MOCs: Models of trains running in Hungary

[Ashi Valkoinen]

17 hours ago, jbrickj said:

Hello Everyone, today I am sharing my first rendition of a DB Stadler flirt 1, made in Lego, this is still a work in progress, so any comments, critics, or anything else is greatly appreciated. 

 

Here is the link to the pictures (this is the only way I could put in the pics, there is a limit on eurobricks)  Lego DB starlet flirt 1 side angle | jack bryan-jones | Flickr 

For first, I guess you need to open a new topik for your creation, because you posted into mine. It is no problem for me, but you can get more attention and help, if you have your own.

 

Navigate here and click the brown "Start new topic" button on the right: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/forum/122-lego-train-tech/

Giving a single image won't be enough, tell us something about your creation. How long it is, how did you plan it (virtually or just starting with real bricks at home), etc.

For me it seems you are quite young and you built your FLIRT train from whatever bricks you found at home. Your build is a good start, but surely you can do better if you can order some additional LEGO-bricks to build every part with right colours. For the doors (they are 4 studs wide) I recommend to use SNOT (studs not on top) technique to get more detail, like this door (just buidt it taller).

[XG BC]

20 hours ago, jbrickj said:

Hello Everyone, today I am sharing my first rendition of a DB Stadler flirt 1, made in Lego, this is still a work in progress, so any comments, critics, or anything else is greatly appreciated. 

 

Here is the link to the pictures (this is the only way I could put in the pics, there is a limit on eurobricks)  Lego DB starlet flirt 1 side angle | jack bryan-jones | Flickr 

looks good as a start. id try to use snot as the person above me said. maybe try digital aswell (you appear to have a pc from your other pictures on flickr) to try stuff out before building it irl. there are free programms like stud.io designed to do this. btw. if you insert the link, press enter and wait a bit, eurobricks automatically embedds flickr links as pictures. if you have any more questions or need help feel free to ask!

[jbrickj]

Hi everybody, I would just like to thank you for the replies, and really means a lot for me. So yes, I am young (halfway through high school) and I don't have a good part inventory, also this was more of a side build, As I have spent most of me pieces on the city, seen behind the trains in some pics. So, I designed this in real bricks. I am currently waiting on some orders from brick link and LEGO direct, which should get here in a few weeks. I also have changed the colors of the flirt into a blue and white MAV H-Start theme. I haven't had much time lately due to my calculus teacher giving me so much work (why???) so I can't do the snot doors yet. 

Specs of the train:

-In total its 148 studs long, around 4 feet Ish. 

-8 wide

-11 bricks and 1 plate tall excluding the pantograph. 

-motorized with LEGO POWERED UP

-One motor at one end (another on the way

- and can navigate normal r40 Lego track and normal stock switches. 

-In newer MAV color scheme

Again, thanks for the replies, have an amazing day!

 

[Ashi Valkoinen]

And a creation I totally forgot to post here - my second Stadler Citylink tramtrain unit built on the request of Stadler Trains Hungary Ltd. 

Fortunately - similarly to their previous orders - they requested a stationary modell, so for the bogies and joints it wasn't necessary to make them turning - resulted in easier build and cleaner surfaces. 

Stadler delivered 123 FLIRT units, 40 KISS units and 12 Citylink units for the Hungarian Rail Operator MÁV-Start, and Stadler Trains Hungary (who is responsible for maintence and train body manufacturing in Hungary) ordered LEGO-replicas from me of each different trains.

Currently I am working on the KISS unit which will be delivered for them next month.

[Sérgio]

On 6/4/2023 at 9:13 AM, Ashi Valkoinen said:

Wow, thank you! :)

Fortunately I have good communication with the two Hungarian raiwlay companies (MÁV and GySEV), and also participated with my LEGO-trains on some of their events.

And it is not even an unique power - I summon @Sérgio to give us some fresh photos of his portugese trains! :)

As you wish!

 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Sérgio

[zephyr1934]

grin!

[Ashi Valkoinen]

I am really happy to present a new MOC train to you again.

The Siemens Desiro ML train was bugging me for a while, I found LDD-attempts on my computer from 2018, too, when my electric motor unit fleet was way too tall. I got stuck with the curvy front of the Desiro ML unit - the GySEV/ROeEE version has a biiig yellow front, curved in two directions. The big corner slope piece worked nicely on my fictional "Velo" train I designed only in LDD, but unfortunately this piece and it's relatives doesn't exist in yellow.

