hoeij

For anything larger than 6 wide you'll need to be an excellent MOC builder, because you'll have to MOC pretty much everything. The trains should also become a bit longer too, so the total weight (and $ cost) will be higher than that of a 6-wide train. To make it look good, you'll need a significantly larger layout that has room for long stretches of straight track. You need to have room for that. But the main issue is time: You need a lot of time to design and build your trains and everything that goes with it (if you enjoy MOC'ing everything, then that could be considered a plus). Of course, if you do manage to build one of those spectacular trains or buildings that we regularly see posted here, you'll have a great sense of accomplishment.

Excellent news! Can't wait until I receive the service pack. So far I've only built the B model (lots of fun!) and decided to wait with the main model until the service pack arrives. Really looking forward to this.

Yes, I don't run them at top speed! The track has to go in the garage, there's no room for it in the house. Not a great thing if a train falls on the garage floor.

What do you use to scrape it with? With a sharp knife, the cuts can be made quite quickly because the material is soft (much softer than regular lego bricks). I've done these cuts to about 70 cars, or 280 wheelsets, with 4 cuts per wheelset, so that's over 1000 cuts. Quite a bit of work, but it will help to make my 9V motors last much longer.

Found the cable. I put a picture on: http://www.math.fsu.edu/~hoeij/t/c/wheelset.jpg Most of my train cars have received this treatment, except the very lightest ones.

I'll make some pictures once I find the cable that connects the camera to the computer. Most of my wheel sets have received such treatment. One of the reasons I did that is to make my 9V motors last longer; for example, for my Santa Fe train the cuts reduce the load on the motor by about a factor 2.

I think the gauge is not the same.

If you replace a radio speaker by a DC motor, you'll actually hear the radio sounds coming out of the DC motor. The controller in the RC train, as well as the PF receiver, the way it makes motors run at less than full speed is by quickly switching between on and off (a higher speed setting simply means that the percentage of the time that it is on "on" is larger). This switching between on/off produces something that on an oscilloscope will look like a block signal, and on a speaker it would produce a sound. The pitch of that sound is simply the frequency of the on/off switching. But if a speaker makes a sound, then so will a DC motor, for essentially the same reason (they both have magnets that are moved by the electrical current). The difference is that a sound speaker contains parts to amplify that sound while a DC motor does not, that's why the sound from the DC motor is not as loud as it would have been if the signal had been connected to a speaker.

My RC train (I have the white passenger train) does make a high-pitch sound on all but the fastest settings.

That would have to be a typo. I saw one on bricklink about one or two weeks ago for 170 Euro's, and that was complete with stickers, instructions, and box. I didn't buy it (perhaps a mistake on my part) and it's sold now. Next best one on bricklink is also 170 Euro's, without box.

For those that think that prices of 9V will just keep going up: the cheapest lego train motors you can buy happen to be the oldest lego train motors, the 4.5V motors.

Printed instructions for the B model should be available to those that want to pay a little extra. I don't think I'd pay extra for the instructions because they read fine on my laptop. If my computer were a desktop, then I probably would want to pay extra for the instructions.

Well, it makes sense to them! They have to clear out their inventory to make room for new stuff. For the buyers, yes, it makes sense to wait until we can buy the new motors that are clearly much better.

The page of the 8862 instructions you showed, if that were split up over several pages, I don't see how it would make the building process any faster (or easier for that matter, even though it's just one page it does show pretty clearly which parts to use, and where they're supposed to go).

