Heritage B.C. steam locomotive enters the digital world

A new virtual reality project in Kamloops is breathing new life into the city's famed historic steam locomotive. 

The 2141 locomotive, which traverses the Kamloops Heritage Railway was built in 1912 and is owned by the city.

The digitization was spearheaded by the Arc/K Project, a nonprofit that works to digitally archive valuable works of cultural heritage around the world. 

Brain Pope, executive director of the Arc/K Project, says the train was a "romantic" choice.

"It's not just a train. It's adventure. It's a frontier. It's the human cause pushing forward," Pope told CBC's Jenifer Norwell on Daybreak Kamloops. 

Using over 18,000 photographs taken by three artists, software programers have made a virtual reality reproduction of the historic train, Pope said. 

"These days you can take enough pictures of any object — even a person — from enough angles," he said. "Software can analyze those photographs and figure out the 3-D shapes and the colours of that object."

As the train gets older and parts get harder to find, the digital version of the train can be a valuable resource, Pope said.

The visual counterpart can also be an important substitute for requests — from Hollywood film companies, for example — that could put the fragile asset in danger. 

"Our idea is that by giving them a hyper detailed, hyper realistic 3D model of their train, they can use that visual effects asset to replace some of the uses for the train that would otherwise be impossible," he said. 

Nicholas Adams, the vice president of the Kamloops Heritage Railway, say the virtual counterpart is very close to the real thing, just a lot less "oily."

Adams says the digital project is like a time capsule. 

"It is an old engine and it won't run forever," Adams said. "If somebody restores it one day in the future, they have a lot of reference material that they can now work off."

Listen to the segment on Daybreak Kamloops here: