Resita in 009: the holy grail of forestry lines...
I think I'd be fairly safe to say that the most common steam locomotive type built for forestry service in Europe is the Romanian 'Resita' narrow gauge type. These burly compact 0-8-0t use articulation of the front and rear axle to allow their use on tight and poor trackwork whilst maintaining a high tractive effort, low axle weight for a 150hp design.
My layout is 009 rather than the more popular H0e so this does mean I've resorted to scratch building suitable forestry engines (the Krauss) but flushed with the success (so far) of my O&K 3D project that I thought I'd turn my hand to try a Resita!
Now before anyone says it, yup it's going to need a custom chassis but this isn't as scary as I first thought as I've got the help and guidance of a lot of good kit and chassis designers.
I managed to track down a fairly large size dimensioned drawing so printed that out full size. I have converted the stated dimensions to 1:76 and worked out the scale to take some of the other necessary measurements.
This has allowed me to start sketching up in 3D, so far I've got the cab and tanks drawn up in basic outline, still plenty to do but exciting! This will be a long time coming as I've got plenty of other engines ahead in the queue but my plan is to get a lightly detailed but dimensionally correct body drawn up and then start work on the chassis. More soon...
My layout is 009 rather than the more popular H0e so this does mean I've resorted to scratch building suitable forestry engines (the Krauss) but flushed with the success (so far) of my O&K 3D project that I thought I'd turn my hand to try a Resita!
Now before anyone says it, yup it's going to need a custom chassis but this isn't as scary as I first thought as I've got the help and guidance of a lot of good kit and chassis designers.I managed to track down a fairly large size dimensioned drawing so printed that out full size. I have converted the stated dimensions to 1:76 and worked out the scale to take some of the other necessary measurements.
This has allowed me to start sketching up in 3D, so far I've got the cab and tanks drawn up in basic outline, still plenty to do but exciting! This will be a long time coming as I've got plenty of other engines ahead in the queue but my plan is to get a lightly detailed but dimensionally correct body drawn up and then start work on the chassis. More soon...
UPDATE: made a little more progress on the model...
Well, yes, but do you know that the Resita's design is in fact of the Hungarian origin? Her predecessors were manufactured in the Budapest locomotive works well before the WWI. Only in Slovakia there exist at least 10 0-6-0 and 0-8-0 forestry engines from Budapest, most of them in the operational condition...
ReplyDeleteHello Hank - yes I was aware of the history of the Resita design, it is described in Keith Chester's book on East European Narrow Gauge. Thank you for the comment though :)
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