Orient Express choofers (we needz them too).

[Gumboots]

Express D'Orient is a problem. Great map for testing, because it has just about everything, but it got me thinking: the choofers are all wrong. Stirlings and Dukes and Connies and Moguls are all very well, but they don't fit there. Which got me looking at stuff that did fit there. There's an amazing variety. That corner of the world was like a whole 'nother steampunk planet around the beginning of the 20th century. They tried all sorts of things, some of which were really bizarre and some of which were very sensible.

So yes, RT3 does have the S3 and the P8, which are quite decent in terms of what they'll actually do, but they're not a lot of fun. The S3 kinda looks like the designers had a nasty accident with a large frozen bratwurst and suffered brain damage as a result. The P8 is very serious Prussian choofer for very serious people, the sort that might bite you if you even think about having fun. I've taken a bit of liking to the Austrian style of the period, primarily Karl Gölsdorf's designs.

These are a good fit for the several Orient Express maps that various people have made, and come in a range of types from freight slugs to flat out express. For example, there's a four cylinder compound Atlantic known as the kkStB 108. It's a bit tricky to find information on them in English (Google Translate rocks) but there's some good pix of a model here. This was one of the locos used to haul the Orient Express, and was also used on runs as far as Berlin in the north and Verona in the south, west to Prague, and east as far as St. Petersburg. They really got around. Introduced in 1901, just about the time most people playing Orient Express maps start to get worried about their express speeds. In service for more than 30 years. Clocked at 89 mph during testing. What's not to like?

So that led me to Blender, again.

And while doing this I realised the logic behind the weird and lumpy Austrian tenders of the period. I'd always thought they were a bit bonkers and wondered what the point of them was. It turns out they were quite sensible. They just had a different way of looking at the problem.

The water tank takes up the whole lower section of the tender. This has rounded edges because those were easier to keep strong and watertight. No stress concentrations or gunk traps. You just bend the sheet around without needing to join it. The coal bunker is just sat on top of the water tank. They didn't bother cutting chunks out of the tank like the usual UK and US tenders. They just made a big simple tank, and sat a box of coal on top. Since their choofers went merrily choofing all over the place, this plan obviously worked.

The extra funny-looking bit on the sides, in the middle and with sloping tops, are tool boxes. Not just for the usual spanners, but big enough for a long-handled shovel and a crowbar, or whatever else you might need for fending off vampires out in the wilds of Transylvania.

So there ya go. Big simple tank full of water. Box of coal on top. Really good-sized toolboxes port and starboard. Put it all together and you get one weird and lumpy-looking tender.

[Gumboots]

Hey it turns out I was wrong about the tool boxes each side. That was an assumption on my part. Never make assumptions.

I just got around to translating a 1905 article about these tenders, and they were even more clever than I thought. The 3 metre (about 10 feet) sloping hinged lids are the water fillers: one each side. They were sick of trying to line up their trains so the old small water fillers matched up with the water tower. Drivers were having to shunt the train back and forth to get the filler and the water tower lined up, and it was wasting time.

So on these new tenders they put a filler on both sides, and they made it ten feet long. Result was that the driver could just come into the station fast, brake more or less where he wanted to, and the filler was long enough that it wasn't a problem. The hinged lids were operated by a lever easily reached from the cab, so as soon as he stopped the driver just yanked the lever and the filler popped open. The lids were sloping not to shed rain, but so that any stray coal falling out of the coal box would drop to the ground instead of jamming the water filler lid partly open.

But wait there's more. In the diagram below you can see a pair of dotted lines sloping down and backwards from the front of the tender.

This was a pipe, and was used to store the fireman's poker. They used to just store it any old how, but to use it the fireman had to swing in around in an arc to get the business end to the firebox door. Not only did this make things awkward for the crew, but the fireman would often swing it partly outside the cab and sometimes it would hit railside structures. This caused damage and injuries, so no good.

The sloping tube in the tender was lined up so that all the fireman had to do was haul the poker out, and it would already be heading straight for the firebox door. When he was finished, just throw it straight backwards into the tube again. It even had a hook on a chain to handle the poker when it was hot, so he didn't have to worry about burning his hands.

This is all genius.

Edit: Did a bit more work on the model, so added some extra pix. This is obviously not a usable game asset yet, but the poly count is on target for such a thing. I'm getting the feeling that most steam locomotives can be made to look pretty slick at around 1500 tris, give or take a bit. This is about halfway between the PopTop single Mikado, and the double Mikado I made from it. The most complex locos, like large Garratts, might push towards double Mikado territory for polys, but even that is quite usable for a dozen or so special units. It'd just load things up a bit of you were running a hundred or more.

For comparison, this is a reference shot of the real thing...