[MOC] Moveable railway bridge

[sporadic]

3 hours ago, faph said:

@sporadic I see, the Lego logo on the studs is the problem. I’m happy to follow the “non-standard” technique in this case ;)

Yeah. I put illegal in quotes because it's one of those things that only a small segment of the community cares about.  It's only illegal because of the logo raising the stud slightly.  It is a red flag in some circles (LEGO IDEAS or the BDP, for example), but isn't generally a big deal.  I only brought it up because as those tiles will be slightly stressed/out of alignment because of it.  I think it's a good idea to use the studs for extra support of the tile-rails since trains will go over them.  You could swap them out for hollow stud (Technic) pieces if it turns out to be an issue (which I doubt)

[faph]

Extensive real-life testing over the weekend threw up an issue:

When spacing tracks a stud apart, train wheels are prone to dropping on the inside of the split rail connections. This was even more of an issue when I was connecting the track with tiles-as-rails since that would have an additional half-stud gap.

It doesn’t cause derailment but with the tiles-as-track it wouldn’t be a comfy ride for passengers either!

So I’m going back to spacing official track a stud apart - the ride is just about smooth enough in that case. I will accept that I will be 2 studs out of grid :(  

And yes @Shiva I have now placed the pivot point a plate higher relative to the track and this does solve the collision issue nicely. Thanks for the tip!

 

Edited April 21 by faph

[Shiva]

Cheers, glad to help :)

[faph]

This is what I've got now:

Track now 1 plate lower compared with pivot point.

I am also needing to curve and incline up to the bridge. This means at this end of the bridge I do need a raised area between the rails otherwise light train cars might derail at the half stud spacing between the track parts.

[zephyr1934]

On 4/19/2024 at 12:04 PM, faph said:

Our daughter needs to be able to place minifigs anywhere!

Ah, design constraints to satisfy the consumer... (grin). I do like your brick built solutions and there might be a way to either fill the gap at the end of the rail or use the tiles to nudge the wheels over, but at some point it is pragmatic to just get to playing. If the 2 stud offset ever bothers you you can probably get fractional track lengths from TrixBrix or similar to bring it back into grid.

 

17 hours ago, faph said:

Track now 1 plate lower compared with pivot point. 

The rule of thumb I've heard and live by is to have at least one straight segment between a curve and a switch to prevent trains from "picking the switch," i.e., derail. The curve right into the gap might give you a similar problem on the near side of the above photo.

 

At any rate the design looks great

 

[faph]

3 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

The curve right into the gap might give you a similar problem on the near side of the above photo.

Exactly, it does. But the raised “island” between the rails solves it!

Experiments signed off by Statler himself:

No more design changes allowed ;)

[zephyr1934]

On 4/23/2024 at 2:03 PM, faph said:

Exactly, it does. But the raised “island” between the rails solves it!

Ah yes, guard rails just like real railway bridges (and especially drawbridges)

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

This project becomes more and more interesting, it deserves to be published on Lego Idea or better yet on Rebrickable!

[Ropefish]

Awesome work, love seeing folks designs slowly come to fruition in real life! 

[faph]

I will probably start building the whole thing soon. We will see where that takes us. 

Still haven’t quite figured out how I want to build the curved sloping tracks, though. I probably should just start provisionally with just a few bricks to prop it up. I appreciate that curved ramps mean twisted track curve pieces…