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Showing results for tags 'Monorail'.
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Hello, and welcome to our Monorail topic!!! --- Here's a list of notable contributors to this topic, as well as their Flickr pages, Youtube channels, etc. @Trekkie99 https://bricksafe.com/pages/LegoMonorailFan @djm https://bricksafe.com/pages/djm, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaiwT968-E48IHGE00ZnVWg @Asper https://www.youtube.com/user/MrAsperka @FiliusRucilo https://www.flickr.com/photos/filiusrucilo/ @Mark Bellis http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=mbellis @fred67 https://www.flickr.com/photos/54894071@N06/ @Paperinik77pk https://www.flickr.com/photos/138174786@N04/ @ronlmitchell https://www.flickr.com/photos/60322621@N05/ @sed6 https://www.flickr.com/photos/96675811@N02/, https://www.youtube.com/user/sed6 @MonsieurCaron https://www.flickr.com/photos/73552079@N05/ @Holodoc @Masao Hidaka https://www.youtube.com/user/MasaoHidaka @mrfuture @Hanso https://www.youtube.com/user/SiouxNETonTrack, https://siouxnetontrack.wordpress.com/ @XG BC https://www.flickr.com/photos/145736297@N05/ @tkf @Arefalalmani https://www.instagram.com/afob.arefalalmani/ @Buttermaker https://www.youtube.com/c/Buttermaker-Klemmbaustein-Messi @DoVoMonOgel https://www.flickr.com/photos/tolvvolt/ @zephyr1934 @Rijkvv https://www.flickr.com/photos/richie_v/
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Hello, we love our lego monorail, so we mad an experimental moc. The inspiration for us was the crocodile. Have much fun.
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Hundreds of years in the future, a team of astronauts discovers a small moon orbiting a big ice planet. As they approach the surface, they discover wreckage of spaceships and large robots, some buried deep in the dust of the moon. Now, two years after the initial findings, the astronauts have built a base on the moon and are discovering more and more traces of an earlier battle as they excavate. Commander Chris Studstrong leads a team of scientists and engineers who have made it their goal to find out more about the earlier events on this moon. While some of the astronauts are on the moon's surface excavating, others are back at the base examining the discovered artifacts. If you like this model, you can support it on LEGO IDEAS: Classic Space Excavation Site on IDEAS Classic Space Excavation Site by Aldar Beedo, auf Flickr Let's have a look at the Protagonists: Classic Space Excavation Site by Aldar Beedo, auf Flickr Boris, Jenny and Lucas, as engineers, explore the wreckage and dismantle parts to be examined afterwards. Naomi, a chemist, researches the spacecraft's fuels and ensures that no dangerous reactions can occur while working on the wrecks. Ted, a scientist, and David, a geologist, study the lunar surface to find out more about the crashes and their causes. David's instruments have just made a very exciting find: a droid frozen in the ice under the dust! Gina works at the base and researches the technology and materials of the excavated objects in her laboratory. Jule, an engineer, makes sure the station's life support system is working properly and also keeps the spacesuits in good shape. There's nothing she can't fix! Bob, a reporter, accompanies the crew on their mission and documents all interesting objects and progress. An overhead railway is used to transport excavated parts and connect the base to the surrounding area. Pilots Phillipe and Cara can also use a crane to retrieve heavy debris. Classic Space Excavation Site by Aldar Beedo, auf Flickr Classic Space Excavation Site by Aldar Beedo, auf Flickr Classic Space Excavation Site by Aldar Beedo, auf Flickr To better cover long distances on the moon, the moon buggy is used. In addition, the friendly robot S.O.L.A.R.I.S. helps the team with the work on the wrecks and warns his team of potential hazards with the help of his sensors. Classic Space Excavation Site by Aldar Beedo, auf Flickr Classic Space Excavation Site by Aldar Beedo, auf Flickr Classic Space Excavation Site by Aldar Beedo, auf Flickr Classic Space Excavation Site by Aldar Beedo, auf Flickr Classic Space Excavation Site by Aldar Beedo, auf Flickr Classic Space Excavation Site by Aldar Beedo, auf Flickr This set consists of 2718 parts, including 12 minifigures, a robot, a space buggy and a lot of utensils for the excavations! By pulling or pushung the handle attached to the long part of the track, you can decide whether the railway should stay on the upper circle or go down. The track can easily be extended at the siding to explore new excavation sites. Classic Space Excavation Site by Aldar Beedo, auf Flickr Feel free to give feedback on my MOC! :) Best regards, Aldar Beedo
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If Lego were to bring back the monorail as a new system, what would like to see from it? What features should it have? Also, what would it take to make a successful Lego monorail Ideas project? Two features I'd like to see which would work hand in hand, would be that the monorail could actually grab onto the track, that way allowing the system to work as a suspended monorail, all while using the same system. I forget who said it, but I remember hearing somewhere that Lego designers tested a monorail system idea with kids, but their reaction wasn't the highest on the "this is awesome!" scale. Whether or not the designers had a physical concept system or just drawings and concept art, it would be interesting to know what they may have had in mind for a new monorail system.
