Plethora of links

[Gumboots]

Might as well add all the other sites I've bookmarked for tech drawings.

Norfollk & Western Historical Society Archives

The Joseph A. Smith Collection

Rhodesian Railways Locomotives (inc. Garratts)

More Rhodesian Railways Locomotives

Museum of Science and Industry - Beyer Peacock Collection

French Compound Locomotives

Wikimedia: Line drawings of steam locomotives

Great Western Railways: Swindon Drawings

N. Wales Wanderer's Photobucket

I also have a lot of other stuff stashed on my desktop, some of which I've forgotten the source for. If you're looking for something in particular, I may have it.

[Gumboots]

Found some handy Blender stuff for trains here: http://www.44090digitalmodels.co.uk/tut ... nder1.html

Check out the Bits Box pages too.

[Gumboots]

Hey this looks useful. Train stuff is under the "Manmade" section, but there's all sorts of goodies available for general modelling.

http://www.cgtextures.com/textures.php?t=browse&q=0

[Gumboots]

Three more free online books.

The early motive power of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad

The evolution of the steam locomotive (1803 to 1898)

Locomotive engineering, and the mechanism of railways : a treatise on the principles and construction of the locomotive engine, railway carriages, and railway plant

[Gumboots]

Great link here: http://www.deacademic.com/contents.nsf/eisenbahnwesens/

Yes, it's in German. Don't panic. Google translate does a pretty good job on it. You might even end up learning enough German to get you by if you ever visit the place.

For instance, it doesn't take long to learn that "Heißdampflokomotiven" means "superheated steam locomotive" (literally, "hot steam locomotive") or that "Eisenbahn" is a railway (literally, "iron road"). Steam locos are often called "dampflok" for short, just as we would use "loco" instead of the full "locomotive".

The book was written in 1913, and is an excellent source of all sorts of information about railways of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The page for Heißdampflokomotiven has some excellent dimensioned plans for several locos, one of which is the game's Prussian P8.

This page has a great rundown on all sorts of coach stock from Europe and the US, including stacks of great drawings: Oh dear, this is in German too.

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Found some more goodies. Also in German. You'll love it.

Das digitale eisenbahn fotoarchiv should be self-explanatory. I actually registered there so I could get me some high quality plans of choofers.

Organ für die Fortschritte des Eisenbahnwesens

That's a link to one issue, but anything with that name is worth a look (it was published over many years). The trick (if you don't read German) is to start at the back. It's one of those old style of books which has all the text first, and all the pictures at the back.

So if you want to find out the interesting bits and you haven't got a clue what all that German is about, start with the pictures are the back. They are of very high quality and cover just about anything to do with railways.

The Internet Archive also has umpteen issues of Railroad Locomotives and Cars. That's not in German.

Neither is The Car Builder's Dictionary, which is more than just a dictionary. Again, it's an old style book that has a lot of guff you may not want at the front, and the pictures start some way in. They're worth the effort once you find them. They start on different pages depending on the issue, but try starting around page 200.

[Gumboots]

Hey here's a nice find: William Halsey Locomotive Drawing Collection

These are freely downloadable, and have incredible detail if you know a few web tricks to grab the high res tiles. If you zoom in to maximum on each unit on its viewing page, and drag the viewing window around the thumbnail to load all the relevant parts of the archived image, you can grab a collection of 512x512 .jpg tiles that will patch together to make an image that, just for loco and tender without extra blank paper, comes in at 8192x3072 and about 12 meg. That's detail for ya. The drafting work that went into these back in the 1860's and 70's is pretty amazing. William Halsey was definitely right into trains.

Some of the details are unusual from a 20th or 21st century perspective but were obviously normal back then. For example, several of the locomotives have the connecting rods inside the front drivewheels. They are still outside cylinders, but must have been set at a fairly narrow spacing to make that sort of drivetrain logical. If I had to guess, I'd say it was probably an attempt to reduce "nosing".

Anyway check out the drawings. No German required.

[Gumboots]

Found a couple more things yesterday. One is a handy collection of maps: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection

The other is some original Baldwin profile and section drawings: Gallery on this page.
These are profile and section drawings for two 4-4-0's, seven Moguls, two Consolidations, two Ten Wheelers, and one tiny four-wheeled tender for a shunting locomotive. Most of these are standard Baldwin production classes, from between 1870 and 1890, which got tweaked a bit to suit customer specs. However, one of the 4-4-0's is identified as a B&O Class I6, and one of the Moguls is identified as being for the narrow gauge DRG&W road.

There are also indexes of customers and classes on this page. The indexes give details (but not pictures) for every locomotive that Baldwin ever built. If you know which customer and year you're looking for, it's not hard to track down the relevant index pages.

When using the indexes, note that the class is given using Baldwin's own idiosyncratic notation. The first number gives the total number of wheels, so 08-30 is either an American or a Mogul or an 0-8-0, and 10-30 could be either a Consolidation or a Ten Wheeler or a Prairie.