LDD MOC - UK Desiro EMU

[Hod Carrier]

Evening All,

Been having a little play to see what manner of trains can be replicated in LEGO. It seems that some designs lend themselves more than others, but I think the UK version of the Siemens Desiro EMU seems to work quite well.

This is a Class 350 EMU in London Midland colours rendered in LDD. It's 8 studs wide and each car is 50 studs long.

Yup, it's a 4 car unit.

Some impression of the length of the model.

One of the driving cars.

Driving cab. You can just see seating and grab handles represented inside too.

Detail of the lower front end showing dummy Delner autocoupler, obstacle deflector and anti-climbers.

The pantograph well and associated power transmission equipment. The pantograph is perhaps a tad oversize, but it looks acceptable to my eyes. Although it's made of a number of hinged parts I anticipate that it would be fixed due to the way that they've been arranged.

The pantograph car.

More roof detail including the roof-mounted air conditioning unit.

For comparison, here is a real one.

The original idea was to actually use the LDD renders as the design stage ahead of actually building the thing and then showing it off a little, but a good rummage through the official LEGO store and various online marketplaces shows that the design seems to rely on bricks in colours that simply don't exist, most notably the transparent curved bricks that I've used to represent the curved windscreens. Also, the livery relies heavily on Light Stone Grey/Very Light Bluish Grey which doesn't appear to be well supported. I've tried rendering it in the next darker shade but it simply doesn't look right.

Anyway, I'm offering the virtual model up for your appraisal. I hope you enjoy it.

Hod Carrier

Edited July 14, 2015 by Hod Carrier

[marook]

Looks good!

[dr_spock]

Would using this curved windscreen work? http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=92474

[Ashi Valkoinen]

Nice MOC, I especially like the front design, however, does those curved slopes exist in transparent colours?

And a suggestion, if you ever build this for real: connection between cars should be mounted on boogies, with 3L rods mounted on waggon bodies it wont work on standard LEGO track curves and points.

[Hod Carrier]

Thanks for all the feedback so far.

Sadly no, those curved bricks I've used for windscreens do not exist. The windscreen part suggested by Dr Spock is sadly too large. I'm still tinkering to see if I can come up with something else that looks OK, but I'm still going to be hobbled by the lack of body parts in Light Stone Grey.

As for running it, yes I am aware that the cars are too closely coupled to negotiate any sort of curves but the bars can be swapped for longer ones. There's no reason why they shouldn't work when coupled directly to the car ends rather than between the bogies provided there is sufficient clearance for the required degree of articulation as that is what happens with real trains. Mounting the car ends on a shared bogie would certainly give a very nice, workable close coupling but this practice is not used in British trains.

Hod Carrier

[Ashi Valkoinen]

There's no reason why they shouldn't work when coupled directly to the car ends rather than between the bogies

Then you will need a quite long technic rod - 7 stud or longer one. Your train has really long waggons compared to the curve radius, so waggon end - especially on S-curve or points will be really far away from each other. To keep the distance between your waggon ends around 1 stud you need to mount your coupling on the bogies and you have reall lots of free space under your waggon to do it any way you want. Mounting couplers on car body is really rare - I have seen it only on trains which run on straights and long-radius curves built from straight pieces.

Imagine how long rod these units may need, if mounted on car bodies and not on bogies. It will be the same with yours, having ridicolous distances between each unit.

[Hod Carrier]

Point taken.

A running model is just one option, but I'll be honest and say that I don't have any space to run something of this size and at present am just interested to see how it looks. Although I've included a motor bogie you can see that I haven't added a battery pack, so a running version is still a little way off.

The next challenge is now to see whether or not I can modify the model so that it can actually be built with commercially available parts.

Hod Carrier

[zephyr1934]

That build looks great. Indeed, getting the long cars to play nice on lego curves adds some challenge, but it can be done. If I follow your original post that this is your first train then that is really impressive.

[Hod Carrier]

Hi,

Yes it's my first effort. Thanks for the kind words, but in my inexperience it appears that I have designed something that is in effect unbuildable. I'll have to do better next time.

HC

[detjensrobert]

If you want to build something with only available parts, try running LDD in the regular mode (the blue one), not the "Extended" mode (the black one). Although I could not find the wheelsets, it supposedly only has bricks in the colors the are currently produced in. This might be easier than manually checking, but there are bound to be mistakes and missing parts.

Might be worth a try.

-Robert

[zephyr1934]

Yeah, that is a hazard of virtual building, but I wouldn't say "unbuildable", wait a little while and either the parts you need will come available or you will get some clever insight as to how you can work around an unavailable part.

[Lamborghini2670]

Sorry to bump this topic, but is there anyway you can post the parts list based on with what parts Lego sells and what Bricklink users offer?

[Man with a hat]

Sorry to bump this topic, but is there anyway you can post the parts list based on with what parts Lego sells and what Bricklink users offer?

Oof that's a tough question.There is no actual parts list of all avaible pieces.

What might beclose enough though is LDD Manager which checks the parts and shows wether they are available on Bricklink. I find it very convenient although it is not 100% accurate (some newer parts/colours are not always correct) and you might still end up with some very expensive parts in your MOC.

[Hod Carrier]

Sorry to bump this topic, but is there anyway you can post the parts list based on with what parts Lego sells and what Bricklink users offer?

A number of the key parts for this MOC simply don't exist, therefore there is no parts list as such never mind a way of cross-referencing it against Bricklink or the LEGO shop. I think that this MOC is going to have to remain a sort of digital art project while it remains unbuildable. Sorry.

HC