LEGO Trains 2022

[Djmojo]

Seen two interesting (to say the least). One is that this years big harry potter set will be an expensive hogwarts express ( reminds me of april.1 2021 😅) and the second is that the disney train is being split up into two sets: only the station and only the train.  Finding these rumors hard to believe. Toughts?

[Amoreternum]

I highly, highly doubt anything 4 wide beyond what we already got, except they expand the theme into some kind of 4+ type theme with a seperate track system. Which I'd enjoy, always loved the playfulness of Brio.

A bigger Hogwarts Express in 7 wide would be great and would get many people on board (hah!), both HP fans and if it's a nice representation of the Olton Hall, train fans as well as adult collectors. Splitting the Disney train up would not make sense though, but would make the train itself more interesting since the stupid pricetag would be lower.

Edited January 23, 2022 by Amoreternum

[Matt Dawson]

17 hours ago, Djmojo said:

Seen two interesting (to say the least). One is that this years big harry potter set will be an expensive hogwarts express ( reminds me of april.1 2021 😅) and the second is that the disney train is being split up into two sets: only the station and only the train.  Finding these rumors hard to believe. Toughts?

The Harry Potter "UCS Hogwarts Express" rumour has been going a while - unless I see some concrete evidence, I'd leave well alone. 

As for Disney, I find it highly unlikely they'd do a re-release but split the contents. Only thing I can think of is they're changing the train to a 2-6-0 and different passenger cars to represent a different park

[Pendra37]

22 minutes ago, Matt Dawson said:

The Harry Potter "UCS Hogwarts Express" rumour has been going a while - unless I see some concrete evidence, I'd leave well alone. 

As for Disney, I find it highly unlikely they'd do a re-release but split the contents. Only thing I can think of is they're changing the train to a 2-6-0 and different passenger cars to represent a different park

An UCS Hogwarts Express would be ridiculously huge and expensive. I highly doubt that. The Disney "train" is more of a caricature on rails. I would not consider that a train set even if separated from the building. 
If it is not 4 wide, then how about 2 Wide? A big, pixel art Hogwarts Express picture would fit the general HP lineup.  Or something created in the manner of the Starry night. A "painting of a train" you can put next to your actual trains. 

 

[Stuartn]

21 hours ago, Pendra37 said:

I doubt that. I don't think the 40518 was even a mild success.

I don't think we can judge whether it was a success yet, as it hasn't even been out one month, many playsets are released after Christmas and there are always birthdays coming up. When parents who contrast a US$20 train against the last one which was over $100, there could be a lot of appeal, especially as they are probably unaware it can't run on track. I do agree though it probably won't be a smash-hit success though. Those are nice dioramas by the way.

[McWaffel]

1 hour ago, Stuartn said:

especially as they are probably unaware it can't run on track.

So basically, the success of the set is based in part on scamming parents. Nice 

[Djmojo]

3 hours ago, Pendra37 said:

An UCS Hogwarts Express would be ridiculously huge and expensive. I highly doubt that. The Disney "train" is more of a caricature on rails. I would not consider that a train set even if separated from the building. 
If it is not 4 wide, then how about 2 Wide? A big, pixel art Hogwarts Express picture would fit the general HP lineup.  Or something created in the manner of the Starry night. A "painting of a train" you can put next to your actual trains. 

 

Well, this years d2c is ridicoulusly expensive 😂 i think we will se a revamped h.e in the form of a new playset or (higley unlikely) a d2c with a station build as the current h.e is retiring and the harry potter theme has (to my knowledge) always had an hogwarts express on the shelves☺️  
And yes the disney train rumor is allegedely one of the weirdest i have heard.altough it was a shame as in my opinion it was a great train In a much better scale than the other locos lego have given us 

[M_slug357]

Three things that would make me hawt for a Hogwarts Express D2C:

1) Dark Red

2) A larger version of Hogsmede(?) station (similar parts count as disney station)

3) Two coaches

 

*if* TLG ever made it like this, I would feel obligated to buy a minimum of 3~4 sets hands down.