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Hello dear Lego fans, After having signed up here in the Eurobricks forums in 2011, I posted a new thread in the "Hello my name is..." section about my plans to create my own Lego City layout. Now almost 9 years later, I can finally show you some of the progress that has been made just at the beginning of the new decade :) Good things come to those who wait. Renovations on the attic are finally complete (apart from the lighting) and we now have around 110 m² to unleash our imagination. The current plans of the Lego city layout add up to around 60m² in size and they are, as you can see in the video, far from finished. However, I thought you might be interested in some of the things that my girlfriend and me were designing in the last couple of days. The name of the city is still unknown, but the overall design has started to take shape with a downtown area, which includes all the modulars, and shops, a residential area, an amusement park, a winter village, a train yard and a harbor/beach area. I would also like to add an airport to the city and some of the classic monorail tracks have been placed already. We are also getting into MOC a little bit and we will add our own creations to the layout as soon as they look nice! The commentary of the video is in German, but I am trying to add English subtitles into the system. Please let us know what you think here in the forums or in the comments section of YouTube. I will keep you posted on future updates if you like :) Note: All of the parts used in this layout are original Lego parts, except for some of the baseplates. I thought that lime green in the Hogwarts castle area might look cool, but I will probably exchange it for regular grass green baseplates in the near future. Thank you so much for taking a look! :) Christof
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A joint venture from several classic space factions to form a unified monorail layout, consisting of a mix of official sets, modified official sets and custom creations. Entire layout: https://www.flickr.com/photos/141514326@N04/albums/72157679091445758 Transfer Center: https://www.flickr.com/photos/141514326@N04/albums/72157703788898952 Uranium Processing Plant: https://www.flickr.com/photos/141514326@N04/albums/72157679091626448 Monorail service complex: https://www.flickr.com/photos/141514326@N04/albums/72157714844908156 Monorail Power Station: https://www.flickr.com/photos/141514326@N04/albums/72157705706365181 Artifact Research Hub: https://www.flickr.com/photos/141514326@N04/albums/72157703788848162
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What would people like to see if LEGO did a suspended railway set? This could be anything that would work with the system
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Hi everyone, I finished my latest build. This build is for the LowLUG collabration at Bricks am Meer in April. In the tower is the HQ of Alpha Team. After the attack of Ogel on their previous HQ, Alpha Team had to restart at a smaller location. Below the HQ is an cafe where people can buy some drinks and snack. This tower can be reached by monorail. For more pictures, please look into my Flickr album. Questions and feedback are appreciated.
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Hello everyone! Here's my version of a suspended monorail train, hope you'll enjoy it I'm introducing it here because this forum has been quite helpful to me while building this, especially for the doors design. To see more of it please head to this page: http://www.moc-pages.com/moc.php/423851 You can see hi-res pictures and a short video here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/23071566@N02/sets/72157663217856521 Cheers!
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I have a standard 36 inch by 80 inch hollow core interior door on folding legs that serves many purposes in my hobby room. It constantly gets repurposed for any number of different hobbies I enjoy. Currently I have it set up for my trains and I've tried to cram as much track and functionality into it as possible. Right now my layout has: two complete loops, a crossover between the two loops, a reversing leg, five sidings, nine switches, a passenger platform with crossing, a cargo or maintenance terminal and room to park all my trains. My blue cargo train (60052) and white passenger train (60051) can run at the same time despite the zero clearance between the loops. The BNSF loco can navigate the entire layout but cannot pass another train on the curves because of it overhang. I know it might look a little jam packed to some but it provides me with endless switching and running possibilities. Hope you like! Newest update- Here's a video of my layout today with only my custom trains running.