If your 9V track is too small, you have several options: (a) buy more, on eBay you'd pay $185 plus shipping for 50 pieces of straight track, or (b) sell your 9V track and use the money to buy RC track, or © buy more RC track, keep your 9V track for now, and decide later what to do it. I was in a somewhat similar situation with the passenger car of my Emerald Night train. I had a number of passenger cars from other train sets, making a nice train of about 8 feet long (the XL motor in the Emerald Night can easily pull that). The problem was this: The passenger car that came with the EN was the nicest car among them, but its color clashed with the colors of my other passenger cars. To solve this problem I had to either: not use the other passenger cars and get more EN passenger cars (but they're expensive), or, not use my EN passenger car. I waited about a year to make up my mind, but in the end I decided to sell my EN passenger car for $58 on bricklink. My EN train is now one car shorter but the color conflict has now been solved. Regarding prices, I don't think that they simply keep going up. The blue 12V track I've bought in the last couple of years was cheaper than 9V track. A lego 8868 air claw can be bought for less than $100 and this is consistently rated as one of the top 5 lego technic sets. Same for the metroliner. It's true that some sold-out items are very expensive (cafe corner and 9V straight track) but there are lots of nice lego sets that didn't go up in price. If you're not sure, you can of course always go with option ©, invest in RC track, and if you later decide that you put too much money into lego you can still decide to sell your 9V then. My guess is that the price a few years from now will not be much different than it is now. 9V straight track prices have been constant for some quite time now (switches and crossings have come down a bit in price).

Ah, but that settles the case! If you're passionate about this train then the other arguments don't matter. Once you find one at reasonable cost, then just get one. And I wouldn't worry about used bricks. Sometimes when you buy used lego, they do may need to be washed. Just disassemble it, and put all the lego pieces (except of course the electrical pieces) in a bucket with soapy water (not too hot) and wash them by hand. Takes a couple of days to dry, then reassemble, and it will look great again.

If you have no 12V track, then I'd go for something more cost effective. If you buy a new train then you can be sure that you can acquire a good amount of track at reasonable cost. A train on a small track is not a lot of fun no matter what train you have. Getting 12V track at good prices is not so easy (for completeness: I have lots of blue 12V track, and I've bid quite a few times on a 7740 on eBay, but I have not yet won one).

For sure the "few steps per page" can't be the idea of the designers, so this has to be about saving money for lego. Each box returned to lego costs them a lot of money. If printing more pages leads to slighly fewer costumer complaints and returned items, the savings may outweigh the increased printing cost.

Engine plus 5 SF cars, that surely is too much for one 9V motor.

I applied a little bit of WD-40 to mine, but then I read somewhere else on Eurobricks that WD-40 is bad for the lego's plastic and that I should have used something else instead (search for lubrication on Eurobricks and you'll find some hits). I have spare gears, so I don't worry about them. The only thing I don't have spares for are the Emerald Night train wheels. To reduce the wear on them, I decided to remove the rubber traction bands on the front driving wheels. The reasoning is this: If the front driving wheels don't have to contribute to pulling a long train, then there will be less force (and hence less wear) on the pins in the driving wheels because a force on the front wheels translates into a force on those pins.

9V motors can indeed break (that's why I bought quite a few spares) so you have to be careful with them. I'd definitely be concerned if their load is heavy enough to make them run hot. For such loads I'd feel much more comfortable using the new PF train motors because they seem to be stronger (certainly have lots of torque).

9v is simpler because you don't have to figure out a spot where to put the battery box and the PF receiver. But RC also has a number of advantages (that are already mentioned numerous times here on Eurobricks, so I'm not going to repeat them).

You probably want to buy a multi-meter, costs about $10 or so, and measure everything to see if it conducts electricity or not. Without measuring you'll be guessing blindly and you'd have to try out everything. Even the motor itself should conduct electricity (a reasonable estimate is that it should measure somewhere between 30 and 200 Ohm, if your measurement anywhere in that range then that's a good sign).

On eBay a metroliner usually sells for around $100 - $120. There's one listed right now (current bid $82). That one comes with the box, station, and people (so it might go for more than $120, don't blame me if you don't win the item...). If you're in the UK you may be better off waiting for a UK eBay listing, to save some money on shipping. I think prices over there for used lego trains are not higher than on the US eBay. I wouldn't bid more than $120 because with patience you should eventually win one for that price.

Even without flex track you can place a 90 degree curve between two switches to make a curved siding. In my 9V layout I use 12 switches. Depending on how you set the switches, you either get one long loop with 6 sidings for trains to park, or, two loops with fewer parking spots but this time with switches to go from one loop to the other. This way you have one layout which can function in two different roles (one long loop, or two shorter loops). I use the switches to start/stop the trains, the voltage on the track stays pretty much always the same (except if trains are about to collide, then I shut down the electricity by using a remote controlled AC outlet).