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The wheels on the locomotive have a lot of friction, it should work better if you replace them by regular train wheels.

Instead of buying the PF parts separately, I wonder if it might be more economical to buy complete train sets instead. If you buy an extra copy of the cargo train and/or the passenger train, then you'll get the PF parts that you want, but also more track, as well as train wheels, magnets, train base plates, etc., that you need if you want to build some MOC cars. Of course you'd end up with an excess of curved track and remote-controllers, but everything else in the train sets is pretty useful, and much of it fairly expensive (e.g. train wheels) if you have to buy it separately. Excess curved track used to fetch very little money on eBay, but now that lego stopped selling curved track separately, you can sell your excess curved track at a price that's worthwhile.

The 9V trains can run if you buy ME track, because the most expensive part of 9V track is the straight track, and with ME track you won't need to buy 9V straight. 9V switches usually sell for a reasonable price on eBay (at auction they often are around $15 a piece, sometimes less). Sometimes people will list them at a high price, but with patience you'll be able to get some at a decent price. A 9V cross track costs $20 on bricklink (I had several, but after the initial curiosity I never use them anymore. The reason is because I like running more than one train on the same loop, and with cross track it's just a matter of time before they crash). Another option is of course to sell your 9V track and motors. You can get quite a lot of $ for them, and it means less stuff to store.

Why not use them for sidings? That will also help to prevent them from sliding.

Instead of Enlighten track, I think you're much better off buying ME track. http://www.me-models.com/store/index.php This ME track is attractive for several reasons: Different track lengths (1/2, 1, 2, and they're planning to come out with 4 track length straights, the latter being the most economical option for straight track) and they also plan to bring out curves with a larger radius. If I didn't already have a large collection of 9V track, I'd probably sell my 9V and RC track, and buy ME only because it doesn't seem to cost more than RC track, has more options (larger radius curves) and can also run 9V trains.

At the moment, lego track is expensive ($20 for 8 straight plus some flex track), but apart from that, the current lego train selection is very good, especially Emerald Night, Maersk, and the cargo train. Many vintage sets have become expensive, so if I were you, I'd simply buy the new train sets, that's more cost effective. One exception I'd make is the hobby train box. There are 30 models (you can download the instructions) for the hobby train box; that's a great way to learn about building trains.

A very nice setup would be to have some custom metal wheels that can pick up power from the ME track, which would then be connected to an M, XL, or a PF-train motor. Don't know if anyone is working on that.

The wheels in the old 9V wheel sets also did not spin independently, and nevertheless did quite OK in curves. The newer 9V/RC train wheels sit looser on their metal axles, so this allows the two wheels to spin at different speeds, but this seems to make little difference in experiments. On straight track, the technic axle pins definitely have more friction than the technic 6 axles. I would recommend the technic-6 axles, not the pins (the Emerald Night has a couple of pins, I felt it was necessary to lubricate them to make them run more smoothly. No such problems with the axles). This is of course very important. You'll have tons of friction if you put the wheels on too tight. Legoluchlol: Did you try this? Let us know if it helped. If you hold the train upside down and spin the wheels, they should not stop spinning right away, they should spin freely for a couple of seconds.

Last year I had a layout at our local train show. It happened about 4 times that I saw the caboose on the long cargo train in front of the engine. My explanation was that somehow children are drawn to the caboose and just can't help touch it. It then decouples, and when the train goes around the loop, the caboose ends up in front of the engine. Not sure if my explanation was correct because I didn't actually see them grab the caboose, but I don't know how else to explain how the caboose kept coming off (this happened only on the outside loop, not on the inside loops). To get the caboose back where it's supposed to be, I'd simply back up the train the whole loop (that would take a while because the track was quite long). About MOC's, if it is specifically a lego show, then you should have MOC's, because your fellow lego fans have already seen the standard lego sets. But our local train show is not a lego show, practically none of the visitors knows which ones are MOC's and which ones are sets (most didn't even know that lego sells trains). Actually, it's nice to point at the Emerald Night (and this year, the Maersk train) and tell them that they can buy this one right now. Logistics is a big difficulty for a train show. How to get everything from A to B, how to set up everything on time (there is a limited amount of setup time), etc, this was not easy. In fact, I did not actually manage to set up everything on time, so I ended up with roads that had no vehicles on it, houses that were still sitting in the box, etc. You can see some footage of my 2010 show at (turn of the sound, the neighboring layout was producing "music" fit for a horror movie). At the end of that clip, you can see a kid trying to grab the engine (he would have gotten it if his parents hadn't been so quick). I've done this 2 years in a row now, and haven't lost a single lego piece. In the first year, in 2009, my Santa Fe locomotive crashed on the floor when I made a mistake with one of the switches. Some of the pieces went 15 feet away, but people brought all the pieces back to me so it's still 100% complete. Still, as a precaution I now run the faster trains on the inner loops, and the slower cargo trains on the outside loop. To the original poster: if the kids liked it, then you did a good job!

