Engineering and Design : Rail Buff Uses Computers to Create Locomotives in Miniature

Fifteen years developing and designing computer software for the U.S. Navy was enough for Roger Goldmann.

The longtime Santa Paula resident, who saw his youth seemingly passing him by, chucked his comfortable Navy post seven years ago in favor of a dream that had enchanted him since childhood.

“I kind of got fed up with the politics and wanted to be my own boss,” said Goldmann, 45.

Today, he spends his days designing and crafting 1/8-scale model steam locomotives and assorted parts inside a crowded metal workshop behind his house.

It is a passion that Goldmann has steadily built into a business with a reputation and customer base that stretches to virtually all parts of the country.

“We build a lot of locomotives here, but that’s kind of the exception,” he said, taking a break recently outside his hilltop shop. “Most of what we build are castings, drawings and other parts for people who want to build the locomotives themselves.”

Goldmann’s proudest work is an 800-pound model of a 1920s locomotive known as the Pacific.

“I love being able to conceptualize a product and then be able to engineer that into something one-eighth its full size using modern technology,” he said.

After four years of study, design and construction, Goldmann sold the Pacific in the fall to Leroy Williams, who uses the steam engine to haul children and adults through Griffith Park in Los Angeles on Sundays.

“I love it,” said Williams, a member of the Los Angeles Live Steamers railway club, who said he paid $20,000 for Goldmann’s scaled-down model.

“I used to work on the railroad as a young fellow in the Ogden, Utah, depot,” said Williams, a 77-year-old retired postal worker from Santa Monica. “I always envied the engineers and firemen on those steam locomotives, so I did the next-best thing and got myself a little miniature.”

*

Over the years, Goldmann has acquired what he says is the most efficient and computerized locomotive-parts assembly operation on the West Coast. Others in the cottage industry agree.

“Most of the supply companies are pretty much (using) sand castings and conventional machine tools,” said Bruce Metcalf of the National Model Railroad Assn., a Tennessee-based trade group.

“Better than half of the people in the live steam hobby are retired machinists,” Metcalf said. “Their position is that they’re not only preserving the locomotives, but also the techniques used to build them.”

Goldmann said he has invested more than $300,000 in drills, computer equipment and other manufacturing tools that cram his shop. Stacks of manuals and boxes of drill bits and castings clutter the inside of the metal-frame work space.

“Without computers, I’d be back to a manual drafting board,” he said, looking over his one-man manufacturing plant. “But I wouldn’t even begin to do this by hand.”

To begin building an engine replica, Goldmann first studies reprints of the original blueprints used by train builders of years past.

Then he designs the hundreds of intricate parts by computer and routes the drawings into computer-aided machines that automatically produce the pieces he needs.

“It takes years of research and time drawing it all on the computer before you can even start to build,” he said. “But I have no competition when it comes to this sort of sophistication.”

Joe Rice, editor of Live Steam magazine, said Goldmann is years ahead of anyone else who supplies model locomotive parts.

“There may be one or two others in the business who are doing this on a limited basis,” Rice said. “But he’s the only one committed to doing it with computers.”

There is an ongoing debate between preservationists, who cling to traditional manufacturing techniques, and manufacturers such as Goldmann who use modern technology to produce the parts, according to Rice.

“If they don’t change, they’re going to price themselves right out of the market,” Rice said of the preservationists. “So what Goldmann is doing makes a great deal of sense.”

Goldmann has shared his engines and accessories with members of the Goleta Valley Railroad Club, a group of train enthusiasts in Santa Barbara County who hold a private weekend show once a month on a 1 1/2-mile stretch of track in Montecito.

“The work he’s doing is perfection,” said Norman Johnson, a director of the club. “Everything he puts together works like perfection.”

No one besides Goldmann has so successfully blended the use of 1990s-era computers with small-scale replicas of engines from the 1920s, Johnson said.

“I don’t know of anybody with a computer setup like he has,” he said. “He can just punch in the numbers and build 10 parts at a time.”

Goldmann’s latest project is an order from an out-of-state buyer interested in reproducing a Union Pacific Challenger steam engine--another 1920s model that features four lead wheels up front, two pairs of six driving wheels and another four trailing wheels.

*

It is an ambitious task that Goldmann said has already consumed much of this year.

“It’s the most sophisticated, most powerful locomotive that any manufacturer has attempted to build,” he said.

Most of his projects are converted to run on propane, a surprisingly minor fuel adjustment from the wood- or coal-burning engines built years ago, Goldmann said.

He has no interest in trains built after World War II.

“From the early 1800s through the 1940s, railroads were powered by steam locomotives,” he said. “But when they converted from steam to diesel, they lost me.”

The golden era of locomotives is far from past, Goldmann said. He is convinced that trains will forever occupy a special niche in transportation, even through the next century.

“If you look at the way things are going, there’s a direction toward rail for mass transit,” he said. “But I don’t think they’ll ever regain their popularity for cross-country travelers.”

FYI

The model Pacific, crafted by Roger Goldmann of Santa Paula and owned by Leroy Williams of Santa Monica, is one of several small-scale engines used to haul visitors at Griffith Park from 11 a.m to 3 p.m. Sundays. Volunteers from the Los Angeles Live Steamers railroad club offer the free rides on a 1.3-mile track starting at 5202 Zoo Drive. Information: (213) 669-9729.