam engine could do 120mph back in the 1940s, take the PRR T1 as an example; let alone the front-end design of the Xplorer was modified from the good old PRR Passenger Shark! It was not a so-called "Tomorrow's Train", it was "Jaws: The Failed Revenge"...
Great Superman compilation Mr. Jones! And with that magnificent John Williams theme music, you can't beat it!
Thanks for posting it! Loved it!
Trains, trains, wonderful trains. The more you get, the more you toot!
Wow! Lois Lane's as amazing as Superman! She handles that tommy gun like a Marine!
MiningmanAnybody care to fill in the story? Was this from a museum heading to another museum? Obviously the Pennsy did not exist in 2010.
Hello:
I'm referencing a PRRT&HS Keystone Magazine article in the Vol. 46, No. 4 issue, Winter, 2013.
Briefly, some of the Keystone cars went from Penn Central/Amtrak to SEMTA (Southeast Michigan Transportation Authority) under a grant. By the time the money came through and the cars located (!) they had been shuffeled around between yards and storage areas in New Jersey and wound up on the old L-V Oak Island yard. Ampol, a scrap dealer became involved and further damage was incurred to the cars.
Finally in March of 1981 the train set minus one damaged car, #9603, finally arrived in Michigan. After more budget and grant cuts the project was finally shelved and the cars put up for sale in 1986.
Fellow named Jack Haley of Waterloo Iowa bought them. The cars sustained further damage due to mis-handling, wrong placement in a freight train. Further vandalism occurred after the cars were moved to Waverly, Iowa.
Two Keystone coaches, 9604 and 9605 and the 9600 power car had been rented out to a dinner train operation in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The remaining five cars in Iowa were scrapped after a fire and further vandalism. After a few more tourist/dinner train operations the three remaining cars were sold to several hopeful operators but nothing ever materalized and the cars again were up for sale on the Ozark Mountain rail site.
A Canadian outfit, CANAC bought two coaches and in April 2010 they were moved to Quebec where they were expected to be used to ferry miners to and from the Arcelor Mittal mining facility at Claremont, running from Port Cartier, Que.
The company found the cars to be troublesome right from the beginning. The seating, steps, ride and lateral motion of the trucks were a source of irritation for the riders and the crews.
The company bought conventional cars from NJ Transit to use in ther crew-ferrying operation, the Keystone cars were stripped of anything salvagable and (at the time of writing) were sitting, stripped of trucks, glazing and all hardware on the ground at Jonquirre, Que.
Tubular_PRR by Edmund, on Flickr
Tubular_PRR_0001 by Edmund, on Flickr
Tubular_PRR_0002 by Edmund, on Flickr
Tubular_PRR_0003 by Edmund, on Flickr
Hope that helps, Ed
I had no idea! Man was I off on that one.
Thanks for this information Ed, greatly appreciated.
MiningmanThanks for this information Ed, greatly appreciated.
Glad to be of some use, Miningman
I came across these 2010 photos at Canac and the cars still look pretty decent.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtlwestrailfan/albums/72157629635667514
Perhaps someone has more recent information?
Regards, Ed
Locked in with way too much time on my hands edition:
1) Next Load Any Road .. the locomotive edition.
2) Russian Bi-Level .. really long time ago, turn of the last last century.
3) Never mind containers, just send the whole dang train.
4) "Hey Pennsy, keep the steam, ditch the 'pedes"
5) When going out for dinner I prefer Japanese trains over American trains.
6) New Service! If you missed your train we'll get you aboard.
7) C'mon now, I don't see any wings!
8) Ending on a sad note. The last Missouri Pacific live steam move.
2 Steam locomotives hauling a line of their brethren for scrap, including themselves. Now that is a really strange thing. Can you imagine someone took an aerial photo of this that day.
Nice selection of shots! Taking them in turn...
1) Frankendiesel? Or a "We ain't mad at nobody!" paint job?
2) Looks good enough to live in! I suspect the railworkers weren't Bolsheviks with accomodations like that!
3) Car float on steroids? Actually not a bad idea, run the cars up the ramp to the ship!