[Feuer Zug]

20 minutes ago, M_slug357 said:

Three things that would make me hawt for a Hogwarts Express D2C:

1) Dark Red

2) A larger version of Hogsmede(?) station (similar parts count as disney station)

3) Two coaches

*if* TLG ever made it like this, I would feel obligated to buy a minimum of 3~4 sets hands down.

That about nails my thoughts on a good Hogwarts Express. And a motorized option like the Crocodile, but not including the motor to keep costs down.

[Toxic43]

33 minutes ago, Feuer Zug said:

That about nails my thoughts on a good Hogwarts Express. And a motorized option like the Crocodile, but not including the motor to keep costs down.

This is important. More folks would buy something like this as a display piece rather than to run on tracks. It would be popular with kids no doubt, so the option to add a motor so they can drive it is key also. But the most important is that there is a complete train, with al least 2 coaches. For Lego to pull something like this off, we'd be looking at prices higher than the current cargo train. I don't know what the rumours are around the newest H.P D2C this year, but of the price is on the higher end, we could be on the right track, so to speak.

Or they'll just do the castle again...

[Pendra37]

17 hours ago, McWaffel said:

So basically, the success of the set is based in part on scamming parents. Nice 

This is what came to my mind, too. Lego should put big warning labels onto the box:

NOT MOTORIZED!

NOT COMPATIBLE WITH OTHER LEGO TRAINS OR MINIFIGS.

NO BUILD, PLAY OR VISUAL VALUE. Ideal companion to our Starry Night set.

 

They don't do this which will probably result some nasty surprises upon opening the box. 

 

Edited January 24, 2022 by Pendra37

[McWaffel]

4 hours ago, Pendra37 said:

They don't do this which will probably result some nasty surprises upon opening the box. 

Brilliant. You can’t make this stuff up. I can imagine being a parent pr grandparent who knows nothing about LEGO and who goes to the store to buy a gift for their child/grandson.

 

I see the train, I remember my child/grandson has a LEGO train. I see the price, it is great. I decide to buy it. 
 

cannot imagine the feeling I would have if they build it and it’s tiny and doesn’t go on the track 

[Phil-B259]

On 1/21/2022 at 11:47 PM, Toastie said:

There is none. Over and out.

Other than: Regulations, regulations and more regulations, leading to endless litigation regarding the use/availability/impact of such technology to unattended post 2010 kids  .

Best
Thorsten

 

Nice! I like that.

Now, should he get a little older, and should he be willing to this one thing: Don't kick the 3 metal tracks in this particular section - called refueling - apart (or build it in a way that is tough to do so by playing with excitement), dream of a power pickup rail set, attach whatever DC voltage is required to that track section, roll your train onto this section, which then feeds your wide voltage range chargeable LiPo (as 8878 was) and don't worry about any power issues. Just navigate your train, at the end of wild rides to that section, go to bed and tomorrow morning - blast off. The ESP will be very happy, I bet.

This is what I do - however, at age 60.

Best,
Thorsten

 

Actually there is a benefit!

Many real life railways have invested in bi-mode traction which has can use electrification or an on board power source - traditionally diesel. Newer developments have also seen batteries replace / augment said on board diesel engines that get recharged when the train is receiving external power. There are also some schemes in development which are based around a fast charge boast being given to batteries at intermediate station stops or where the train terminates.

The key point about all the above is it means you don't have to spend a fortune electrifying every bit of railway to get the benefits....

... Now one of the things which has been cited as a problem with the Lego 9V range was the expensiveness of the track, something that limited the amount of pieces it was viable to produce. Plastic is cheaper to make but you then need a bulky battery module on the train which has to be easily accessible for it to be removed when it needs new batteries / charging.

However if you take the current real railway developments on board then you could have a smaller battery which gets recharged on a special 'charging track' piece - which could be manufactured as a single design leaving the rest of the track to be made totally from plastic.

 

 

 

 

Edited January 27, 2022 by Phil-B259

[Toastie]

1 hour ago, Phil-B259 said:

Actually there is a benefit!

