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I've cut some of my 9V cables, to make them longer by inserting more wire. The item you mentioned I usually just throw it away, you're not going to notice the difference.

Looks like you have a lot of damage to that motor. I had two bad motors, but I managed to combine them into 1 good motor (plus some spare parts, that could be put together to make a working motor, though not a very good one). With your motor, I'd probably not use it until I had some spare parts from another bad motor. It is possible to pull a huge train with just 1 motor, do this for a significant amount of time, and then overheat the motor that way. But I think there is another explanation that is much more likely. Many of these motors work great, but some of them need lubrication (I wonder if that has to do with the way the motor was stored for all these years?). The motors with lots of friction desperately need lubrication; otherwise, if you run them then they have to work hard to overcome this friction, and that's how they overheat. I've had motors that would not move until there was more than 6 volt on the track; after lubrication, they're already moving with less than 2 volts. This makes them run much less hot (which in turn means that I can safely pull a longer train).

More axles doesn't mean more resistance (more weight = more resistance).

Thanks for the detailed info. I agree that this is the best way to do it, it saves money on a reverser, and saves space as well. And, each time you want to double-power another locomotive, you'll end up saving time, just put in a regular and a reversed motor, connect, and off you go!

If you look at a piece of 9V track, you immediately see the reason: The layer of metal is very thin. This problem is much smaller on 12V track because the metal is thicker there. I do not yet have ME track, however, the pictures show the whole rail made out of metal, so the resistance should be much lower still.

But despite this view, they have nevertheless still managed to bring out beautiful train sets in recent years. I think lego is doing very well financially for a simple reason: Modular Houses. Who would have thought that you can offer a lego house for $150 and that it would sell like hot cakes? In any case, the modular-house success proves that there are plenty of people willing to pay over $100 for a toy, provided that it is beautiful. I think that that is the reason that lego decided to produce beautiful trains again, and we've seen three in a short time span Emerald Night, Maersk, Horizon Express.

I definitely want some of those. The ME straight track, can I place this directly on a baseplate without using any sleepers? (I want to use them for a 9V-tram, but my 9V track is not convenient for that because a tram-track should not have sleepers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:4trams_vienna.jpg and hiding the 9V track sleepers requires way too many lego pieces).

I'm almost certain that this will make the train run well again, but to be sure, let us know how it goes. If the track is clean (keep cleaning it until no more dirt shows up on the cloth that you use to clean with), and the bottom of the motor too, it may stutter for say five more laps, but after that, it should run perfectly, and not stall anywhere on the track anymore.

I agree, recent offerings have been very interesting. And it looks like these sets are selling, and not lingering. Bad experiences in the past may prevent them from selling individual cars and other goodies. However, if the trend "good trains --> good sales" continues, there's still reasonable hope that more track offerings or other goodies become available.

Prices of 9V track are not going up, they're a little bit lower now than they were a year ago. Both supply and demand are very small, so a big buyer/seller could push the prices quite a bit up/down.

For the 12V motor that has the same size as the 9V and PF motors, for that one, you can not pull the wheels off (only the center wheels come off). For the other wheels, if you pull them off, they won't go back on...

You need to clean the track, then it'll run again. An alcohol-based cleaner (or track cleaner from the hobby store) will do (it's not the dirt that you can see that blocks the electricity; it's the dirt that you can't see that causes the problems. So it doesn't matter if the track looks clean or not, what matters is that you cleaned it with the right kind of cleaner (regular household cleaners don't work)).

12V trains are pretty neat. Obviously the grey 12V track looks better than the blue 12V track. However, 12V blue track (including the remote controlled switches) is a lot cheaper than 12V grey track.

It looks like the only expensive part in there is the baseplate. You need 2, but unfortunately only 1 is for sale. To get a second one, you may have to buy a set like 21-2 but that's expensive. I'd probably just make something that looks similar but costs much less money. PS. After the record, are you going to put some of that blue track back on bricklink?

How are you planning to make banked track? In regular track, a single PF motor will produce enough speed to fly out of a curve. Definitely agree with that. Sava's steam trains are more spectacular than the Emerald Night. But I have yet to see an AFOL designed TGV train that beats the 10233! I think that one PF motor will be sufficient to pull two sets. If you add more cars, from a 3'rd set, you'll probably need a second motor. Most of my trains have 1 motor and are 5 feet long (the same length as two sets of 10233).

