Daedalus304 Posted February 21, 2017 Hello all! I've finally gotten around to taking pictures of my BNSF SD40-2 that I built a little over a year ago. Usually I'm a steam engine guy, but all the bright orange BNSF locomotives I saw on my road trips along the Interstate 40 really caught my eye after a while. OF course, there's a pretty good variety of engines that run, and I'm not sure I've actually seen an SD40-2 on my road trips, but this was the loco I chose. I really like the shaping of it and I've always really liked the big porches on the ends. My SD40-2 is powered by 2 L-Motors, one per truck geared down 2:1. This makes it somewhat slow, but very powerful. The PF LiPo battery is hidden upside-down in the center of the engine, with the top of the battery box accessible through a hole in the center of the fuel tank for charging so I never have to disassemble the locomotive. My original design had just barely enough room for a PF IR Receiver, but I instead upgraded it with one of CodeFox's BrickSter Bluetooth controllers, which I really like. One thing I didn't expect going into this was the complexity that would be required to get all the shapes and proportions just right. Building in orange made this even more complicated, but it was a good fun challenge and I really like having such a brightly coloured locomotive. I would have liked to be able to include just a bit more detail on the long hood, but between the 8-stud long tile section in the middle and the massive motors and gearboxes in the rest I couldn't find any good consistent way to do any hatch detailing. Still, I'm happy enough with the shaping of the rest of the engine that it doesn't really bother me. Most of the yellow striping is brick-built, but in the places where there was just no way I used a thin yellow pinstripe sticker I found at Michaels. It colour matches the real LEGO yellow extraordinarily well and one of the stripe sizes perfectly matched up with the thickness of a plate. I'll leave off with this last photo for this post, but if you would like to see more pictures I have plenty more in my Flickr album, including some WIP screenshots of older stages of the design. The album can be seen right here Thanks for your time! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
zephyr1934 Posted February 21, 2017 An excellent looking machine (and well photographed too) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
legoman666 Posted February 21, 2017 Man..... awesome job. Making me jealous. I need to rebuild my BNSF ES44, too fragile. I really want an excuse to do the yellow, orange, dark green livery, but all of their new locomotives have black and I want to make a SD70ACe. Decisions decisions. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
M_slug357 Posted February 21, 2017 How was it building CodeFox's bluetooth receiver? That's slightly more interesting (to me) than your engine MOC; Could you please provide some details? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Daedalus304 Posted February 21, 2017 10 hours ago, zephyr1934 said: An excellent looking machine (and well photographed too) Thanks! I had a lot of fun taking pictures of this engine. 5 hours ago, legoman666 said: Man..... awesome job. Making me jealous. I need to rebuild my BNSF ES44, too fragile. I really want an excuse to do the yellow, orange, dark green livery, but all of their new locomotives have black and I want to make a SD70ACe. Decisions decisions. I considered the livery with the dark green for all of .002 seconds before I realized that I was just not up for trying to figure out all this crazy SNOT and roof detailing with the limited parts palette of dark green, especially since my other main build colour was orange. If you can do it, I would absolutely love to see it! 1 hour ago, M_slug357 said: How was it building CodeFox's bluetooth receiver? That's slightly more interesting (to me) than your engine MOC; Could you please provide some details? Ah well, I spent quite some time looking through CodeFox's thread and the information he provided and realized pretty quick that between the fact that I have incredibly shaky hands and the fact that I have no soldering experience whatsoever, there was little chance I'd be able to build one. So I cheated and bought one that Legoman666 put together for me. :D Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
LEGO Train 12 Volts Posted February 21, 2017 Amazing locomotive! Great livery and nice proportions! Beautiful work! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
M_slug357 Posted February 21, 2017 @Daedalus304 Don't worry, I too lack surgeon's hands! Is @legoman666 still offering to assemble these? I wouldn't mind purchasing one as an example, but then building my own copies afterwards. I'm decent with a soldering iron, and need an excuse to buy new tips! Thanks for the info btw! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Freezingvettes99 Posted February 21, 2017 Very nice indeed! I am not an 8 wide fan but I am certainly a SD40-2 and BNSF fan! Get some BNSF stickers made up for that hood! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Feuer Zug Posted February 23, 2017 Nicely done. Well detailed and the size is about right. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Daedalus304 Posted February 23, 2017 On 2/21/2017 at 2:12 PM, M_slug357 said: @Daedalus304 Don't worry, I too lack surgeon's hands! Is @legoman666 still offering to assemble these? I wouldn't mind purchasing one as an example, but then building my own copies afterwards. I'm decent with a soldering iron, and need an excuse to buy new tips! Thanks for the info btw! Sure thing! Sorry I didn't have more info to give! On 2/21/2017 at 3:45 PM, Dansharos said: Very nice indeed! I am not an 8 wide fan but I am certainly a SD40-2 and BNSF fan! Get some BNSF stickers made up for that hood! Hey thanks! 8-wide diesels don't seem to be as popular as 8-wide steamers I've noticed, but that's okay; to each their own! I've been meaning to put together some SVGs of the numbers and BNSF logos to get some good-quality stickers to get the lettering and numbering on it, but I keep getting distracted. I tend to be pretty bad at finishing off the sticker/decal stage of locos I build... 4 hours ago, Feuer Zug said: Nicely done. Well detailed and the size is about right. Thanks! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Carefree_Dude Posted February 24, 2017 I love it! It's beautiful Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