Oh, sure, I totally agree here as well - but when you have all the 9V track already - and I believe @McWaffel has a lot, then it is really frustrating to live through decades of train decay at TLG. 12V was brilliant with regard to the many things you could get, working signals, motorized switch points, diverse(!) trains and carriages - track-side stuff, buildings - the came 9V - far less of all of the above but still tons more of what is available today - and a power pickup system that, if I am not mistaken, was/is perfectly well suited for DCC, but I don't know. The invention barrier to really nice pickups allowing that were/are not that high, though. And then came all plastic - I believe in terms of decay we should skip the next evolution step and call it quits, train-wise. As in: The original from TLG.

You know, all my trains do have either 8878 on board, or simply 6 x 1.2V NiMH rechargeables, which are always charged when on metal track (for a non-LUG member I believe quite a bit here) and run on battery when on plastic track, which is there as well, mostly for insulation purposes (another BIG advantage of battery operated trains with power pickups: Polarity changes simply don't mean anything: The motor is operated via a PUp hub or PF receiver or RCX brick, the batteries are charged via bridge rectifiers, always providing the correct polarity to them. 8878 gets the full +15V track +/- DC (OK, minus the two diode drops), the NiMHs get constantly 8.4 V (9V regulator fed via pickup and bridge rectifier = 14.2 V), + one series diode = 8.4 V; a fully charged NiMH cell has about 1.4 to 1.5 (max); 6 x 1.4V = 8.4V so they trickle-charged whenever on metal rail = always full overnight, are never overcharged, and when they are below 8.4V and on metal track DC goes directly into the controllers = almost full blast.

This setup works now for about 6 - 10 years - I have never changed the NiMH cells nor any 8878 - no leaks (they hardly can) - and ready to go. The last two years time was devoted to other things - fired the trains up last week: All ready to go.

Yes, there is a benefit to "battery" operation, for sure!

Best,
Thorsten         

Edited January 27, 2022 by Toastie

[McWaffel]

1 hour ago, Phil-B259 said:

Now one of the things which has been cited as a problem with the Lego 9V range was the expensiveness of the track, something that limited the amount of pieces it was viable to produce.

I ran some numbers.

9V track cost $12.99 when it was released in 1991. Adjusted for inflation it would be $26.61 in today’s money. This was for eight straights, which are 102.x cm, so let’s say it was $26 per meter.

Plastic track currently sells for $19.99. This is for 8 straights and four curves (which nobody needs) and some flex track (which nobody wants). Without the flex track it comes down to almost exactly $13.34 per meter.

As a side comparison, FxBricks track costs $69.99 (last time I checked) for 8 double straights, or just over two meters (204cm) of track. So it’s around ~$34.50 per meter, give or take.

So yeah, plastic track is definitely cheaper. Half price cheaper, almost. But now you need to factor in running costs. Because the power draw from my outlet to run the trains is so low, it’s basically negligible. The lights in my room probably use significantly more than the trains, and those are all 100% LED.

A pack of 12 AAAs costs $6 on Amazon (just checked), which 6 are required to run a PF train. In my experience, that lasted me around 45-50min of runtime. Let’s say 1h, for the benefit of the doubt. So running trains is about $3 per hour per train.

The break-even-point is reached after four hours of runtime per meter (yes, I realize it’s a strange metric). In other words: for every meter of track you need to add four hours of runtime to the break-even-point against 9V track costs.

I could calculate numbers for running trains on rechargables etc, but I can’t be bothered. So what does this all mean? 
I don’t know, you tell me.

Edited January 27, 2022 by McWaffel

[Maple]

Where do people here these weird rumours? Why would LEGO split a set up? That said I own the station onl and it's beautiful while I had no desire for the horrible 'train' ride. I also went on the ride like 25 years ago so that says something.

[dr_spock]

1 hour ago, Toastie said:

\Yes, there is a benefit to "battery" operation, for sure!

Best,
Thorsten         

Batteries do allow some flexibility to where you can bring the club layout display. We run exclusively on batteries at the hospital kid picnics. Weirdly enough, parents and kids at the outdoor events don't seem to care how the trains are powered as much as we do.

 

[Toastie]

2 hours ago, McWaffel said:

I could calculate numbers for running trains on rechargables etc, but I can’t be bothered.

