Millie can push/pull up to 300 tons of railcars, equivalent to the average a real switcher locomotive can achieve. In addition, she can also bicep curl nearly 10 tons w/ just one arm, no problem! Something not every CORE droid can achieve.
And even w/ heavier loads of any kind, her tractive effort is too great, so she can handle nearly anything given enough time. She’s an absolute unit.
Also, whenever she’s working hard, she makes steam engine ‘chugga’ sounds cuz it’s cute :)
Construct-class 2-8-0+0-8-2 steam locomotive, Slaibsgloth Coal Mine Railway No.14, ex-G&NE No.1303010₆, pulling a coal train out of the coal pits ca. 2324 AD.
These locomotives were built on planet Gymnome for the Glooiw & North Eastern Railroad in the year 2297 AD, late into the first steam era, and were very successful freight workhorses. After dieselization followed, they were sold to in large batches to various coal mine railroads, where they were popular enough to warrant additional batches.
They saw use through the oil crisis of the 2330s and 40s in mainline service as well as in the mines, and continued to work all the way into 2379 as the last remaining coal burning steam engines on Gymnome (Though by that time oil and biofuel burning advanced steam engines were still in use alongside diesel engines in regular service in a few less developed areas)
The Construct class, like so many Gymnomi Slime locomotives, is a Garratt-type articulated loco, with the boiler slung between two engine units, with a tender atop each engine unit.
This engine has been seen several times in my art:
As a model built by Eaurp Guz
As an even larger model built by Eaurp Guz (and mysteriously with the face of her childhood friend Slamtha) in this Artfight Attack
And in full scale in two varieties in this drawing of two trains passing eachother in a mountainous part of Gymnome.
After making my first model of the Advanced Steam Tank Engine for Train Misconductor, and working on a Thomas the Tank Engine model, the Garratt was my next modelling project.
Here is an early iteration of that.
I picked at the model over the next few months in between other projects, and I had plans to fully model the Southern valve gear too, but that hasn't happened yet, because I realized that the loco was just about the right size to fit into Train Misconductor as a Broad Gauge locomotive!
The model in the game was finished by taking a lot of shortcuts. The detail density didn't have to be nearly as high as planned, so the rest of the detailing and the pixel-art texturing went fairly smoothly.
The engine can be seen in-game here.
Also, check out the steam page for the game!
I wanted to do a nice drawing of the new model, to sort of retcon the inconsistencies of previous drawings and also to put some detail into the engine since that didn't make it into the model.
I made several renders from different angles, but settled on this one:
I traced the locomotive using the vanishing point snap feature in Firealpaca as well as the straight line and ellipse tools. This isn't that unlike how I would approach a normal train drawing, except the sketch layer is replaced with a 3D model.
Here's a look at the line art alone after it was finished. Several of the plumbing details come from the Chinese JS class locos, as they were the original inspiration for Guz's model in the first drawing. The valve gear is Southern valve gear, chosen because it's just a little unfamiliar and alien to people familiar with the more typical Walschearts. The light on the smokebox--which is normally unnecessary on a Garratt--is known on Earth as a "Mars Light." It's a swivelling light that moves in a figure eight shape so it looks like it's flashing, but also so that it can be aimed by the engineer by controlling the speed of the swivelling.
Several major elements had to be modelled from scratch. The pivot on the front engine, alongside its ball-jointed plumbing, the reverse lever, and the steam pipe which delivers exhaust steam from the high pressure cylinders at the back, through a gap in the firebox ashpans, and into to low pressure cylinders at the front.
Then the environment was drawn--using the Sandaoling Coal Mine Railroad as a reference. The environment is done fairly simply so as not to distract (me) from the foreground, but is detailed enough to get across the setting. This is one of the moodier pieces I've done, taking place on an overcast day in Slaibsgloth.
Then the loco was colored
And weathered, referencing the Sandaoling locos, previous drawings of the engine, and the game model's texture.
Then the loco was rendered, yielding the finished result above.