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I've created my first custom train and it's a monorail. The concept behind the display is based on Blaine the Mono from Stephen King's sci-fi/fantasy/western book The Dark Tower III. I displayed the train over this weekend at a comic convention and it went over well even though the source is somewhat obscure, people liked the train and the volcano a lot. They couldn't seem to figure out how the train knew when to stop Here's the full 5x8 layout from Brickworld 2018 and BrickUniverse 2018. Here's a shot of the whole smaller layout first. And now the train itself.
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Lego Mindstorms EV3 Monorail
Hanso posted a topic in LEGO Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
One of the policies within Sioux.NET on Track, is to change a build every three years. In other words, when a build has been part of a Lego World demo for three years, it should be replaced by a new one. For example, loading the train was first done by the container crane, now it is done by the delta crane. The same applies for the train: the first years, we controlled the train by an NXT, now it is controlled by an EV3. For the new layout, I am thinking of replacing the train by a monorail (and thus renaming the group to "Sioux.NET on Monotrack" ;-). I always use Youtube as inspiration. To see how others solved the typical problems you run into when building something. But I haven't seen a Lego Mindstorms monorail yet. The Lego Technic monorail created by "Osi" (click here for an example) is most nearby for what I have in mind, but it is not using Mindstorms inside. In other words, I will have to use my own imagination. What a pity ;-) I started with creating the track. This was my first attempt: Although it looks good (I was aiming at an open, industrial look), the curve is not smooth enough for a train: So, I made a second attempt: That looks much better. It was not easy to get the curve smooth AND find a brick with the right distance. This is how I managed to get this curve: A simple train (only proof of concept until now), runs easy through the curve: The next days I will continue building a motorized train (proto). Let me know what you think so far Merry Christmas! Regards, Hans -
Some photos of the M-Tron mining base I made for the Yorkshire Brick Show 2014 at the National Coal Mining Museum for England (hence the mining theme). There are quite a few, hope you enjoy them! Early in the morning, the M-Tron miners arrive by monorail from their homes in the mountains: First job of the day involves scanning the ground for signs of ore deposits: It can get pretty tiring: But the canteen is always open if they need to refuel: After a snack, they descend into the mines and begin to fill the special containers with the ore they extract from the rocks: The containers are loaded onto trains to be taken to surface. But things don't always go to plan: The ore-filled containers are hauled to the surface by monorail: Then lifted up to the roof and loaded onto the ship which is being refuelled before it flies to the processing plant: M-Tron aren't the only faction at the mine. Maybe you've already spotted some Blacktron spies up to no good? The Space Police are present to thwart their evil schemes: One of the Blacktron spies is prepared to use... unconventional... methods to infiltrate the mine: The Space Police could be doing a better job: A Futuron research team is also in the mine, investigating signs of ancient alien life uncovered by the miners: Meanwhile, deep underground, the miners have uncovered some more recent signs of life: Thanks for looking! There are more pics on Flickr, plus videos of the monorails in action!
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We've seen this before. But this time I'm back with an airport that won't fit on any reasonable-sized table. Planned for two terminals, perhaps three, and spoiler alert . . . there might be some kind of monorail shuttle system involved. What you're looking at in the initial pics is terminal #2, near completion. Right now, there's pics of Terminal one and it's runways. I simply cannot get over how many of those round white dots that I've gone through lighting the runway. I've altered the rear end of two of the three blue jets to allow the lines to continue through. I've tried to add a red variant, and I'd like some feedback on the tail wing being red, right now it is red because I'm out of light grey tail wings, but would like to know everyone's thoughts - should I just keep it this way when the light grey tail comes in. There's 4 set 6396 jets in all. Two short length and width, two engines on each side of the fusselage and then two that are longer and as commented by one of my friends, probably have an absolutely excessive amount of engines - six total with a pair on each wing in addition to the other two. The longer term plan is to integrate a complete MOC (not MOD) of a very, very significant and unique airport terminal, but as of now the plan is a little more scatterbrained. You can see in the background (below the monorail shuttle) you'll see the area that should soon be occupied by terminal #1. Most of my stuff is pretty predictable, so you can probably guess what you're going to see next, and the themes of the planes that will be residing in the #1 Terminal. The #1 Terminal and runway system will be about 60% of the size of Terminal #2. And yes, while positioning the plane that is about to take off, I can only be reminded of the KLM flight disaster with the tail strike as the passenger jet desperately tried to lift, striking it's tail, and eventually the other plan on the runway.
