Improving the 71044 Disney Train (WIP and Idea thread)

[Carefree_Dude]

Recently the Disney train came out; The train itself wasn't bad by any means, but I felt left a lot to be desired. I've started modifying mine to make it more like the original CK Holliday Steam Engine. 

My first goal was to fix the wheels; the original set has both the drive wheels and front bogie spin. The Drive rods didn't really look like much either. So, I would like to present my initial modifications:

 

Probably the biggest challenge with this was making enough room everything; the original wheelsets had to go; also the wheels i chose here are closer to the original train (Even the tan pins match the original train!)

 

I had to make the bogie extremely flat. There is just BARELY enough clearance for the pistons; on a standard lego curve, i have maybe half a plate worth of space between the wheel and the tan round piece. 

 

I'm not sure I 100% like how i did the drive rods. I would have much preferred to have something that pumped in and out of the piston, but I  couldn't figure out a way to make it work while also keeping the round bricks. 

Speaking of the piston, I couldn't get the original build to work at all, so I initially grabbed some modified red round bricks with the technic axle hole at the bottom; the ones in the most recent Christmas train. This worked, but didn't quite give the right look. To my great surprise, I discovered there were round 2x2 bricks with pin holes in the side. I ordered these, and they do the job; I still dislike the hole in the side however. 

 

The attachment of the pistons to the boiler uses some technic parts to hold everything together. I initially used brick, but it fell off. 

 

lastly, here is a view from the bottom of how the front bogie connects. It's basically the same as the emerald night. I also toyed with the reverse pivot method that Jayhurst recently showed off with his newest Big Boy, but it didn't fit well with what I was doing. 

 

 

 

 

Anyways, this is just a start; I really want to make this more true to the original CK Holliday. Here is a list of things I hope to fix eventually. 

 

• The proportions are off; The original train looks longer than this. I want to adjust the train to better fit the proportions of the original. 
• Redo drive rods and pistons. What I have done works, but I feel it could be done better. 
• Chrome the necessary parts; The original train has a ton of chrome gold and grey. Dark tan doesn't replace chrome gold very well. 
• rework the cab; I want to get rid of the giant gaps that are directly open to the drive wheels. I probably should have done this when redoing the drive wheels.
• redo the Lilly Belle train car. The one in the set looks silly with how short it is. I've ordered the parts, just waiting for them to arrive. 
• Get some custom CK Holliday stickers. 
• Add a light somehow. (probably toss an LED in there)

 

I'm sure I'm not the only one making modifications to this set. I would love to see what everyone else is coming up with, and would also love to see some ideas and suggestions. 

[zephyr1934]

Looking good so far

 

6 hours ago, Carefree_Dude said:

I still dislike the hole in the side however. 

Possible solutions:

Simplest: 1x1 plate, round or square

Impurist: cut the towball end off of this pin

Expensivest: the uncirculated red half pins

Futurist: these new axles just showed up but are not yet available

[CSW652]

I could be wrong as I am clearly not an expert on steam locomotives, but shouldn't the Disney train be wood fueled as opposed to coal?

And if so, maybe someone can show a good example of simulating a wood load on top of the battery box in the tender?

 

Edited October 20, 2019 by CSW652

[legoman666]

I had a couple people ask for more realistic decals for this set, so I made created some: http://www.ebay.com/itm/293219215572 

I also have decals for the station available upon request. It's mind boggling to me why they didn't include the real names on the OG sticker sheet.

[Carefree_Dude]

1 hour ago, legoman666 said:

I had a couple people ask for more realistic decals for this set, so I made created some: http://www.ebay.com/itm/293219215572 

I also have decals for the station available upon request. It's mind boggling to me why they didn't include the real names on the OG sticker sheet.

Those look really good, do you have a bricklink store?

[legoman666]

19 minutes ago, Carefree_Dude said:

Those look really good, do you have a bricklink store?

I do, however not all of my stickers are on it: https://store.bricklink.com/legoman667&utm_content=globalnav#/shop My listings on eBay have approx 100x as much sales as my listings on BL and checkout through ebay is more seamless.

 

[TJJohn12]

So the real C.K. boiler jacket is Russian Iron Blue, not Dark Green. Hold onto those Dark Green parts though for when you pull together a E.P. Ripley. That color change is the chief MOD I made to my home-built Holliday. Haven't bought the actual set yet, but was able to build the loco from a combination of parts in stock and a couple BL orders:

Since taking these pictures, I've swapped the 2x2 dark tan round jumper tiles on the pistons for pearl gold round tiles.

