legotownlinz

I've already added a second motor to the passenger train, now I did the same with the cargo train engine. It required a different approach. The passenger train has two engines with two battery boxes, thus changing the polarity of the second motor is sufficient. However, the cargo train engine has a single battery box that I wanted to connect to two motors. Although there are two outputs, the remote control does not allow to control both outputs together, so the buttons of channel A and B would always have to be pressed together, which is not a satisfying solution. I'm using the original remote control, thus an app that controls both channel together wasn't a solution either. What I did was disabling channel B inside the battery box and internally connect it to channel A with reversed polarity. What you need: Torx T6 screwdriver Small soldering iron Very thin wire Sharp knife A Powered Up train motor Some Lego bricks to adapt the second bogie First of all, open the battery box. I've marked the locations of the four screws with circles in the image below. Then remove the printed circuit board (PCB) by lifting it while pressing with a screwdriver on the spot marked by the arrow. The next images shows the bottom side of the PCB. There is an IC labeled LB1836. This is the motor driver IC. Pins IN/OUT 1/2 are used for channel B, pins IN/OUT 3/4 for channel A. To disable channel B, OUT 1 (pin 3) and OUT 2 (pin 5) must be disconnected from the PCB. I used a knife to cut through the pins and the soldering iron to remove the remains of the pins. Then I've connected pins 1 and 2 of the Powered Up connectors together. I recommend to place the wires on the right edge of the PCB. When placed as shown on the image, the battery box cannot be closed properly. Connection between pin 1 - pin 1 and pin 2 - pin 2: Motors move in same direction Connection between pin 1 - pin 2 and pin 2 - pin 1: Motors move in opposite direction (shown in image) The Powered Up connector pinout, taken from here: Finally, assemble the battery box, modify the second bogie to match the first one and enjoy an engine with double traction.

Two reason: First, it was easier to do. I just had to cut and remove two pins of the LB1836. When connecting the two inputs as you suggested, you would have to disconnect one from the microcontroller. Second, I originally planned to connect LEDs to the second output (but have not done it yet, mainly because it would require ugly wiring). My approach has an issue: At high speeds, the LED of the battery box starts blinking. I've not figured out why it happens yet. I might try your approach for my next engine to, maybe that avoids the issue.

Warning: If you dislike modifying or gluing bricks, you should stop reading at this point. The Wiener Linien offer several Lego models in their fan shop, including the tramway E1 and the trailer. They are made by DerKlassiker. A pic of the real tramway is available at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/30_Stammersdorf.jpg/2560px-30_Stammersdorf.jpg. There are three issues with these models, the second one being severe if you want to run it on your layout: They are unstable, which is fine for display, but not for playing. It uses part 6092658 (bearing element 2x2) and a 1x1 brick with knobs together with small train wheels. The distance between ground and the bearing element is not large enough for the tramway to run over switches. It gets stuck. The wheels are rough-running and jarring. A single motor is barely able to move the tramway. Thus I modified the model a little bit. First, I removed 1.6 mm (half of a plate height) from the bottom of the bearing elements and the 1x1 bricks using a CNC mill (Stepcraft 600). You can see a the milling here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCAWKObQn_U. Below are the modified parts: To make the model robust enough for playing I glued together all parts shown below: The drawbar between the tramway and its trailer is to high to pass switches, too. Fortunately, this can be fixed be removing the bottom plate. To remain stability, I used glue again: I've used a special glue for ABS plastic: To make the tramway run smooth, I used the machine grease shown below. According to the instructions it is suitable for plastic. The results are really stunning the, a single motor is enough, even for inclines and the noise is pleasant: Btw, the grease is also highly recommend for the Lego 60097 City Center's tramway, which has the same wheel issues. I've used it on all my models with small train wheels.

Take a look at this amazing train station by Bricky_Brick: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/8345a6f7-adf4-4864-bae0-540717177c84

If it's not a train then I'm disappointed. I would prefer a re-release of the Emerald Night. It would be the perfect opportunity to push the Powered Up system like the original Emerald Night demonstrated the possibilities of PowerFunctions. It's hard to understand that TLG doesn't recognize the potential of trains in the AFOL market. It's only trains and Technic models that have play value for adults. At least I neither play with cars, buildings nor minifigs, I just arrange them in my city layout. It's the trains that are fun to play with, often together with friends. Any train fan sooner or later spends money on city-related sets to complement the train layout, so even if the sales of the train sets is average, the long term effect on sales is huge.

I love your station!

I've already written an article on how to change the polarity of PowerFunction train motors. This is a follow-up on how to do it with the new Powered Up motors. From the outside, the old and new motors look very similar. Inside, a printed circuit board (PCB) has been added, due to the increased complexity of the Powered Up system. Fortunately, it is not necessary to understand how Powered Up works in detail, because there are still two leads that directly drive the motor. We just have to swap these leads. This is easier compared to the PowerFunctions motor because it can be done without removing the PCB or motor from the housing. Lets start. What you need: Powered Up train motor Soldering iron Torx T6 screwdriver Instructions: Remove all four screws at the bottom of the motor and open the motor housing. Unsolder the leads labelled M1 and M2 from the PCB. Swap the leads and solder them to the PCB again. Close and screw down the housing. Motor after opening the housing: Motor with unsoldered leads M1 and M2:

When I play with my trains, I don't want to setup a server that handles all those things and I want my trains to be compatible with any remote or any app. I'm not even sure if your suggested solution would work for me because I have a rather large layout, too large to keep the connection without the remote following the train. Would it be possible to setup a BLE mesh with multiple transmitters? Would the handover to another transmitter work seamlessly?