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[WIP] Imperial Conveyex Transport
MajorAlvega posted a topic in LEGO Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
This is a new project I just started. As most of my projects it will probably never get completed but will be a good showcase of some ideas for other projects. I usually don't do MOCs, just like to automate things and add some unusual effects. Last two years I've been collecting some monorail parts with the idea of making something monorail-based, with a few 4DBrix parts to control my budget and also to let me control the movement of the train. When LEGO launched the LEGO 75217 Imperial Conveyex Transport I had the idea of using it as a monorail but adding the new Powered Up hub so I can control it with a MINDSTORMS EV3. So this is the first proof of concept: the EV3 pikcs the Conveyex and make it move until an ultrasonic sensor detects it: To connect the monorail motor to the PUp hub I modded a PUp lights cable, soldering an old 9V plug to the power pins (1 and 2) of the cable: This makes the monorail motor be seen as a Light by the Powered Up (and BOOST) hub so it only works with apps that accept Lights but for me it doesn't matter since I intend to use my own bash/python script. But for manual control and my kids pleasure it also works fine with the PUp train handset: Roadmap: - add a micro-motor to the Conveyex to also control the linked chain track - use EV3 motors (or perhaps 4DBrix motors) to control the monorail Y's - sell a kidney to get a few more monorail parts - integrate the monorail circuit in a Star Wars diorama, with the help of a PLUG mate that is an expert in Star Wars universe The MINDSTORMS EV3 is running ev3dev (linux). This allows me to use a Bluetooth USB dongle to talk BLE with the Powered Up hub. And will also allow me to use some gadgets like NFC sensors to detect the train position or IRLink to control some Power Functions automations (like the AT-ST head). Questions and suggestions are welcome. -
Hey, I haven’t seen a monorail here for some time ?.. I’ve built a Unitron-themed, because I like their colors and I think there was a way to little amount of sets ☹️.. I have also created a file with stud.io (mainly because I never used it before and wanted to test it), so if you want you could rebuild it. Here’s the link: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-19393/glx0711/unitron-monorail-train/ ?..
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Dear Community, please find below an update of my town layout (first time video). Thanks in advance for your fruitful comments and improvement feedback! Also, thanks to Rune for the additional monorail tracks! Main area of concern, how to best integrate an airport..??? My first thought is to add it behind the fairground area, using the monorail airport shuttle to liaise with the city.. Thanks in advance for your thoughts.. I usually take most of your valuable feedback into account - the more brains, the better ideas Wish you a nice day, night, evening, morning or afternoon!
