Fx Bricks (Michael Gale) announces Fx Track system

[Ashi Valkoinen]

6 hours ago, goldfing said:

The P40 switches "did it to the market"?

Not really. The first batch delivered had issues, was in a sense called back, and what happened thereafter? Did I miss something? To my knowledge,  they have not been available for several years now, not only for 6 months.

 

The P40s which didn't make to the market:

Yeah, sure. You simply missed it. The switches were never recalled, replacement tiebars were sent based on your orders, the replace process took less then 1 minute for each point, but basically they were working with the wrong tiebars, too. I own currently 30 P40 switches, so they are quite real and made it to the market.

[Narissis]

I think the switch tiebar debacle is a good illustration of why the product iteration process is so incredibly long. Michael needs to go back and forth with the manufacturer to work out all these little kinks, and with even the rigid rails without moving parts being composed of multiple pieces that all need to be assembled within certain tolerances, there are lots of opportunities for such kinks to arise.

[zephyr1934]

On 7/19/2025 at 5:55 PM, Ashi Valkoinen said:

I own currently 30 P40 switches, so they are quite real and made it to the market.

And that explains why none are left on the shelves (grin, just kidding)

[Narissis]

On 7/19/2025 at 6:55 PM, Ashi Valkoinen said:

The P40s which didn't make to the market:

[Image snipped]

Yeah, sure. You simply missed it. The switches were never recalled, replacement tiebars were sent based on your orders, the replace process took less then 1 minute for each point, but basically they were working with the wrong tiebars, too. I own currently 30 P40 switches, so they are quite real and made it to the market.

Is that double crossover a 3D-printed one converted to 9V? Or did you butcher some of the FX switches? :P

[Ashi Valkoinen]

17 hours ago, Narissis said:

Is that double crossover a 3D-printed one converted to 9V? Or did you butcher some of the FX switches? :P

It was made by Miles McFadden on request, using four original FX switches. The switches which didn't make to the market. :)

[Narissis]

New blog post; looks like some switches did in fact come in stock but they sold out almost instantly.

Some more news on other products. A while back I had been wondering if Michael might double his power pickup bogie to two axles, like how Bevins Bricks did, to ensure continuous power through switches and it looks from the photos as if that will at least be an option.

FX Bricks will have a presence at BSBT, for those fortunate enough to make that event you'll have the chance to chat Michael up in person about what's going on behind the scenes.

[Black Knight]

Quote

.. new family of 9V extension cables (5x lengths 128 mm, 256 mm, 512 mm, 1 m and 3 m)

Awesome. @michaelgale you are such a nerd! I bet the 1 m cable actually is 1 m and 24 mm in length. I love it.

[LM12V]

Looking at the wheels they don't look very black. Let's hope that the black problem has not been solved with something in between.

[Modeltrainman]

I hope the track feeder and others come soon!

Waiting to buy.

[Pelzer117]

Any fresh news from BSBT? Too sad I didn't make it. 😥

[Ashi Valkoinen]

11 hours ago, Pelzer117 said:

Any fresh news from BSBT? Too sad I didn't make it. 😥

Yes, FX presented some of their prototype motors and speed regulators at the show. However I didn't have too much time talking to Michael and Max, I had a short 5 minutes brake from driving and played a little with their prototype 9V motor.

The motors are geared differently, than the usual LEGO train motors we know (9V, RC, PF, PU), they are slower but having more torque. The speed regulator is easy to handle, the slidebar instead of the rotating switch of the old 9V speed regulators is a nice feature. The FX speed regulator also consumes less space, and multiple units can be attached next to each other, the neighbouring units feeding power to each other. So you plug one FX speed regulator with USB-C type connector, and it can power other speed regulators, too.

I have driven an old 12V set with the FX 9V motor underneath, the maximum speed was okay, but as I mentioned, not the speed we got used to with LEGO train motors, on the other hand the FX version give a really, really nice low-speed operation - perfect for shunting and other train station movements, the train kept the really low speed I set for it on the curves, too. Wheels are full metal and they have a really nice, realistic look by colour. 

[Pelzer117]

Thank you @Ashi Valkoinen

Hmm. I definitely have no experience as a “professional”, i.e. as an exhibitor (like at BBST), but I wouldn't consider the lower speed to be a problem. Most people want to see longer trains anyway, not “faster” trains.

Above all, I see the same problem as with the real railroad: there are not many “fast lines” available 😅

But I would be interested in the opinion of the community

[Narissis]

I very rarely ever turn my 9V speed regulators up all the way anyway. Better consistency and reliability at lower speeds, more torque for longer trains, and better durability all sound like fair tradeoffs to me.

[djm]

There are some switches back in stock, although they look to be selling quickly. As of about 5 minutes ago, both the boxes with a pair of left switches and those with a pair of right switches had sold out. A box with one left and one right switch are still in stock at the moment.

Regards,

David

[logistiker]

I've been experimenting with Bevin's Bricks power pickups and you can get by with just one power pickup if you place a charging board and capacitor bank after the bridge rectifier.  It's also helpful to run your tracks at higher power (think laptop power supply at 18v) so the capacitors can charge quickly.  I've found that 5 3V 1F supercapacitors in series for a total of 15v is more than enough to keep your locomotive moving over dirty track.   In my case, I replaced one wheel in the tender for the power pickup.  I typically use the knockoff Chinese PF receivers so I don't have to deal with the limitations of Lego's PF IR because there are places it can be blocked on my layout and I detest PU and don't consider it a viable option.  The problem is I'm running into current limitations of those receivers when paired with a locomotive running dual L-motors when two L-motors are placed on one output of one receiver.  I changed it so it uses two receivers and placed one motor on each receiver on the same output channel but it doesn't seem to work well either.  I've read this is also a problem with the official PF receivers and the V2 can handle more current but it's still IR and that's annoying.  I think I've just come to the logical conclusion that I need to get DCC.  I'm eyeballing the Loksound 5 L decoder for my dual motor locomotive.  Not only does it have its own keep alive, it can pull 3 amps, it also does sound and a host of other functions and it takes up a lot less space than a bridge rectifier, charge board, 5 capacitors in series, a buck board and two separate PF style receivers.  I was trying to find some other solution because DCC is generally expensive but there are cheaper options now for a command station like the CSB1 although the ESU 50210 is more tempting despite the cost.         

