Mechanical Drawing: Drafting Queensland Railways

Book in for our facilitated school program Mechanical Drawing: Drafting Queensland Railways where students are introduced to historical methods of mechanical drawing techniques. They will also be challenged to produce their own design drawings, all while exploring resources from within the museum’s collection.

Program overview

Before the introduction of CGI, mechanical drawings, despite their complexity were produced by hand by skilled draftsmen. In this program, students will be introduced to these historical design drawings through the use of original hand drawn locomotive and wagon blueprints from within the museum’s collection.

They will learn how to read, interpret, and identify key elements of hand produced design drawings, including scale, measurements, perspectives, and key design features. They will also be introduced to design layering, methodologies and requirements of designing a steam locomotive and carriages. While doing so, students will also gain insight into where current design technologies developed from, and a better appreciation of the craft of skilled tradesmen. 

Students will also be challenged to create their own mechanical drawing from supplied museum objects, including lanterns, brake pads and tools. 

Please note that some writing materials can be supplied, if necessary (pencils, erasers etc), but it is highly recommended that students bring their own specialist graphical design utensils including writing implements, rulers, protractors, compasses and set squares.

Learning outcomes

• Understand that mechanical drawings historically were hand drawn, but still produced to the same level of accuracy as modern drawings using computer technology
• Examine and discuss historical mechanical design drawings, determining intent and purpose, as well as key details and how information is presented.
• Exploring conventions around mechanical drawing and how they define and use different line types to present 3-dimensional information layered in 2-dimensional form.
• Create mechanical drawings of museum objects, using the techniques discussed during the program.

School visit information

See our Visit as a school page for information on visiting the museum and booking a group into a program. Groups may be allocated time for self-guided Museum exploration during school program rotation.

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Learning Resources 

Explore additional learning resources related to this program on our Learning Resources platform.

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