4) "Keep the steam, ditch the 'pedes!" I'll be they wished they did!
5) Oh boy! Lady Firestorms hero!
6) Uh, they better not get that hydrogen-filled blimp to close to that steam engine! One stray spark and POOF!
7) There must be a story there, beats me what it is.
8) Either the pilot knew something momentous was happening with that MoPac funeral train or a railfan photographer did who hired the plane. Depressing, really.
Miningman5) When going out for dinner I prefer Japanese trains over American trains.
He also eats broadcast towers :
Pullman Railplane
http://www.dieselpunks.org/profiles/blogs/sunday-streamline-12-pullman
Where is that carferry? Most of the ones I am familiar with, carried the cars below deck.
MM to MM -- That is in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico. That is the MV Bali Sea and the trains are Ferro Sur.
Amazing !
Miningman 6) New Service! If you missed your train we'll get you aboard.
I don't think sparks would be a problem, since the train looks like it is doing 60mph and the airship is presumably also at that speed.
Depending on the date of the photo, the train is from the Midland railway with a Class 3 4-4-0 Johnson "Belpaire" number 775 (perhaps, it's not that clear). The twelve wheel clerestory roof corridor cars suggest that this is indeed an express train. If the photo was taken after January 1923, the train would belong to the London Midland and Scottish Railway.
Peter
M636CI don't think sparks would be a problem, since the train looks like it is doing 60mph and the airship is presumably also at that speed.
If that is what I think it is, a British SST ('twin') introduced toward the end of WWI, the top speed was indeed about 57mph, but I would think the 'descending' passenger, if that is what it is, and the vertical line would show considerable drag. Even if the line were anchored at 'both ends' I'd expect to see some curving, not a plumb-bob-straight line. This leads me to wonder if this is not a clever composite photograph.
If the photo was taken after January 1923, the train would belong to the London Midland and Scottish Railway.
And indeed the SSTs were flown into 1924, so this is a possibility.
Number 7 is the William Stout designed "Railpalne", a railcar built pretty much as a monocoque fuselage from an airplane, i.e. something with a very high strength to weight ratio. Many of the design/consruction elements went into the early UP Streamliners.
Erik_MagMany of the design/consruction elements went into the early UP Streamliners.
But I don't think the basic design philosophy, of a thin skin over triangulated space-frame cagework, was. It certainly wasn't with respect to the trucks -- a subject that Kratville goes into in some detail in his book on the Streamliners. You need to do a little reading between the lines to get the full effect of the statement that increasing the effective unsprung mass of the primary truck by the weight of a couple of outboard six-cylinder flathead motors and mechanical transmissions improved ride quality.
We have covered the general utter lack of safety of that kind of construction in a railcar that might suffer damage in a collision -- with stuff falling off adjacent trains as well as directly with car-ends or engines, especially things with projecting couplers.
Some of what was carried over to Streamliners from Stout's patent -- the effect of the streamlined ends and distinctive cross-section on quartering or side turbulence -- would prove relatively short-lived in Streamliner design, as customers greatly preferred larger, and higher-up, interiors. We might consider the El Capitan high-level train in the Fifties to be almost a design opposite of Stout's principles ... and we know which of those two was more of a market success...
Mr. Overmodulated:
It is real but staged. Stunt preformed by a daredevil. You know who found out this great info!
This photo shows the post January 1923 LMS livery, the only difference being the coat of arms on the cab side. The Midland emblem was vaguely triangular in shape. The colours and lining were unchanged. However, some locomotives were not superheated until in LMS service, and lacked the extended smokebox.
Looking at the original press photo, the man on the rope looks too large compared to the train, so I would go with it being a composite photograph (or possibly the dirigible is closer to the camera than the train). Composite photos were often used in that period.
Beautiful model! A real work of art!
Looking at the airplane in the first photo, it's definately 1914, or pre-WW1 at least. I'm not sure but the airplane looks like either a Farman or a Bristol Boxkite, or something similar. State-of-the-art (more or less) in 1914 but totally obsolete by the post-war period.