Hmmm. That is a pity. Numbers would look much nicer, but will never beat off-the-wall-wart operation. As don't e-bikes, recharged from a solar panel on the roof. Never. Thing is: The extension cord for the bike ... with trains the situation is of course different.

There is no question - zill - when you calculate the power needs and costs. However, the whole thing is a bit more complex, isn't it? Remote control, automation, and so on. When you don't want that: I'd go your way. But what if you do want to go there?

We have no DCC. You can implement that when you want. You have to do it on your own and all is good. No doubts. There are the tracks, the 9V motor as power/signal pickup and that's it. I believe, DCC, with some restrictions (educate me, I have no clue!) could work. Maybe not. I don't know.

However, there may be a sort of "LEGO way" to run trains: With some TLG controlling "bricks" (PF receivers, PUp hubs, PBricks) operated on rechargeable batteries (because they lose their brain without), recharged on the fly. Why is this relevant? Because some folks try to live with what TLG (and others! But there is nowhere brick based DCC, as far as I know) within their universe is providing - and then add what they feel is required (in a totally self-centered "my idea" environment).

When you do your calculation with all that in mind, the math gets quite complex, I believe.

Best,
Thorsten 

27 minutes ago, dr_spock said:

Weirdly enough, parents and kids at the outdoor events don't seem to care how the trains are powered as much as we do.

Wait: They run on Diesel, don't they?

Edited January 27, 2022 by Toastie

[McWaffel]

@Toastie yes DCC is what I want to get too in the near future. And obviously that’s only possible with conductive track. But for that to work I need to wait for FxBricks to release new motors (or to find burnt-out 9V motors to buy)

[Pendra37]

2 hours ago, McWaffel said:

@Toastie yes DCC is what I want to get too in the near future. And obviously that’s only possible with conductive track. But for that to work I need to wait for FxBricks to release new motors (or to find burnt-out 9V motors to buy)

Why you need conductive tracks for DCC? Wireless communication has been a thing for quite a while now. You can get complete solutions for H0 trains based on the ESP chips. Since they works on 3V and draws minuscule power, it can happily run even on battery. 

[McWaffel]

@Pendra37 besides my personal deep hatred for batteries and rechargables:

Wireless communication is unreliable. Also it doesn’t allow you to do signaling, switching and detection.

With metal rails you can power the entire layout from the track. Want to run a motor for a switch? Just wire it to the rails. Want to light a building next to the track? Power from the rails. Want to have red/green signals on the track? Power from the rails. Want to detect where a train is on the track? Only need to measure what track section has power draw. Want to reprogram a DCC decoder? No problem, you can do it with the train sitting on the track.

Rail-powered trains are basically 0 maintenance. No charging, no swapping batteries. They’re also not as heavy because you don’t need to haul all those batteries around.

You can build smaller engines, because you don’t need to house batteries

Edit: You only need to feed power to your track and that’s it. Literally everything including buildings, automation and trackside features like motorized railway crossing barriers can be powered AND controlled through the track without having to run wires everywhere and it can be done without expensive wireless receivers (which need an antenna, which means they have a fixed minimum size)

Edited January 28, 2022 by McWaffel

[Pendra37]

1 hour ago, McWaffel said:

...

Wait, you don't need to use batteries. An ESP can run on power from the rails just fine. The battery option is there if you have issues with the rails. Weak connections, voltage drops, plastic rail sections etc. If you have such an issue, the train may still be able to get out of the low power area using momentum but the chip will power down and restart. The battery is there as a buffer and you never need to worry about those intermittent power drops. If your tracks are 100% top notch, no need for the battery buffer. Since I tend to use rails from the bottom of the pile, I found that battery buffer useful.

Signaling and switching would also work the same way with an ESP. Instead of a DCC capable chip, you install an ESP chip. Consider that only the interface changes. DCC you uses LAN, ESD uses WiFi. The price and capability is an odd point to bring up. DCC receiver units tend to cost around 20-50 USD and you also need an expensive controller unit in the 100 USD price range. An ESP receiver is 5-10 USD and you don't need any special controller, well actually it is useful to have a good router. You can reprogram anything sitting on the rails, or even sitting in the box if you use a buffer battery. ESP has none of the DCCs limitation like limited number of channels and such. You can control as many receivers as many IP addresses you router can hand out. A whole lot. It is generic WiFi, every train, switch, light sensor etc is considered one separate computer, an IOT solution. Not like DCC which is a very specialized solution.
   

