You are absolutely right! It had occurred to me that I would need to change the materials somewhat before I declared it finished, but maybe I should start now. My materials for wiring, castings, etc. are still labelled “red” “yellow”, etc. and will become what they should be in the later stages. So I was looking at braided cotton for wire insulation, or VIR as you said and colours that I remember from my youth. I was trying to find out what colours they used for three phase supplies - now I think red, yellow, blue and black for neutral, but back then? Also the condensers I found were all covered with an aluminium case, often square sectioned. So I thought I would start off with what I knew here and look over time at what they should look like. If you have any references for old condensers, then please do post them - historical accuracy is important to this project, but some of my references just show outlines rather than detailed drawings. So for example the valves are just an outline, not a specific valve and I have no idea of pin numbers for these, so have avoided showing them.
The same will apply to the donkey engine and compressor - I will have to spend hours on the material to get these right!
Thanks for the input any help is gratefully received.
Cheers, Clock.
PS. I have heard about Mercury Arc rectifiers in my younger days , I will do some research on them.
EDIT:
I forgot to say Thank you @Jaxtraw for the kind comments, terrible manners… :o
Revised wire colours and the start of the control panel featuring a new fangled “Cathode Ray Oscilloscope” to show the output waveform and frequency - there’s a lot more to go on this bit…
@Jaxtraw - I have some good news, :eyebrowlift: I have been looking through my papers, you raised the issue as to whether Mercury Arc Rectifiers were in use on this loco. I have to admit I was struggling to find where the DC came from, given the AC generator, that would be required for other than the Traction Motors, which use square waveform, fixed frequency EMF. Well the good news is I found this image in my paperwork:
This shows Theo. Ibertson-Thorndyke’s youngest daughter Zeva preparing to charge her “Electric Motor Chariot” ready for use. I believe she was responsible for the development of the charger, which featured a very early Mercury-Arc rectifier to change AC to DC. She was a true “Chip off the Old Block”, inheriting her father’s passion for developments in the field of electric control machines. The rectifier’s glass envelope was “hand-blown” :eek: from molten glass into five separate chambers to contain the main anodes, ignition anode, excitation electrode, mercury cathode and the condensing chamber. I think this was fitted after the transformer and only took low current to convert to DC to provide power for some of the control systems, the majority of the power from the generator went to the PSVTD to feed the traction motor speed controllers. I will add this to the list of parts to make in the near future. It will of course carry the famous Ibertson-Thorndyke manufacturer’s brass plate…
Cheers, Clock.
FYI:
Zeva means “Rose” in English and is of Greek origin meaning “last born” - this is the end of the classics lessons for now. :yes:
I think I will leave the Phase-Shifting Voltage-Thrumming Discombobulator for now, there is still much to do on it, but I think I should get the main transformer and cooling systems in place before returning to this and some more electrical systems. I will then explain just how the PSVTD works, so there is something to look forward to… :yes:
And some more background on the Ibertson-Thorndykes. Theo. married his childhood sweetheart, Demelza Ponsonby, on reaching the age of maturity (21 then) and they had three daughters; Sophie-Helene - who married an Admiral Of The Fleet (Royal Navy) and spent her days, whilst he was at sea, embroidering, playing the piano forte and frequently getting a “good seeing to” from the young grounds keeper on their estate. Clara-Louise was the second - she married a vicar, who later became Dean of Salisbury Cathedral. The third was Zeva - whilst Demelza was “with child” for the third time Theo. fell off his horse whilst “chasing foxy” and landed on a five bar gate - with one leg each side. This had two effects; 1) he talked in a rather high pitched voice and 2) he could not sire any more children, so Zeva was the “last born” as her name suggests.
Theo. never had a son to take over the business, but Zeva quickly developed a gift for maths and physics, gaining a first class honours degree in Mathematics at Newnham College, Cambridge. She went on to get an M.Sc in Electrical Engineering and a Ph.D after submitting a remarkable thesis on “The Effects of Rare Sub-Atomic Particles on the Trajectory of Free Electrons in a Charged Conductor”. What we now know as the Higgs-Boson particle, only she could not call it that as Higgs and Boson hadn’t been born at the time. She devoted her entire life to electrical engineering and died at the age of 78, having never married.
After she retired, she ran the village post office until near her death and the inscription on her tomb reads thus:
Zeva Ibertson-Thordyke.
Spinster of this Parish.
Mathematician, Electrical Engineer and latterly Post Mistress.
“Retuned to her Maker Unopened”.
This is one hell of a project you’ve got on the go here, it’s look impressive so far.
One thing I did notice when reading through the thread was how similar the body shell of the engine is to a more modern diesel engine train. I guess that without the need for a steam boiler it was just a natural shape for the train to take.
