Steam Locomotive (Tintin in America)

Tintin in America (French: Tintin en Amérique) is the third volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children’s supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from September 1931 to October 1932 before being published in a collected volume by Éditions du Petit Vingtième in 1932. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy who travel to the United States, where Tintin reports on organised crime in Chicago. Pursuing a gangster across the country, he encounters a tribe of Blackfoot Native Americans before defeating the Chicago crime syndicate.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

As I’ve said many times before, you can’t really be a Tintin super fan if you don’t like all the stories, but if I’m honest, Tintin in America, is probably my least favourite of all the Tintin albums. There are two main reasons for that, the first I came by honestly, and the second I grew to understand.

The first is simple enough to understand, so simple even a child could understand… which is handy, because I actually was a child when I first started to feel this way towards Tintin in America. The long and short of it is, like everyone, I’m attracted to Tintin’s globetrotting adventures, and for a kid from Canada, an adventure in America is probably the least exotic locale imaginable. A Canadian adventure would have been a patriotic curiosity, but America? Meh… give me the Belgian Congo or Shanghai anytime.

The second reason is a little more subtle, but Tintin in America is basically two separate adventures – the American adventure that Hergé wanted, and the one his boss forced upon him. It took me a long time to fully understand the reason behind the hard left turn that Tintin takes mid-way though the story, where he trades in his plus fours for a pair of chaps. Once you understand the context though, it’s easy to the struggle that Hergé went through to craft the story. Father Wallez might’ve thought the readers of the Le Petit Vingtième wanted the then contemporary Chicago gangster tale, but as soon as he thought he could get away with it, Hergé sent his hero to the Old West.

Regardless though, understanding the issue might mitigate some of the second reason, it still doesn’t do much to convince me that an American adventure should be more interesting that just about anywhere else.

Still, favourite or not, that doesn’t mean it can’t hold an important spot in my Tintin build project. The question really wasn’t if, but what? The choices are a bit limited. The most obvious choice is the blue checker taxi that the gangsters use to trap Tintin shortly after his arrival. I still plan to include that one, but the problem really lies in he fact that it’s a fictional vehicle rather than based on a specific real car. That means some significant scratchbuilding and/or kitbashing to achieve.

Then it hit me… like a locomotive. After all, Tintin in America features no less than three of the – the one that carries Tintin out west, the one he “borrows” in pursuit of the villain, and the one that is nearly the end of our hero after he’s left bound on the tracks. Although they’re all quite similar, the second one plays the biggest role and by extension, has the most reference pics to draw from.

The build:

The first challenge for the build was figuring out what to use as the base kit. The locomotive in question is inspired by several European-styles, but is arguably supposed to be American. To make matters worse (or easier, depending on how you look at it) the entire locomotive doesn’t ever appear.

After some research on the available Kitmaster/Airfix offerings, I decided to settle on the B.R. Mogul as the donor kit. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s got most of the right elements, including the shape of the boiler, the front and the windows of the cab.

I’ll admit though, I took a bit of a gamble on this one that almost didn’t pay off… but did. Instead of just trying to get my hands on an Airfix boxing of the B.R. Mogul, I decided to take a chance on a “bag-o-locos” off eBay. The price was right, and even though there were four separate baggies, two of them, including the Mogul, looked complete. Well, I was almost right. I did get one complete locomotive kit (which I plan to put to good use), but it wasn’t quite the Mogul. The Mogul kit was MOSTLY there, but for one of the major frame pieces. At first I was quite disappointed. But, after a sober second look, I decided to scratchbuild my way out of the problem. Using the one piece of frame that I did have, I cut out a blank to use on the opposite side. It was a bit tricky to cute precisely, and there was no way to get the details of the brakes, but since the thing didn’t actually have to roll around, it was useable.

After that, the other main challenge was swapping out the smokestack. The Mogul’s is a bit thin and tall compared to the one in the story, but this is where having a bag of parts to draw from was a life saver. There was indeed a stack of the right shape, all it needed was some careful cutting and sanding to make the graft.

Finally, there was also a bit of scratch building required to add some of the bits and pieces visible in the Tintin album. Nothing a few polystyrene tubes and a bit of bending couldn’t accomplish. After that it was just a matter of painting everything black, and I have to say, at that point even I couldn’t really tell which side of the frame was scratched up. Feel free to tell me what you think though: