This is the official update and progress blog (R&D!) of the ckhollidayplans.com and Highball Sim!
The original project in 2012 was to: virtually “build” a “working copy” of the CK Holliday.
At the time, I described it:
It’s a project I wanted to do since completing the drawings for Steve DeGaetano’s Welcome Aboard the Disneyland Railroad.
I am not a professional mechanical engineer, machinist, or a steam railroader. I am simply a fan, enthusiast, and a hobbyist. This project is a tribute to one of my favorite engines, the CK Holliday.
And it is also a tribute to Paul Boschan, who showed me how he built the real Disneyland Railroad engine, the No. 5 Ward Kimball, so this will be my own virtual-“build” of a DRR engine.
And to my dad for taking me to Disneyland for the first time when I was 9.
And Steve, for showing me that liking the DRR is not enough–you have to live it–feel the steam and smell the oil!
For more information on this project please see Q&A.
“It may be an engine 5/8th the scale, but it’s got the charm full-scale!”
The project has grown into a 1:20 scale prototype model of the engine. It is the most accurate model of its kind.
And now it has grown even more into a simulator: to bring the CK Holliday and the EP Ripley right to your home! You too can learn and experience what it’s like to operate a “genuine steam powered locomotive”. The simulator features accurate physics coded especially for the steam locomotive, combined with lifelike 3D modeling and realistic sounds. Indeed, over six years since I started my little CK Holliday project, welcome to Highball Sim!
I come to follow you. Great work and I am very proud of you.
This is one of the most interesting (and amazing) projects I’ve seen documenting the building of a steam engine, and it’s accuracy is so well done I’d like to display your webpage in my classroom for other steam powered vessel enthusiasts – which happen to be my power engineering students. Our specialty is power engineering – we used to be called stationary engineers, to separate us from the people who had boilers on moving vehicles. Your steam engine is very similar to the old fashioned firetube boilers employed on land, and it looks like a great teaching tool to supplement the textbooks I am using. I am an instructor in a college teaching power engineering and would welcome the opportunity to show some of your diagrams and operations. Just being able to show a working crankshaft that has an eccentric to operate the slide valve is rare.
If you are interested in allowing me to show some of your material, I’d like to hear from you. I will leave my email address in the reply field below.
Your project is well done 🙂