Thank you for the kind words - yes this loco was really the forerunner to the more modern shape, however there was precedence for this shape in some of the trams and other horse drawn vehicles nearer the time of this loco…
I have found the nameplate for the loco - and recreated it in what I presume were the materials of the time (further studies may find that this was the case, or not maybe): :eyebrowlift:
I guess this name was appropriate, given what Sir Henry Cavendish did for science, apart from provide the name for my senior school that is. As far as I can tell, no other loco was ever named after this great man. If anyone doesn’t know what he did, I will tell you later. :yes:
Cheers, Clock.
PS. My Victorian “Spiel Chocker” seems to be working better now…
I’ve found that mercury arc rectifiers were found to be troublesome, and were switched out for silicon rectifiers later on, but I suppose this one never really existed to reach that point!
This is a render of just the Mercury Arc rectifier, I note for the record the the City Of Edmonton used one of these to power their trams from 1945 to 1985, I clearly need to do a lot more work here with Filmic, but I am impressed with what it can do so far… Any tips here would be gratefully received. I have also changed all my Mixers in the compositing nodes to Mix rather than Add - this makes things much easier to control I have found.
Cheers, Clock. :eyebrowlift2:
PS. Now I am back home I can get on with this project again. I think I will look at some of the materials for what is already built first, I am not happy with either my copper of brass. :no:
PPS. @Evertrainz - sorry to say that this loco predates silicon rectifiers by a large number of years…
These are cast from iron, hence the rippled surface, this being a long time before rolled steel plate was available. the grills were cut using a Transparent Shader and BW image feeding the Mix-Shader node. I have also revised the pinstripe method so its is easier to implement for so many panels on the loco and tender. I have also to deal with the millions of rivets required to hold this thing together!
I am also starting work on the Diamond Light-Source Particle Accelerator Syncatron for the main reactor. :eek: This is used to accelerate the sub-atomic particles in the fusion chambers.
It is all coming together nicely, Clock. The design of the locomotive looks quite “modern” in my eyes and I expected a more classical steam locomotive shape. But it’s not a classic steam engine after all and the engineers were once more ahead of their times.
@Minoribus; Thanks my friend, I am not too worried by the overall look that the designers of the loco came up with, bearing in mind that around this time, trams looked a lot like this:
The horse-drawn tram was from before 1880, not sure of the exact date. :no:
So this loco, extremely innovative for its day technology wise, was not a million miles from what other tram/carriage designers were doing. Many of the trams at the time were made of wooden frames with metal panels. This was also true of carriages from the same era, unhappily for the passengers when they crashed! Really the traditional steam loco’s shape was determined by the bits required - a boiler, a firebox, etc. and no real effort was made for many years to make them aerodynamically efficient until the days of Mallard, etc. I wouldn’t want to be in the cab if this one ever crashed, no crumple zone, no stressed bodywork, no integrated “mono-hull”, all bad for the driver/engineers on board! There was still a lot of use of standard cast iron girder sections, rather than more modern castings, rolled sections and complex shapes made by welding bits together.
I am still struggling with some of the materials, but it’s been a good learning curve. :spin: It has also been a good exercise for rigging, some of it has got really complicated…
Overview so far - I reckon I am about 20% through the building so far - then there is the materials to sort out, then the scene, then an animation, then…
I have found the original drawing for the transformer and some other electrical bits not yet attributed, this will help me to revise the detail of the transformer. These bits were built by Thompson, Watts & Angrave of Tewkesbury Ltd. I think they were swallowed up by endless mergers and take-overs until they became eventually part of English Electric, the paper trail is very thin in places.
Further to the Ibertson-Thorndykes, I have found an old diary from Sophie-Helene, she was married to Admiral Cuthbert Dorkins-Chalmondley, RN whom she described in one entry as “Singularly lacking in abilities between the sheets” and adding that she thought he “mightbe inclined to bat for the opposition” whatever that means - a cannot find reference to this in the laws of cricket, or in any old copies of Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanack. Her two children’s dates of conception do however, vaguely tie in with his shore-leave dates… Whereas she describes Padmore (the young grounds keeper and as such was only ever known by his surname) as being “hung like a donkey” (this is confusing, because whilst I know the Victorians hung their criminals, I did not know they also subjected their donkeys to the same judicial process) and “bangs like the outdoor water-closet door in a gale”. :eek: Although I would have thought that a simple latch on the door would stop the problem. Such society scandal these days would not go unnoticed by the tabloid press, indeed her comments may have been missinterpreted, but back then it was very acceptable apparently.
Cheers, Clock. :eyebrowlift:
PS. Sir Henry Cavendish, amongst other things, discovered Hydrogen, which he called “inflammable air” and he also accurately worked out the mass of the Earth and therefore defined the gravitational constant of 32ft/sec/sec, or 9.81m/sec/sec. Just thought you might like to know. :yes:
You seem to be steaming on well with this train. It is looking great, though a pity all those luminous chemicals and glowing transformers have to be hidden away inside the carriage.
As for Admiral Cuthbert Dorkins-Chalmondley batting for the other side, his bat might have been from the game kuningaspallo because it doesn’t sound very British, stiff upper lip and all.
