greenmtvince

I had the 6687 Turbo Prop I, 1974 Flyercracker USA, 6375 Trans Air Carrier, and 6657 Fire Patrol Copter at my 6396 International Jetport that was protected by a 6440 Jetport Fire Squad. Never got the airport monorail though... And more recently my family and fiance will buy me the creator aircraft for birthdays, christmas, fun, etc. Despite the collection of aircraft, my love has always been the trains. The other pilots always think there's something wrong with a pilot that dreams of being an locomotive engineer.

As a helicopter pilot I actually love this topic and had the 6357 Stunt Copter and Truck as a kid. In reference to real world -most helicopters are flown to wherever they need to go from the day they roll off the factory assembly line. In the US however, more than once I've seen a Bell 206, or similar single engine helicopter modified for crop dusting rolling down the road on the back of a flatbed with it's support equipment. Helicopters being very expensive to operate, and I can't imagine crop dusting being a highly profitable venture, transporting the aircraft long distances rather than flying it saves a tremendous amount of money.

Stickers on. It makes the model look as intended, and in many cases adds an element of realism like many rolling stock brandished with railway logos and identification numbers. I tend to collect TLC designed models and like to complete them as designed and buy seperate parts for MOCs which I also decorate. If I really need that part for something else later I can usually flip brick around or put the sticker back on the transfer sheet at some loss of quality. Slightly off topic, one of the things I never understood about many AFOLs is their insistance on more printed parts and that stickers were this horrible thing that lego is doing to jip the consumer out of a quality product. I think printed parts are terrible and truly limit rebuilding and resale possibilities. I don't ever shop in the decorated categories on bricklink. My latest printed part gripe: The dark green 2x4 curved slopes on the emerald night. They would've made great parts I could use countless other places and would've justified buying a parts only EN if it weren't for that gold trim on the side. I say more stickers, save the printing for the minifigs!

Regards to the genetic oddity of the kid, perhaps it's a designer in joke: the kid is the proverbial "red-headed stepchild."

I actually think the grey plates make great looking ballast and I prefer that to the mottled look of many other lego layouts ballast beds with white, black, light and dark greys. To me the differences in color of stones is below the resolution of a 1x1 plate and the shading difference offered by only 4 tones.

As promised, here's the pics of my Alco S4 and some of the mods. It's based on this prototype, CCRR's 105. Here's the locomotive in 6 wide. I feel a bit longer in 7-wide would've looked better, but I don't have the space here. Selective compression and Lego's 1:48 'Heroic' scale won. The roof simply lifts off to access the battery compartment. Kind of a dark shot, but you can see the wiring packed in under where the 9V battery goes. Up in the cab is my stripped down IR reciever. I modded the sensor itself to extend off the circuit board, so I could keep the circuit board hidden, but the sensor up in LOS of the remote. Initially I did a bunch of engineering calculations to figure out motor torque at max battery voltage, how much torque I'd need at the wheels to move three cars at a given speed, and back calculated the right gear ratio. Then I built a prototype in LDD. Unfortunately the design was pretty loose and lost a lot of power, so this gearing mechanism was the comprimise with what I had to work with. It still moves 3 cars according to spec, but I'm having traction trouble on turns and points. I'll note that there's still some torque steering of the truck, but it's not enough to derail the train or cause any problems. Here's the truck transmission. Inspired by the article on PF trucks on bricklink. And finally a shot of 105 in action spotting an ACF 3-bay covered hopper to the rail to truck transfer on Mulberry Street in Claremont, NH. An empty CN/DWP bulkhead flat at Lavalley Building Supply waits for transfer back to the NECR at Claremont Jct.

You're right about reversing the wires as Mark pointed out in his post. I forgot that the extension wire was delivering power on the middle wires for accessories. I also seemed to miss URL in my above post, but this is the tutorial I meant to link. In any case, the 9V battery works like a charm. I just finished wiring tonight and was driving the train up and down the tracks. Turning the lights on and off. I'll post some pics soon. I'm really curious to see your take on a similar switcher. The problem I'm having at the moment is this light switcher has no traction on the RC rails and no place to put any sort of weight. It'll move several cars on a straightaway, but starts spinning out when they hit a curve or the powered trucks go over switches. But like I said, I'm using an M motor and geared truck, so the RC motor may give you different results. In the meantime, I'm working on a fix. It sure wasn't. I thought I'd killed my reciever when I accidently sodered the wrong leads on and tested it. Fortunately, whatever happened reset and there appears to be no permanent damage.

