markg

Thanks everybody. A few things : - The train is motorised, the engine is built on a 9V motor. I have PF stuff in the closet but haven't actually built a train with it yet! - Funny thing about the clikits on the boxcar. For some reason I had in my head that clickits snapped into technic holes, so I built the whole boxcar with 1x2 & 1x1 bricks with technic holes. Then I brought over my 3 year old daughter to pick out the decorations and realized the clikits need a reversed headlight brick. Argh! Had to take apart and replace all the technic bricks with headlights. - I should have made bunny legs rotate around as the train moves (like pull toys) I've got a few fun ideas for a Canada day train. The maple syrup car is a great one. Maybe a BeaverTail car to go with it :) cheers - mark

Following up on our Christmas Train, the kids and I put together an Easter Train over the weekend. I apologize in advance for the poor pictures, the light in our living room is less than ideal for picture taking. First up is our bunny engine. We did have to 'sacrifice' 3 Bunnies to put the engine together, fortunately I got about a dozen of them on sale a year ago. Next is our little egg carrier, filled with an assortment of tasty plastic eggs : The clikits decorated boxcar comes next, the clikits snap into the back of a headlight brick. Looking out of the car is our very own easter bunny. I debated whether to make him brown or white and ended up choosing white. Too bad they didn't make the head in white to match the body. Credit to Kenneth Nagel on MOCpages for the boxcar design idea. Last is the caboose based on 10014, but with some nice easter colours. It's a little plain and we should have added some clikits - maybe next year :) Overall shot : We're looking forward to the next special holiday train. Halloween is too far away - maybe Canada Day eh!? cheers - mark

The rest of the train will come later, I have to spread the LEGO purchases out over time to avoid trouble with my wife :) I based the train's height on a standing minifig, I didn't want it too seem to tall, so just made it tall enough for a minifig to stand inside the car. The end of the window line looks like the below. I'm not sure what you mean by illegal technic 1x1, but that's what I used. cheers - mark

I never had LEGO trains to play with when I was younger, but we did have a good collection of HO trains and would usually have some sort of layout running in the basement. My favourite cars and train were the Rivarossi CN Super Continental that my Dad had picked up used somewhere for a good price. It was made up of 5 passenger cars, including an observation car and was powered by an F9B and two FP9s painted in CN's distinctive Zebra Stripe paint scheme. Now that I'm a older and have young kids of my own, we've been setting up an HO train set every year at Christmas to run around the dining room table. This has made me realize the HO trains are too delicate for my 3 and 6 year old to handle, but a LEGO train that can be rebuilt will be fun for all of us. I got a great deal on a batch of used LEGO including a set of Santa Fe Cars and BNSF loco, but I wanted to build my own passenger set. So, drawing upon some ideas I found on the web and here, I made up plans to build my own 7-wide/44 long passenger car. My original inspiration for creating a 7-wide Passenger Car was Cooper's excellent collection of 7-wides. Though I came up with the window design on my own, I later found that Tim Gould had posted instructions for the windows on brickshelf. I did follow some of Tim's plan for the doors on my car. Here's a shot with one of our old HO scale cars for comparison. I don't have the HO scale car that I based my LEGO car on (38-seat Club Galley). The ends of the car are currently open, I'd like to add a door but haven't gotten a good idea yet. Beneath the removable roof we have seating for 20. I'm looking into sticker options now, as I need to add the 'wet noodle' CN symbol and the car name. I do plan on building more of these cars and the engines to go with them, but for now I'm happy with how this one turned out. cheers - mark

Thanks - this fixed it for me. cheers - mark

Thanks for the guide, I've been building some models in MLCAD and would like to get some nice renders of them. Here's the problem I've found. I have both Pov-Ray 3.6 & 3.7. 3.7 is much faster than 3.6 (multi-core support), but gives different results. Here are two images, the first, lighter image is from 3.7 and the second darker image is from 3.6. I prefer the 3.6 image - any idea what settings I need to change in 3.7 to improve the image? I'm using the same *.pov file for both renders. POV file - http://sites.google.com/site/legonxtpinball/445.pov cheers - mark

Here's the image - courtesy of pdf2jpg.net : Can you access the layout on all four sides? The 4' table depth is a little too deep to reach from one direction. cheers - mark

I'm making up my Bricklink order and found a bug in LDD Manager. It imports BL ItemID #194 - 'Nozzle' to BL ItemID # 4210 - 'String Reel 2 x 4 x 2 Drum'. LDD Shows the nozzle as Part #4210. cheers - mark

Thank you very much! I had just finished building up a model with 4.2.5 and imported it into a slightly older version of LDD Manager, it was missing brick #94148. Came here and found the new version which imported the model no problem. cheers - mark

Here's the Christmas train the kids and I put together to go with the (Winter Tunnel) we built last week. #2 helper posing with our train & town display in the LEGO room. (#1 helper was off making gingerbread cookies) The locomotive is based roughly on the Holiday train, the Candy Cane car is a copy of 10013 Open Freight car in more appropriate colours. Next we have a mostly accurate copy of the Holiday train present car and a car completely made up by #1 helper - my 6 year old son. The tree is a from a polybag set, also on the car are a couple of carolers and a snowball fight. Of course every Christmas train should end with a present caboose. This one is based on one someone else posted here - sorry, couldn't find the link, but thanks! Merry Christmas! cheers - mark

Thanks. The tunnel entrance is just a big square hole :) I plan to put something together with arches or reverse slopes, but didn't have time. Another idea for breaking up the white might be a couple of minifigs climbing the 'mountain'. I can rope them together with the string/stud piece and put little picks in their hands. I've got a couple of the big white arctic backpacks that I could put on them as well. The mountain should be coming back home this weekend, I'll post up a picture of the fixed up tunnel entrance/exit when I can. cheers - mark

A couple of nights ago I finally finished up a winter train tunnel that my 6 year old son and I have been working on for awhile. I snapped a couple of quick pictures before my wife took it off to school for her LEGO club day. The tunnel sits on a 48x48 baseplate and has a height of 16 or 17 bricks in the tunnel - it had to be tall enough to fit our tallest train car that features a Christmas tree. I used about a dozen LURPS/BURPS on the outside, some door frames and wall panels for internal support and just about every white slope that I own. I ran out of time, but I plan to add some more detail (trees?) to the top and a few guys fishing in the water. Perhaps a skier or snowboarder as well. Funny how all my dirty white pieces look cleaner with the flash photo :) Every good Winter tunnel needs a Wampa! cheers - mark

Brickset has instructions for 10 Star Wars Cube Dudes : http://www.brickset.com/miscellaneous/cubeDudes/ cheers - mark

The price seems to good to be true and 0 feedback is a bad sign. Good luck to anyone who orders this.