legotownlinz

The only problem is that BlueBrixx does not sell the tan and brown train windows separately. They are only available as part of sets.

An Indiana Jones 3 circus train would be a perfect successor for the Crocodile and fit perfectly to the rumored Indiana Jones theme. In such a historic/fictional context I'd say a circus train is acceptable.

There were no color issues, the colors were identical to Lego. The surface of BlueBrixx parts is slightly less glossy, which results in a small difference to new Lego bricks. I'd say the look of BlueBrixx parts is the same as those of used Lego parts. The problems I noticed is a greatly varying clutch power and wrong geometry of some plates which result in warping. And of course the wheel sets should be immediately disposed and replaced with Lego wheelsets (the old ones with steel axles) or ball bearing wheelsets from HA Bricks.

I bought the train windows in dark green for another project and the quality was good. For the open freight car presented at the top of this topic, the windows would be needed in redish brown, but they are not available from BlueBrixx yet and neither on BrickLink. I'm still looking for a source of thís part. Nearly all other parts are available from Webrick, were I ordered them but still waiting for the parcel to arrive. It is my goal to order only parts that are not available anywhere else from BlueBrixx, but otherwise avoid their low-quality parts.

Now it is official, no train set in 2021 :-( I wish you a happy new year. Let's hope 2022 will be better than 2021 (in general, not only regarding the trains).

Supported

I intended this to be a thread for everybody. The part count and part list be be found on Rebrickable. If quality matters, then don't buy from Bluebrixx. Unfortunately, not all of the parts are available from Lego. I'm still investigating how to get the bricks for more cars and let you know once it is done. I might try webrick.com, they seem to sell Gobricks bricks.

I'm think about ordering the parts somewhere else to build a for more of these cars.

I'm starting the thread with my experience with the BlueBrixx open freight car in eight-wide. I bought it because it looks great and it's cheap. The quality of the bricks is somewhere between low and medium. I had no issues with colors (only one 2x6 brick is a bit darker), but the clutch power varies greatly (sometimes too low, sometimes too high). The worst issue is the size of the plates, they are too large and warp when a second layer is added. This is how the result of the first step looks like: The quality of the wheel sets is extremely low, the friction is too high. A heavy eight-wide car needs better wheels so that the engine can pull several cars. At least my car did not derail. Other reviewers reported that the axles are sometimes too short. The building instructions are only available as pdf files and the model is stupidly built bottom-up. It would make more sense to add certain decoration parts last and build unstable parts as submodels. I redesigned the bogie to accomodate HA Bricks ball bearing wheel sets and made it one stud shorter to keep two cars closer together. The instructions (which offers a better building experience than the original instructions) can be found on Rebrickable. Let me know what you think about the bogie design. I added brick-built leaf-springs that are typically seen on such cars.

The email conversation was polite. I wrote pretty much the same there as here. Of course a discussion started with mostly complaints about the quality of BlueBrixx. I understand that they do not want 95% negative comments in their group. But blocking people only moves the discussion to groups outside their control. Not so smart. If you still read their Facebook group: Be aware that the comments there do not represent the true customer (dis)satisfaction. I paid 15 Euros to send it back. I guess BlueBrixx also believes their product is not defective. But a spring mechanism is part of any model railroad switch I've seen so far.

In the meantime I have sent the double switch back to BlueBrixx and got a refund. But they did not refund the shipping costs which would be required by EU laws in case of a defect ("Reklamation" in German). I could open a case in PayPal, but I don't think it is worth the troubles. I also asked why they still offer the product in their web store although they know it is defective. I got no answer, instead they blocked me on their Facebook group. Imho this is close to fraud, it looks like they hope that customers don't send it back because the shipping costs are 50% of the product's price. To sum up, I'm not only disappointed by the low quality of their products, but also by their business conduct.

Yeah, if there wouldn't have been the problem with the spring mechanism, I would have been perfectly happy. When I unpacked it, it was like "wow, great". But then I integrated it my layout and the trains derailed.

But it should be more robust and have a better haptic feedback (latching). The idea of the BrickTracks approach is good, but the actual implementation is disappointing.

42 Euro for a double crossover without flaws is a better deal: https://trixbrix.eu/en_US/p/Double-Crossover/58 As you can buy the same from TrixBrix off-the-shelf it makes no sense to print it yourself.

I have no plans to fix it or develop a workaround. I simply return this crap and keep buying the 3D-printed Trixbrix double crossover which works fine.