It should be approximately double. Not really. I tested it a few minutes and noticed that the battery box starts blinking at higher speeds. I think that means the batteries are empty, but they are fresh. I have not checked yet if that also occurs with an unmodified box and two motors. I measured the current drawn by a single motor at highest speed. It is between 0.1 (idle) and 0.5 (motor blocking) A. In practice, the motors never block because there is not enough traction between wheels and rails. Two motors stay below the absolute maximum rating of 1 A and the motor driver IC has overtemperature protection.

I'd recommend a vacuum cleaner to clear up after shows. Actually I'm using a small vacuum cleaner very often to move small bricks from one box to another.

Regarding safety, NiMh cells are safer than LiIon. LiIon cells can explode or overheat when not loaded correctly or when they are defective. When handled with care and charged within the specification, both types are safe. Regarding capacity, LiIon technology is superior to NiMh, it offer more capacity per volume and more capacity per weight. Cylindric cells are not ideal for the Lego batterie box, lots of volume is wasted. Prismatic LiIon cells are available and used in most devices and battery packs, but solitary cells are rarely sold to end users because of the safety issues when used without protective circuits. The low weight of LiIon cells is an advantage for most applications. For Lego trains it isn't. The more weight, the better the traction. I'm using the 9V LiIon block below for many devices, but only for those made for 9V blocks, not for Lego trains: The price is 15 Euros. A pack of Eneloops costs 17 Euros. 1 and 1/2 pack are required to get six cells, resulting in total costs of 25.5 Euros. Thus, Eneloops are more expensive, but they offer twice the capacity. It should be noted that other brands of AAA rechargable batteries are available for less than 10 Euros.

Unless most other batteries, the Eneloop label specified the MINIMUM capacity, which is 930 mAh. So the actual capacity of a new Eneloop batterie should be well above 1000 mAh. Obviously, you can't completely discharge the batteries. On the one hand, they might get damaged if fully discharged, on the other hand, the train's speed would be too low or it wouldn't move at all. However, NiMH batteries can be used until the speed decreased significantly while the Lego LiIon battery turns off automatically before the train gets noticeable slower, thus you can't use all of its capacity.

I've never had any problems charging NiMH batteries. NiMH batteries are easy to load compared to LiIon. I'm not using a Panasonic charger but a charger from ELV that is at least 10 years old.

I'm using Panasonic Eneloop Pro rechargeable batteries. They have 950 mAh. With your LiIon solution, you end up with only 350 mAh or 650 mAh. I think it makes no sense to modify the battery holder unless you get significantly more than 1000 mAh.

I've noticed your software uses WinForms. You should consider to migrate your code to XAML/WPF as soon as possible. It would be lots of work once you've created many dialogs. For a modern, appealing UI, you'll definitely need XAML. I know that the first steps with XAML can be frustrating, but spending a few hours learning XAML will save you lots of time working around the limitations of WinForms later on.

It's Creator Expert and it's a train. You questions cannot be answered without taking the Winter Holiday Train into account. It's very likely that Lego will not consider a new train until the Winter Holiday Train is retired.

The last one was 10254 Winter Holiday Train, which is still on sale. Thus, Creator Expert trains are not finished.

But shouldn't be a re-release be profitable even at low quantities? There are no costs to design the model, even the instructions already exist. I wish they did a re-release every few month, available for a limited time in the web store only. Lego produces so many sets, it can't be a big deal to produce some re-releases.

Putting my two cents in, the Corner Garage is average. Too colorful, too ragged. The style reminds me of a blown-up Creator 3-in-1 building. If images of the Corner Garage would have leaked, I would have bet that it's fake, pics of an average MOC.

Right, at the moment BrickTracks is known by a few fans only. But the potential is greater. The stores were I buy Lego have some third party bricks. They may be willing to sell BrickTracks products, too.

Nice concept, but nothing the average Lego fan will do and definitely nothing for coaster to base his business on. Coaster does molded tracks, not 3D printed one. Molding is economic for large quantities only. A few LUGs and power users buying 9V tracks is not enough. And once these customers have bought the track they need, no more sales will happen. Plastic tracks are appealing for millions of Lego customers.

This one looks amazing:

I thought about writing an alternative firmware for exactly the same reasons plus to support acceleration/deceleration ramps and to swap the direction in software instead of changing the motor polarity with the soldering iron. I hope that Lego offers a few of these features in the official firmware so I'll wait at least for the next wave of Powered Up products before I start such a project. Overall, the official firmware is not too bad, the handsets allow to pair each train with each handset and trains with two motors are supported, too.

Sure. Lego could add an option in their firmware.

Reliability, simplicity. My experience with H0 and N model trains is that power from the rails is often unreliable. My Lego trains never failed. Terminal loops and wyes are difficult with 9V tracks and impossible without using third party electronics. Plastic tracks allow easy control of multiple trains.