hoeij

This train was the last 9V train (together with the hobby train). It was meant to be powered with a 9V motor in the tender (instructions could be downloaded from lego.com at the time and I'm sure they can still be found somewhere). To make it work as a battery train, the first question is where does the battery box go? (which battery box are you using?)

Question 1 is three hours (measured with 6 passenger cars obtained from other lego sets, but I think with fewer cars it'll be the same). Question 2. I removed the rubber traction bands in the front driving wheels. This makes it easier for the EN to go through curves. Question 3: The motor from the previous RC train is about the same speed as a 9V motor, perhaps even a little bit faster (but a little less torque). I have two of them, one of them is a tiny bit faster than 9V I think, and one of them is about the same speed The new RC motor (power functions motor), I have not tested it myself but I've read that it is also fast enough to derail a train in the curves, so I assume that it is as fast as a 9V motor as well (the 9V motor is faster than I'd like it to be, I don't like it to be able to derail). The Emerald Night with power functions XL motor is quite a bit slower than the 9V and RC trains, in my view it's speed is perfect. It does not derail in the highest speed setting.

Car looks fantastic. Incredible, really.

Only if you insist on having a complete collection. I have a layout once per year at our local train show. In deciding my max-bid on eBay I ask myself how much this train could contribute to the show. By that measure, my max-bid would be lower than the price of an Emerald Night with power functions, because the EN is for sure a better crowd-pleaser. Of course, this limit on my max-bid means that I'm not going to win a 7750 eBay-auction for long long time, I can only win an auction after all those that "must" have their 7750 get one first.

Those are there to make the rear wheels look like the front wheels. Don't know why but I liked it better this way. These 12V wheel sets are the only ones that I kept, I sold all my other 12V wheel sets (from 7745) and replaced them with 9V wheel sets because this reduces the load on the motor by at least a factor two. My 6-car 7745 is now about the same load on a motor as a standard 3-car 7745. In any case, about the 3741, I like the underside of it (the part with the gray 2x6 plates and black plate, modified 1 x 2 with door rail) so I kept that, and added some round 1x1 black plates (idea taken from Emerald Night) and then in the front I added some round bricks (idea taken from hobby train set) attached with a technic axle.

It's easy to put lights in the new trains (lego item 8870, power functions light). Some of my 9V trains have two 9V lights, I'm planning to replace those lights by one 8870.

I have always really liked the way lego steam engine 3741 looks like, except that the 9V motor makes it look less good. The sound of the 9V motor fits very well with high-speed trains, but does not fit with a steamer. But the bigger problem is that 9V has no moving pistons. Both of these problems are solved by replacing the 9V motor by a 12V motor. The 12V motors have moving pistons. All of the non-standard pieces that you need to turn 3741 into a real steam engine are included in lego set 7865, which contains the 12V motor, the moving pistons, the corresponding cylinders, and a few other pieces. The cylinders do not fit underneath the train base plate (at least, if you want to be able to take curves). But it works if you extend the 3741 train by 4 studs (longer looks better anyway) with a 4x6 black plate. Placing tiles on top of the cylinders from lego 7865 allows the cylinders to slide underneath the 4x6 plate, and the rest of the motor (the cylinders are attached to the 12V motor) can rotate underneath the train base plate as usual. Here is how the 12V version of the 3741 train looks like: As you can see, the boiler also had to be made longer, but that looks better anyway. Here is another picture (I had some difficulties making pictures, the flash light of the camera messed up the colors in this picture) and here is the 12V motor with pistons and cylinders attached: I use this engine to pull three logging cars (from the My Own Train series), two MOC wooden-looking cars and a caboose. Adds up to about 5 feet plus a few inches long, but these logging cars don't weigh much so it's an easy load for the motor. This 12V 3741 train is definitely cheaper than my Emerald Night with power functions, but I like it at least as much, if not more (the 12V motor with its pistons sounds much nicer than the high pitch XL motor).

Among used 9V motors, it's not uncommon to find one with worn out bushes/commutator. But I have yet to see that in any of the used 12V motors that I bought. In every single one of them, this part is still in excellent condition, which tells me that the motor will still last a long time. Two of my motors have worn down contact points at the bottom of the motor (anyone know where I can find a replacement for those?). When the contact points wear, they get flatter, making it harder to go over switch points. But even those motors still look very good on the inside (at least, after I removed all that hair...).

I don't see the appeal, it's a steam engine without moving pistons! The only value I can see is that it can be sold for lots of $ to someone else. If I had a copy of this set it'd put it on bricklink right away.

