LDD MOD: 1940's Railway Express Coaches

[Murdoch17]

Built in 1940 - 47, the following coaches were the first 8 wide passenger train on the Brick Railway System. They were built to be hauled by a 2-8-4 Berkshire class locomotive, which will not be featured here. (Anthony Sava's fabulous locomotive (which I want instructions for! ) can be seen at his Flikr Set)

The Baggage car is of European design, and features a small loading door along with passenger seating for 6 people.

The inside of the baggage car. Notice the connecting door between passenger & baggage areas.

The passenger car, usually one of four or five in a train.

These cars seat 14 people each, and use the "open" design: no compartments or dividers.

Observation cars are common on the Brick Railway System, however, as of 1947, rear platform cars were banned, as to the danger of falling from the platform at hight speed. Thus, this is the last type of platform observation car produced before the ban went into effect.

The observation car seats 14 people.

The train as it will look whenever I get it... yes, this is 100% buildable.

Here is the LEGO digital download. Feel free to modify as you please. If you look at my Flikr set, you'll see I had it even in Hogwarts colors!

Comments welcome!

[Laura Beinbrech]

Nice set of passenger coaches, Murdoch! My only slight complaint is that in some of them, a minifig wouldn't actually be able to sit down because the seat is tight against the wall (you need about half a stud of clearance or so to seat minifigs)... While I haven't designed any 8-wide coaches YET (I'm going to be designing some as part of a soon to be unveiled secret project), I have used a technique where I use jumper plates (those ones that are 1x2, but with a single stud on top) to place the seating so that they take up a total of 5 studs worth of floor space, with 1/2 stud of clearance on either side. It worked pretty well with my FNS Inferno patrol craft bridge, so I'm going to see how it would work with train coaches....

Here's a pic of the technique I'm talking about:

PT Bridge Interior by Hikaro Takayama, on Flickr

...Of course a simpler method would be to have the chairs facing sideways, towards the windows or towards the center of the car (like some of the seats on the DC Metro). Just my $.02 though.

[fred67]

Very nice!

If those windows are panels, then it seems like the minifigure could sit there if it's arm were raised to shoulder height (like it was leaning on the window sill).

[medib]

looks pretty nice.

the baggage car is actually a combine, because it has both baggage storage and space for passengers.

I can't wait to see it in real life...

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Nice retrò style!

[tatertots]

I love the lines on these cars as they stack up. That retro feel really comes through! Great work!

[Murdoch17]

Thank you all for your comments!

@ Hikaro Takayama: Thanks, I might just do your half stud seat idea.

@fred67: Yes, the windows are panels. So we'll se wether I do your idea or Hikaro Takayama's.

@medib: Thank you, and I feel like such a idiot now concerning the baggage combine car. I knew something was wrong with the description, but I couldn't put my finger on it!

@ LEGO Train 12 Volts: Thank you!

@Tatertots: Thanks!

This train orginally was in regular red and had a yellow sripe under thw widnows... just like a certain magic express train. However, I didn't like the bright red, so I changed it to dark red w/ black stripe. The black 1x1 tiles on the sides are supposed to be printed with numbers 1 - 6, with one being the baggage car, and so on.

By the way, I'm going to build these once I can get $500!

Once again, thank you for commenting!

[Laura Beinbrech]

$500?! OUCH! If you want to save some money, maybe you could change the Dark Red to Redish Brown or Green... Or even Light Bley (a lot of 1930's and 1940's passenger cars and interurban trains were painted silver/light blue-gray... A prime example would be the Zephyr). Granted, I know that the Brick Railways colors are red and black, but still, $500 could almost get you 5 Maersk trains...

Also, I'm sorry if I seemed a bit pushy with my suggestion earlier, its just that, being a natural born engineer, I tend to get fussy about functionality, and I happen to be in the process of designing 8x28 stud (so I can use the long train base plate as a starting point) express coach for my Wasteland Express project, and I've tested the jumper plate thing on one of my ships (you only need four 12 jumper plates, one 1x2 flat tile and two 1x1 flat tiles per seat section)...