This year I made an another, finally succesful attempt, when an idea came to my mind while playing with rigid 3 mm tubes used on my IC+ cars. The other useful piece for this was the 1×2 inverted curved slope - if I remember correctly, they weren't available back in 2018, especially in yellow. This was the test piece for the front cone:

When I built this I realised I can do this and completed the design mostly in LDD, including this front. However I knew due to the forces induced by a curved, stress tube it will be surely different in real, the LDD-design worked in most of the train.

This is the entire train in my garden after first fully assembly. As usual, it has front-tail lights and indoor lights, using - of course - LEGO power function led lights. The train is driven with two of PF train motors, lights and motors are controlled via SBrick (which is sadly currently out of prouction). For the lights to work I cutted some light transmitting cables for the desired length:

Since this EMU doesn't have shared bogies and I didn't want any wobbly cables on the roof which look ugly on R40 curves (on these curves normal 4-axle car ends can be really far away from each other), I used an experimental magnet coupler here. I bought some 10 mm diameter, DC conductive magnets from China, and cut PF-cable were soldered on their outputs. Except the magnet and the halved cable all structure is pure LEGO, including putting the 10 mm diameter custom magnet into old fashioned LEGO magnet holder. The old magnet holder can turn on plate 1×2 with bar - with 6 mm long horizontal part. This is an old part design, the longer horizontal bar allows enough space for the cable and magnet holder to turn. The new part design with 5 mm long horizontal part doesn't work here,

So the power for indoor lights and other ends front-tail lights are connected throught the bogies. It allows also quick putting together of the full train. Since this technique worked nicely, I plan to update my Stadler KISS with these to finally add interior lights to that train, too.

Some further images:

Front view. I think, it is quite remarkable!

The front once again with roof details.

The completed train.

A photo taken right after it was completed. Note the "Ventus" pattern - it is brick built. Honestly, it should be done with a sticker since the letters can't be proportionally higher than 3 plates, but firstly, I hate stickers, secondly, I wanted to include it with brickbuilt pattern. So, bigger, but we are still playing LEGO-bricks here. :)

Edited August 1, 2023 by Ashi Valkoinen

[Vilhelm22]

Always brilliant seeing your astonishing MOCs, @Ashi Valkoinen!  I travelled in Hungary earlier this year and have now seen the magnificent trains - and this is just another!

[zephyr1934]

Another amazing train, great work!

[ivanlan9]

More than a little jealousy-provoking. 

 

Very nice work--as always!

[Selander]

Amazing technical solutions. Very well done 👍

[Ashi Valkoinen]

@Vilhelm22, when did you visit Hungary? Are you planning to return in some time again?

Thank you for all of your nice comments. For me, it seems, building new trains is a little over, at leas, I hope, no Hungary-related railway operator will by Stadler units in the following two years. :)

This article picked my interest tho, after selling my Railjet train in the first months of pandemic I would be really happy to have a train with this colour pattern again - a Stadler KISS unit in dark red!

 

[Sérgio]

Freaking awsome curves!

[Vilhelm22]

On 8/3/2023 at 2:18 PM, Ashi Valkoinen said:

@Vilhelm22, when did you visit Hungary? Are you planning to return in some time again?

@Ashi Valkoinen I was there for a few days late May-early June visiting my uncle in Budapest while travelling round Europe and took the train in from Bratislava and then out again to Krakow and saw many other beautiful MAV trains in the process - Budapest Nyugati is a fantastic place to see trains!  I also went to the railway museum, so I’ve seen a lot of old steam as well.

No idea when I’ll be back - it’s just the way life plays out really.  My uncle’s half in England half in Budapest and goes back and forth often, so I see him when he’s over here.  The previous time I went to Budapest was 2015, so it’s not exactly a frequent occurrence.  Maybe one day though…

 

[Ashi Valkoinen]

Hello to all of you reading my topic,

For today I brought some pictures from our latest event held in a small town in Hungary. Honestly, this is the best part of the LEGO-year, the last show of each year where the locals are always waiting for our train layout. This year I managed to take some photos of my train layout and gathered all my trains except the swiss Traverso and some old and not so good cars for a photo. 

And the locals... our show was scheduled to open at 10 a.m., but the major wrote accidentally 9 a.m. to his facebook, so this photo was taken half an hour before we were officially open. We started the trains and let the kids enjoy them. In front of us my good old Stadler FLIRTs passing by, the middle part owned by Máté Dömel and his father, András Dömel, right side is mine and the branchline belongs to András Pécsi and Donát Szüts, all from Hungary. 