That is the Willows #5, one of the great unsung aircraft in the world, which has been somewhat interestingly omitted from most histories of aviation except in passing. It was specifically designed to give sightseeing tours over London; there is room for four in that dramatically streamlined fuselage. The little pipe connection is to take heat from the engine exhaust and other sources to the ballonet system that maintains balance in the nonrigid ('limp') envelope without using a formal rigid keel. Presumably this combined with good 'silencers' accounts for the reported great silence in operation; I would also expect the propellers are made to have relatively good thrust at low rpm, as with those on later WW1 aircraft. I surmise the propellers are double, on outriggers, since I cannot make them out clearly, but the one reference I have that mentions running speed gives 38mph, which presumably corresponds to train speed in the picture as any tail- or crosswind would be reflected in the smoke plume. I think the 'upper' picture has been retouched differently relative to the lower, as in the one that shows detail on the cars and locomotive, the 'ladder' clearly curves away in the slipstream.
There is a very large "WILLOWS" on that big ventral tailfin.
It would seem that the airship was very controllable under many conditions -- there are repeated instances of Ernest Willows dropping down to about 12' altitude and addressing doubtlessly-startled people for information or directions! Willows may have had the bad luck to sell his previous prototype (#4) to the government, which numbered it as HM airship #2 and then developed it themselves into the SS and the SST I referred to earlier. #5 may have been as far advanced over #4 as Trevithick's carriage of 1802 was over his from 1801.
Willows designed a very competent kind of barrage balloon during the War, and built a factory to produce it. This went dramatically bust by 1919, and any market for the private construction of small-place airships with open cockpits had not recovered by the time Willows was killed (apparently piloting a sightseeing flight in 1926) Of course as we know, there was no place for him in either the inept development of rigids in Britain, particularly the Government project that would culminate in that worst of all dirigibles the R101... but it might have been interesting to see where the 'private' development effort might have led had he lived.
I can find no indication that the film, or even the part of it containing the 'boarding' scene, has survived the usual fate of nitrate stock. I suppose we are lucky to have the ephemeral documentation we do, as otherwise there might be no real record of #5's performance at all.
Overmod Erik_Mag Many of the design/consruction elements went into the early UP Streamliners. But I don't think the basic design philosophy, of a thin skin over triangulated space-frame cagework, was. It certainly wasn't with respect to the trucks -- a subject that Kratville goes into in some detail in his book on the Streamliners.
Erik_Mag Many of the design/consruction elements went into the early UP Streamliners.
But I don't think the basic design philosophy, of a thin skin over triangulated space-frame cagework, was. It certainly wasn't with respect to the trucks -- a subject that Kratville goes into in some detail in his book on the Streamliners.
Note the emphasis on early. FWIW, I bought my copy of Kratville's book in 1977.
Erik_MagNote the emphasis on early.
We may be running on different definitions of what 'early Streamliners' represents. I consider the first actual "Streamliner" to be the M10000 itself, and much of the discussion about superlight 'aircraft-style' construction had essentially been settled by the time that train was built. It took a little while longer to eradicate the idea of lightweight low-mass trucks for a lightweight low-mass train, but I think Kratville described the process -- and the increasing weight and strength of each iteration -- in some detail.
If I'm not mistaken, a far better place to look for Stout 'inspiration' is in the Goodyear-Zeppelin trains, like the NH Comet; a more 'Mosquito-like' invocation of airframe "technology transfer" is in the original rocket-ship Pendulum Car demonstrators. What we do not see are radical fleets of extreme lightweight equipment, even in places the Post Office requirements would not touch -- there were no fleets of Schienenzeps to match the increasing numbers of Flying Hamburger-style trains; no widespread Clark Auto-Trams with engines far better than Stout's vying with the very early Pullman and Budd high-speed motor trains. And, most incredible to me, no more Comets, even in all the areas where high speed and no practical alternatives would prevail for many years...
That rotten R-101. When it went it took Barnes Wallis' magnificent R-100 with it, figuratively speaking.
Here's the R-100...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa1tGgo6tQM
And a little bit more...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k60YoKKiayE
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