LEGO #21344 - Orient Express

[Aanchir]

2 hours ago, dtomsen said:

TLG really should make a new train magnet in the form of the old classic one but with modern neodym magnets instead.
Much smaller business entities already have.
Solves most problems when pulling a lot of weight with a moderate degree of rolling resistance.

That's something they've specifically avoided for very clear safety reasons. In the early 2000s there were multiple incidents of children being injured or even killed due to swallowing neodymium magnet toys. Currently, while some countries like the United States still allow small neodymium magnets to be sold as toys as long as they carry the appropriate warning labels, other countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand ban them entirely.

Moreover, even if there weren't any strict legal hurdles in place, I doubt LEGO would willingly take the risk of having one of their products associated with even a single tragic story of that sort. After all, this is a company that still prides itself on having only recalled three products in its entire history due to safety concerns — and in all three of those cases, they were able to preemptively recall those products before even a single injury or fatality occurred. They are not going to take any chances with the safety of their products, even in cases where current regulations would not hold them liable for those worst case scenarios.

For what it's worth, I believe the current version of the magnetic couplings DO use neodymium magnets. But because of these safety concerns, they are secured in a large, pre-assembled plastic housing designed to keep them from being removed by the consumer.

Edited November 17, 2023 by Aanchir

[Lyichir]

3 hours ago, dtomsen said:

TLG really should make a new train magnet in the form of the old classic one but with modern neodym magnets instead.
Much smaller business entities already have.
Solves most problems when pulling a lot of weight with a moderate degree of rolling resistance.

The issue with using stronger magnets (especially detachable ones like the classic ones) is that strong magnets pose significant safety hazards. Especially if ingested, magnets can cause severe injury, which is why recent Lego sets with magnets have had them sealed in sturdy plastic shells and have been weak enough that they don't risk cracking that sort of containment. There are laws in several countries regulating magnetic toys and many manufacturers (including Lego) tend to hold themselves to even stricter voluntary standards to ensure that their products don't become associated with injuries.

Smaller entities can get away with using more powerful magnets for multiple reasons—less global businesses can skirt stricter laws in certain countries, a smaller user base means less risk of litigation from injuries, and less of a reputation for safety to uphold means they won't be held to the same standard in the court of public opinion.

Personally I think the use of towballs or similar connections is fine for purposes like this—it's strong and reasonably easy to couple or uncouple.

EDIT: My sister got in ahead of me and made a better explanation. :P

Edited November 17, 2023 by Lyichir

[dtomsen]

Oh, I definitely agree and understand TLG's reasoning behind couplings when the market are toys for small children.
This train set however is not and (most if not all) of our dissatisfaction springs from this simple fact.

Edited November 17, 2023 by dtomsen

[dr_spock]

I think large companies have liability lawyers to nix those product ideas.  Small businesses may not have the resources and policies to run things through the legal department first.  There is no EULA with LEGO sets that you can't add your own magnetic couplers after purchase. 

 

[zephyr1934]

3 hours ago, Lyichir said:

EDIT: My sister got in ahead of me and made a better explanation. :P

Oh god, you've been tag teaming us all along? (grin)

I wasn't suggesting that Lego goes back to the old style magnets, while they are safe for adults who will not generally put them in their mouths, you both hit it spot on, magnets small enough to be ingested are horribly dangerous in toys that might be played with by younger siblings, etc. So third party magnets are not necessarily bad when bought by adults for adults and kept away from young children, but lego is first and foremost a toy and should always fail safe.

Meanwhile, I don't really have a better solution in mind than the tow balls. They just seem like a bit of a hassle for coupling and uncoupling. I had though of a hook mechanism (a variant of which was used on lego trains in the 1960's before magnets) but as I think about it more that could be worse than tow balls since you need a lift and drop instead of simply pushing the cars together. Knuckle couplers look amazing when you have flat track but can be bad if you have really bumpy track. Maybe a variant of the G-gauge couplers could work well for lego trains?

 

[lego3057]

How many new bricks did you spot? Coaches: I saw 1 , a modified 1x2 T plate to fix the snot windows. Loko the drivers? and the 4 modified 2x4 plates in the front (I think these are new)

[R0Sch]

44 minutes ago, lego3057 said:

How many new bricks did you spot? Coaches: I saw 1 , a modified 1x2 T plate to fix the snot windows. Loko the drivers? and the 4 modified 2x4 plates in the front (I think these are new)

Well if we don't count all the printed and misprinted elements, there are also a bunch of recolors, like 1x6 plates and 1x3x3 windows in pearl gold, 1x4 arch bricks, large train doors L+R and the Minions heads in dark blue, the large bucket in black etc. More 6x16 dark red plates are also nice.

