The October 2008 issue of “Railfan and Railroad” has an article (first of a series) by Preston Cook, about the evolution of the E-unit design. (I bought my copy yesterday at the Railfan Shop in Melbourne, along with a copy of another railfan magazine I won’t name: the contrast between informed and intelligent articles like PC’s and the mindless photo galleries many railfan publications put out is stunning.) On page 39 there is a photo of the “Proposal Model” of the Winton-engined EA. It’s a “skinless” model, perhaps only of the frame and up portion of the locomotive (the photo is cropped so that you can’t see if it originally included trucks and fuel tanks &c): it shows the truss frame (including the curved frame elements underlying the skin on the nose) and interrnal equipment (slightly schematic but still fairly detailed: individual power assemblies on the engines are represented).
I’d love to know more about this model! For instance:
----What scale is it (the Smithsonian has, and – back in the 1970s -- displayed in the Railroad hall of the History and Technology museum, a similar model, made by EMD, of an E-8A, at 2 inches to the foot)?
----Did the original model include the under parts (the Smithsonian’s E-8 does)?
----Was it used only internally, or was it shown to potential customers?
----Does it still exist?
Also, on page 33, there is a photo showing a FULL SIZE mock-up of a preliminary cab design, squarer than the one finally adopted. PC compares it to the cabs of the shrouds retrofitted on some Alaska Railroad RS-1; it also reminded me of the cabs on early English Electric streamlined diesels.
Scale models at least used to have an important role in engineering: they revealed such things as whether different members of the design team had put different pieces of equipment in the same place, and whether three-dimensional maintenance people could really access the parts. Only recently, I think, has the development of computer software capable of showing multiple perspective views of an object begun to replace physical models: a book on the Boeing 777 (title, I think, was “Wide Bodied Jet”) said the 777 was the first Boeing jetliner to be designed WITHOUT the use of a full-scale mockup!
I’d love to know more about this model! For instance:
----What scale is it (the Smithsonian has, and – back in the 1970s -- displayed in the Railroad hall of the History and Technology museum, a similar model, made by EMD, of an E-8A, at 2 inches to the foot)?
----Did the original model include the under parts (the Smithsonian’s E-8 does)?
----Was it used only internally, or was it shown to potential customers?
----Does it still exist?
Also, on page 33, there is a photo showing a FULL SIZE mock-up of a preliminary cab design, squarer than the one finally adopted. PC compares it to the cabs of the shrouds retrofitted on some Alaska Railroad RS-1; it also reminded me of the cabs on early English Electric streamlined diesels.
Scale models at least used to have an important role in engineering: they revealed such things as whether different members of the design team had put different pieces of equipment in the same place, and whether three-dimensional maintenance people could really access the parts. Only recently, I think, has the development of computer software capable of showing multiple perspective views of an object begun to replace physical models: a book on the Boeing 777 (title, I think, was “Wide Bodied Jet”) said the 777 was the first Boeing jetliner to be designed WITHOUT the use of a full-scale mockup!