Not just your motor, lots of 12V motors out there need maintance. I bought nine 12V motors, and six of them were not running smoothly. Some of them wouldn't even start moving unless there was more than 6 volt on the track (that's just the motor without a train!). What they need is lubrication. They need to be opened up because the gears need lubrication (e.g. WD40). Two of my motors even had a bunch of hair in them (no wonder they didn't run right!). This gunk obviously has to be removed. Now they run very much better (2 volt is enough to make all of them move). A lubricated motor will move with much less friction, will thus use much less current, get less hot, and last much longer. If one motor is running slower than another motor, the slow motor is actually working much harder than the fast motor, because the slow motor is slow only because it needs to turn gears that have lots of friction due to lack of lubrication. PS. It is not easy to open up a motor, but I think that if I want the motors to still be working 10 years from now, there's really no other choice.

I've been wondering about what would happen to 9V in the long run, and how long the items we need (e.g. 9V train motors) would remain available at reasonable cost. At the moment, if you are new to lego trains, and if you like to build long trains, then the 9V system is difficult to get into because of the high cost of 9V straight track (if you have long trains then you need lots of straight track, otherwise it's not going to look good). But I think that in the longer run, 9V is going to become cheaper. In the short term, the excessive price of 9V straight track will prevent some people from entering 9V. In the longer term, there will be more lego battery trains out there, which will also reduce demand for 9V from people new to lego trains. So at the moment supply (especially the straight track) is low, but demand is low and will likely decrease. Supply, on the other hand, is not likely to decrease any time soon. Lots of 9V trains have been sold, and every year when kids go to college, they end up on eBay. This can go on for many years. Consider that 12V is still being bought/sold, that there are many more 9V train sets out there, and that 9V is much more recent than 12V, all this makes it seem likely that a couple of years from now 9V sets will be cheaper on eBay than they are today. 9V switches are already decreasing in price (the price of curved track has to be low because there is way too much of it out there. For the same reason, controllers can only go down in value as well). Another thing to keep in mind is that most used 9V sets don't come from AFOL's, in other words, most of those motors have only a small number of hours of usage, they are essentially new. When 9V ended I anticipated an increase in the price of straight track and motors, and both lots of both. But I think that in a few years, motors will start to decrease in price. Unfortunately, the collections of non-AFOL's tend to have few straight track, so straight track will remain expensive longer than 9V motors will. Still, looking at what happened to 12V (12V straight track is cheaper than 9V straight track) it seems likely that five years from now, straight 9V track will be easier to buy than today.

It has 4 channels that you can choose from, and has two dials, for a total of 8 combinations. If only one could remember which combination corresponds to which train... Oops, the wrong train started moving...

I have one copy of the set 7996 switch track, and I was considering converting it to 9V using ideas posted here on eurobricks some time ago. However, the problem is that I don't know how to make good use out of it. Each of the yellow controls affects both tracks, which means that two trains driving next to each other on parallel tracks will always go towards the same track and thus run into each other eventually. Has anyone experimented with making a cut so that the two switches now operated by one control can be operated independently? Is there friction (to prevent the switch from moving by itself) on both sides, or, if I make a cut, will one side move freely?

I'll get this set when I see it in a store. Straight RC rails are worth $2.00 a piece, so four of them is $8.00. You're paying $12 for the rest of the set.

My guess is that hot-selling big sets is the reason that the company is doing well financially. The modular houses are around $150 and were selling like pancakes! Who would have thought that you can sell so many copies of such large sets? That must be a big part of their bottom line. I was really looking forward to their new passenger train. The previous one sold for $89. Unfortunately, the new one is $129. I don't want to pay that much, so I haven't bought it, but I can understand their reasoning a little bit though: the moment that the previous passenger train was sold out, the eBay price went from $90 to $150. Perhaps the lego company is thinking that if eBay can sell passenger trains well over $100, then so can lego. I don't know if that's true though, I still have some hope that that price will have to come down at some point. I did recently buy some very nice small sets though, I think the selection is pretty good actually.

The main 9V loop had on average 3 trains running on it (sometimes more, sometimes less). To ensure constant voltage along the track, power is supplied at 4 places using 3 controllers. The speed setting is 4 (out of 6) which means there is 6.5 Volt on the track. Not all of the controllers are sitting next to each other (after all, the idea was that power is supplied at various points in the track so that a train is never far away from a power supply). So it is not easy to turn them all off. To deal with that problem, I got a remote-controlled AC outlet. This way I can shut down all the electricity with a click on one button, and prevent a collision or fix some other type of problem. The only train that is not stopped by that button is the Emerald Night, that's why it needs its own separate loop. All the 9V trains have one motor in it. There are two reasons for that. First, it makes it easier to make them run at nearly the same speed. But more important, if there are two motors in one engine, then it tends to pull the magnetic coupler loose when I turn the AC power back on. With one motor it is easier to organize this layout (the long cargo train on the 12V track is the only one that does have two motors). PS. Thanks for showing me how to post the link to the video.