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Hi all, hopefully it's okay to put all the train stuff together in one thread - I don't have that many train MOCs yet, plus all things belong together somehow. A few of you might know me as a car builder mainly, however, from the beginning I was interested in the different elements of Lego layouts - cars don't mean that much to me without a proper surrounding. That's why I've also built some other stuff over the years - which leads to the question of a proper scale. Scale When dealing with several types of vehicles and buildings, scale becomes an important aspect, that's why I've tried to find a proper graduation of widths for vehicles (like others did, too, but a bit larger since I'm developing things with the cars in mind): Some more info about this subject you may find in this EB thread: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/97314-citytown-vehicles-range-of-possible-widths/ The Monorail Regarding trains, I started in 2013 with a PF-driven Monorail train: The EB thread you may find here: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/82147-moc-monorail-train-7w-with-powerfunctions/. There are some developments going on regarding the Monorail, too, but that will be shown later. The GP38-2 The GP38-2 you can see in the photo above was a first step into the "real" Lego Train world in 2015. I'm a huge fan of those great US Lego train layouts plus I wanted to see what trains and especially locos would have to look like to match the other stuff I’m building, especially the cars. I soon found out that even 8w might be too small for one of those gigantic American locomotives I wanted to build, that’s why I opted for 9w (plus railings), which furthermore looks quite good on the Lego rails with their large scale. When looking for a proper livery I soon found out that the St. Louis - San Francisco Railway (“Frisco”) would be a good choice since the rather simple logo could be built completely out of Lego quite easily. There don’t seem to be too many of them in Lego, I’ve seen 2 or 3 of them since, I guess, but maybe that’s rather due to my lack of knowledge in this field. The GP38-2 has gone through some changes recently to make it more fit for its duties (see below) - it originally had body-mounted couplers which didn't work out - and to improve its handling so that it might be more or less finished right now. This is what it looks like today: Some more pics on Flickr. The loco has moving radiators, propelled by an M-motor, connected with the front lighting and operated via the IR receiver so that you have a bit of a startup procedure and the possibility to let it idle properly which is otherwise rather difficult when mimicking diesel-electric locos with Lego. Some specs: Scale: 1/43 Length (platform): 50 studs Length over couplers: 42 cm Width (platform): 9w Weight (with 4 batteries and two aluminum dummies): 1,130 kg The Hump Yard Originally meant to pull a (probably rather short) cargo train within a collaborative layout I recently thought about having a hump yard in order to get some more action on the layout. The GP38-2 had to be modified for that purpose (especially regarding the trucks), plus there had to be a second loco (a GP15-1, still a WIP) to push the cars uphill with 2 locos combined (which also proves to be a big improvement when pulling rather heavy cargo trains through curves). I also built some cars (also WIPs, except the caboose below). On a meeting with fellow builder Steffen Kasteleiner (see https://www.flickr.com/photos/29666619@N04) I was able to use two of his magnificent tanker cars so that there were already 5 cars to be humped, as is documented in this video: The main point here is the decoupler for which I used the great and well-known decoupler design by CamelBoy68: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/80286-decoupler/ However, I added a spring so that you don't have to operate it any time you want to decouple a car. The downside of this is that you have to take off the decoupler part when pulling the train out of the yard. Still thinking about a solution to set down the whole spring unit for that purpose. Another possibility would be to pull out the sorted trains at the opposite side of the yard so that the hump is omitted completely. But that would require even more room. Of course the switches are operated by hand at the moment, I just edited that in the video. I'd love to enlarge the whole thing - however already a baby hump yard like this requires a lot of room. The Caboose Now for the caboose: Some more pics on Flickr. The caboose is also 9 studs wide, of course, the cupola even 11 studs. I would have loved to build the cupola in 10w, however, I wouldn't have been able to build the roof in the style I've wanted. I've already been told on Flickr that there should be done more regarding the trucks, however, I haven't found a proper solution for that purpose yet - in fact you don't see much of the trucks from above at this width, but that might not be a proper excuse for you train guys! One aspect in the title is still missing: containers. You may spot the 9w yellow well car with a 7w container in the video which is still in the making. Containers are an important aspect regarding scale since you can't use the usual 6w containers in such a surrounding. Plus containers are quite important to me because they are some kind of interface between road and track vehicles. There's already a proper container truck, there's a 7w container design with a special stacking lock, and there's a (hand-operated) reach stacker in the making. Hopefully this can all be presented together in the near future. 100% Lego. Thanks for reading all this stuff, more to come! -
Another my own construction in the spirit of one of my favourites LEGO factions from childhood - the M: Tron. This time I built a space monorail, fragment of base, some rocky terrain and a mini fuel tank from the Blacktron II fraction. Read more » Bigger photos and full story here: LEGO Gallery - [MOC] M:tron monorail WIPs, Behind the scenes and other extras at my: Instagram | Facebook | Flickr
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In the monorail system that I have been developing on and off since 2013 (from the Hidaka monorail that uses a City prototype of the Osaka monorail), I have built a Classic Space monorail train. The train has a new drive-train and is geared down 5:3 so that the heavier train will climb well. It is still based on a train motor but I stopped using belt drive. The average speed is up to 0.57m/s. The lights on the right-hand axle will flash when the train moves. This uses the other channel of the IR Receiver. The battery box (AAAs or LiPo) is behind the Space logo and is easy to change. There is a removable module system. The module on the train unfolds to become a scooter. There is a medical stretcher module and a power module on the ground. It has proven to be reliable on my loft layout. I will do a video in due course. I need to get the lighting right as it was too dark last time I did a video in the loft. As well as a second Classic Space train and a 2-motor goods train with extra wagons, I have prototypes for Futuron, Blacktron and M-Tron trains. More pics of the system here Mark
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So here is my latest airport terminal. It's a custom modular. While it's custom, there are some obvious takes from the lego city airport set 7894, but not many. The inside is a full functioning terminal with a security check point, help desk, restrooms, gate area, bag check and bag claim, a lego store, a lounge and dining area and a observation area. It has its own monorail station which also has a bus stop and bike share station. I'm still working on rebuilding the jetways.