I too was bugged by the Lilly Belle's scale, so my Combine Car (and the matching Santa Fe & Disneyland passenger cars I need to photograph) is based around a 28 stud long train base instead. It's still "too short", but I think the scale splits the difference between LEGO's scale and the real proportions.

I have some custom stickers on the way for the coaches. If the quality is good, I'll be ordering up some custom 1955-era stickers for the Holliday as well. Gotta be SF&D or it doesn't feel like it's doing justice. ;-)

BTW, the red driver wheel 3-packs are insanely cheap over on Bricks and Pieces - if you're looking to fill out the rest of the loco roster it might be worth it to stock up from LEGO because BL prices are a little insane in comparison to less than $1.50 for two drivers and a blind wheel direct from LEGO.

-John

[SteamSewnEmpire]

It's a shame Lego couldn't simply do little things like these themselves prior to release. When you're talking about a high-dollar product of this order, it's really disappointing when this company cops out. 

[zephyr1934]

 

5 hours ago, TJJohn12 said:

I too was bugged by the Lilly Belle's scale, so my Combine Car (and the matching Santa Fe & Disneyland passenger cars I need to photograph)

Wow, that looks really good... does the door on the combine open? The red doors on the end are too high contrast in my opinion, but that might be prototypically accurate. Clicking on your photo stream, if you have a chance, please start a separate thread about your horsecar and monorail.

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

23 hours ago, Carefree_Dude said:

 

What a beautiful MOD!

This is a steam engine! 

[TJJohn12]

11 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

 

Wow, that looks really good... does the door on the combine open? The red doors on the end are too high contrast in my opinion, but that might be prototypically accurate. Clicking on your photo stream, if you have a chance, please start a separate thread about your horsecar and monorail.

The Combine door is static - there’s just not enough length to do a full sliding door unfortunately. I’ve wanted to try a grille tile to grille tile rail door for a while, but the space here just doesn’t let it happen.

The original cars had red doors as well:

https://www.ocregister.com/2017/07/12/original-disneyland-railroad-car-from-1955-to-display-at-d23-expo/amp/

The Main Street Trolley and Monorail are both a bit older. I can’t remember if I ever posted them over here - if I did, the threads would be over in licensed. But maybe it’s time to roll them into the Train forum too. I’ll definitely start a new thread over here with my full 3-car Retlaw consist.

[Carefree_Dude]

Looking at pictures and comparing them to the model, the loco itself should be 7 studs longer. 

Also I knew dark green didn't look quite right!  I think I have the dark blue already, and I also have gold striping tape for the gold lines on the boiler. 

 

[TJJohn12]

Just posted a thread for my passenger cars as well. Stickers came in yesterday... I think they look amazing:

 

[Carefree_Dude]

Hey, I got the parts I need for the Lilly Belle today. Well most of the parts, i forgot to order parts for more seats but the train car is officially larger now! Sorry for the bad images, i'll take some better ones later. 

 

Anyways the build is basically exactly the same as the original car in the set, but extended by 8 studs. I'm considering making it longer though; I got enough parts to go all the way to 40 studs. 

 

 

[legotownlinz]

Has anybody tried to shrink at least the cars to 6-7 wide? 

[zephyr1934]

I would like to present my rebuild for the Disney locomotive. My top priority was redesigning the mechanicals to enable proper drive rods while maintaining as much of the original aesthetic as possible. Ultimately I had to make one trade off in this regard, but I will get to that in a moment. Since my solution fixes the drive wheels to the boiler, I was also able to fill in the crack beneath the cab that was necessary in the original model to let the drive wheels pivot.

The challenge with any Lego steam engine is that the drive wheels and cylinders need to be rigidly fixed together, but R40 curves do not allow for long straight structures like that. The Disney locomotive is short enough that you can cheat it, but the conflicts between the cylinders and the pilot truck will still be the primary challenge. Unlike Carefree_Dude, I went straight for Jayhurst's reverse pivot method. It did a great job of opening up enough space for cylinders while allowing the engine to negotiate curves. The build photos are not yet public, but you will see how I did it when they are viewable. My approach employed a clever "studs down" flip for the pilot truck, so be sure to look for it when the gallery is available.