[samsz_3]

11 hours ago, R0Sch said:

Base and first carriage almost done: 21344.io

Wow that was quick! Nice job

[Lion King]

Are there any stickers?

[R0Sch]

1 minute ago, Lion King said:

Are there any stickers?

Go back a page...

[Lion King]

36 minutes ago, R0Sch said:

Go back a page...

Thanks for being “helpful”…

[Lion King]

I have zero interest in this lovely train except for a minifiure that looks like Pippin Reed / Gail Storm. 

[idlemarvel]

I'm sure they were trying to be helpful but unfortunately on this forum posts aren't numbered or dated so you can't refer back to a specific earlier posting, like "see post #24" so you can only be rather vague.

[R0Sch]

2 minutes ago, idlemarvel said:

I'm sure they were trying to be helpful but unfortunately on this forum posts aren't numbered or dated so you can't refer back to a specific earlier posting, like "see post #24" so you can only be rather vague.

What's vague about going back one page? I literally posted a picture of the sticker sheets yesterday on page 18.

[Lion King]

35 minutes ago, R0Sch said:

What's vague about going back one page? I literally posted a picture of the sticker sheets yesterday on page 18.

I mean…”go back a page” is pretty much vague. And now you said you posted it yourself, which it’s not that vague. 

Thanks for your “hellp”, tho. 

 

Anways…. the more I look at Orient Express, the more it reminds me of the Polar Exprss. Now I hope lego would do a Polar Express set. Maybe some of us coud MOC/MOD it at least. 

[Yoggington]

1 hour ago, idlemarvel said:

I'm sure they were trying to be helpful but unfortunately on this forum posts aren't numbered or dated so you can't refer back to a specific earlier posting, like "see post #24" so you can only be rather vague.

So you can perma-link to any particular post by clicking the 'posted on' section and then copying that URL.

Like so for the stickers post:

 

 

Or if you turn off automatic embedding ('display as a link instead') you get the straight link and you can see the comment number (3660073 here)

https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/195019-lego-21344-orient-express/&page=18&tab=comments#comment-3660073

 

Or of course you can always just quote a post to reference it.

[zephyr1934]

Anyone have thoughts on how to power this train? Do you think one L motor in the locomotive powering the drive wheels could do it? Or would it need two L motors to reliably move?

I know they said they "tried everything" to motorize the train and couldn't power it, but I bet that really means, "everything without making a compromise Lego can't or won't take." I suspect the main issues they encountered were:

1) not enough weight on the motor so wheels slipped. Probably true no matter if they motorized the loco, the tender or a car. Can be fixed with weight bricks or non-lego ballast.

2) there's plenty of space to motorize a car but you can't do that with an interior (and this set is ALL about the interior of the cars) and it is always wonky to push the locomotive from a powered car

On the plus side for motorization, it looks like one could carve out a large cavity inside the boiler for motors and/or a PU hub, and then there seems to be unlimited space in the tender for a hub.

One challenge I see is that to get two L motors in the boiler you might need the hub in the tender, and that would require a long run for the wire to the front motor. I have not done much with PU, does anyone know how long the wire is on a PU L motor? My guess is 32 studs, but ???

 

 

7 hours ago, lego3057 said:

and the 4 modified 2x4 plates in the front (I think these are new)

I'm pretty sure those are actually brackets from the Friends cubes, I've been keeping an eye on that part for some time, has a nice curve to it

 

2 hours ago, Lion King said:

I have zero interest in this lovely train except for a minifiure that looks like Pippin Reed / Gail Storm. 

Wait 3 months and I bet they will be selling really cheap as people buy 2x copies of the set and don't want duplicate figs and others buy in quantity and start parting it out.

[lego3057]

2 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

 

 

 

I'm pretty sure those are actually brackets from the Friends cubes, I've been keeping an eye on that part for some time, has a nice curve to it

 

Wait 3 months and I bet they will be selling really cheap as people buy 2x copies of the set and don't want duplicate figs and others buy in quantity and start parting it out.

You are wright! I tried to find them in Studio.

