Commander Wolf

Thank you, that is exactly what I am looking for!

This is a really nice model. What is the scale?

For those of you who have taken the 12v motor apart, how do you open the case? It doesn't seem to have any of the tabs of the 9v motor; do you just have to cut around the entire edge?

Thanks! Are you in BayLUG?

Been a while for this thread, dumping a couple more larger/themed modules: Auto Dozer and Slide and Spin:

How did you remove the metal gear from the old motor and/or install it on the new motor? Just brute force? EDIT: Also, the 4.5v motor is pretty easy to disassemble since it has screws: does anyone know of a guide for dismantling the 12v motor?

Dat rotary phone

The body is very nice. I think you could make nicer trucks if you used Technic axles and the cross-axle wheels.

Clever containers. I did a double take

If you are using modern plastic track, especially R40, I think it's sufficiently strong to secure only the ends and let the curved section "float" on tiles.

Always depends on implementation, but I think in general cranks should be fine. I have at least one fairly heavy duty engine with one powered axle and the rest cranked, and I have not had any problem with the cranks.

Probably just that the rigid wheelbase is too long to take R40 switches cleanly. In my experience doing a rigid F-B-F wheelbase with XLs (single X) is already pushing it.

Thanks zephyr, appreciate your thought as always. I'm starting to get really torn on the R40 issue. With wide radius being used more often I don't know if I should care that stuff doesn't work on R40 anymore. I resist because it feels strongly non-purist to me (and I'm strongly purist when it comes to LEGO), but it does block a handful of bigger designs I like (say PRR Q2 or 80' passenger cars), though not too many. Which leads me to this next point: I'm a huge fan of the turbine engines (M1, John Henry, UP 1-75), steam and gas but they are all huge and would look silly on R40, though something I would start considering making to run on wider radius. The good part about the various turbines is that they don't have large drivers so it's easier to make something that will still work on R40 even if it looks silly. In fact I started working on the UP 8080 experimental GTEL, but never really got that far:

There's actually a lot of wide radius footage in the video, just most of it is R56... what you're looking for is probably these timestamps for R120: https://youtu.be/CwOQEIaV2QA?t=75 https://youtu.be/CwOQEIaV2QA?t=630

Hello all, bit of a necro here, but I finally had the chance to convert the Leader to PF and compile a ton more footage into a video: This took a while to get to mainly because I didn't have any spare motors, but also because I incorrectly thought the obvious PF implementation was a double M motor configuration, since the internal cavity is mostly four-wide. After tinkering with it on and off and on and off in LDD, I couldn't find a way to fit the battery box and receiver, so it kept sitting. Eventually I bought a bunch of extra PF motors (since PF is going away ) and I found out that a single XL was the perfect form factor for the engine and it's basically the power equivalent of two Ms. The engine was so heavy in the end that it hasn't needed rubber bands yet. There's no change to the external appearance of the locomotive (save for needing a receiver bump), and I attribute it to building the body and chassis in two separate parts: it makes it much easier to do drivetrain swaps like this, despite having to do some minor modification to the body. Now that I've been able to run it more my biggest gripe (after the inaccurate under-body curve) is the overhang on R40 curves, but there is probably nothing I can do about it at this point, and at least in my LUG wide radius curve is becoming much more common (thanks @M_slug357 ). Thanks for looking!