McWaffel

Eurobricks Citizen
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Posts posted by McWaffel

  2. Posted

    4 hours ago, monai said:

    It has been conceived for Harry Potter's audience, not for train one. With such a scale they could  make the rods leverages a bit more realistic, it is a pity, not to mention the ridiculous steam ducts. The only positive thing, from a railway point of view, are the new large wheels, XXL size, but only flanged, therefore people must by  from others the dumb ones!

    This might sound crazy, but what if you made a product that could cover BOTH fan bases?! 
     

    I know, it’s ridiculous to ask for a train that actually works 😂

  5. Posted

    33 minutes ago, XG BC said:

    for 469 dollars it better be made out of gold. what the hell dude? is it like apple where people just buy no matter the price?

    Every LEGO and Apple fanboy ever, basically. 

  6. Posted

    That price is extremely steep. I’m definitely going to wait for a discount or some sort of GWP/VIP Points Event before I buy one. But I’m very interested. I hope we’ll get a decent amount of cars with the engine 

  8. Posted

    I think the problem is not that trains are dead, but that the CITY theme is dead. Only garbage sets with overpriced tags. And the trains being in the CITY theme doesn’t help.

    If trains became their own line, it could really liven things up with extra carriages and accessories. You know, like they used to do 

  9. Posted

    1 hour ago, Maple said:

    I live in the USA and we don't really have stations unless you are in a state capital.

    That’s probably where LEGO‘s been getting their inspiration for train stations over the past few years :roflmao:

  10. Posted

    19 minutes ago, Tube Map Central said:

    Over on Ideas, Studgate doesn't look like a real station to me, a dome on a roof is just silly, imagine passing steam trains filling it up with smoke, so I will be giving it a miss

    …this is exactly how it used to be though. The London Underground even used steam engines for a while. And yes, it was as bad as you probably think. But it’s not unrealistic nor is it silly to have a dome roof over a train station in the steam era. Most European main train stations in big cities have domes like that from way back in the day. Cologne, Frankfurt, most London main train stations…

    personally, I would love a modular train station of any type, but that’s just wishful thinking. Realistically we’re getting another half-assed 60050 and that’s gonna be that.

  11. Posted

    1 hour ago, Tube Map Central said:

    Does anyone disagree that 4554 was the best ever TLG station? It was playable and stylish, is it too much to hope for something just as good?

    Hands down the best one ever made. FOUR large „station baseplates“?! Unheard of. 

  12. Posted

    I already have the P40 switches, track feeders and motor bogies/pickups on my list. I absolutely cannot wait to throw bags of money in your general direction. 
    After buying a bunch of straight track from your first batch back in March 2021, I am absolutely confident your future products are going to be amazing in functionality and quality. Good job so far and keep up the amazing work :classic::thumbup:

  13. Posted

    2 hours ago, RedBrick1 said:

    A hundred bucks seem to indicate a decently large train station set. I am hopefully optimistic! 

    I‘d be very surprised if it’s a decent station. It’s probably just insanely overpriced. Judging by the last few stations that were all pretty bad, it would truly be surprising to see a decent one

  19. Posted

    Fair warning: The content below contains permanently modifying retired LEGO pieces and thus is not suited for purists or the faint of heart.

    I have just completed phase 1 of 3 of my conversion to DCC, with the proof-of-concept for power pickup via 9V motor.

    I bought an old, broken 9V motor and gutted the electronics, cleaned it up and reassembled everything:

    yr6PqIO.jpg

    Then I snipped a 9V extension cable in half added connectors to it and put it on backward onto the exposed leads of the 9V motor:

    0gH9MVD.jpg

    Thus I had a power-pickup with connectors, nice and clean and no modifications to the connectors or housing required.

    Next, I had to modify the tender of my holiday train engine, because I intended to put the tender atop of the power pickup, as it has enough space to house cables and hide them later on. I extended the walls by two studs and reused some decoration pieces from the original bogie that it was sitting on, as those were no longer required:

    2rTXboR.jpg

    And finally it was time to put it all together. I also snipped off a PF cable end and added the same type of connectors to it, so I could connect it up to the PF motor without having to modify the PF motor. And finally, a test run:

    Link to the video of the running train

    The reason why I went with a split cable instead of 8886 is that this allows me to run a DCC decoder in between the 9V pickup and the PF motor. This will be phase 2 of 3. For this I need to buy all the DCC equipment, so it will take a few months from here on.

  21. Posted

    I keep hearing this „trains is a niche market“ thing, but have yet to see any actual proof of it. When I was a kid, everyone and their moms had a LEGO train. Like, literally 5/6 of my closest childhood friends had a 9V train set. 

    But I digress, this is tech talk after all. DCC isn’t really difficult to set up either. Most model train starter packs that come with DCC are super kid-friendly. You essentially start off with a central controller, and an app and that’s really it. Couple of cables and you’re good to go. You can buy trains equipped with decoders off the shelf. 
    I don’t necessarily think we need that level of convince in the LEGO world for DCC (although it would be very nice), but I would already be happy with having a motor with split power pickup and drive train. If I can also buy a cable for it so I don’t need to solder anything to metal parts that rest on plastic housings, I‘m golden.

  22. Posted

    That’s exactly the problem. NXT is way overpriced (not that LEGO isn’t overpriced generally) and is total garbage hardware, and doesn’t even integrate to the trains properly. It’s not even remotely a reasonable option. I‘m sure once FxBricks gets their motors and power supplies out, they have a real chance at dominating the LEGO train market, if they manage to get their product more visibility at various reseller stores.

    so yeah I agree with your NXT arguments 

  23. Posted

    If TLG wanted us to be able to use LEGO technology, they would integrate mindstorms/NXT or whatever their current lineup is called, into trains.

    They don’t, so we have to get third party stuff. Same with LEDs, by the way. And no, the PF LEDs they used to sell don’t count. Two LEDs with a cable for that price was criminal.

    Clearly we have no choice other than to use 3rd party equipment. And moreover, LEGO trains is arguably the one theme that uses the most 3rd party elements. Track, wheels, motors, energy storage etc…

  24. Posted

    7 hours ago, Pendra37 said:

    So where is the end? What is accepted within the boundaries of "Lego train" and what is too far?

    To be frank: who cares? 
    this isn’t a competition. We’re just here to have fun and enjoy a hobby. You want to build LEGO on top of O-gauge trains? Cool, do it. You want to modify 9V motors to do DCC? Also cool. 
     

    I don’t think anybody should draw lines anywhere in that regard. Everyone can do whatever they want. You need to know for yourself what is fun for you and what isn’t. Personally I want to use as much LEGO as possible, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. Even 3rd party LEGO-compatible stuff counts in as „LEGO“ for me in that regard

  25. Posted

    1 hour ago, Sunil766 said:

    That's 8886 isn't it? That would probably be more expensive though. 

    Oh, damn I didn’t realize that extension chord is 9V-compliant. I need to check how much each option would cost.

    @Toastie you can talk about the ESP stuff here too, I just created this thread specifically so we can talk about all sorts of tech, that we were doing in the 2022 trains topic before.

     

    52 minutes ago, Toastie said:

    I don't see why you want to wait for DCC (DC) motors - other than that they are different from regular DC motors of course!

    I simply don’t want to ruin pristine, working 9V motors ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

    I‘m just waiting for FxBricks to release theirs, because they supposedly will allow a split between pickup and drive power, so people can put DCC decoders in between. if I wanted to do that with my 9V motors, I would have to basically permanently modify them, which I don’t want to do