Thousands of brilliant patterns from Adelaide Islington workshops reborn in digital NFT metaverse as LocoBitz
The LocoBitz Reborn characters created as NFT (non-fungible token) digital art, to live in a LocoVerse, created by Adrian and Jack Adams through Adelaide’s JABA web design, were made from the original century-old wooden foundry patterns (top right) handcrafted at the South Australian Railways workshops (bottom right) to build locomotives at Islington.
Twenty thousand brilliantly handcrafted wooden foundry patterns, used to build steam locomotives at South Australia’s huge Islington railway workshops from the late 19th Century, were rescued to be reborn and relaunched into the 21st Century digital world of blockchain by a group of Adelaide web designers. About 1000 of the patterns were used to create LocoBitz as NFT (non-fungible token) digital art characters to live in a whole blockchain LocoVerse.
The wooden foundry patterns were the starting point for the mass production of steam locomotives and machinery from the later 1890s at Adelaide’s Islington railway workshops, the largest of their kind in the southern hemisphere. Each pattern began as a blueprint and was then handcrafted by the most gifted woodworkers from the finest timbers. A mould was created from the pattern to cast the component in iron, bronze, aluminium or brass to become part of a locomotive or other machinery.
Thousands of these pattern moulds were likely headed to being burned or dumped in landfill when the Islington workshops were to be demolished in 2013-14 after being rundown from 1970s. Their saviour was Myd Crabtree, an avid long-time collector of foundry patterns and obsolete industrial paraphernalia that he used for his own art objects.
Crabtree’s effort to rescue the patterns by the truckload was helped by his friend Adrian Adams, director/creative of JABA web design company in Adelaide, and Adrian’s son Jack. From there grew the creative concept of using the patterns to create an NFT collection of characters called LocoBitz to inhabit a digital metaverse called LocoVerse. The Adams’ LocoVerse had intrinsic authentic unique “heart and soul” by being able to use the patterns in their original state to create their LocoBitz characters. The patterns had retained their colours and fitted together perfectly.
The challenge was to build a three-dimensional digital space using more wooden patterns, instead of following other NFT collections that were built using computer or AI (artificial intelligence)-generated images. The LocoVerse featured missions, games and other ways to collect inhouse tokens or currency called LocoBuckz. Users could use LocoBuckz to buy land plots in the LocoVerse as NFTs and then buy upgrades to put buildings on these plots. Both LocoBitz Reborn NFT Collection and the LocoVerse were centred around 16 families of Locos. Each family has different traits and specific places to live in the LocoVerse.
A LocoBitz Reborn site’s 2023 pre release of a free mint called LocoPetz sold out in only 14 minutes. This inspired confidence in the popularity of the LocoBitz collection – all built using century-old wooden foundry patterns or "art with heart".