These are my GySEV/ROeEE coloured EMUs - finally I can have them on the same photo. From left to right - Siemens Desiro ML "Ventus", Stadler FLIRT and Stadler FLIRT3.

And my latest project fully finished - I was really unhappy having my Stadler KISS EMU without interior lights for three years. On the other hand, anyone who built a double decker train before could know that it is not that easy to squeeze any electronics to both decks aesthetically. Yes, I used the original Power Function ledlights to do so. I put all the connectors under the stairs of each car, the power from the cars with drivers' cab are provided through DC-conducting magnets, so lights lit up when the cars are connected with the magnets. 

Night time at the event location - after everyone left we switched the lights off. Only my poor Stadler CityLink tramtrain has no lights - it will be a hard task to equip her with lights, too.

Another side, featuring my freshly rebuilt, modular main street of my village. The lights are unfortunately non-LEGO, but simple 3 mm diameter traditional light bulbs, but the sidewalk of each road baseplate hides a 36 stud long original 9V cable - the neighbouring baseplates are connected with the lamps, which have 2×4 electric plates on the bottom. The wires of the lamps are connected to the top of these 2×4 electric plates - but instead of soldering and modifying the expensive LEGO-parts, I fixed the wire ends on them with 1×2 electric plates. So they are easy to dismantle and be repaired, but it provides also a quick install of the street with working lights. LEGO did a great job with the 9V-system, in any aspect...

Closer image of my modular electrified street.

 

What makes this LEGO train hobby better, if your girlfriend also decides to participate in your hobby. She built this small lake into my R104 9V ballasted corner and it helps a lot not to have only tracks and trains! The alpine cabin fits this scene really well, she bought that LEGO set for herself, now that cabin is an accepted guest on our MOC layout. :)

She helps me also a lot with the details - installing my working signals, trains and the station takes 10-12 hours for me at each event. While I'm setting all the railway thingies up, she helps me with the details and flora - at this event my branchline connection wasn't used at all so she made it abandoned.

And this is her own MOC train - a small maintence vehicle with two small cars. The workers on the real life train cut and collect wood which could endanger the trains next to tracks.

...and a small scene done by her - the Spectre figure from the Minifigure Series 14. enlighten by a single SBrick ledlight. I had one free port of the 24 given at each SBrick Light Hubs there, so next to the shunting signal she used the remaining slot to add this detail - the kids loved it!

[Feuer Zug]

Incredible display. Lots of details and fun. All the lighting, including the banshee, really adds to it. Nice to hear your ladyfriend is involved as well.

[ivanlan9]

@Ashi Valkoinen Tell your girlfriend that's the best Lego lake I've ever seen.

[zephyr1934]

That looks like an amazing layout. If I recall correctly, you do open loop operations, with no complete circles of track, right? If so, that is all the more impressive.

 

On 10/31/2023 at 3:52 PM, Ashi Valkoinen said:

Another side, featuring my freshly rebuilt, modular main street of my village. The lights are unfortunately non-LEGO, but simple 3 mm diameter traditional light bulbs, but the sidewalk of each road baseplate hides a 36 stud long original 9V cable - the neighbouring baseplates are connected with the lamps, which have 2×4 electric plates on the bottom. The wires of the lamps are connected to the top of these 2×4 electric plates - but instead of soldering and modifying the expensive LEGO-parts, I fixed the wire ends on them with 1×2 electric plates. So they are easy to dismantle and be repaired, but it provides also a quick install of the street with working lights. LEGO did a great job with the 9V-system, in any aspect..

That looks like you've gone and updated 7777 to modern building techniques. Also very impressive. Then there you go, you're still using the classic road plates but blending them in seamlessly.

[Ashi Valkoinen]

9 hours ago, ivanlan9 said:

@Ashi Valkoinen Tell your girlfriend that's the best Lego lake I've ever seen.

Thanks, already forwarded your comment to her. :)

6 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

That looks like an amazing layout. If I recall correctly, you do open loop operations, with no complete circles of track, right? If so, that is all the more impressive.

There was a double track loop this time. Point-to-point traffic is the best I prefer, but turning around the trains requires some time, and the visitors - mostly the kids - may get quickly bored with realistic frequency of trains. So the last year we turned for the double track mainline, which forms a big oval, hosting two mainline stations (mine with the signalling and Máté Dömel's one), and there is always a single track branch line with two or three additional station, splitting from the mainline at my part or Máté's part. The branch line is a nice place forthe point-to-point and shunting traffic, and the mainline has a nice capacity to feature trains for the visitors.

