Stephenson’s Rocket

I have always been fascinated with early steam engines and railroad technology. If you add to that a great story of people, places, and politics then you have the story of British engineer George Stephenson and his Rocket locomotive. It was built for and won the Rainhill Trials of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR) in 1829 showing that this improved locomotive design could be a very efficient and speedy way to transport goods and people. The story is not a simple one and I won’t try to tell it here but I urge you, if you are interested, to take a look at Wikipedia or seek out one of the books available. With the design of the Rocket we see, once again, that a practical engineering genius like Stephenson can bundle the best ideas of others with his own into a winning combination. It is said that the essential features of the Rocket shaped locomotive designs for the next 100 years.

My model of the Rocket locomotive and tender is approximately 1/14 scale or about 18 inches end to end. This was a scratch built model, no kit involved on this one. It is a hybrid model made from machined metals, 3D resin printed plastic, precision cut wood and a massive amount of work. I was able to download (with my son’s help) a good set of blueprints for a 1/8 scale Rocket model from the British Science Museum collection website. Most of the larger, more complex parts were entered from blueprint data into a CAD program and then printed on a high resolution resin printer. Many of the smaller metal parts were lathe turned or milled. I do admit that for the first time I hired out several steel parts to be laser cut because I had no reasonable way to fabricate them. My digital calipers were my constant companion on this build. Oh, and I just happened across the CAD information for the fellow you see driving my model, he seems to be having fun. I hope you will enjoy it too.