i think the only thing the rivet material needs is a bit less specularity and you're set? They wont really show that large anyways on a render :-)

Btw, did you try saving as a br5 file? (dont know if thats possible) i've had rather less problems with corruption in br5.

 hmm i wouldnt know what its for either :-/

Well... it's a meter of some sorts....  when the arrow is at the top there is too much of something... when the arrow is at the bottom..  there is too little of something,,,,   

Where in the cab and at what size???  Could possibly be a repeater guage for the tender water level as the water tank is generally behind the coal bunker.

Cheers
GG.

Kiwi_gg:  I'll post a pic when I've installed it in the cab.

Completely stumped now, no wires, pipes,levers, nothing?????????
Engine Drivers abacus perhaps!!!

Cheers
GG 

Maybe the weight of the water tank.. maybe...

The input could be into the back of it, either via a pipe or a direct connection to some tank behind the bulkhead.

I'm pretty certain it's some kind of low pressure water level gauge.

Just found a picture (from a simulator) which may help.

nruddock, I'm still thinking along those lines as well.

Cheers
GG

Excellent Picture.

Cheers
GG

Cheers
GG

nruddock: Thanks. That helps some.
Kiwi_gg: Interesting pic.

My problem is I can never seem to get the photo ref shots I need.

BTW I just realised, I've been at this for over 2 years now.

Almost a life sentence.

Cheers
GG

That definitely looks like a water guage! You had to watch those things like a hawk and make sure you had enough water for steam to get to your next rest stop for water and fuel, and sand, if you had to go up grades. You also had to make sure you had enough water to cool the crownplate, 'cause if that went you'd have an incredible explosion that could take out half a city block!! Smart railroads always kept an older experienced locomotive engineer with a trainee, until he could be trusted wirh good judgement with operating the equipment over that route.  Lives are at stake at all times while operating a steam locomotive, even the Bon Flying Scott. Diesel locos will never seem so alive, or be as dangerous

Second that. Letting a boiler go dry is a very bad thing. I believe the same still holds quite true for modern turbine systems and even on the secondary side of steam generators for nuclear implementations using "hot rocks" as the heat. (Can even be more tricky if there's a condensing side on the circuit, but I don't think the old steam engines had to worry about too much water and vacuum problems.)

Brilliant !!!! How are the file sizes looking?

Cheers
GG

The cab is 170mb and Bryce is NOT happy. I keep getting error access exceptions and then Bryce crashes before the file loads up into Bryce....or something like that. I've even installed a clean version of Bryce and that won't load it either.

Just a thought, (yes it was painful), are you able to export as a mesh then bring it back in and still work on it or does that not have any effect on the file size. I don't know as I've never tried that.

Cheers
GG

Well if I can't open the file..........

Duhhhh!!!!!!!  

Cheers
GG

Keep the inspiration coming mate, I just hope the next Bryce update will correct that damned memory limitation.
I've had problems converting some things, as the result usually crashed Bryce, so I just don't convert anymore.

 did you try to move the file and its bitmaps to a directory closer to the root of the drive? it might just be messing up because of file paths longer then 256 chars

Oh Bugger!  I just remebered something. Thanks, Ray!

There's problem with some texture names being too long. This goes way back I think.

You can't make part, object or mat/texture names too long.

You've done a lot of very fine modeling on your project. I hope you're able to finish it. Good luck.

hope that fixes it :)

32 characters if I remember right, and that goes back to the Corel Bryce 4 days - if not older. But once you get that resolved, keep the progress coming. I want to see this actually get completed.

*I want to see this actually get completed.

*Slave Driver!!!

ooh does that mean it works again? :D wicked!

Yes, Ray. It's as tricky as hell, but it works.
C&Cs welcome as always.

@ 50p : Nice of you to say so.

Very Awesome. I'm so glad that you got it to open again.

Very Awesome. I'm so glad that you got it to open again.

 spiffy!

ohmygosh, Bryster, i'm beginning to think it would be easier to buy a metal shop, build the real thing and just take a photo. 

Your patience and perseverance is amazing.  Truly amazing and worthy of awards and praise.

Great job, it's really taking shape!

4,169 objects
7,102,409 polys

Just a heads-up. I won't be doing any work on this for a while as I'm about to have my HDD rebuilt in the hope that this will solve some issues I'm having with Bryce.

Thank you for your interest.

You are doing an "epic" work, so you must take a rest from time to time.
I hope you can solve the Bryce problems.

 good luck on rebuilding your harddrive

 Hoping this gets us back to the top of the forum with this.. ...

Well my harddrive is back together again and Santa got me a nice 1 terrabyte hdd to go with it, along with a new m/s keyboard which is really the cat's backend/greased silk/kinda thingy. So now that data storage is no longer a problem....everything being backed up onto the 1TB, I should be able to do some flipping work.

Thanks for the help Bobby.

Whoot! WTG Brycie! Just popped back in to annoy....er....say hi and look at your wonderful progress. looking awsome there, great stuff.

Since I live in York, & work just a couple of hundred yards from the National Railway Museum, I'd be happy to take any pics you might need, but unfortunately there isn't much to see at the moment, since it's in bits undergoing a full restoration, & isn't likely to be complete before 2010 :(