I looked at that webpage, and it showed that at the same voltage, the two motors have a very similar RPM.

I want to use my Maersk engine to pull about 8 train cars, so it'll need two motors, but I can't make up my mind between these two options: A) Two 9V train motors B) One 9V and one PF motor (electrically connected with extension wire 8886). The advantage of B is that the PF motor is perhaps a little bit stronger than the 9V motor (and cheaper too). A small drawback is that it'll make the front and rear wheels of the engine look different, wheels with metal on one truck but not on the other. But perhaps there are some other reasons to pick one option over the other? What would you do?

You can find adapters for all sorts of voltages. Chances are very good that somewhere in your house (probably already plugged into one of your outlets) you have an adapter that produces 6V, or 7.5V, or 9V, or etc. Any adapter that says: DC, with a voltage of 9V or lower, would be OK. Most adapters are DC, but check nevertheless (don't use AC). I also have a variable adapter (I don't remember where I bought it from, but it was less than $10) and it has two buttons, one to reverse polarity, and the other to choose from 1.5, 3, 4.5, 6, 7.5, 9 and 12V. Perfect for the M motor, it'll even allow you to change the speed.

They already have one this year (the cargo train comes with a crane to lift containers from the train to a truck). The Maersk train car, containers, and truck look really good with the crane from the cargo train set.

It doesn't take much time to take the motor off and replace it by unmotorized wheels.

Thanks. I've been trying to get a good complete picture of the glass cabinet, but haven't been able to get a good shot (the reflection of the flash in the glass messes up most of the pictures. I think I have to take the glass out if I want to get a full picture). This second diesel locomotive is not an MOC, it's a locomotive from the hobby train box (the first one is also from the hobby train box, with some modifications).

You can fit a 1x4 or a 1x6 plate on the back of each side wall, it fits when you put it in the second lowest position.

If you do not yet have PF parts and track, then you're better off buying the cargo train, because it comes with more track, and, it comes with a container crane that you can use to lift the Maersk containers from the train.

I do have a cargo train with about 15 cars, but it runs only once per year (when I have a layout at our local train show). At home there's no room for a layout where you can run this train. Even my passenger trains (most of them are 5 feet long) are too long to be practical in a typical layout. I'm currently building a new cargo train. I bought 3 copies of the Maersk train. One of the engines will be parked at the train shed (with its engine exposed, and a minifig trying to repair it). The other two engines, plus the 6 cargo cars from the 3 sets, plus another 3 MOC cargo cars, will make a cargo train of about 11 feet long. This new cargo train can also only run during the train show, for the other 364 days out of the year it'll be parked because I don't have room for a layout that can run that train.

I'm sure people on eBay are willing to split up sets, so that you can buy just the part that you want (the container cars, or just the engine).

Why double-motor all locos? Only the loco that you put in front of a very long train needs to have 2 motors. For a short train, it does not help to have a 2nd motor.

I think it will look out of place, because the lengths of these two engines differs significantly (and the colors don't match). The engine that'll look best behind the 10219 Maersk engine is simply another Maersk engine (and its cheaper too!). If I didn't already have a BNSF + TTX cars, I think I wouldn't buy them anymore unless I could get both at a good price (that would be hard to do). The TTX double stack container cars that fit well with the BNSF, those cars are a lot shorter than the 10219 container cars (the scale is 4-wide versus 6-wide, that's a big difference). So you can't put those cars in the same train either, TTX cars have to stay with the BNSF loco, and the 10219 cars stay with the 10219 loco.

Wonderful MOC, I wish I had a train station like that. I'm always amazed by these highly original MOC's. Usually all I do is to make small modifications to existing designs, e.g. see the picture in post #6 under "New Lego train fan(atic)". Even small modifications like that costs me a lot of time (change it, change it back, change it again, etc, two hours later and it still looks almost the same as what I started with).

The hobby train is my favorite train set, glad to see you are getting good use out of it too. I really like these two engines from the hobby train box: The second one is the same as in the instructions, but the first one has had a number of modifications (had to lower it two plates to make the height fit with the second loc).

There's almost no difference, except perhaps in resale value (check bricklink to see prices).

The nominal voltage on an alkaline battery is 1.5 when it is new. When it is half-empty it'll be about 1.25 volts, and when it is almost empty it will only output 1.0 volts. So during its lifetime, the voltage of an alkaline battery is about 1.25 on average. The rechargeable battery starts at about 1.2 volts, and stays there until it needs to be recharged. So its average voltage is 1.20 volts. The main difference, however, is what happens when you draw a lot of current (e.g. when you're pulling a long train through a curve). The alkaline batteries will see a much larger voltage drop than the rechargeable batteries. In other words, with alkaline batteries, the train slows down more in a curve than what you'd see with rechargeable batteries. So for high-drain applications, rechargeable batteries are better than regular batteries.