Advice on building 8 Wide Trains

[edsmith0075]

Greetings crew,

I have been building trains in standard six wide. The more I see 8 wides the more intrested I get in converting my fleet to 8 wide. What Im looking for however is advice. Are their any building guides or 8 wide instructions for american locomotives and rolling stock. If I convert my 6 wide trains to 8 wide does anyone know how many brick in height and also in length would be required for proper scaling.

Thanks in advance

Ed

[greenmtvince]

For north american trains in 8-wide, an approximate rule of thumb is that 8-studs equals 10 feet. A 40' boxcar then becomes 32 studs long, a 56' long locomotive would be 44 studs and so forth. One plate then becomes 6" in height, and you can do your math from there. I tend to build a plate or two taller than scale to compensate for the flanges on LEGO wheels.

Tony Sava sells instructions for his 8-wide locomotives and rolling stock based on examples at the Texas State Railroad. Much of the equipment saw service in the Texas and Pacific and Southern Pacific railroads.

[Stefaneris]

Hi Ed

You could callculate the height and length with the width of the train compared to the real one. However on my opinion Lego trains often turn out to be to high and the lenght is a problem with the curves. For passenger cars which are often about 25 meters long, there are cars with a lenght between 60 and 70 studs. For the height I would say about ten studs, but this depends on your prototype (double deck car might be higher, and there are also small single deck cars). You get the ratio of about one to six for height to lenght, which is pretty accurate for a car with a lenght of 25 meters and a height of four meters. Of course, if the prototype is longer and you use three bricks height for the boogies and seven for the car, the car might already be to high. On the other hand, if you want to fit in minifigs you often have make compromises since their body proportions are really wrong, and wronger compared to the rails and trains

I don't know if there are instructions but on Flickr, there are groups for Lego trains where you can inspire yourself and see how other people have built their 8-wide rolling stock.

Stefan

[Commander Wolf]

More or less what everyone else is saying:

1) Choose a scale (8 studs = 10 feet is generally pretty good)

2) Find engineering drawings (easier said than done, but for common locos it's usually not bad)

3) Scale things and build accordingly - ie now that you know from your engineering drawing with dimensions that your loco is 50 feet long and 10 feet wide you can build it 40 studs long and 8 studs wide. Same goes for the various features on the unit. If a particular feature isn't dimensioned, you can derive it from the relative lengths of other dimensioned features.

[garethjellis]

Hi Ed,

I use a great scaling tool from Sariel,

http://scaler.sariel.pl

Welcome to the world of 8 wide.

[edsmith0075]

Thank you guys so much

I have been afraid of moving up to 8 wide because I did not understand proper portions and ratios. I also have a large rolling stock that is already 6 wide so you could say I'm invested. I would like to upgrade everything as I have started to really enjoy working with the XL and L PF motors. I also have been building my own battery setups. Right now I'm limited to 6 AAA but would like to be able to use an RC 9 volt power supply with a quick charge and utilize BT communication as a receiver.

I started trying out the blue print scaler but I had trouble understanding the width and height. I wanted an 8 wide train but all the images were from the side.

[garethjellis]

I started trying out the blue print scaler but I had trouble understanding the width and height. I wanted an 8 wide train but all the images were from the side.

The best way I found is get a front and side picture of the train you want to model. Merge them together in MS publisher or MS powerpoint. Make sure they are the same height. Use this picture in the scaler. (you will need to upload it to a photo hosting service. Or you could search Google for pictures on line like below.

[CrispyBassist]

If you can only find side-view photos you can find the length if you know the type of locomotive. That info is pretty readily available online, and will definitely help with the scaler tool

-Matt.

[cgarison]

I will have to say that moving to an 8 wide (plus up to an additional stud of overhang) by 44 stud long locomotive after having built a handful of 6 wide models has been one of the hardest and most mind blowing processes that I have come across in Lego and this includes moving into studless builds using modern Technic pieces. I do not know why my brain cannot easily wrap around additional 2 studs of width when building a train, but it has been rather tough. I literally have had the frame structure built of what will become my next train MOC complete with PF motors, IR Receiver and battery box laid out, but building the locomotive around the power bits has just given me a mental block. Maybe the holidays will clear my brain to where I can get back onto the project.

[Dread Pirate Rob]

There is very little 6 wide steam possible with integrated power functions. Thanks for the advice on this page, nothing I've done in 8 wide is up to standard yet but I'll keep working at it.

[Redimus]

OK, gonna stand against the tide here, you don't *have* to be exactly to scale if you don't want to. I am slowly building up a fleet (well, one full train at the moment, but give it time) of 7 wide British stock, and I've designed it all using nothing more than 'does it look right'?

Until you are really comfortable with how to build Lego trains the way *you* want them, why constrain yourself to such rigid (and often very awkward) parameters?

On to more useful advice, look at the Lego train ideas Flickr group (link) for general and more specific ideas on how to tackle difficult areas. Also search the rest of Flickr, Brickshelf and Google Image Search, both for how other people have solved problems, and also for prototype photos. Whilst the drawings are useful, nothing is more useful than a ton of good clear photos from as many angles as possible.

[zephyr1934]

Indeed, you do not have to live in a single size. Most of my trains are 6 wide (I personally think that goes better with the standard lego curves) but most of my steam engines are 8 wide + wider cylinders (though I did sneak one 6 wide steamer in that could easily be converted to PF). I typically use an 8 wide cab, stepping to a 7 wide tender, and then to 6 wide cars. Even when staying in 6 wide my old stuff looks stubby next to my newer trains. So perhaps start building a few new trains in 8 wide to see how you like it (the extra detailing can't be beat). Then as you want to pull older trains over, do so. But converting a MOC from 6 wide to 8, in most cases you will likely be largely starting from scratch anyway.

As for instructions, there are eight wide models both in the RailBricks magazine and in the instructions section. There MIGHT be eight wide on L-gauge too. In any event, as others have said, borrow ideas from models you like and try to reverse engineer some of them.