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I finally managed to pick up a space monorail set in decent condition and at a decent price so thought I'd have a play around with it. The space theme didn't really fit into my city! So I had to come up with a plan. Ever since the 60097 set was released I knew the tram looked ideal so here is my first attempt at converting the 60097 tram set onto monorail. It seems to work well, you can barely see the battery or the motor so I'm not too bothered about that. Image 1 This layout is just on my kitchen floor, the next stage is to move this into my city, I'll raise the city up and have this mostly running underneath. This is a short video of it running: This is the station in it's place from set 60097 and some monorail track set out: Image 2
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Let me introduce you to my new creation. PLAYING IN SPACE SINCE 1978 by Cristiano Grassi, su Flickr Have you ever wondered how our Spacemen Heroes could travel for almost 40 years through space without getting older or bored to death? Here’s your answer. For forty years our heroes have been playing with LEGO bricks! I was reorganizing some minifigs when I found a spaceman that I used to play with when I was a child, having him live the most amazing adventures. And I started wondering “He’ll be 40 in a little while, what’s his secret?” So, I imagined him, together with all his travelling companions, playing with a LEGO Space base for forty years. Maybe it’s true that playing with LEGO bricks keeps you young. What do you think about it? Do you find it new? Interesting? Creative? I had never seen something like this before and it's one of the reasons I've launched the project on LEGO Ideas. Another one is to see our beloved Classic Space minifig come back, or, why not, maybe even a few themed sets could come back. This project could act as a springboard. If you like, here's the link https://ideas.lego.com/projects/b21ccd00-a013-4509-9614-65cdab72ec82. Let me know what you think about it.
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Dear All, my train layout is built “into/around” my home office, which is located in the attic. With the pitched roof area beginning at a height of about 60 cm (2,0 feet), there are not that many options for placing longer runs of LEGO track, as close to the walls in about 40 cm (1,3 feet) height. The floor area is 4,2 x 6,3 m2 (26,5 m2 = 285 square feet), whereas at 2 m height (6,6 feet) there is only a 40 cm (1,3 feet) width section … so beware of your head! Figure 1: Schematic views of my home office. Top: Room cross section. Bottom: Floor plan. All numbers in meters. [The most important question of course is: 2,3 feet? I simply used an online tool for the conversion – I am wondering, is the “,3” bit in the decimal system? Which would mean: 1 foot and 3 tens of a foot. That does not make much sense as there are 12 inches in one foot … and 2,54 cm in an inch. There are 30,5 cm in one foot (rounded) – so we have 3/10*30,5 + 30,5 cm = 39,7 cm which is close enough to 40 cm.] OK, I am just kidding – I lived for 4 years in the US – changed/added a good deal of things around and to the house and - it is absolutely no problem to adjust to the yard – feet – inch world. None what so ever. Because you have to; there are simply no “cm” or “m” in the US … Uhmmm – what did I want to show … sorry: Yes, bridges. When you live in an attic, there may be holes in the floor to get there via stairs. And maybe doors opening to another room. And furniture; certainly not only 60 cm high (I leave it in the metric world) … so you need to mount your track to the walls behind or even “through” furniture, under desks, and you need bridges – many. Essentially it is one large bridge - this post is about the brick- or semi-brick built sections on my train layout. Figure 2: Floorplan and track layout. Left: “Principal” track arrangement: Two main outer loops, two smaller independent loops around the chimney on the left and on the right. Right: Actual BlueBrick track layout. Note that there are two track levels. Red rectangles indicate bridges as referenced below. With respect to Figure 2, left: This was the principal idea: Two parallel main track sections going around the entire room (outer two red lines). Then one circle on the right and one around the chimney on the left. There are possible track levels, as indicated by the two stacked red