TaltosVT

I've done an Adventurer's Train, a Circus Train that opens up into a full big-top tent, and a Batman locomotive. I've also seen a couple of chinese dragon trains. At BrickFair this year, there was an awesome shark train that had fins which would retract into the shark's body when it went through a tunnel. I also recall seeing a dwarve's mining train, I think here on Eurobricks. I thought that one was a neat idea. -Elroy

There was a thread about this topic on the Trains-n-Town forum a while back. You might find some information there. My own experiences are posted in that thread. I've had luck finding clear and white sticker paper in office supply stores such as Staples around here. For decal paper, I used some from the Testors model company that were made for applying to plastic model car kits. I had some success with that, but I found it hard to find in large quantities. -Elroy

Here's one with a few of the prototypes pictured. The wheels on a couple of the prototypes actually melted on the plane on his way over from Denmark. The reason being that they were rapid prototype, and made from a soft plastic. And here's one with the blue color-scheme for the coach, along with a couple more prototypes: There may also be other photos in the ILTCO NMRA 2009 gallery. He gave about four talks throughout the weekend, so a few people had a chance to take photos. http://www.flickr.com/groups/iltco2009/pool/ -Elroy

Jamie Berard, the designer of the Emerald Night, gave a nice talk on his design process at the NMRA show in Hartford, CT this summer. Basically, the Night isn't really designed around anything in particular, but more along the lines of "heavily inspired" by all of the above. The passenger car had the possibility of having dark blue sides at one point. He showed us a nice model that was used in the decision making process. One side was blue, the other brown. If I recall correctly, the same method was used to decide on which type of window to use. Very interesting talk to listen to. -Elroy

My experience has been that two motors will add more power, but not speed. I've used up to three motors on a single train without problems. After three, the regulator starts to get overloaded and shuts down. As for faster/slower motors together, they seem to be fine on the same locomotive. If you want to spread the pulling power across a long train (say one motor in the locomotive and one in the middle of the train attached to a boxcar), it's best to have the faster motor in the front. If the faster motor is in the back, it will tend to push the train together, sometimes causing derailments. With the faster motor in the front, there is always tension on the train. -Elroy

I agree with you on this point. One thing to remember, however, is that the stores are buying the product that they know will sell. In other words, if they have the choice to buy a case of Emerald Night sets, or a case of Millenium Falcon sets, the Falcon will win out as they know they can make a profit selling those. I've always thought that TLG should try marketing the train sets at train shows, where the target market is more specialized. Even here, though, they would need to be willing to work within a smaller market, which they are not likely to do when they know they can sell Star Wars sets to the general public and make a larger profit. Much of the discussion in this thread has been discussed before, back during the "Save 9V Trains" campaign days. Bottom line: There wasn't enough support from buyers to warrant continuing the line. People said that they wanted 9V, but when it came time to actually spend the money, most didn't. On the positive side, there was enough support to continue a train line. Rumor is that the new line is not selling well either, though. Basically, vote with your dollars. If you want to see trains continue, keep buying trains. I know it's difficult to do, given there isn't much of an offering right now, but that's the reality. Lego does listen to it's customers, but it still needs to make a profit. The Emerald Night is a good example. It comes with driver wheels, something fans have been asking for for years. It comes with rare colors like dark green and dark brown. Rare parts like the tan train windows. Basically it is full of things that fans have been asking for. Many people won't buy it, however, based on the price. So if people aren't going to buy the product, where is the incentive for Lego to continue the line? -Elroy

I've actually considered trying to use it to control switch points on a layout. The way the channels are set up, you can run up to 8 devices at the same time. If one of those is the train, the other 7 could be motors connected to the switches. Granted it would require the purchase of 7 more IR receivers, but I do think it'd be neat to walk around a layout and flip switches as the train gets to them. The most difficult part would be keeping track of which switch is on which channel. Another idea that I've been toying with is to build a work train that includes a crane or a wrecker. One channel would control the locomotive, another three would be used on the crane. One for rotation, one for raising/lowering the boom, and the third for raising/lowering the hook. -Elroy

The best brick-built door that I've found so far is pictured here: Brick Built Door I originally got the idea from Chris Masi, who later told me that he got it from James Mathis. Advantages include being able to open and close the door, and the ability to detail it to match a paint scheme such as what I was able to do on my Rutland Boxcar. The 1x2 plate with handle, fits snugly between the 1x1 with clips, keeping the door closed when needed. It's a wonderful solution. -Elroy

Before I started moving my Lego storage to the layout area, it looked like this: The rainbow bridge wasn't pretty, but it was functional. Now that I've brought my bins to the basement, I needed to cut off a baseplate and a half of table space in order to make room for people to walk between the layout and the basement stairs, so I'll need to reconfigure the bridge somehow. It is a lot of fun to run a train on the outer loop while making up and breaking down other trains in the yard though, so I'm hoping to stick to a similar track plan. -Elroy