Quick question, has anyone ever measured the percentage of mechanical energy that gets lost for each gear in the gear-train? For instance, say the maximal torque of the M-motor is K. Now I insert a sequence of 10 gear-connections (say using only 16 tooth-gears). What would then be the maximal torque on the axle of the last gear?

I was using fairly old batteries when I wrote this. In a later post in that sequence I wrote that with fresh batteries, some friction is useful because with full batteries, the switching is so fast that it can bounce back. Initially I was also planning to build the ultimate 8043, but actually (unless you have the LA's from the first version of 8043 that was only sold for about a month or so) it works fine just as it is. Mine also works fine without lubrication (I am not against lubrication, have used it for other things). The only thing I think is worth changing is to hide the gears in the undercarriage a bit more (there was a post on that of someone that had hidden those gears very nicely). Actually, now that I think of it, the undercarriage could use some other changes too. The excavator is riding on top of those small wheels at the bottom, these wheels go through the grooves in the track, but the wheels are round and don't go smoothly through the grooves in the track, leading to a bumpy ride. There are other small wheels that fit better and should lead to smoother driving, but I don't know if it'll look as good. All in all, I think 8043 is the best technic set. I'd recommend building the B-model first (and also the C-model that someone posted instructions for a little while ago). The reason is that if you build the main model first, it's so nice that you don't want to take it apart, and that would be a pity because the B and C models are definitely worth building too.

More than a hundred replies in just a day. Clearly this is going to sell very well!

I always thought it was great that they would put a picture of a Jeep on the box without giving any instructions. If you want kids to learn, sometimes you just have to put a challenge in front of them: You have the pieces to make a cool Jeep, now go ahead and figure out how to do it! How does the steering work? Does it have a working gearbox? That's your call. It's a pity lego doesn't do that anymore (afraid of returned items I guess). A lot of modern sets are technically much more complicated than the old sets, but the instructions are so detailed that people can build them even if they have no understanding about how it works.

Mike, The Hobby Train was a very good replacement for individual sets. With so many models to choose from, it allowed us to build whichever was necessary: passenger cars, cargo, engines (and some creativity was needed to make good use of the remaining pieces). A follow-up on 10183 would be great.

Looking at the discussion here, it looks like the unwritten rules should just stay as they are: unwritten. Before lego came out with remote control, I took the electronic components out of an old broken remote-control toy car car and used them in a lego model. I thought that was a pretty creative way to use the available components. From a purist point of view, I suppose that model was not OK at the time. But just a few years later, lego came out with remote control components, so now you can make the exact same thing with lego components. Here is a question though for lego purists: The train wheels in the train sets, when they are new, they roll very well, with very little friction (meaning: you can pull a long train with relatively little effort). However, after some time, due to a design flaw, the wheels start rubbing against the wheel holder, and this increases friction. But you can make them run as well as new wheels by cutting away a small part of the plastic in the wheel holder. Would that still be an acceptable move? You can't see the difference (unless you pick the train off the track and look underneath). Functionally, what it does is make an older wheelset behave as well as a new (not-yet-modified) wheelset. Instead of cutting, one could buy new wheelsets from lego, but they're expensive, and it does not take very long before they start to rub too.

There's one other way to do it that would also be quite fair: First, player 1 does the obstacle course. Then, player 2. Then, player 2 again. Then, player 1 again. Now take the average running time of each player. (PS. I would expect the speed to drop about 1% for every 3 minutes of running).

This is not quite true, when fully charged, it runs a bit faster (you might not notice the difference, but you can measure it; e.g., measure the time it takes to lift a fully extended arm from the bottom to the top). But the voltage-difference between near-full and near-empty is a lot smaller than with alkalines (1.4 --> 1.2 volt, instead of 1.6 --> 1.0 volt). If the game is supposed to be fair, you should each start with identical batteries. The simplest way to do that is to fully charge them before each player starts.

I don't think that this would cause any problems, as long as the motors are electrically connected.

One L motor produces roughly the same speed and torque as two M motors. So if you have an L motor, that'd make things a whole lot easier...