[MOC] 4 Wide trains, DRG Class 80, DB V90

[Pendra37]

Recently I made some trains from Lego for wooden rails. They looked pretty familiar so I compared them to my old H0 trains and ho and behold they are extremely close in size. I quickly made a bunch of different wagons and trains. This way the kid can play with his H0 push along trains on his wooden railway network. Doing the same on my proper H0 railway resulted some catastrophic failures. If he breaks the Lego trains, I will be able to reassemble them with ease. Plus they are pretty cheap. The V90 set with all the wagons cost only 30 Euros. 

So far I made a DRG Class 80 steam loco with a matching coach wagon and a DB V90/100 with a flat wagon, a cooler wagon, a generic freight wagon and a tanker wagon. I'm in the process to make DB TRAXX and maybe a V43. I used solid bogies with those big wheels. The pin allows enough movement for the wheels take regular turns. The Traxx will have rotating bogies because that is freakin long, 27-28 studs.      

More pix here: https://bricksafe.com/pages/Pendra37/4-wide-trains

 

Edited February 8, 2021 by Pendra37

[deraven]

Wow, you've captured the look really well for being done in 4-wide!  That's a lot of fun, and I'd love to see a larger setup at this scale.  

[Man with beard]

Wow.

I so wish that I had thought of this! Brio trains and Lego were my two favorite toys as a kid, and now they can be united! More importantly, now I can make Lego trains without breaking the bank . Thank you for sharing.

Edited February 7, 2021 by Man with beard

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Very cool!

Great realization!

[Pendra37]

Thanks! I received the parts for the Traxx so I built it quickly. Pretty massive next to the other locomotives. I even made it 2 studs shorter that it should be. 

Much more pix here: https://bricksafe.com/pages/Pendra37/4-wide-trains

Edited February 8, 2021 by Pendra37

[zephyr1934]

Nice work! It is really hard building in 4 wide and your builds came out really nice. So what are you using for wheels? I did something similar for similar reasons a long time ago. You know when your son is ready to make the jump to HO there are transition cars too.

[Feuer Zug]

Your 4-wide selection looks wonderful. The ability to run them on wooden track is both funny and resourceful.

[Pendra37]

@zephyr1934 The wheels are 15535 - 3673 - 2817 - 3673 -  15535. The result is a pretty woobly wheel base. However, I like that better than the 50254 - 4600 - 50254.
The Tile round 2 x 2 with a hole is nice and thick, meanwhile the Train wheel small is razor thin. More likely to break or get damaged when someone steps on it.
The Tile round is nice and loose, it can move left and right on the pin to follow the curve of the rail. The Train wheel small has a snug fit, it need needs rotating bogies to make a turn. This can complicate the build.
The downside of the Tile round is that it has a larger radius. You need to use an extra plate which makes the build higher. It also limits the max length of the build. 14 stud between the axels is about the longest it can handle. Modern trains are double of this length. Wagons can be 3x.There, the rotating bogey is the only option. I made a rotating bogey with the Tile round, but it was unnaturally high. You kinda have the same problem with the original 4 axle Brio trains. They are too high and look ugly as a result. 

The stud covered flatcar is funny. I didn't know about that. It may be interesting down the line, however at this point, I keep my son and the H0 set separated. The few sessions we had so far all ended in destruction of property. The wooden rails and buildings can resist him much better. The Lego trains, he can rebuild after a step or a drop which cannot be said for the poor old H0 :(. 

@Feuer Zug. I had wooden and H0 rails. My kid would love an actual Lego train set but my apartment cannot hold an appropriately designed and built table in Lego scale which is similar to O scale. Even the H0 is pushing it. This is the compromise so he can have Lego trains and I don't need to buy a bigger house.
   

Edited February 9, 2021 by Pendra37

[Pendra37]

21 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

Nice work! It is really hard building in 4 wide and your builds came out really nice. So what are you using for wheels? I did something similar for similar reasons a long time ago. You know when your son is ready to make the jump to HO there are transition cars too.