EDIT: Got my item numbers confused 8881 vs new train battery box. 8881 uses 6 AA batteries, the new train box uses 6 AAA batteries. Both AA and AAA batteries should have a voltage rating between 1.2 and 1.5 volts each depending on the chemistry yielding a total of 7.2 - 9 Volts total. This affects what equipment you can use and the max rpms of the equipment. AAA have a capacity of 500-1200mAh, again depending on the chemistry. The total capacity is the same if you have 1 or 6 in a battery box. This is how long the battery will last. The rechargeable ones will tend to be on the lower end while the disposable ones will be on the higher end. AA batteries are usually 1500-3000mAh A single 9V rechargeable LiPo battery like I use is about 500mAh. I think I read that the Lego Rechargeable battery box is 1050mAh but I can't find the source.

Yes. You would just need to connect the motor to the red or blue connector on the IR reciever with a Power Functions Extension Wire with the PF end on the IR reciever and the 9V end on the motor. Connect the IR reciever to anotherPower Functions Extension Wire's PR connector end. Then connect the Extension Wire's old 9V end to the leads on the top of the old 9V battery box. Here's an example of someone driving a Power Functions motor off of a 9V battery without the box. I'm currently using this method with a PF Medium Motor in my Alco S4. But I've stripped down a lot of the Powerfunctions parts to make it fit in the small space I have. I'll have pictures soon.

Yes please post them! I'm working on a small switching layout and I was going to use kadee couplers for all the uncoupling I'd have to do. Please also tell us the model of kadee coupler you picked since I'm having trouble deciding.

This set is great, because the building and walkbridge are something I could do without (and at the least the tower, has been in every level crossing set since they started making trains) I haven't seen anything like that in North America, Japan's JR or Finland's VR. Straight Track, the crossing itself, and MOW vehicles are something I can always use, and in multiples. Best of all the crossing kits!

Thanks for the look at this set! I'm actually looking forward to this station, and it's one of the first train kits I've been looking forward to in a long time. It's too bad the passenger train to accompany this one is somewhat lackluster.

Ah, brilliant! I should've posted to the topic you started! I'll know better to use the search next time. I love the little diesel switchers of yours and Buchi!. Especially his technique of using the rechargeable motor. I may have to build one myself now. I imagine your switcher corners just fine on the normal radius track, I'm wondering how it does on the minecart track. To me it looks like you can't complete a full 4 wide turn with the 12V curves, like you'd end up with gaps in the outer rail. Although if you're setting up a shelf switcher this isn't really an issue (but I guess switching is.) I'm glad to see others have been bitten by the narrow gauge bug.

With the release of the Indiana Jones track, I was considering a foray into the world of narrow gauge model railroading. Before getting myself too heavily invested in the idea I just had a couple questions I was hoping folks here could help me out with. 1) What's the radius of the Temple of Doom minecart track? 2) Is it in the newest version of BlueBrick? I'm behind a firewall and won't be able to download the update for a few days. 3) Can you put a pair of normal diameter flanged wheels or medium BBB Flanged drivers together in a way that would still power a 6 wide 0-4-0 through a turn or is the radius so tight I need to use minecart wheels or articulated trucks? 4) Can the old 4.5/12V track be used for straghts or do the flanges present a problem? If there's a good answer to #3 I'm going to try to cram a PF M Motor, 9V Battery, and IR reciever into a 6-wide 0-4-0T Porter and do a little logging or mining railroad.

I'm a fan of the kadee coupler solution. I think a pair of Kadee O scale cost the same as a pair of sealed magnet train buffers, but allows us to do both shunting and more accurately model north american prototypes. I'll be using those for my micro layout I'm building now since it's a 5x2 baseplate layout for just switching games. Here's some Lugnet threads that talk about it: http://news.lugnet.com/trains/?n=29970&t=i&v=a http://news.lugnet.com/trains/?n=25596&t=i&v=a This would be my kadee coupler pick: http://www.kadee.com/htmbord/page806.htm As far as purity goes, I think there's some exceptions that can be made out of necessity. There's plenty of examples out there such as using Brickarms supplements to model militaria, or prior to the Emerald Night, using BBB wheels for steam locomotives.