lines in Figure 2, top left. Problem #1: The stairs (shown in green, top) to get up to my office; here only one section of track fits in between outer wall and hole in the floor. Solution #1: A long incline eventually allowing the two track sections to run “stacked”. Problem #2: The door (also in green, bottom) giving way to the next room stuffed with stuff that we regularly look for. Solution #2: A draw bridge, which is always in the “up” position when I am not playing. On the same image on the right, a BlueBrick generated track layout is overlaid. It actually consist of two “layers” – there is a good section of elevated track under my desk on the left and also behind some book shelves on the right. This is why the layout looks pretty congested in some areas. Most of the track running close to the walls is not visible (or is behind furniture) and is mounted on wooden supports which in turn are mounted to the wall. Some of these areas are rather complex modular constructions, as I need to get there from time to time. Then there are some regions covered with low-level “table” type areas (IKEA is your friend) – as well as supports mounted to furniture. The same is true for “tunnels” – they are all over the place as I have to run some track sections “through furniture”. Coming back to bridges: The red rectangles in Figure 2 on the right indicate the LEGO built bridge sections. I used all sorts of LEGO bricks: DUPLOs from my daughters (now 20 and 22 years old; asked for permission of course!) to swiftly gain elevation, combined with System bricks and plates to adjust to required heights/widths. And Technic stuff to secure things. Oh well and Monorail track … I guess Monorail enthusiast will not like that … BUT: This stuff is fantastic to structurally support bridges!!! Bridge 1 This one is lame – uses the Monorail straight tracks as main structural support – and DUPLO bricks mixed with System bricks and plates for the end-sections. Figure 3a: Bridge 1, location on layout cf. Figure 2. Figure 3b: Bridge 1. Bridge 2 This one is a little more complex. It is a fully automated draw bridge integrated into my PBrick control scheme (and here). The PBrick operating that thing is a Scout. It has its own ID address and understands 4 commands: “Up”, “Down”, “Stop”, and “Status”. Manual control is also possible; the switch to toggle the mode from “remote” to “manual” control is the light brick in combination with the built-in light sensor of the Scout. Further, there are two touch sensors to ensure that the Scout knows the status of the bridge. One detects the fully “up” and the other the fully “down” position. When both sensors are open, the bridge is somewhere in between. To make things a little more appealing, a slightly modified/extended #42042 crane is used as power source. I needed to extend and fix the boom to the ceiling as the load is fairly heavy. Furthermore, I used a pulley system apparently called “threefold purchase” (according to Fig. 6-21 on page 64 in Sariel’s extremely helpful “The unofficial technic builder’s guide” book (http://sariel.pl/2016/10/guide2/) to get a mechanical pulling power advantage of 6. This way the PF M motor used in #42042 manages to draw the bridge up from the fully down position, which requires the biggest drawing momentum, without hassle. Figure 4a: Bridge 2, location on layout cf. Figure 2. Figure 4b: Bridge 2, entire structure, “down” position. Top: Top view showing the track. Bottom: Side view with a “track lift” on the left, LEGO storage shelves on the right, and a door to the storage room, which remains clear in the “up” position. Figure 4c: Bridge 2, details of the sensor mounts (“up” sensor mounted to the book shelf, “down” sensor mounted to the underside of the bridge) and the pair of guide rollers. Figure 4d: Bridge 2, details of the Scout PBrick, the #42042 crane, and the pulley mechanism providing a mechanical advantage of 6 when drawing/releasing the bridge. This video shows a little more … Bridge 3 This bridge is fully LEGO brick-built and spans my entire “City” area. It also connects to the next bridge via a curved elevated segment, which was quite challenging (for me …) to give the supporting structure a “solid” appearance. Figure 5a: Bridge 3, location on the layout cf. Figure 2. Figure 5b: Bridge 3. Top: From the wooden shelf track support on the left an elevated two track segment travels behind the City buildings. Bottom: The two elevated