 

About the motorisation:I would try 2 vertical medium motors in the loko, directly connected to the flanged  wheels. Lego is not producing the round ones anymore, but I don´t know if the large motors wil fit

Part 21980 : Electric, Motor WeDo 2.0 Medium [Electric:Electric, Motor] [BrickLink]

 

Edited November 17, 2023 by lego3057

[M_slug357]

I just watched that speed build video, and the boiler is definitely wide enough to have accommodated an L or M motor…

[samsz_3]

2 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

I know they said they "tried everything" to motorize the train and couldn't power it, but I bet that really means, "everything without making a compromise Lego can't or won't take." I suspect the main issues they encountered were:

1) not enough weight on the motor so wheels slipped. Probably true no matter if they motorized the loco, the tender or a car. Can be fixed with weight bricks or non-lego ballast.

2) there's plenty of space to motorize a car but you can't do that with an interior (and this set is ALL about the interior of the cars) and it is always wonky to push the locomotive from a powered car

I would guess another issue TLG encountered is the length of the coaches. Although they are on bogies and will go around standard Lego curves, there will be a lot of drag (explanation if interested: the drag will be on the rearmost bogie sets of the coaches, due to the sides of the wheels being pulled against the rails, as the load path follows along the coach. On tight curves, the coach body has a large angle compared to the tangent the curve at the rear bogie. The issue is much greater on 1x 40stud coach, than 2x 20stud coach, as on the 2x, the load is transferred through the couplings at a much smaller angle between coach and tangent). This will be even worse with the silly plastic wheels, without metal axles.

Like I've said before, using custom Trixbrixx (or equivalent) wide curves, this won't be an issue, but obviously TLG don't want to make a whole new set of track geometry.

[Aanchir]

15 hours ago, dtomsen said:

Oh, I definitely agree and understand TLG's reasoning behind couplings when the market are toys for small children.
This train set however is not and (most if not all) of our dissatisfaction springs from this simple fact.

Even if only included in sets marked 18+ like this one, I think LEGO would still be reluctant to produce any parts that they don't consider child-safe. After all, a lot of the loose parts from my childhood collection were stuff my dad bought at yard sales or on auction sites in mixed lots, with no separation by what themes or target age ranges the sets in question had once been marked for.

And while LEGO probably wouldn't be financially liable for people buying non-child-safe products in that sort of mixed lot and mistakenly thinking they're for children, any accident resulting from that sort of incident could still result in a lot of bad press and a weight on the conscience of whoever designed the parts in question or approved them for release. It's just an ethical minefield that LEGO could just as easily avoid by sticking to the more traditional plastic-on-plastic connections that their success was built on.

3 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

I'm pretty sure those are actually brackets from the Friends cubes, I've been keeping an eye on that part for some time, has a nice curve to it

Yeah, definitely a very nice part! They were also used right-side-up in last year's big Hogwarts Express to attach the buffer beam. I imagine it'd also make a cool wheel arch for eight-wide or six-wide road vehicles or construction equipment — it kind of surprises me we haven't seen any sets use it for that sort of thing yet.

31 minutes ago, M_slug357 said:

I just watched that speed build video, and the boiler is definitely wide enough to have accommodated an L or M motor…

If you're willing to break the real-life rule of having the locomotive itself do the driving, I imagine you could even potentially fit an XL motor into the tender and put the narrower and more System-friendly hub/battery box inside the boiler. But of course, until people who own the set are able to test this sort of stuff themselves, I'm not really qualified to make any sort of predictions about what combination of motors and gears would provide the best balance of speed and torque for a train this size — especially since I've personally only ever had experience running trains using the default train motors.

Edited November 17, 2023 by Aanchir

[R0Sch]

Restaurant carriage completed.


I noticed both in the BD's review and in the official product images that the 16L train rail pieces are badly deformed and curve upwards. Either too much stress due to plate tolerance stack-up or they are deformed from molding process and it's a quality topic.

[lego3057]

1 hour ago, R0Sch said:

Restaurant carriage completed.


I noticed both in the BD's review and in the official product images that the 16L train rail pieces are badly deformed and curve upwards. Either too much stress due to plate tolerance stack-up or they are deformed from molding process and it's a quality topic.

IO FILE PLEASE

[Murdoch17]

15 minutes ago, lego3057 said:

IO FILE PLEASE

Honestly, there is no need to shout. @R0Sch only has one off the cars done anyway, so it could be a while before the remaining 2/3's is done. Patience is key! 

Edited November 17, 2023 by Murdoch17

[R0Sch]

3 hours ago, Murdoch17 said:

Honestly, there is no need to shout. @R0Sch only has one off the cars done anyway, so it could be a while before the remaining 2/3's is done. Patience is key! 

Thanks for stepping up for me. The .io file link is the same as from my previous post. That's the benefit of Brickshelf. I keep updating it as I progress further in the build.
Sleeper and Restaurant done.