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[gallery] It has been WAY TOO LONG since I've built a new steam engine. Finally happened... well... I built this engine almost a year ago but then rebuilt it last month to get the proportions better and eliminate a structural weakness. While not really based on any specific locomotive, it borrows heavily from Reading and PRR locomotives. It brings together a couple of things that I've been meaning to do for some time: a camelback, and a slope back tender (see later photos). Of course I had to work in valve gear too (grin). The engine design was one of efficient packing, with only 4 studs behind the battery box empty, Note how the IR receiver is actually holing the smokebox on (hard to tell in this image, but there is a pair of grill tiles concealing the actual receiver dome) But all of that is secondary, that was just my wish list that I pulled out and overlaid it on top of mission one: build an O-Gauge lego train. I can't imagine that I am the first person to attempt such a thing, but I haven't seen any other O-guage lego locomotives. The thing that makes this a real challenge is that you effectively have only 3 studs to work with between the rails. O-guage is about 5 mm narrower than lego gauge, so you don't even gain a half technic beam to work with. My son joined a model railroad club and they all figured me for one of those parents not interested in trains. I told them I built lego trains and got the "yeah yeah, sure sure." Then I showed up at their holiday open house last year, threw down my brand new bricktraks R120's, and watched their jaws hit the floor when my trains started running (tee hee). Still though, their space is already full with Z, N, HO, and O, so G and L are just occasional visitors to the club. They sometimes take their layouts on the road, so I wanted to have a train that I could play with when my son is at shows. So began my quest to make an O-gauge lego train. Between the cutaway screen shot above and this view looking up from below you can get a good idea of how I got the power to the wheels. The one not so obvious bit of secret sauce are the three size #8 flat washers on each axle to get the roughly 3 mm spacing necessary for the O-gauge track beyond the 3 wide frame. For the rest of the train I just grabbed two of my regular L gauge rollingstock and swapped out the trucks With the odd spacing I had to use technic axles and the drag from 12 of them is quite a bit (this train might have as much drag as my much heavier 7 car Superliner consist). Still, the L motor is happy to drag the resisting cars kicking and screaming behind. I'm looking to upgrade to roller bearing axles, but all in due time. Here I figured I had the first lego on the layout, and technically I do, but I spied some clones repurposed to good use That's the story so far, but let me leave you with a couple of gratuitous shots [full gallery]
