Introduction
The 4449 Southern Pacific Daylight engine is housed in old roundhouse in Portland, Oregon, my home town. So being a native of Portland and a fan of LEGO trains, it was only natural I would want to model it in my favorite medium; LEGO. This model represents my third iteration and I must admit, I'm very pleased with the results.
The Pictures
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Here is a picture of the entire train consisting of engine, oil/water tender, baggage car and four passenger coaches. The gray roof on the baggage car is prototypical. The passenger coaches are 38 studs long. |
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A close up of the engine. The engine is 42 studs long and the tender 26 studs in length. . |
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Steam engines required a lot of maintenance. That was part of the reason behind the demise. Here an engineer applies some oil to some fittings. The black train wheels are from an older, pre 9v era LEGO train set. The Daylight decal is a Champ, O-scale decal. O scale seems pretty close to scale. |
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Here is the wheel configuration with the top of the engine removed. The 4449 is a 4-8-4 which I've modeled acurately. The linkages between the drive wheels actually go up and down and move with the wheels. The entire configuration nogotiates all track configurations without any hint of derailment. The middle drive wheels are all aligned to simply ride on top of the rails. Two very special joints make this possible. In the back, a joint that rotates and translates up and down. In front, the joint rotates, translates up and down and forward and back. Thus the entire wheel arrangment easily negotiates curves and any slope irregularities in the track. One motor is sufficient to drive the train. Two more can be added to the tender for extra pulling power. |
