locoworks

does it smell of urine too??

why not power a carriage instead with smaller wheels?? or maybe fit a gearbox to the loco?

i play with 5 inch gauge stuff ( not lego, i wish they would scale up the technic stuff to 'dublo' size ) and for the coning on wheels to work you can only use gentle curves ( like full size stuff ) the coning effectively makes the outer wheel with its flange to the railside slightly bigger in diameter than the inner wheel running on the smaller end of the cone so it wants to turn. trains 'squeal' at slow speeds when the radius is too tight for the coning to work. with the radius of lego curves and the gauge used the difference in distance on each rail in the corners is VERY signifficant and needs a lot of slipping to allow the wheels to take the corners. with O rings all round slipping is hard to achieve and the motor struggles.

i would suggest that O rings are only fitted on ONE side of a loco, this means that on the corners where really bthe wheels should rotate at different speeds the non O ring side is free to skid easily. this will prevent the strains associated with O rings on both sides. ideally eack driving axle should have a diff in the middle and then O rings all round would be OK.

the boiler has the protypical taper so i imagine it is not lego underneath but a former to give the 'correct' shape. i'm not knocking it, or any of the others in the photo, they look like their protoype originals and are very impressive. i remember the good old days when the wheels came out that had those big red plastic centres with a brass pin to push into the special grey blocks. these days there at that many 'special' pieces it is like playmobil with warts..

i don't think so, it may be nice for you , and me to be honest because i was bought up on lego and hornby and scalextric. but many/most model railroaders are looking for 'scale' models. the detail and accuracy is getting better and better. i don't see lego suddenly coming up with a range of track like peco OO and a range of accurate looking trains. to get a reasonable accurate loco would need lots of special parts which isn't going to happen. as said elsewhere the train is part of the city rather than its own entity despite having its own 'theme'. lego won't ever be competing with model railway producers. there may be some novelty interest, but very few will stop 'proper' railway modelling for lego trains.

yep

i have the new passenger set, and when it trys to get above speed step 4 on the loop of track the coaches get left behind by the drive unit!! is this the norm? i can't believe that effectively 2 coaches is too much for the couplings to have enough power to stay coupled. also, do the new couplings connect to the swivelly ones on the 9v trains?? and if not is the coupling buffer unit a direct swap onto the older stock??

while i would personally like to see LOTR in lego, i think as lego is generally aimed at the younger market that reasonably accurate orcs may be a little scary to be sold to little kids. it would be like lego vampires and werewolves, great for older folks, but not what i think lego would want to be associated with. a lego scooby doo range would be nice, the monsters are not so scary as they are cartoon based. a lego mystery machine would look well on the mantle piece.

the click to curved or straight is a great idea

perhaps a larger radius would help, but if you are building a 'permanent' track on a dedicated baseboard you will be able to make use of the small CSK hole in each flexi section. i am guessing this is to allow the user to screw the tracks into place to hold the curves rigid??? for the less permanent layout on a solid surface ( not on the carpet ) i would expect 'blu-tak' under each section to hold things firmly enough??

ok, i didn't realise the magnet could turn!! i thought it was fixed N-S horizontally so from above the same pole was always on the same side...

totally awesome.

true enough, but my trains from back then are 9 volts so in the abscence of insulated joints and auto reversers reverse loops are not an option. one of the benefits of the battery powered range. i will have to be careful about what runs where when i mix the sets together. one thing that put me off the trains back then was that on the points the power bogie nearly always wanted to climb the frog as if the bogie was out of gauge, OR the check rail moulding was too thin. i never persued a cure back then. did anyone else have this issue?? and if so what was the fix??

to keep costs down they could sell unpowered sets, and even sets without track. it would be nice to just buy what you wanted without having to double up on curved track you have no use for once you are into you third or fourth set. all you want is switches/points and straights.

what he said, this will because it will have a cheap low frequency speed controller. the same could be found in much older 'normal' train sets running DCC. there are now so called 'silent drives' where the power is chopped at a much higher frequency and so the motor doesn't get to sing to you at slow speeds.

HI all, newby with first question. out the box this loco ( from the new HP sets ) looks awful even with the tender because it has two coach bogies!! has anyone sussed a good looking conversion to the proper wheel configuration ( the EN loco looks close ) and are there any online tutorials??