Anyone know if the first FX motor bogie is going to have DCC compatibility?  I remember reading about it in older blogs that he wanted to make it DCC compatible but I'm curious if that will be in the first iteration of the motor.   Based on the latest blog on FX bricks, it looks like all regular DC controls to me similar to the old 12v system.  

[Narissis]

AFAIK, DCC support is still firmly in the 'maybe' camp. The intent is to launch a 'dumb' motor (similar in function to the official 9V motor except with an intercept between pickup and motor for an outside controller to be added) followed later by a 'smart' motor with the PFx Brick hardware built in. Maybe it will be possible to replace the PFx firmware with DCC? But an easier solution might be to just get the 'dumb' motor and add your own DCC decoder to the 'intercept'.

[LM12V]

All products will be DCC ready, even simple wheels. Unfortunately, however, the times seem biblical. We are always still. We hope to see something by the end of the year.

[Narissis]

FX Bricks runs on Valve Time™.

[DGoSec]

On 9/13/2025 at 12:54 AM, logistiker said:

I've been experimenting with Bevin's Bricks power pickups and you can get by with just one power pickup if you place a charging board and capacitor bank after the bridge rectifier.  It's also helpful to run your tracks at higher power (think laptop power supply at 18v) so the capacitors can charge quickly.  I've found that 5 3V 1F supercapacitors in series for a total of 15v is more than enough to keep your locomotive moving over dirty track.   In my case, I replaced one wheel in the tender for the power pickup.  I typically use the knockoff Chinese PF receivers so I don't have to deal with the limitations of Lego's PF IR because there are places it can be blocked on my layout and I detest PU and don't consider it a viable option.  The problem is I'm running into current limitations of those receivers when paired with a locomotive running dual L-motors when two L-motors are placed on one output of one receiver.  I changed it so it uses two receivers and placed one motor on each receiver on the same output channel but it doesn't seem to work well either.  I've read this is also a problem with the official PF receivers and the V2 can handle more current but it's still IR and that's annoying.  I think I've just come to the logical conclusion that I need to get DCC.  I'm eyeballing the Loksound 5 L decoder for my dual motor locomotive.  Not only does it have its own keep alive, it can pull 3 amps, it also does sound and a host of other functions and it takes up a lot less space than a bridge rectifier, charge board, 5 capacitors in series, a buck board and two separate PF style receivers.  I was trying to find some other solution because DCC is generally expensive but there are cheaper options now for a command station like the CSB1 although the ESU 50210 is more tempting despite the cost.         

Anyone know if the first FX motor bogie is going to have DCC compatibility?  I remember reading about it in older blogs that he wanted to make it DCC compatible but I'm curious if that will be in the first iteration of the motor.   Based on the latest blog on FX bricks, it looks like all regular DC controls to me similar to the old 12v system.  

If you're bumping the voltage up, then yes, you'll need a buck convertor to drop it back down, but are you trying to be cost conscious or space conscious?  If you use dual wheel pickup, then that will most likely resolve 99% of the power delivery. You can get a 16-25V 1000uF capacitor if you really want to smooth things out (should be good for 100ms gap and about a 2V droop), but 1F seems large.  We can start to add ceramics and diodes to deal with inrush currents and high frequency noises, but at what cost and space?  I only say this all, as I've been recently been playing with the rectifier and capacitor in doing some 9V conversation work, but I am using dual wheel setup.   If you're trying to put in a charge board, are you running a small battery with it?

[logistiker]

I'll take a dumb motor that is at least DCC ready so I can just use a third party decoder.  I saw how Michael added DCC support to a Lego motor years ago but it's a bit of a pain.  I have yet to open a 9v Lego train motor without cutting the tabs and of course once they're cut, it doesn't stay together very well anymore unless you superglue it.   

I had dual wheel pickup on the locomotive tender on the front and back bogie and I found it didn't make any difference.  If there was even a slight cut in power, the PF receiver would turn off and you'd have to start it up again.  Sorry I misspoke in the last post, I'm using 5 3v 15F capacitors in a series.  I was thinking that if it's pulling a heavy load or there's a longer power cut, then it wouldn't be noticeable.  I was basically following the concept documented at brickmodelrailroader.com for a keep alive: https://brickmodelrailroader.com/index.php/2017/03/20/supercapacitor-power-packs/.  There is no battery.  The charge board is just for the capacitors as you can see in that article.

Initially I was seeing if I could make it work with minimal cost and ditching the battery of course but after all this ordeal, I finally came to the conclusion that I needed to convert to DCC.  For example, the Loksound 58325 can provide up to 3 amps of power (compared to a puny 1 amp for the PF receiver) and that should be more than enough to move a large dual L-motor 4-8-4 locomotive with a bunch of heavy carriages.  In addition, that decoder already has its own capacitors with a built-in keep alive.  It looks pretty nice.  It takes up a lot less space and isn't terribly expensive either (i.e. cheaper than one box of FX bricks turnouts - haha).

[M_slug357]

On 9/14/2025 at 4:05 PM, Narissis said:

FX Bricks runs on Valve Time™.

"...but we assured the Administrator that nothing would go wrong"