Shipbucket

Hello again!

The steam locomotives are absolutely gorgeous!

Greetings
GD

Whoa they're awesome!

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nyoom

Nice work!

Fantastic. Some of these locomotive engines, I've never heard of and I had to go find actual pictures and compare. Very accurate!

http://oldtomstoys.com/category/mason-bogie/page/3/

The Mason Bogie "Bully Boy" almost threw me. Excellent rendition of it as an example.

My interest in Masons extends back to around 1998. Mason's Bogies were designed to put as much weight over the driver wheels as possible to increase tractive effort. That lead driver truck also pivoted under the boiler to aid going around curves. Bully Boy was the trail horse for a lot of Mason Bogie users, particularly the Colorado railroads. The pivoting truck idea was good however, that truck didn't pivot easily. Bully Boy had a penchant for jumping the curves. The wheel flanges were also hell on the track and wore out curve rails in a hurry. I've seen some of the surviving correspondence between Mason, the NPC, and the Colorado buyers of follow-up locos. In Colorado they added pilot wheels to guide the drivers into the curves. It worked.

I got involved in a Group Build of a Bogie model back in 2002 on a website called MyLargescale.com. A bunch of us built in the Garden Scale of 1:20.3 (G Scale track used as 3' Gauge). Large Models! Being an N.P.C. nutcase I built Bully Boy. That lead to deep research on Mason Bogies, in my case Bully Boy in particular. I created my own decal artwork, with the help of my museum friends and our accessing high quality reproductions of surviving original images. The ones you saw at that "oldtomstoys" site are extremely low resolution versions of what I have. Actual original Mason blueprints are largely non-existent. Much of the archive was destroyed by a fire about 30 years ago and what's left is inaccessible by the owners. They can be viewed but absolutely no photos, tracings, etc.

You should have seen the rest of this post (Deleted it). A bloody novel.

Slowly working on the NPC's other to Masons: NPC #2 "San Rafael" and NPC#3 Tomales (never delivered).
Also nearing completion on Mason's "Phantom" (1857). A pretty blue 4-4-0 American.

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In active progress
More Ships with Sails
Early Torpedo Boats in SB and FD Scales
Some railroad stuff
More random stuff that strikes me!

At one time, around the turn of the last century, the French were building some of the prettiest and most advanced steam locomotives around. (French 2-8-0 is an example, around 1908 and later the Chappelon re-designed series 4-2-8 SNCF 240P series intended to do for France what the steep grade Masons were intended for in America.).

Have you done any illustrations of some of these locomotives?

Tobius: I've not! Sound interesting, Go for it!

My interests in railroading cover 1832-1890. Basically the start of railroads until black paint became common. Mostly West of the Rocky Mountains although I slum around in the 1850's-60's. Very pretty equipment. I'd also be interested in the real early stuff but that may require 2x FD or Larger.

Here's an example from 1857.

Mason Machine Works "Phantom (1857).

A Standard Gauge 4-4-0 American Locomotive. Mason was well known for beautifully crafted locomotives. He was also well known as a design trend setter. Locomotives at this time were pretty cluttered, a real Hodge-podge of architectural/mechanical weirdness. Mason began the trend to clean them up and celebrate the mechanical age with artistic form and functionality.

Now, getting Narrow Minded we have another North Pacific Coast Railroad Loco to go with the Mason and Baldwin I submitted last week:

USA, Baldwin 8-22d NPC #13 (1883).
A 3' Gauge freight locomotive. The NPC used this both for general freight service and as a helper loco for White's Hill Grade. Freight traffic included heavy lumber (Redwood/Douglas Fir), hay, root crops, and all sorts of other agricultural goodies southbound to San Francisco.


A Sample of 1st Generation Carter Brothers Rolling Stock (1870's). These are based on the 8 Ton Capacity trucks. All were 24' long. Pictured are Carter 24' flats, Combination Boxcars, A flat modified for loose freight (cows, horses, tan bark...), and NPCRR Caboose 2. Nobody knows what #1 looks like, all we have are some Cash Ledger references. This is one of two surviving NPC Cabooses, this one is currently located in Duncan's Mill, California. 1 Combination Boxcar survives, No 24' Flats survive.

The Carter Brothers had an interesting business model. They realized they could build Narrow Gauge rolling stock in California for less than it cost to ship it from the big manufacturers back east. Also, rather than have a permanent factory location they just moved from railroad to railroad (or sent crews out). Freight cars were basically kits! Ship the parts and build them on the new railroad's site! The formula worked well and pretty soon they were building for roads up to Alaska, down into South America, and even out across the Pacific.

To spice thing up they also contracted out to build railroad structures like trestles, bridges, buildings, etc. By the 20th Century the Brothers were able to survive the end of the Narrow Gauge construction boom. Going into semi-retirement they settled down, lived quite nicely, and developed a keen interest in racing horses.

CraigH

_________________
In active progress
More Ships with Sails
Early Torpedo Boats in SB and FD Scales
Some railroad stuff
More random stuff that strikes me!

W O W Craig

SUPERB drawings matey... I especially like your NPC Freight Sampler

Extremely WELL DONE sir. Excellent work

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https://discord.gg/5PHq8Dk
My artwork is posted here: https://www.deviantart.com/adenandy/gallery/all

WOW! That's just totally awesome!
Keep it up, please!

The NPC Freight Sampler reminds me the days (which actually never ended, just are more rare recently) when I loved to play the Railroad Tycoon (the original 1990 one).

This is so sweet