8 replies to this topic

[brickzone]

Hi there,

I have been arranging Emerald Night as part of a display I'm working on at the moment (to be unveiled closer to Christmas) and it sits by a station MOC with platform. I found it unsatisfactory that if the loco was to clear the platform, the carriage would have a big gap between it and the platform. So I decided to modify the carriage (sacriledge!) to be 7 wide. Nothing drastic (e.g. making it longer) just a simple conversion to the existing design.

I'm sure others have done likewise, but I didn't get any useful results on a search of the forums. I was inspired by the 7-wide carriages of Cooper in this thread. If anyone else has mods to the Emerald Night carriage I'd appreciate any comments, links to previous threads, or pictures.

Here's my attempt. From the outside and inside it looks much the same as before apart from the width:



However, I have replaced the train baseplate with a handbuilt one using dark bley flats (unfortunately I didn't have all the dimensions I wanted to hand - hence the use of 1x1s for the non-structural "skirt"). I used the existing bogies, but modified the rungs to be offset by half-brick each side.


The base isn't too rickety - but if you look at the above photo you'll realise that the side on the bottom of the frame has 1-wide flats along it. This side is helped by the cross supports (ends plus two in the middle in the only available 1-wide space between turning bogies and middle undercarriage) but also making use of the Emerald Night carriage's existing interior. The seats are on a raised plate, and I simply used 2x 2x6 dark brown flats to connect the carriage edge to the rest of the base for extra support. I did add a layer of flat along the gangway too, to gel the 2-wide flats on the other edge to the rest of the base:


Nothing fancy but nice as it's discreet and given that dark brown is such a limited colour, but 2x6 is possible (I don't have the Troll Battlewheel so I very boldly stole them from the MMP inn furniture).

Anyway, this is a very simple little thing, but I thought I'd post it just because I couldn't myself find other examples, and I think it improves the train (or at least makes it a bit less silly-looking beside platforms).

[Captain Zuloo]

Great job, it's great to see someone do what I have been wanting to do for ages. I want to get my hands on another 3 cars to widen and lengthen them to make 2 more realistic cars. Do you think 8 wide would be streching things? Just that it would allow 2 rows of minifig seats.
Well done anyway, I like your design. Keep up the great work.

[Cooper]

In my experience to date seven wide coaches are very plate intensive to build the bases up.  Actually planning the bases for my 7x44 coaches took a fair amount of planning in order to get the seams on each successive level to overlap in a robust manner.

Here's a shot of the underside.

Captain Zuloo, on Nov 16 2009, 03:03 PM, said:

Do you think 8 wide would be streching things? Just that it would allow 2 rows of minifig seats.

You can do two rows with 7 wide.  

Edited by Cooper, 16 November 2009 - 11:38 PM.

[Captain Zuloo]

Cooper, on Nov 17 2009, 07:56 AM, said:

You can do two rows with 7 wide.

But there is only 1 stud gap between the two rows, and if there are minifigs seated, there is no room for passengers to travel down the isle.

[brickzone]

Thanks for the comments - interesting to see your design Cooper. An impressive amount of dark red plate, that's for sure! With my own attempt, I wanted to maintain the base as just two plates high (although in a sense it is three plates high if you count the added plates inside the carriage) and the bogies/carriage at the same relative heights. This does mean that the entire carriage resting on the bogies is really just resting on those two modified 2x2 plates with technic hole - but there doesn't seem to be any strain.

Captain Zuloo - 8 wide would be nice for interior detail as you say, but I am noticing that though the Emerald Night carriage didn't look right at only 6 wide, even at 7 wide it starts to highlight more the different scale used for the loco, or the shortness of the carriage, or something. Also I need to stick some kind of end doors into the passageways (looks silly that people can step out of the end of the carriage to the tender or track).

[Mark Bellis]

brickzone, on Nov 17 2009, 11:43 AM, said:

...
Captain Zuloo - 8 wide would be nice for interior detail as you say, but I am noticing that though the Emerald Night carriage didn't look right at only 6 wide, even at 7 wide it starts to highlight more the different scale used for the loco, or the shortness of the carriage, or something. Also I need to stick some kind of end doors into the passageways (looks silly that people can step out of the end of the carriage to the tender or track).

You're right that 8-wide coaches can seem short.  That is unless you build the length to scale like this one!  And, as you say, a bigger engine!
I tried putting in the compartments for this UK Mk1 coach.  Just about room for 2 seats each side in the compartment and room for a minifig to go sideways in the corridor.  This one is the Hogwarts Express, hence the characters in the windows.
Of course I have yet to re-do the roof with a smooth scheme!

On the underside, the bracing, which I tried to make in proportion to the real thing, actually performs its function in the model, keeping the baseplate taut.  The larger the model, the more the features perform their real functions.

For these coaches I kept the baseplate 1 plate high because the bracing does its job, but many of my locos have thicker composite baseplates for other reasons (like needing holes for wires to go through).

Well done for making 7-wide work, functionally and aesthetically.

Mark

[harrysnapperorgans]

excellent (and seamless) improvement - how it should have been originally! Nice re-engineering.

[peterab]

Captain Zuloo, on Nov 17 2009, 07:10 PM, said:

But there is only 1 stud gap between the two rows, and if there are minifigs seated, there is no room for passengers to travel down the isle.

I'm not huge and I often find it easier to go sort of sideways down the aisle in our suburban trains. Its a prototypical feature  

[Captain Zuloo]

peterab, on Nov 18 2009, 01:14 PM, said:

I'm not huge and I often find it easier to go sort of sideways down the aisle in our suburban trains. Its a prototypical feature

I'd want to walk sideways to keep maximum distance between me and those Melbourne siders too...