Anyway, here's the final result:

 

Or I should say, the first final result. This point is where my trade off comes in. I only had room for 6.5 plates front to back for the cylinder. So I either had to eliminate the curved shape (as per above) or eliminate the drumhead, as per below

 

If you would like to see it in action, hopefully this short Brickshelf video will work...

The MOD handles R40 curves just fine,

I've uploaded a full tutorial for rebuilding the locomotive (including both cylinder variants) but the gallery is waiting to be moderated (I'm so old school with my Brickshelf habits). I'll post back once it is public.

 

 

EDIT: the link to the gallery showing the MOD instructions is now live and can be found here.

[TJJohn12]

6 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

I would like to present my rebuild for the Disney locomotive...

Man, this looks amazing! I love the way you’ve preserved the form factor of the original set. Looking forward to when Kevin moderates your folders and we can get a glimpse of the inner workings. :-)

17 hours ago, Carefree_Dude said:

Hey, I got the parts I need for the Lilly Belle today. Well most of the parts, i forgot to order parts for more seats but the train car is officially larger now! Sorry for the bad images, i'll take some better ones later. 

Anyways the build is basically exactly the same as the original car in the set, but extended by 8 studs. I'm considering making it longer though; I got enough parts to go all the way to 40 studs. 

Ok, so I’m going to confess something g about my Grand Canyon observation coach: it’s wrong. ;-)

At the scale I chose, it was next to impossible to get the windows right. But since you’re going to make things a bit larger you might have the space to play.

The Grand Canyon car - which was later converted into the Lilly Belle - had 6 sets of paired windows as opposed to the evenly space windows in the rest of Retlaw 1. Between each pair was a bit of car body - at your scale a Dark red 1x1 between the red windows would likely suffice.

Also, on the outward face of the car - facing out of the park and on the left of the car when running normally - one set of windows in the original Grand Canyon was blocked off for the sideboard in the car. The Lilly Belle is a weirdly asymmetrical beast.

In short, 12 windows on the park facing side spaced apart in pairs; 10 windows on the esplanade facing side spaces the same, with a gap where pair three would go.

[TJJohn12]

As we're thinking about the next steps... Here's a sketch I've been working on - the Fred Gurley:

Edited October 27, 2019 by TJJohn12

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

On 10/25/2019 at 5:05 PM, zephyr1934 said:

 

 

You're out of competition, these are professional pistons rods!

I'm just kidding ... I was wondering what this locomotive would look like with your pistons, the only ones I dreamed of since this set came out!

[zephyr1934]

9 hours ago, LEGO Train 12 Volts said:

You're out of competition, these are professional pistons rods!

Fine! I'm going to take my legos and go home! (grin)

[TJJohn12]

So, just a quick update on my Holliday - my custom stickers came in the mail today and I had the chance to apply them this evening. Just a quick preliminary photo:

[zephyr1934]

The gallery showing the steps for my MOD is now open (link also added to my original post)

 

 

 

Note that the alternative cylinder build can be found here.

 

Comments and questions are certainly welcome

[Carefree_Dude]

@zephyr1934, I love your work. Do you have any issues with the cylinders being weak, only attached by two studs? If so, I have a possible solution; rather than using the modified plate with the technic pin on the bottom, use plates that have the technic holes so you can have a plate going straight across connected to both cylinders. You can just have a grey technic pin in the bottom of it. 

[zephyr1934]

@Carefree_Dude, thanks for the kind words. The suggestion is a good one as well. So far I have not had any problems like that, but I'll keep that in my back pocket in case anyone does report such a thing. For the main design there is actually a cascade of three successive plates where a given cylinder is held on by only two studs. The clutch should be strong enough to hold on the cylinder itself and the 4L bars are very low resistance for the "piston" sliding on them. Anyway, if more clutch were needed, the round cylinder alternate design would be well suited for it. The 2x3 plates and the 2x2 plate with pin in this image being replaced with a 2x8 technic plate and the pair of 2x2 plates with two studs (or are they tiles with two studs?) being replaced with a 2x2 round plate, and then use a technic axle pin to connect to the pilot truck.

[TJJohn12]

Just a quick post to show off some better shots of my custom stickers for the Holliday (and yes, that's a LEGO deer on the headlamp):