tracks merge into a curved one-track segment. Figure 5c: Bridge 3. Bottom left: The curved one-track segment. Bottom right: There is a small pedestrian bridge providing access to the light house. Top: The curved segment continues with a longer straight stretch. A largely modified #10027 train shed (with an additional structure on top) serves (also) as track support. There is a small grating type secured elevated path, which allows the City train personnel to survey the City traffic situation and act properly … Bridge 4 This bridge is a semi-brick-built structure; however, as it spans the opening for the stairs to the story below my office, I wanted to be sure. There is a wall mounted main support which is “decorated” with a supporting structure consisting of Monorail curved track segments; on top though the long incline in the back as well as the elevated track segment connecting to Bridge 3 is entirely brick-built and self-supporting. Again with System and DUPLO bricks – there is even some DUPLO SNOT. With the addition of Technic beams, the pylons have become quite sturdy, so I may even replace the wooden “floor” sections with actual LEGO bricks and plates but that has to wait for a longer time, I guess … Figure 6a: Bridge 4, location on the layout cf. Figure 2. Figure 6b: Bridge 4. Bottom: Entire view of the bridge structure; on the right, the City bridge structure merges with the level 2 section of the outer loop (cf. Figure 2). Top left: In the front (barely noticeable) the inner main loop at level 1; in the back the long incline (sloped at 2 plates/ 9V track piece) of the outer loop main loop. The arrow points to the incline on both pictures. Top right: Last bridge section leading to a long stretch of track behind book shelves. Figure 6c: Bridge 4. View from the stairs giving access to the attic (cf. Figure 2), showing the curved Monorail tracks as supports along with the Technic cross bars. Figure 6d: Bridge 4. Some details of the Duplo-, Technic-, and System-bricks used for the support structure. Figure 6e: Bridge 4. Details of the last bridge section leading behind some book shelves using straight mono rail tracks and bridge support parts (#55767) as main structural elements. The pylons are made from Duplo and System bricks. Bottom right: Some Duplo SNOT on the main pylon. There are some more images on BrickShelf (http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=ThorstenB), just navigate to the “bridges” folder. These are pretty large in size though. Best regards, Thorsten
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Classic Legoland Space from 1978 through 1987. Gallery: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rva-lug/albums/72157680915365175 Video: Classic Legoland Space from 1978 through 1987. Monorail layout on baseplates equal to 48 32x32 stud baseplates, or 192 by 256 studs, 49,152 studs total. 85 pieces of original monorail track: 19 Monorail Track Straight Long (2671) 16 Monorail Track Straight Short (2670) 5 Monorail Track Monoswitch (2774) 23 Monorail Track Curve Long (2672) 3 Monorail Track Curve Short Left (2892) 3 Monorail Track Curve Short Right (2891) 3 Monorail Track Point Left (2890) 3 Monorail Track Point Right (2889) 5 Monorail Track Ramp Lower Part (2677) 5 Monorail Track Ramp Upper Part (2678) 47 Classic Space sets (plus one Futuron) 6991: Monorail Transport System 6980: Galaxy Commander 6985: Cosmic Fleet Voyager 6972: Polaris I Space Lab 497: Galaxy Explorer 6971: Inter-Galactic Command Base 6951: Robot Command Center 6940: Alien Moon Stalker 6929: Star Fleet Voyager 6931: FX Star Patroller 6950: Mobile Rocket Transport 6930: Space Supply Station 6780: XT Starship 6928: Uranium Search Vehicle 6927: All-Terrain Vehicle 6892: Modular Space Transport 6926: Mobile Recovery Vehicle 6891: Gamma V Laser Craft 6890: Cosmic Cruiser 6750: Sonic Robot 6881: Lunar Rocket Launcher 6882: Walking Astro Grappler 1499: Twin Starfire 6872: Xenon X-Craft 6880: Surface Explorer 462: Mobile Rocket Launcher 1580: Lunar Scout 1558: Mobile Command Trailer 6846: Tri-Star Voyager 6874: Moon Rover 1498: Spy-Bot 6848: Inter-Planetary Shuttle 6845: Cosmic Charger 6847: Space Dozer 6824: Space Dart I 6842: Small Space Shuttle Craft 6844: Sismobile 6825: Cosmic Comet 6820: Starfire I 6822: Space Digger 6826: Crater Crawler 6802: Space Probe 6805: Astro Dasher 6807: (Unnamed) 6823: Surface Transport 1557: Scooter 6803: Space Patrol 6806: Surface Hopper