For some reason I can't send PMs so I send it here. Do you feel like putting up your 4W design to Rebrickable maybe? If not, can I recreate your design in Stud.io and put it up there with you in the reference? I was thinking that we could create a like a family of these wooden rail/H0 sets. Locos, wagons, buildings and infrastructure. The whole show from Lego. 

I checked further and I realized Marklin has a full play set with those studded wagons (4x18 plate) which comes with a studded motorized undercarriage (4x16 plate with a 2x6 block in the absolute center). With that in mind, it would be possible to adopt these builds to be compatible with that, too. The end would be a three in one Lego family: Each can be a regular Lego toy, a Brio toy or Marklin H0 superstructure.   

[zephyr1934]

I think you need to have 10 posts or something like that before you can PM. For the moment I'd like to keep my 4 wide designs private. I'm sure many folks in this forum can reverse engineer them and that's fine though.

I had horrible problems with wooden switches, the engine would go one way and the cars the other way. So there is definitely room to improve the wheels and it looks like you may have solved all of the problems I had.

Going from Brio to Marklin is not as easy as plug and play. Indeed, there is an entire "block train" Marklin set. Pretty much all of the cars have to be built on the fixed flatcar base. The locomotive base has specific constraints for building around the motor and the fact that it is an 0-6-0 configuration. None of those constraints are insurmountable and it looks like a fun challenge to come up with something that looks good. I was all set on making the jump and attempting a 4 wide HO Lego train myself when I realized that the Marklin locomotive requires the three rail Marklin system (looking deeper, it might even be a special version of the Marklin three rail intended for kids). I was hoping for something that I could run on my son's HO track, but all of his stuff is the conventional two rail HO so I abandoned that project.

[Vliebricker]

Hello Pendra37, well done with this design! I've tons of wooden rails from the time that my grandsons were too young to play with LEGO. And trains really had caught them at that age. I think I'll try to build some small trains out of lego to fit these rails. So 4-wide must do the trick? Thanks for sharing this with all of us. 👏🏻👍

[Pendra37]

I made a set of basic freight wagons for the locomotives. Passenger wagons will follow. Then the 4 axles heavy haulers.

This wheel setup do work with regular turns and switches. Even the 4 axles V90 can turn fine. Side railings, like bridges, are also OK. Thomas trains usually fail there. I'm not sure about the sharp turn thou. They may get stuck there, but even some Brio trains got stuck or derailed on the small radius turns. I checked the Marklin set further and yes, it uses the three rail system. Marklin keeps being weird. I'm thinking to take one of my crappier loco, remove the superstructure and bolt a Lego plate onto it. May be interesting. 

     

 

[zephyr1934]

Your cars are fantastic, you've really captured the look and feel of Brio trains at full scale out of Lego. Please keep posting as you build more.

[ark0]

Incredibly well done! I have always thought about getting the Brio trains and track, this might have just pushed me over to get one and try to imitate your build. 10/10

[Asper]

Very cute. Well done!

[Pendra37]

Thanks, I'm glad you like the build. I designed for the passenger wagons, I decided to attempt a DB V220. My son kinda likes this loco from my H0 set. 

And an M424 because why not :)

Edited February 23, 2021 by Pendra37

[High_Admiral]

Neat! Will there be any motorized builds or is it just too small for that?

[Pendra37]

2 hours ago, High_Admiral said:

Neat! Will there be any motorized builds or is it just too small for that?

The wheel base doesn't lend it well for motorization. The axles are fixed and the wheels are moving left and right to take up the direction of the curve. One way to motorize would be to add a hidden, powered, rubber wheel at the middle. I think the small motor and a battery pack would fit inside the TRAXX but I don't have such parts handy so I can't really try it. I'm actually preparing to sacrifice one of my somewhat broken H0 loco, take off the superstructure and bolt a Lego plate onto it. Then add a pair of LiFePo AA batteries and off it goes. But that is not proper Lego, more like that Marklin set we discussed earlier.