Smokebox: Central Pacific Railroad #60 "Jupiter" 4-4-0

[trainboi1]

It's very true that paint looks different day to day, and your engine matches the replica a lot more closely. It's also true that the truth lies somewhere in between...I'd suggest a compromise, something a little less garish than what you have now but a little less somber than the deep blue and crimson on the model.
I don't know that a weathered version would be necessary - in the 1860s insulation was so bad that crews cleaned their engines daily to preserve fuel (that and they were proud of their engines). But a little something, like a dim smokestain on the cab where it's hard to reach or condensation trails on the smokebox, would lend it the look of actually being used.

[mrennie]

It's very true that paint looks different day to day, and your engine matches the replica a lot more closely. It's also true that the truth lies somewhere in between...I'd suggest a compromise, something a little less garish than what you have now but a little less somber than the deep blue and crimson on the model.
I don't know that a weathered version would be necessary - in the 1860s insulation was so bad that crews cleaned their engines daily to preserve fuel (that and they were proud of their engines). But a little something, like a dim smokestain on the cab where it's hard to reach or condensation trails on the smokebox, would lend it the look of actually being used.

I'll probably have time for experimenting with that over the holidays ... let's see what I come up with.

Next job, though, is to model the engineer

[Logan20131]

Quick question, will we beable to rename the engine's tender so maybe we would like to have the Leviathan in the group?

[mrennie]

Quick question, will we beable to rename the engine's tender so maybe we would like to have the Leviathan in the group?

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[hertsbob]

...If you have an issue with the amount of niggly little details I'm posting about...

No, no! I think you'll find you're in exactly the right place. There's nothing Mike likes more than a niggly detail.

(Sorry, Mike. I always go for the low-hanging fruit. )

Cheers

Bob

[mrennie]

...If you have an issue with the amount of niggly little details I'm posting about...

No, no! I think you'll find you're in exactly the right place. There's nothing Mike likes more than a niggly detail.

(Sorry, Mike. I always go for the low-hanging fruit. )

Cheers

Bob

You know me so well Bob! I live for niggly details

[trainboi1]

No, no! I think you'll find you're in exactly the right place. There's nothing Mike likes more than a niggly detail.

Sounds like my kind of place. Although as a modeler myself, I know that no matter how much you love little details, they can get irritating. I think it was the twenty-fifth time I exported C&C No. 2 into Trainz to make a detail adjustment that I figured that out...Mind you, there's nothing more satisfying than pointing to a little detail and saying "That's prototypical."

[mrennie]

No, no! I think you'll find you're in exactly the right place. There's nothing Mike likes more than a niggly detail.

Sounds like my kind of place. Although as a modeler myself, I know that no matter how much you love little details, they can get irritating. I think it was the twenty-fifth time I exported C&C No. 2 into Trainz to make a detail adjustment that I figured that out...Mind you, there's nothing more satisfying than pointing to a little detail and saying "That's prototypical."

We are kindred spirits, you and I

[buzz456]

Rivet counters need to be aware that they are seriously annoying to those of us who are in the great unwashed class. We love our sim and don't need to constantly be told what's not perfect. I truly believe that most of this picking of nits should be handled by PM since with all due respect a lot of this is merely bragging about how mush more I know than you do. You guys seem pretty sincere. I know Mike a lot better and know he is a perfectionist. A lot of this stuff tho just makes things less enjoyable to us less critical to the imperfection of the sim like the imperfection of life.
Please don't take offense to this.

[trainboi1]

Rivet counters need to be aware that they are seriously annoying to those of us who are in the great unwashed class. We love our sim and don't need to constantly be told what's not perfect. I truly believe that most of this picking of nits should be handled by PM since with all due respect a lot of this is merely bragging about how mush more I know than you do. You guys seem pretty sincere. I know Mike a lot better and know he is a perfectionist. A lot of this stuff tho just makes things less enjoyable to us less critical to the imperfection of the sim like the imperfection of life.
Please don't take offense to this.

None taken. That was why I said I could back off if y'all wanted.
PMs can be effective, though they are harder to track by nature, and I am a big fan of being able to go back and trace the history of a project...that becomes impossible after the first time your inbox fills up. In my experience, development threads are the perfect place for it, as they are open forums for the creator both to show progress and take commentary about it, and while I can agree that it gets tedious reading about every niggly detail, it also is informative and often interesting. I would not define myself as critical to imperfection - if I were I would criticize almost every game ever made pretty heavily - but when things are actively being made, it behooves anyone interested in the final product to help the creator make it the best that it can be. Doing so publicly puts the author at risk of criticism and bores people who do not care about such things, but it also enables the development thread to serve the audience further, since it allows people to openly discuss and debate details.
I also appreciate that a lot of times this can seem like a bragging contest, and that is a large part of the problem...I am glad you think I'm sincere in this regard. 'Rivet Counter' as a term has something of a derogatory connotation because of this (and because, as you say, we're irritating! To quote Invisible Man, "You may say, 'What a horrible, irresponsible person! And I agree completely.'"), but honestly, a lot of us are only trying to directly help with something that we, too, care about a great deal. I always try to clarify this, but I know that it can often come off differently, especially depending on personal experience. In my case, I've done a lot of dealing with old Western railways and stock, and I won't claim to be an expert on that (go to PacificNG or the Nevada or California state railroad museums for that) I have seen enough to know that there's a lot of misinformation about what things may have looked or performed like. This is another reason I prefer publicly debating details: anyone who reads then at least has the opportunity to discuss and make informed details about what things may have been like. In this case, it's not much at all, but consider the example of US Navy L-17: Depending on the source one values most, it either went to San Fransisco for scrap, sank in a storm, worked in the South Pacific, or headed west as far as eastern Africa.
In any case, I hope that you do still get a great deal of enjoyment out of watching Mike work, and that my lengthy response wasn't too tedious or tangential.

[mrennie]

I'm just glad that people are interested enough to post something, anything! The most disheartening thing for me is when I post about a project and there are no replies.

[buzz456]

We're just drooling for this thing to come to pass.

[ssbobz]

I'm not a rivet counter or trivia master but I love and have enjoyed following the project.

[ozinoz]

As have I for all of Mikes projects. The whole building process just amazes me. I struggle to create a simple Point A - Point B scenerio

The paint work is a masterpiece to behold

[ZekTheKid]

The paint work is a masterpiece to behold.

Agreed! Mike, how do you get the colors so spot on? Do you eyeball it and go back and edit or do you get the paint from sort of source?