Locomotion No. 1

 

In 1825, the steam engine Locomotion became the first engine to haul passenger carriages on a public railway. The engine was built by the Robert Stephenson Company under a contact with the Stockton & Darlington Railway to be run on the S&DR’s 25-mile track in North-East England. It weighed 7.5 tons (about 6.6 metric tons) and could manage a top speed, downhill, of 15 mph (24 kph.) Unfortunately, in 1828 the boiler exploded killing the driver.

 A replica of the engine was built in 1837 using some of the original parts and compatible parts from other engines. This engine was used as a static display by the S&DR and is currently on display at the National Railway Museum in York, England.

 This model is based largely on the 1937 replica. Because of the complexity of the mechanical components on top of the boiler, it was difficult to understand from photos how it all fit together. Until, that is, I stumbled on a 200-page report by railway historians Michael R. Bailey MBE, DPhil, MA and Peter H. Davidson MA (Cantab.). titled Locomotion No. 1, An Assessment of its History and Modifications Through Archaeological and Archival Study. This document turned out to be a treasure trove of explanations, diagrams and detailed photos of the whole engine.

#Locomotion_No_1 #S&DR #steam_engine #railway #history #Blender 4.1 #Cycles

 

B-24D Liberator Bomber

 In 1939, under a contract from the U, S, Army Air Forces, Consolidated Aircraft Corp. of San Diago designed a new heavy, long-range bomber, the B24. Its first flight was made in December of that year. Over the next six years, over 18,000 B-24s were built by Consolidated and under licence by Ford, making it the most produced military airplane in history. In addition to the USAAF the plane was in service with the U. S. Navy, the Royal Air Force and the Australian R.A.F..

With a wingspan of 33.5m (110ft) the B-24 had a range of 4,600km (2,800 miles), making it ideal for antisubmarine bombing in the mid-Atlantic.  It had a bomb capacity of 3,630 kg (8,000 lbs) and was armed with 11 .50 calibre machine guns. The plane was manned by a crew of 10: Pilot, co-pilot, navigator/bombardier, radio/radar operator, flight engineer/top turret gunner, ball turret gunner, two side gunners and tail turret gunner.

I chose to model the B-24D Strawberry Bitch, Serial Number 42-72843 mainly because the name was intriguing, but I was not able to find anything about the origin of the name. The plane flew over 50 combat missions between September 1943 and June 1944 with the  512th Bomb Squadron of the 376^th Heavy bomber Group based at Cairo, Egypt.

#B-24 #bomber #WWII #USAAF #Strawberry_Bitch  #Blender-4.1 #Cycles