legoman666

Been working on these on and off for a while. Finally completed a set of 5. These are scaled properly for 0.7studs/ft. The opening for the containers is 6 studs wide, which works out to be 8.5', which is pretty close to the real thing. I made a few different length containers, some 53' (37 studs), some 40' (28 studs), and some 20' (14 studs). I printed & cut the decals at home on vinyl with a Roland BN-20. You'll notice that the 53' and 40' length markings on the side of the well are in fact accurately scaled. I'd like to open up the offer to print decals for other train fans as well. I know a lot of us have a hard time finding a place to do one offs for reasonable prices. I can do white ink on to clear vinyl, I can cut out text/logos, and basically anything else. For more information please send me an email at legoman666@gmail.com. I can't do it for free, but I think my prices are reasonable.

I've been planning a SD70ACe in my head for a while now. You are encouraging me to actually start.

Thanks! They can't do R40. R56 and up are all good though. Here's the two shots you wanted. They are quite stiff, no sagging.

Glue it.

Very nicely done. Love the side cab windows, the front ones look a little too tall though. Nice detailing on the trucks. My 7 wide sd40s have the same wheel spacing and also do not go through switches.

I cut holes underneath mine to light them up. I didn't bother with the throw itself, but I considered drilling through the pin and snaking a wire through. The official Lego ones only activate the curved section when the switch is thrown. I permanently wired mine so both the straight and curve are always live.

Man..... awesome job. Making me jealous. I need to rebuild my BNSF ES44, too fragile. I really want an excuse to do the yellow, orange, dark green livery, but all of their new locomotives have black and I want to make a SD70ACe. Decisions decisions.

Want

I think the new style axles are 0.05mm bigger. I measured a bunch with calipers. The old style were consistently 1.95mm ish, whereas the new ones are 2.00mm ish. The bearing hole is 2mm, so if there's any positive variance on the axle size, it isn't going to fit. The older style are better anyway, the wheels don't just fall off.

Pretty slick! I've done a couple of those myself, 1 Canadian National, 1 Vale, 1 Chessie, and 1 Western Maryland.

Have you considered putting some ball bearings on your rolling stock? :)

Fantastic, nice color choice. Any idea on limits of how much it can haul?

What if you want to put a switch right before a turn? You can't, there will be a 1/2 straight in the way. Thats what i mean by mess up geometry.

Pretty good attempt! My only gripe is that American trains don't have buffers.

I've connected drive wheels through connecting rods before. Not a good time. When one wheel wants to slip or go faster, the connecting rods bend and bind. They were even properly quartered. I ended up connecting the pair of drive axles with bevel gears inside the bogie. Much smoother. 2L motors should be able to pull an absurd amount of cars. I've got locomotives with 2 L's that can pull about 30' of stock.

I'll need to tinker with one, I've never messed with pulse motors or servos before.

I recommend doing this to eliminate the need for the adapter pieces.

What sort of signal/voltage is the motor expecting? I'm working on my own level crossing automation and would love to integrate the motor in with my own lights and sound and sensors.

Sounds cool, but alas, I have almost no stock vintage trains. The ones I do have have had many of their essentials stolen (wheels.... Couplings.... Windows).

clever use of the pistol, did it come in black?

Not a fan of the adapter pieces. Clutch strength is the same as their plastic stuff: awful. I glued mine together.

They're on shapeways! I ordered and assembled them myself, had to buy the rail separate and wire it up. They do not work well with 9v motors with the code 100 rail. The real things won't use code 100 though.

My recent several diesels have had 9 or 11 studs between axles (ignoring the center axle) and they cannot reliably go through standard switches.

The coaches look about 1-2 plates too tall. (especially with the curved under-carriage) Are they true to scale?