Edited January 28, 2022 by Pendra37

[McWaffel]

@Pendra37 huh, you make a good point actually. I might need to go read some ESP documentation. Thanks for bringing this to my attention 

[Toastie]

1 hour ago, McWaffel said:

Wireless communication is unreliable.

Huh?

No. Otherwise, cell phones won't work reliably. Or BT headsets. With BLE it gets even more secure. Range may be an issue, but within the dimensions of a decently sized layout with lets say 30 switch points that is not true (anymore). BLE pairing is as far as I have experienced using an ESP BLE client [running e.g. Legoino with multiple BLE instances to connect to multiple BLE servers (=PUp hubs), or an n!software BLE stack on VB6/Win10], nothing ever happened with regard to reliability of the connections. At least not here.   

1 hour ago, McWaffel said:

Also it doesn’t allow you to do signaling, switching and detection.

Huh?

I am controlling 30 switch points via dead cheap home-brew OOK modulated 433 MHz transceivers of the size of 3 stacked 2x4 bricks based on the Mindstorms RCX IR protocol (used for specifically addressing individual bricks and establish some communication "security" (no other frigging 433 MHz device interference - and there are many in the neighborhood) for about 10+ years now. See below for powering.

1 hour ago, McWaffel said:

With metal rails you can power the entire layout from the track. Want to run a motor for a switch? Just wire it to the rails. Want to light a building next to the track? Power from the rails. Want to have red/green signals on the track? Power from the rails.

Yes. Well, I do that . I power RCX' + Scouts + PUp hubs from the > 90% metal track; that one has 15V DC - with changing polarity on the rails here and there as I have some weird layout geometry up here under the roof, which is taken care of by bridge rectifiers (< 10 cents, size < of 1 cent coin) feeding the wirelessly bound "smart bricks". They have rechargeables because otherwise they lose their brains upon track power outages. And they control currently lights, switch points, and a larger draw bridge. No restrictions for expansion!

1 hour ago, McWaffel said:

They’re also not as heavy because you don’t need to haul all those batteries around.

To be honest: I am glad that some of my engines do haul them around - the metal tracks are pretty slippery - one PUp L motor has "no" weight, nor has the 8878 LiPo. You know what I do? I try to get in as many drained alkalines  as possible into the engine to get more tractive force.

1 hour ago, McWaffel said:

it can be done without expensive wireless receivers (which need an antenna, which means they have a fixed minimum size)

Hmmm - I guess @Pendra37 uses/wants to use ESP32 based controllers; when using boards with the ESP-WROOM-32 chip - man, it gets powerful, cheap, almost no power consumption, and no antenna. Check (for example) this site out: https://eckstein-shop.de/ESP32-ESP8266-Modul. They're small. These modules have (among other) BLE, BT, WiFi on board ... for $4 - and you can get them even cheaper "somewhere else". And: Programming with the Arduino IDE and the library for instant PUp hub/PF connection is readily available).

Trackside locations may even use the ESP dev boards (still rather tiny, most use the ESP-WROOM-32 chip); with those, you have the computing and interfacing power to fly to the moon and return safely.

I guess wireless has advanced as much as DCC has over the years.

All the best,
Thorsten

EDIT: @Pendra37 replied 5 minutes before I did, @McWaffel sorry!

Edited January 28, 2022 by Toastie

[Lok24]

5 minutes ago, Pendra37 said:

You can control as many receivers as many IP addresses you router can hand out. A whole lot. It is generic WiFi, every train, switch, light sensor etc is considered one separate computer, an IOT solution. Not like DCC which is a very specialized solution.
   

If you want control switches you energy, so you have to connect each switch with some kind if power supply.

And DCC is just  the idea of bringing information and power to the same two wires, requiring no special topology like bus or star.
And you need a motor shiled for each switch, I fear