I had a few relatively "good" days so I tackled a small art project over the past two days. I decided to shoot some photos of my HO scale Dreyfuss Hudson steam locomotive which then, as usual, morphed into a larger project.
This distinctive steam locomotive was perhaps the most famous locomotive of the New York Central Railroad, specifically, of 20th Century Limited passenger service fame. This was considered the fastest passenger train service between New York City and Chicago back in the 1940s. The route ran up the Hudson River then traveled westward along the Great Lakes. Today, this route is named the Lake Shore Limited, a route Sheila and I have traveled quite a few times. Unfortunately, the Lake Shore Limited is not nearly as glamorous as the 20th Century Limited once was but it is nice to retrace this historic route nevertheless. The Lake Shore Limited can be referred to as many things but glamorous is definitely not one of them.
I've always been most interested in the transition era from steam to diesel in the 1940s. It was during this period when these streamlined Hudson locomotives were running alongside the first diesel locomotives. In this case, the F3-units were the New York Central's new diesel workhorse of this time period. I've always had a thing for those big Hudson steam locomotives (whether streamlined or not) and the F-unit diesels.
The "F" of this class of locomotives was in reference to "fourteen" because these early F-units were 1400 horsepower while the Dreyfuss Hudson steam locomotive had 4700 horsepower. The horsepower for passenger service doesn't tell the whole story though. The top speed of the Dreyfuss Hudson steam locomotive was just above 80 mph and, while exceptionally fast for passenger service back then, the smaller F3 diesels had an even faster top speed of 102 mph.
For freight service with heavier and far longer trains, the F3-units had a different gear ratio giving them more pulling power plus the F3-units were often doubled up or even tripled, as needed. There was far more flexibility for the railroad when using the F3-units compared to the giant Dreyfuss Hudson steam locomotives.
In addition to providing the railroads with more flexibility, the F3-units had smoother acceleration, they were far simpler mechanically making for a far smaller parts inventory and requiring less preventative maintenance and they were far cleaner in operation. Steam locomotives are very complicated machines with many, many working parts which meant more possibilities of a failure of one of those parts. The F3-unit diesels were, quite simply, far easier and less costly to maintain while providing far more flexibility for varying operations.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog entry, I was feeling pretty good yesterday and decided to do a little indoor photo shoot. There were a few things I wanted to try with some of my model locomotives, particularly my much smaller HO scale locomotives, so I figured it would be good to pull a few of them down off my display shelves and make one of them my "model" for this photo shoot. The one I chose was my Dreyfuss Hudson steam locomotive, seen below.
I collected some photography gear and tried a few different lenses. I quickly settled on a lens mounted with a couple of extension tubes so I could get closer to the model locomotive. For light, I used a small LED off-camera flash. The model locomotive was actually running at idle with its lights turned on through the short photo shoot too.
As I get older, I lean more toward and prefer to model in O scale and F scale which are significantly larger than HO scale, even monstrous in the case of F scale. However, this rather small HO scale model has quite a bit of detail including the tiny builder's plate. I suppose I should say that I can tolerate working in HO scale but I don't really care for it. I do have some nice HO scale models though simply because Lukey's train set is in HO scale.
When I was in high school, I received an N scale train set. However, from age five and through high school, I had a very large 3 rail O scale layout (Lionel). As I progressed in modeling, a few things started bothering me about the Lionel 3 rail trains. First and foremost, I really hated the the tracks were very toy-like with only three ties per track... one on each end and one in the middle. And, worse yet, those "ties" didn't even resemble ties. By the time I was in high school, I wasn't too fond of the way those old Lionel conventional AC trains ran either. It was very unrealistic and slow speed operation was difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. So, as I grew up, I wanted more realistic models.
When I was in high school, I received an N scale train set for Christmas. These N scale trains are roughly half the size of HO scale, or roughly a quarter the size of my old Lionel trains. These N scale trains ran on 2 rails and they had realistic looking track with realistic ties. Slow speed operation was easier to achieve in N scale than with the old conventional Lionel trains. Plus, I could build a large layout in a smaller space. However, the price per square foot of layout was probably higher than O scale. I was excited by the big step up in realism though.
As I got older (beyond 50ish), I realized that my hands were too shaky for those tiny trains. And, honestly, those N scale trains aren't as smooth in operation as HO scale either so I started collecting some HO scale trains when I made a small train set for our grandson, Lukey. At the moment, HO scale is the smallest scale I plan to go but I prefer O scale which is roughly double the size of HO scale. N scale does indeed have its advantages though... I've been toying with the idea and sketching out ideas for a small Christmas streetcar layout that would fit on our relatively large mantle. I could model quite a good sized downtown area in N scale that would easily fit on this mantle. There are two things holding me back from this project though... the shaky hands thing and then finding a place to store this Christmas layout for 11 months.
I really do prefer O scale though especially with today's models. I rarely notice any little bit of tremor in my hands because the models are so much larger and significantly heavier than N scale and HO scale. Vision as we age is an issue too. O scale is a really nice size.
Back to this HO scale locomotive... As one might expect on a rather small model locomotive, the Builder's plate on this model locomotive is so small that I need a magnifying glass to read it but it is there on the side of the locomotive as it should be! You can see the plate below and there is a closer photo down lower on the page...
There is a New York Central plate on the front end of the locomotive too. This plate is significantly larger than the Builder's plate though.
The cab of this highly detailed locomotive is illuminated and also highly detailed...
The big driver wheels are illuminated sort of like ditch lights but I assume these lights were to make it easier to oil all these linkages regularly, even at night...
Here is that closer view of the tiny Builder's plate on this rather small model locomotive...
After shooting the above photos, I thought this would be a good subject to sketch and paint so I spent a little time working on sketching from the above photo. I wasn't completely happy with my results though. These preliminary sketches were okay but, as with almost all of my artwork, I felt what I was doing in the initial sketches was a bit boring so I started anew today.
During the transition era, seeing the large Dreyfuss Hudson steam locomotives next to the F3-unit diesels was a fairly common sight especially along the Hudson River. With this common sight in mind, I added an F3 diesel locomotive next to the Dreyfuss Hudson locomotive to create a scene reminiscent of this transition era of the 1940s and shot a few more photos. I knew this would make for a much more interesting scene.
I used this photo, below, as a reference photo for the painting. In hindsight, I should have been more careful with shadows but I was in a hurry to get to sketching and painting. This was just a reference photo for shape and scale and was not supposed to be a finished photo so I wasn't paying much attention to the shadows I had accidentally created. Regardless of this other purpose, I don't like shooting mediocre photos.
So, if I'm going to be honest, this really is a boring photo with rather poor lighting but the painting is much better. Incidentally, this original photo is an 80 megapixel image which is definitely overkill for this purpose!
This mixed media watercolor sketch came out quite well and it is one of those rare times when I am happy with my own artwork! Here it is...
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