EMAIL: kosh@nesys.com NAME: Dave Merchant TOPIC: Unbelievable COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT. TITLE: Giants COUNTRY: USA WEBPAGE: www.nesys.com RENDERER USED: povray 3.1e Watcom TOOLS USED: Photoshop for JPEG conversion and image map creation RENDER TIME: 3 hours 29 min 16 secs at AA=0.05 and intervals = 6 HARDWARE USED: P400, 128 mb RAM, NT4 IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Visitors to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan are confronted by a huge steam locomotive. The signs say that it is a Chesapeake and Ohio H-8 "Allegheny", a 2-6-6-6, and that it hauled 160 car coal trains over its namesake mountains. But as it sits there, cold and shiny, on a parquet floor in a museum that also features fine antique furniture and Stradivarii, it is hard to imagine that this mass of iron once was alive, or believe that it was capable of passenger train speeds. The subject "Unbelievable" first conjures up science fiction, or the distant past, while this is a monster of the recent past. Some of the unbelievable facts: The engine alone, without the tender, weighed about the same as a loaded 747. The engine weighed about 772,000 pounds, the tender about 440,000 pounds. Together, the weight was well over a million pounds. In road testing with a dynamometer, 7500 net drawbar horsepower was seen at peak, and nearly 7000 on a continuous basis. To do this, the horsepower at the cylinders was significantly higher than this. The Allegheny weighed the same as the famous Union Pacific Big Boy, but was denied the "world's heaviest" credit for most of its lifetime - they were initially designed to weigh much less, but "feature creep" added over 30,000 pounds to the design weight. Since engine crews were paid by weight, the actual figure was kept a secret for many years. When the engine was reweighed later, the builder was forced to pay a very large monetary settlement to the railroad, reportedly several million dollars. These engines were not fully utilized in their normal coal service. They were designed to be high speed engines, but were usually limited to coal drag speeds. Train length was limited to 160 cars due to siding lengths and coupler strength, rather than the true cabability of the locomotives. In some cases, they were used on fast freight and heavy passenger trains, where they performed brilliantly. The Allegheny was a direct descendant of the Nickel Plate 2-8-4 I did last year, but all major dimensions were increased 1.5 times. To keep the rigid wheelbase reasonable, the Alleghenies had two engines under one boiler, with a hinge between them. As a result, these big engines could traverse tight curves easily. The big pipes supply steam, and carry away the exhaust. Steam to the front engine first went to a dividing valve above the rear cylinders. Half was used in the rear cylinders, while the remainder went forward through a pipe inside the front engine frame. This arrangement simplified the swivel steam joints. In this scene, the 1643 gets a ride on a turntable, demonstrating another of the peculiarities of these engines. They were built with a 113 foot wheelbase, to just barely fit on the standard 115 foot turntables, so the front and rear platforms overhung the turntables significantly. Getting them positioned on the turntable was quite tricky. The 1631, sitting on a storage track, is just barely clear of the overhang zone. The rail joints near the ends of the pit lead rails are typical. The ends of the rails were subject to repeated impacts as engines moved off the turntable, and the joints facilitated frequent replacement of these high-wear areas. Although I grew up around the Nickel Plate 2-8-4's, I never saw an Allegheny in operation, even though they came within 150 miles of my house. I recently encountered a man who had been around them, and asked him what his impression of them was. One word: "BIG!" DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: This is all CSG. Due to the family design relationship with the 2-8-4, I had originally intended to reuse many components from the previous model, but found that I was only able to use the bell and the centers of the drivers. Over the last year, I have learned to structure components much more efficiently, so was able to produce a much more complex model with fewer objects. A steam locomotive is made up many textures of metal. The large components are rough castings, others are steel plate, while the jackets on the boiler, air pumps, and large steam pipes are sheet metal wrapped around the thick insulation. Various textures were used to represent this. Note that the curved steam pipes are covered with segmented jacketing. Wheel rims and side rods are nickel steel, which retains a silver color. Whistle and bell are brass, although they were often just steel painted black. Reflections are tricky - although the steel jackets get dirty, an underlying glossiness often shows through. Lights are close to being "available light", but I fudged the positions a bit to fill in some of the details. There are two colors of light used - a slightly orange color to represent oil lanterns, and a very pale yellow for incandescents. Both types of light have fade distance applied. There are no light sources in the headlights or number boxes. Instead, they are concave, and pick up and reflect the ambient light. The ground is a height field, with a crackle texture to simulate cinders. I made custom textures for the glossy metal, the wood grain of the ties, and the sky. I experimented with a sunset, but got mixed reactions from my family, so decided to go with a simple night sky. Piping was done with a set of macros I developed. Steam is interior/media. This function behaves strangely in artificial light - in daylight illumination, the same parameters give a billowing dense, dark gray smoke. I twiddled parameters to get something decent, but it isn't what I had planned to have. That's my animated blobs guy, who is getting better, but still not quite ready for prime time. I put him in the scene to show the size of the engine. He is 5' 10" tall. He is holding a lantern, which illuminates him. I made a nice lantern model, which I intended to use with another guy in the foreground, but the picture composition didn't work out. The sign says "SAFETY FIRST". It is painted sheet steel, with rust streaks. The black letters are cut out of steel and riveted to the white background. They were done with the TTF function, as were the numbers on the engines. I used a moderately wide angle lens, to emphasize the engine size. The only image maps are the staybolts on the firebox. Object count is 5138.