1936 Mercury Streamliner

Introduction

I've wanted to make a model of a steam engine for forever but never had the time or patience honestly. That is until I came across a game called Derail Valley and a mod that allows anyone to add in custom Trains or Coaches to the game in a relatively simplified mannor.

With the knowledge that I could make and drive any train or coaches of my choice in a 3D Train driving game that also supports VR player with full hand interactions I knew what I wanted to do.

I had to choose an engine to make and I had many choices but a few stood out from the crowd of the many I wanted to make and those were the Streamliners and Engines like the Climax and Heisler which had their pistons mounted on the sides of the engines instead of the front where most steam engines have them mounted.

After narrowing it down I looked all over modding forums and archives to see if anyone had many any of the aforementioned trains. Someone in fact did make a Heisler and a Climax already so I stuck to streamliners. After viewing wayyy too many Vintage Streamliners and even taking in the possibility of making the train from Snowpierces I found the Mercury which I just HAD to make.

The 1936 Mercury Streamliner

This engine is quite beutiful, the sleek and steamlined details follow through the engine all the way to the coaches. This engine in particular ran on New York Centrals rails from 1936 to 1959 after which the company that owned them scrapped EVERY SINGLE ENGINE and would not allow anyone to buy them from them or even attempt to keep them in any shape or form.

Some of the engines that were getting scrapped during this time did make it out alive luckly but the Mercury sadly did not. Knowing this information is actually what got me to want to recreate it so I can bring back a piece of history for us to relive to an extent.

Making the Model

As stated before, I've never made a model before so taking on a Streamliner, let alone a Steam Engine is probably the last thing I should have done. This engine has SO MANY CURVES which are not so easy to make in any form of 3D Modeling software when you're just starting out.

I ran to a friend of mine, Lenzic who is quite the amazing modeler and asked him for help to which he gave me an hour or so rundown of the basics of blender. I took this info an instantly set off to make this model.

Afer quite a bit of time the engine was starting to come together, this took about a day to get the basics roughed out then I started working on getting it as close to 1:1 as possible which is relatively hard as Derail Valley uses a Narrower Guage rail system than what most of the United States uses.

Due to this issue I went through many and I mean MANY renditions of this engine trying to make it look big, sleek, and as powerful as it does in the pictures. Which I had to scower the internet for and sadly I didn't really find many decent ones.

I am still having a hard time finding any sort of footage or images of the actual interior of the engine, however this engine is very very similar to the hudson class locomotives also owned by New York Central and these engines have a decent bit more coverage on them since someone had managed to save and restore a few of them!

After getting the engine decently put together I started work on the wheels and the linkage aswell as the brakes and other portions of the wheels.

This is probably the hardest part yet but once completed I will begin adding more exterior details then I will move to the cabin where I will add in the controls and firebox.

Final Thoughts

For now this project still continues. I plan to make the Tender after the engine then work my way back to the couches. I will not be uploading any models until they are done but I will upload them with the textures and animations for all to use. Stop by another time to see more progress!

Before you go however, please meet my sizing conductor! He's been extremely helpful with making sure things are properly sized and is available for download below if you want him too!

Downloads

Name

Upload Date

File Size

LowPoly_Scale_ConductorManequinn.stl

November 25, 2024

96.76 KB

Notes