Quick introduction for those who don't know me already. My name is Elroy. I live in the northeastern U.S. I'm a member of NELUG and I've been building trains for several years now. I actually became involved with NELUG after seeing them at a train show while hunting for n-scale models. My fascination with trains actually started when I was small. My brother had an HO layout that I was always envious of. After he passed away, and I became old enough to buy my own models, railroading became a sort of way to reconnect with him. After seeing NELUG's layout at a show, I saw that my Lego hobby and train hobby could be perfectly combined. My first Lego trains were two of the My Own Train sets that I bought for half-off at a Toys R Us store. About a month later I got lucky once again and picked up a couple of the blue passenger trains, also for half off. This gave me plenty of parts to begin working with. My first custom train was my Adventurer's Train which has now seen a few years worth of train shows. Since the initial build, a flatcar with a plane and a crane car have been added to the consist. My other popular train is my Brickling Brothers Circus Train inspired by a Duplo giraffe that I found in one of my bins. Over the past couple of years I've been building less fantasy-style trains, and more prototypical. My "home" railroad, which ceased operations in 1965, is the Rutland Railroad which used to operate in the state of Vermont. To date I've build a Rutland Alco RS-3, a couple of boxcars, and a Rutland gondola in both six-wide and eight-wide. I'm starting to get into 8-wide building these days, and experimenting a bit with steam. The past year plus a bit have been focused on getting my home layout up and running though. -Elroy

My current home layout: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12534314@N04/...57617311825496/ Also created using BlueBrick. The mainline is electrically isolated from the yard so that I can run a train on the loop while switching (shunting) cars in the yard. The yard is also isolated into three sections. The arrival/departure track off the mainline is isolated from both the locomotive area (to the right), and the switching yard (lower). I also run RC and now PF trains along with my 9v, so in theory I could have three or four trains running at once if I could keep track of them all. The layout is changing slightly as I've had to combine my Lego room with my layout area (http://www.flickr.com/photos/12534314@N04/...57621928414174/), so I'm losing some table space on one end of the yard. I have more track now, though, so I'll likely add more to the industrial section, or reconfigure that side of the layout in some way. -Elroy

A site dedicated to Trains and Town: http://www.trains-n-town.com -Elroy

Just over a month ago, I put a PF battery box, motor, and IR receiver in my Santa Fe Super Chief: http://www.flickr.com/photos/12534314@N04/...57614750062433/ Overall, it worked fairly well. Now that I have the PF train remote and the rechargable battery box, I'll try moving things around a bit to see how it'll work. -Elroy

A few that have actually happened to me: 1. Your kids call your basement workshop "The Batcave". 2. Your kids buy you a knit bat-cowl to wear outside while you're shoveling snow at night (it's actually pretty warm). 3. Other batman fans are stunned when you show them that Batman used to carry a revolver. 4. Also stunned when you show them the Batmobile was once red. 5. Stunned again when you show them how Catwoman originally dressed. 6. You have all of the Lego Batman minifigs on display, including variations, but all your other minifigs are tossed in boxes. 7. Your wife buys you a catwoman Christmas ornament.

This photo shows how I added swivel guns to my flying Steampunk ship: The nice thing is that they swivel up and down as well as side to side. Other photos of the ship, including other shots of the guns, are here. -Elroy

This is a difficult one to answer, as there are many variables. Generally, though, I've seen trains with between six to eight cars that are an average of 28 studs long. Two major variables that can affect this are the weight of the cars, and the amount of friction the wheels cause. If you have lighter cars, you should be able to pull more. Friction can vary depending on the day. We did one show where many of our trains could barely pull a single car, as the air was extremely humid, causing all of our wheelsets to expand, which in turn caused huge amounts of friction. Older wheelsets sometimes will cause more friction as well, as they can wear away at the housing, causing the wheel to come into contact with the frame. -Elroy

Very nice! I like the improvements you've made to my howitzer design. I might have to dig mine up and modify them. The vignettes work great together. I could see a few of these spread out on a table, creating a full battle scene. -Elroy

We had an overwhelming number of British troops. We decided to keep the number of troops on each side more or less equal, so we ended up using about 40 figs per team. The troops in the backpacks and Shakos belonged to another player. Those used for the actual game were mine. I actually made a few attempts at building the tall fur hats that the troops wore at the actual Battle Road, but I didn't have much luck. I settled on the tricorns to keep the troops consistent. -Elroy

I can answer that one. I was at that game, and wrote the scenario. The BrikWars rules for squads call for a standard of some sort to be near the center of the squad's baseplate. Measurements for movement and line of sight are then measured from the standard. For the British troops, the pikes stood out well enough to make excellent standards. There's an after-game write up on Lugnet: Battle Road The tavern in the photos came apart in three sections (roof, second floor, first floor), so that Troopers could be moved inside if needed. If there are any questions about the MOCs on the battlefield, or about the game itself, feel free to ask. -Elroy

That's where having two brick separators comes in handy. Clip one onto the top 1x2, and one onto the bottom 1x2, then squeeze the handles together. Pops the two right apart.

Heh. That one is mine. I like the wagon version much better. It fits into the Wild West theme really well, while mine was aimed more toward the Adventurer's line. I really love how the side wall pulls away to reveal the interior. -Elroy

I built a Rocket Sled for one of these figs a couple of years back. It's really too bad that they don't make these any more. They were action-figure sized, and had all the coolness of Lego.

I bought a copy of The Battle for Macragge starter set a while back. My daughter and I played a few times. I'd love to get into it more, but there's a lack of players in this area. I did take a stab at a Lego version of Space Marine Terminators. At some point I'm going to build a set of modular Space Hulk rooms to go along with them. -Elroy

You can run all of the above off from the train regulator. The speed (or brightness in the case of a light) is controlled by the regulator. I've run lights and track off from the same controller. The light dims and the train slows as you decrease power at the regulator. I've also run the 9v technic motors from a train regulator. The members of my local LEGO users group do this all the time to control the motors for the carnival rides we have on our train layout. We've also run multiple motors off from the same controller so that we can run several different rides at the same time. -Elroy

I don't have any of the newer style, but looking at the photos, does the new design allow a minifig to hold the musket by the end of the rifle butt, instead of just up near the barrel? -Elroy