The 4560 ran many times, just not in this video. The track is designed to make it very easy to change trains, stop one and start another. Every couple of minutes I'd make a change. You don't see that in the video because I was having a water break at the time. At the moment I do not have any other footage (I'm hoping to get some more footage from other club members, but at the moment this is all I have). Kids that stayed at this layout for more than 20 minutes would have seen every train run at least once. My plan was also to ask kids which train they want to see running, however, the guy in the display next to mine had his music so loud that it was difficult to communicate with people in the audience. PS. Did you notice the handcar in front of the Emerald Night? (I used instructions copied from Big Ben's Bricks website, I would have bought the handcar kit but I was too late and it was sold out). Also, did you notice that kid in the first video that came very close to grabbing the cargo train?). The trains on the outside loop would quite often leave some cars behind, presumably due to kids hands, but kids never caused a train car to go on the floor. I don't have a 4559 train. I bid on it numerous times on eBay, just never won one (they tend to sell a bit higher than the 4560 train). I don't want to bid too much for it because I'll need two copies to make the length comparable to that of the other trains.

I had a lego layout at our annual local train show. Setup time took longer than anticipated, so some things of the things I brought stayed in the box (some of the buildings, roads, but most important: the green paper I brought to cover the tables). Nevertheless, kids loved the layout. I think they liked the 4511 train the best. There are a few MOC's, but most of it are standard lego sets. The layout allows any of the trains on the track to be started/stopped with a flip of a switch. I built my own interrupter rails for the 12V track because the ones on bricklink were too expensive. Most of the time there were 2 trains running simultaneously on the 12V track, and 3 or 4 on the main 9V loop, and one train (Emerald Night) on the loop in the middle. I had multiple trains running on the same 9V loop. This worked because the trains were very close in speed and the loop is quite long, so it takes a long time for one train to catch up to the one in front of it, and when it does, there are plenty of sidings were I can temporarily halt a train to let a faster one pass. In the video I have on youtube you see only one train on the 12V track, and 3 on the 9V track, but this is because I was having a little break at the time. I think my favorite train is a 9V steam train (from My Own Train) that I converted to 12V. By making the engine a bit longer, I could put a 12V motor with moving pistons in the front. Looks very nice going down the track but unfortunately I don't have video of it. You can find my video's on youtube, username: mhoeij Let me know what you think.

The M motor is nearly twice as fast as the XL motor, but has only a quarter of its torque. If you can change the gearing, to gear down a factor two, then your Emerald Night with M motor will go equally fast as the usual one with the XL motor (which is good). You'll have half of the pulling power. For 3 coaches I think that that would be OK, I'm pretty sure you're not burning out your M motor that way (the XL motor has no troubles pulling 7 coaches).

Why not simply cut the wiring, strip the wires, and then connect them with some wire-nuts (the smallest ones, the gray ones). But make sure you get the polarity right! I don't think that the IR receiver will be happy with a reversed polarity.... PS. I'm sure that this is also "not recommended practice". Still, this does seem to be the cheapest way to get your EN running while having a battery pack that fits in the tender, and without breaking the bank.

The battery box from train set 7938 should also work, but I have not yet seen it on bricklink.

Thanks for the info, this looks fairly similar to the previous passenger train, the only difference being that the engine by itself does not derail on setting 5 due to its exceptionally low center of gravity (but it does derail in setting 7). The useful settings for the 5-car train are 3,4,5 (or 4,5,6 when I use the other motor, the two RC motors that I have are not equally fast). Below that, the motor is struggling, while above that, you get to do some repairs. To make the train easier to use, I've been considering replacing one of the 6 batteries by a dummy. That reduces the voltage to 7.5V max (for 5 regular batteries) or 6V max (for 5 rechargeable batteries, which is what I use). I haven't tested this, but I suspect that the RC mechanism will still work even when the batteries supply only 6V, and that this should be enough to prevent derailings (the idea is to use the train at a train show and let kids run it...).

This 5-car train, does it move in the lowest speed setting? At which speed setting does it derail out of the curves?

I don't think I'll buy the passenger train unless there is some cost-effective way to get additional cars. I wonder how well this train will sell at $129 which is really quite a lot more than the previous passenger train. My 10016 is only $65 ... I really like the idea of having key train pieces be available in PAB so that we can make additional cars for the passenger train without having to buy a second copy. Your lobbying efforts are appreciated!

That's not easy because the windows at the top are hard to get!