@@Hectichedgehog no, I made it because my now 5 year old daughter had said a year ago for her next birthday party she wanted a “Thomas” themed one. Since I build steam engines for fun, and we have a track around our house the party was easily going to happen, just thought I better come up with the main ingredient - the blue engine. I didn’t make it to make a name for myself or anything like that, I made it primarily for her. Any other enjoyment from others is purely an added bonus.
@@puppetme6316 yep, come off a few times over the last 9 years. Some more spectacularly than others. It is surprising just how much force one of these engines can take in a crash where you come off, you might ding something, scratch the paint or bend some brake rigging or the spring hangers. Just about every “serious crash” I have been able to put the engine back on the rails and continue. There have been three exceptions where an axle pump got caught in the sleepers, another time the draincock broke off and another had the cow catcher ripped off on a point cover at SLSLS West Ryde, I was going too fast and there was a low bit of steel that got caught.
@@A_Calm_K2 good question. If I bought everything for it now it would have cost a couple of thousand Australian in materials. I had much of the material, aside from the wheels and some boiler fittings so it wasn’t “expensive” in that sense.
I noticed that Thomas had a different face and he has his two coaches, Annie and Clerabel.
Reminds me of a Jinty mixed with an E2 some
did you make that becuase if you did that flipping awsome
@@Hectichedgehog no, I made it because my now 5 year old daughter had said a year ago for her next birthday party she wanted a “Thomas” themed one. Since I build steam engines for fun, and we have a track around our house the party was easily going to happen, just thought I better come up with the main ingredient - the blue engine. I didn’t make it to make a name for myself or anything like that, I made it primarily for her. Any other enjoyment from others is purely an added bonus.
That's absolutely excellent. Where did you find Z18 drawings? I'm trying to design a 4mm scale model, as it happens!
@@ajaxengineco I used Gred Edward’s Data Sheet, scanned into auto cad to trace around etc.
Have you ever crashed one of these engines?
@@puppetme6316 yep, come off a few times over the last 9 years. Some more spectacularly than others. It is surprising just how much force one of these engines can take in a crash where you come off, you might ding something, scratch the paint or bend some brake rigging or the spring hangers. Just about every “serious crash” I have been able to put the engine back on the rails and continue. There have been three exceptions where an axle pump got caught in the sleepers, another time the draincock broke off and another had the cow catcher ripped off on a point cover at SLSLS West Ryde, I was going too fast and there was a low bit of steel that got caught.
Was it expensive to make this?
@@A_Calm_K2 good question. If I bought everything for it now it would have cost a couple of thousand Australian in materials. I had much of the material, aside from the wheels and some boiler fittings so it wasn’t “expensive” in that sense.