Garrcomm

My plan is to design two printed circuit boards (I've got some experience with designing those), that will actually fit in Lego. One PCB will be in a watchtower, just to put infrared LEDs in it. From that board there will be a two wire interface to the other board, the main board. The main PCB will be put in a power shed nearby the 9V tracks, so it can also provide power to the tracks. From the control shed, an ethernet cable can go to a local network.

So my metroliner is using 9V on the rails. Because I also wanted to experiment with the IR system, I modified the Load N' Haul Railroad locomotive to work with that, including lights in the front: To store the battery, I just used one of the cargo cars, and made both the battery and IR sensor a cargo item: I have restored all sets I had as far as possible, and only lack a few bricks which I will probably order next month or so. Besides that, a friend helped me getting an additional car, which is also shown in this movie: http://youtu.be/Zl76QZcmZGU Don't mind the mess on my table please

Today I received the final parts to get my metroliner running. I made a small video, demonstrating that it works :) http://youtu.be/KiMelu4bQPo

But isn't that a problem as well? I mean, if you have a fully charged battery with a capacity of 2000mAh and a fully charged battery of 400mAh, it'll be impossible to flatten it out; 2400mAh devided by two batteries would be 1400mAh per battery. But the 2nd battery can't be charged that much.

I'm looking forward to the bridge design. Also, I have to agree with eurotrash, can you reach the back? :)

Yea, I've looked at those, they're very nice. Currently I have to watch my budget, so my first step will be to complete what I have and get it running. But after that, I'm seriously going to see if I can extend the trains I have. By the way, another photo update, last weekend I finished the central station: Hopefully I find some time tonight to work a bit more on completing models. Just received a bricklink shipment, so I can complete the crossing, metroliner, and work a bit more on the red locomotive.

Thanks! The metroliner is very much finished, but I have a list of parts that I'm still lacking. Most difficult ones are the windows. I currently need one small and one big window. Also, I'm thinking of making another car, so it'll be 4 wagons. I really like the looks of it, and a longer train is pretty cool in my humble opinion. For this I need 10 large windows and 8 roof tiles. I already have 4 additional doors with stripes, and the other bricks are quite common.

Oh that sounds awesome!This is post 6, still counting. I'll upload some pictures again tonight, so I'll gain 10 posts this weekend I suppose ;)

Thanks! Well, so far I have the metroliner for 99% complete. I lack only a few bricks of which the windows are the most difficult to find I think. So that's no biggy. The other train is lacking a lot of parts for the locomotive. I think I have another box somewhere, but no idea where, which contained my tracks and the red locomotive. I already ordered some 9V tracks (my plan is to use only 9V metal tracks since it's using the same track width as the current LPF trains) and some parts for the red loc. Here is a picture of the metroliner completely assembled (a few replacement parts), and the crossing. My goal is to use a microcontroller, embed it with ethernet, put infrared transmitters (for the LPF trains) and a h-bridge motor driver (for the 9V tracks). I'm going to design my own PCB for that, and when it's done, I'll publish all documents, schematics, etc. online. It´ll be a difficult but interesting project I believe. But first I want to have 2 trains running; one on LPF and one on 9V.

Indeed very nice job on the grass. I can only imagine what a patience that would have cost! How do you drive your trains? I see a control panel with a few switches, but what's behind that?

Hi there! Lets start with a short introduction of myself. I already introduced myself here: http://www.eurobrick...showtopic=88886 Short story: I got inspired back into Lego after 20 years or so and used to have some Lego trains sets. A few weeks ago I went to my dad to visit his attic and find back my old stuff: Yes, that's a lot of dust and very old bricks. I already recognised some stuff while collecting these bricks, but to be able to rebuild my old sets, I had to sort the bricks. So a week later I had this: After sorting, I started building. Funny thing; I remembered which sets I had, roughly. I found 5 building plans online which recalled some parts of my memory. But I was wrong. After building 3 sets, I already found that I made a mistake and probably never had the Road N' Rail Repair (4525). but instead I had the Road and Rail Maintenance (4546). That mistake was easy to fix, getting other parts, building everything together, and voila; a week later I have this setup: At some places I've been creative, since I'm missing a few parts. Already ordered a lot at Bricklink (Regretfully I found that website :) ) so hopefully in a week or so I have both trains complete. When this is all completed, I'm going to look if I can upgrade everything to be used with the Lego Power Functions, and in a final step I want to be able to control the trains with my computer. I'm not sure if the progress of this project is something that's interesting enough to be posted on this forum, if so, please let me know, and I will use this thread for future updates :)

Ohh that's close. I live near the border with Terheijden.For now, I already built the three wagons of the Load N' Haul Railroad set, and by doing so I only lacked 5 bricks. Not that bad. Still have to do the other parts of the set (the locomotive, forklift and minifigures). I also designed an extra wagon for that set that can hold the LPF battery and infrared sensor, so I can use both trains simultaneously, but that's for a next stage; I'm going to order those bricks at the same time I'm going to complete all 5 sets.

Hi all, Lets introduce myself. I'm Stefan, married, 30 years old, and live in the Netherlands (Breda to be a bit more precise). A few weeks ago I started again with Lego, after I got the idea to interface Lego with small microcontrollers. For this cause I purchased some technic stuff and Lego Power Functions components. Because I kept on lacking bricks, I went to my father who still has loads of stuff from my childhood on his attic. Here I found a lot of dust combined with Lego. I collected this, took it home, and found out I got a few interesting pieces. Regretfully I used my teeth a lot on Lego when I was a child (especially on small plate bricks) some bricks are a bit damaged, and I didn't find any booklets with building instructions, but I actually found out that I had at least 5 sets for trains; Lego Metroliner (4558), Level Crossing (4539), Load N' Haul Railroad (4563), Metro Station (4554) and Road N' Rail Repair (4525). Although I'm missing some bricks, and others are damaged after more then 20 years, my first mission will be to build and complete those 5 sets, starting with both trains.