We are also thinking about leaving the big oval and use return loops at the "end" of the mainline, like traditional model railroaders - this option might giving a better use of space at different locations where we are used to display our layout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Q27JYEC3Po

This video shows most of our trains and the parts of the layout as well. :)

Edited November 2, 2023 by Ashi Valkoinen

[Ashi Valkoinen]

I totally forgot about my second Stadler KISS unit - after finishing the Stadler Citylink for Stadler Trains Hungary I started to build and deliver the static KISS unit for the company.

I mage minor changes on Stadler's unit - and later, when I was building the interior lights to my KISS I applied the changes to my unit, too.

 

[dtomsen]

On 11/2/2023 at 2:00 AM, ivanlan9 said:

@Ashi Valkoinen Tell your girlfriend that's the best Lego lake I've ever seen.

I second that!

[Ashi Valkoinen]

So, on the 23th of December, 2023. this topic became 14 years old, and as time is going on, finally I'm getting closer to the dream I kept dreaming of since I started the LEGO Train hobby. Some years ago I started a new topic called "Waiting for 9V R104 switch - a case study of station geometry" about the developement of my LEGO train station with 9V R104 turnouts, as @michaelgale and his team made FX Tracks P40 switches available for everyone to buy, I started the last big rebuild of my LEGO train station. My goal was always a nicely renovated, Hungarian mainline station, with useful track connections and keeping it available for drivers who arrived with track powered trains. I drive no more 9V trains at all, but for me it was an important issue to grant backward compatibility to those, who owned many train at the times I started this hobby. And since no 9V switches were to buy until last autumn, my station had always genuie LEGO tracks, the R40 points (note: LEGO R40 refers to 40 studs radius, FX P40 refers to 40 studs length of the straight direction, but FX P40s' radius is close to R104).

The first photo shows the current, final layout of my station, inclusing two (left and right) switching yards. The upper layout is the new one, the bottom one is the last version of R40, which also featured some prototype FX P40 switches and one TrixBrix R104R on the left switching yard.

MLVK_RaabDonat_ACTUAL_FUTURE_2024-01-30_v2 by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

The last month was busy at my workplace and at home with the train station, I started the rebuild process on the 31st of December, ignoring some Happy New Year parties I was invited. :) I finished with the renovated modules on the 30th of January, so it took one month to complete.

I started with the "right" switching yard for first - the following photo shows the part close to the platforms. The building wasn't easy, since I needed to leave space for cables leading to the motors switching the points and enlighting the signals, and everything should kept modular so I can fit the whole 11 meters long stuff and the train to a single car I'm using to participate events.

wip_01_sm by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

And this is the "right" switching yard in full length - 8 motorised switches, which make connection between the two tracks mainline and the branch line connecting at my station to the main loop.

wip_02_sm by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

Left part of the "left" switching yard - this yard features 10 points and it is quite larger - I had no space to build it all together, but in two major parts. This following photo shows the easier part - switches' straight directions are paralel with stud grid so easier to motorise.

wip_08_sm by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

And this is the hard to build part of the "left" switching yard - the two switches placed in an angle compared to stud grid needed a big table to put together for ballasting. For this part I rented a place from a friend, because I have neither the tables not the space (and patience from girlfriend) here at home to house this.

wip_05_sm by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

And for the six tracks, the platform modules, starting with track 1 & 2:

wip_07_sm by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

track 3 & 4 (two, 72 studs long ÖBB cars for size reference):

wip_03_sm by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

and track 5 & 6:

wip_06_sm by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

And next Friday I'll see if I planned well, because there will be an event in Hungary and I can see, how all the modules fit to each other I've built last month!

All of the switches are now motorised and included in the software I created in SBrick Pro to make a fully working signalling and train detection for my station, it will be so easy now that we don't need to take care of switching the points to the right direction but the software will do it also making sure, no trains can collide if drivers play according to the appearing signal aspects!

[Vilhelm22]

A grand station and a grand masterpiece!  Very recognisable shape and style as well - I travelled from Bratislava to Budapest and then Budapest to Krakow and saw many of these on the way.  Can’t wait to see pictures of the full station in operation in the near future!

[Feuer Zug]

That's a huge setup. And you're wiring it for lights and motorization! I can't wait to see this in it's full build.

[zephyr1934]

The updated station is amazing! Would love to see it in person some day at a show