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The permanently parked 2-6-2 'Prairie' steam loco is enshrined in a small public space in Lego City. The park used to be much bigger, but eminent domain for more buildings has shrunk it down quite a bit to the size you see now. Nowadays, the OCTAN Company is threatening to take the rest to make into a automotive service station, hence the billboard. Octan and the local historical society are currently slugging it out in the courts to see what will happen to this lot and it's resident steam loco. Nevertheless, this park remains a popular place to grab a hot dog from the vendor and hold a picnic. If you need a rest on your walk, there are two benches, and if you want to read some about the loco there is plaque is placed behind the stairs to the engine's cab. The back side of the MOC, which is pretty ugly and sparsely decorated. I've been on a bit of a modular building kick recently... this plinthed 2-6-2 Prairie-type steam loco with surrounding public park is like my twelfth in a year or so. I've got two others waiting in the wings waiting to be finished as well. The food stall is run by Heimlich Stewblaster from the old LEGO Universe video game. ...Someone left a cake out in the rain, with all the sweet cream icing running down... (this is a reference to a song called 'MacArthur Park' and was sung by Richard Harris - yes, the original Dumbledore had a singing career!) Back when Bricklink allowed you to buy custom MOC instructions, I bought some plans for a small 2-6-2 steam loco from @SavaTheAggie in January 2014. (You can now buy Sava's instructions for his original MOC - and more - at Brick Train Depot.) I devoured the instructions, used the techniques shown to make me a better builder. Now, ten years later, I've revisited the model: I built it in LDD, (with some stand-ins for BBB parts) then went to town making it into my style and then bought the parts in the real world. I changed the boiler to be studs-up instead of SNOT, and removed the squeaky old tiny wheels from the model, and made space for XS Big Ben Bricks wheels instead. (this actually was easier than I thought it'd be!) I added a different stack along with heavily revising the piston / side rod assembly. As for the all-new, longer tender, different wheels were added and a 'painted' box put on the sides. The rear of the loco. The engine is numbered 119 and lettered for BRS (Brick Railway Systems), my original LEGO railroad that I began when I was in late-stage elementary school nearly 20 years ago. (Man, how time flies!) I also gave it the original black-and-red paint scheme of my first train MOCs from the early 2010's, as a nod to my past. This loco was my third set of instructions I purchased from Sava back in the day, although I had never built this one until now. (I did build the 4-6-0 and Berkshire I bought in 2010 and 2012 respectively, but oddly not this one from 2014) The inside of the cab. Thoughts? EDIT: @JopieK Do you you think this in the right area? Or should it be moved to town? I was confident before in my placement, but now I'm not so sure... -
What does a railroad do with a tired, worn out (yet historic) steam loco from an earlier timeframe, when scrap prices are too low to make it worthwhile to destroy right away? Why, send it to some lineside municipality looking to fill out a park and get a tax write-off to boot! Such was the fate of a lot of older locomotives in the early 1900's, 20's, and 30's. (The 4-4-0 Texas of the The Great Locomotive Chase fame comes to mind in this regard.) Sadly, a lot of World War II scrap drives drove towns and cities to destroy historic engines and other pieces of our shared industrial heritage, causing irreplaceable pieces to be destroyed and untold damage to be done to others. In the decades following the 1940's, many engines were also destroyed by Mother Nature - left to rot in public parks until they were beyond saving and the cutting torch was brought in to put them out of their misery. Thankfully, not all was lost in these dark times! A lot were pulled from their pedestal and refurbished cosmetically, with shelters erected around them. Some very lucky few were even restored to working order for a new generation to enjoy the sights, sounds, ands smells of a living steam loco and a long-passed way of life. Now, onto the LEGO model itself. This modular-compatible plinth was born out of a idea to show off a western loco in a modern LUG layout without it looking odd. The locomotive portion of the model was heavily inspired by the famous C.P. Huntington 4-2-4T steam loco originally owned by the Central Pacific, which was at one point on a plinth very similar to this one. Thoughts? EDIT 7/19/23: Added new pictures, as I made the model modular-building compatible. Original pictures in spoiler:
