Would I be correct in guessing that the configuration change from the
early cuckoo headlights to the later round-top housings came with the
move from flame to filament? There doesn't seem to be anything in
common between the pre-1900 light and the 1930's light except maybe
the glass.
I wouldn't hold out much hope for 123D Catch. I tried it a couple of
years ago without good result, and had installed a new copy over the
weekend. There is a 1930's American Airline hangar in Fort Worth
with bas-relief Art Deco eagles that I am using as reference for my
redo of the Zephyrus bas-relief, which crashed and burned last year
due to my lack of understanding of the subtleties of doing
bas-relief.
Anyway, I took a systematic series of photos of one of the eagles
from ground level, around 15 photos in an arc. The result from 123D
Catch was unusable. If you've ever played or seen a 1990's video
game, the result was about the same. 123D Catch does not output any
kind of drawing, but a faceted approximation of the shape with
surface texture from the photos mapped onto the facets. I'm getting
better visualazation of the contours of the eagle by making stero
pairs of photos and cross-eyed viewing them to give the depth
perception.
I've visited 710 in Lincoln 3 times in the last 4 years, and cropped
all my photos that show the headlight reasonably--maybe 15
photos. With the varied background--the smokestack directly behind
and a building and "water tower" in the background from other angles,
Catch was only able to stitch 4 of the photos--the areaa of the
left-side numberboard. And that was badly distorted. I went as far
as trying to manually match points between photos but that did not
help.
If you use or know someone who uses SolidWorks, there is an ability
buried way down in the menu called "sketch photo" where you can embed
a bitmap photo, and scale it per one known dimension. You can then
use it to manually create the corresponding sketch to expand into
3D. With decent orthogonal photos of the headlamp, this would
result in a visually matching 3D model.
But I see from another email that there are actual measuements
forthcoming. That is great.
I grew up in Lincoln and always enjoyed going down to Pioneers Park
to see "old 710" which was behind a tall chain-link fence. After the
cosmetic restoration it was behind an inconvenient railing at the
Haymarket, but for a couple of recent years it was out in the open
and I was able to get good photos around, under and in the cab
(unfortunately the cab has rain-spotted plastic panels obscuring the
view of the interior and backhead). But it was a childhood dream
just to climb up onto the footplate!
Randy
--
Randy Gordon-Gilmore
http://www.prototrains.com
randy@prototrains.com