Help needed with sloped side walls for a LEGO funicular railway

[Zimmi78]

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Hello everyone,

I am currently building a LEGO model of a real funicular railway in BrickLink Studio.

I have already designed most of the car myself, including the windows, doors and roof. However, I am struggling with one particular part of the body: the sloped lower section of the side walls.

Because the real car operates on a steep incline, the body has an unusual geometry. I would like to reproduce this as cleanly as possible with actual LEGO parts, rather than simply creating a staircase shape with ordinary bricks.

What I am looking for is a buildable LEGO technique for the sloped side wall, possibly using wedges, inverted slopes, hinges, SNOT construction, or another technique that I have not considered.

I have attached pictures of my current Studio model and the problematic area.

I am not looking for somebody to redesign the entire model – I would mainly appreciate ideas for solving this sloped section cleanly while keeping the side walls and windows close to my existing design.

Any suggestions for suitable parts or building techniques would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much!

Edited August 12 by Zimmi78

[PossumPatrol]

I can't see the attached files. If you upload them to an image hosting site like Flickr (see this tutorial), then you can embed the images in this thread.

[LL1982]

I also see nothing. But maybe in general already the question do you build the drive train and housing as two seperate items that connect at two spots so that you can a drive train under an angle and the housing perfectly level? because the inside of the funiculair is a stepped design. So you just need a plated outside under an angle with wedge plates to bridge to the horizontal section of windows. If it makes sense what I am saying.

[zephyr1934]

That looks like it will be large scale, if so, that works in your favor- gives you more options of bricks to use. Anyway, you seem to already be on the right track using the studless slopes above the windows. If you like geometry you can do the calculations as to where to put the hinges so that the slopes are close to the roof, or you can just play around with bricks until you get something close.

For the bottom, you could flip to studs down and do the same thing there. Or you could transition to stud out wedge plates.

[imvanya]

I noticed that the vertical offset seems to be different between the first and second, and second and third windows (4 vs 5 plates). Unless it's required for something, a consistent offset should make it easier to find a nice angle for the roof, especially if the offset is 5 plates because it is also 2 studs.

I used the 5654 slope which you also had in your screenshot. As explained on New Elementary, it shares its angle with the 41769/41770 wedge plates:

Here's a quick mock-up with slight modifications to your design:

Lime pieces are 3544/3545, which are just larger versions of the same wedge plates. Anyway, I hope it's helpful: https://bricksafe.com/files/imvanya/stud.io-mocs/_FunicularTest.io

UPD: On @Ashi Valkoinen's suggestion, I updated the file with a section in orange that uses brackets to close the gap above the slopes.

Edited Thursday at 12:37 PM by imvanya
Add some clarifications.

[Ashi Valkoinen]

If you raise every second slope with half plate, the gap will be removed. In this large scale bracket will fit in, without interrupting the interior too much.

[imvanya]

3 hours ago, Ashi Valkoinen said:

If you raise every second slope with half plate, the gap will be removed. In this large scale bracket will fit in, without interrupting the interior too much.

True, thanks for pointing that out. Half-plate offsets are tricky to handle, though, and I thought I'd keep it simple for the mock-up. But since I already have the file, I updated both it and the screenshot.

[Zimmi78]

Thank you all very much for your suggestions and ideas so far! I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to look at my model and even try out different solutions.

You’ve already given me some very useful ideas and a lot to think about. I’m still experimenting with the design, so of course I’m very happy to hear any further suggestions or ideas you might have.

[Daiman]

 fiddled around and came up with this, based on the door side may be smaller scale but i think you could forgivably consider the windows are all the same size to make it easier to get the shape.