andythenorth

Possibly a clutch gear in the drivetrain. In most PF models, moving structures that could cause a pinch injury (or similar) get a clutch gear or some other failsafe.

So I ran the photos past my five year old: - "want want want want" - "engine is red + grey. If it was just red it would be boring. The grey makes it really interesting, along with the roof, which is interesting round shapes like play-doh." - "digger is good" - "coal wagon is good" I asked him how many helicopters we had (at least 5 small ones so far, maybe more), and if we had enough: - "we have quite a few, but this one is white, which is kind of interesting, we should get it" Was really hoping he'd slate the chopper, I've seen quite enough of them. Couldn't get a comment out of him on the crane. Target market much?

For UK customers, https://www.very.co.uk have the passenger train at £80 I nearly bought one, but I dunno. If Lego are dropping trains, not sure I want to buy any more. No wait that's silly. Actually I just spent a lot of ££ on two 60052 trains for my kids at christmas, and I don't want to spend any more right now. I'd happily buy two of these passenger trains in the summer. I'll take a chance on the 60051 train being no longer available then I guess. I'm not going to panic buy toys due to internet rumours. Nor am I going to assume Lego are dropping trains when...there are photos of a new 2015 cargo train...and when nearly every kid who visits our house wants to play with the Lego trains my kids have. Nah. Get real. Or I've missed some irony, easily done.

Ha ha. Good luck. The chances of foamer sets making it through the Ideas process is effectively zero. The only sets making it through are mass-appeal. Foamer interests are not of interest to most people. Lego foamers represent a tiny niche, probably a few thousand people worldwide. Most foamers (in my experience) find Lego trains either unappealing, or just hopelessly, pointlessly unrealistic. I have spent a lot of time around foamers, but hey, maybe your experience is different. Good luck though.

Eh you could just build it yourself?

Saving you a few clicks https://www.flickr.c...go/15888572283/ https://www.flickr.c...go/16321274620/ I like the engine, it's going to divide people I guess. It's a rehash of the yellow engine from 7939, which I like. I have a half-finished similar build in red+white to pull 7938 coaches. My kids will love this one. One thing my kids definitely aren't going to say is "Oh awesome, another helicopter." Not sarcasm btw. They've had enough of helicopters. They always like another small truck or car, or some interesting building, but helicopters...they have enough of. They do like them, but they get frustrated with the limited play value, because they tend to fall to pieces when swooshed, and all the small ones are pretty much identical. I think we have 5 or 6 small helicopters, and maybe 3 larger ones, and that's just from the last 5 years of City sets, nor do I buy them every single set in the City range each year, it's a handful per year per child. The digger looks great, they'll really like that. Like 60052, this is probably a two-kids, two-train-sets purchase, Christmas 2015. I know the hows and reasons for why Lego don't offer many train accessories, but really a nice, well-thought out freight station (multi-cargo, with one wagon, a crane and a trailer truck) would be an easy Christmas buy at the £30-£50 price point. Passenger stations are low play value, and as far as I can judge by my kids + internet opinions, passenger station is more of interest to AFOLs.

Needed for the B model

It's push-rod not rack and pinion. Some of the videos in this thread show closeups on the steering while operated. It's inevitably likely to have some amount of slack and slop in it, the suspension + the push rod setup demands that the steering has multiple articulation points, and at Lego part tolerances, that introduces slack. Ultimately it's a fun toy, not a precision scale model 8110 problems were multiple, but it was an utterly different steering setup. - 8110 axle moved under spring compression, due to Panhard setup. No Panhard on the Arocs AFAICT (parallel trailing arms). - 8110 steering was heavy and steering performance was very poor; Arocs is probably a lighter vehicle, probably doesn't use stiff pins in the kingpins, and the wheels are smaller and have less resistance to scrub - 8110 kingpins mounted very far from wheel center due to portal axle parts, so large scrub radius; Arocs doesn't use the portal axle parts

Length might make no difference. For a given part, in a given material, for a given torque, the shear under rotation should be the same. Adding more strong parts doesn't make the weakest part stronger. OTOH, length allows more deformation, and deformation might contribute to shear. Dunno. Eh, it's a long time since I saw an actual engineering test rig, I might have forgotten something.

FWIW, in any UK city, some of the most commonly-seen trucks are these 8x4 tippers with a clamshell hiab. They're not used on general haulage, they're used by civil contractors for street and utility works (sewers, gaslines and such). They haul in asphalt, aggregate etc, and haul out rubble. Some even have racks on the side for mounting power tools (whackers and such). This one is a pretty typical example, happens to be a white Arocs. http://lcvehiclehire...iab-crane-1.jpg

Front suspension looks similar in principle (not exact copy) of Hendrickson vocational twin-steer design: trailing arms, parallel movement. http://www.hendrickson-intl.com/Truck/Vocational/PARASTEERHD "Other suspensions are available" etc. Commercial (freight) trucks almost universally have solid axles. Independent suspension is rare, except for specialised applications.

I think that is the fairest criticism. I really wanted to like this set. When it came out there were bad reviews, but the box images really caught my attention. Having built the A model, and the B model, both left me underwhelmed. The A model is significantly better designed than the B model, but that's hardly praise. I'm looking at it with 36-year old eyes though. If I was 8 or 10 years old, I think I would have loved this set. The A model packs a lot into a small space, it showcases how LAs work, how pneumatics work, and how a motor can power both via a gearbox. It's also got a great range of parts for building other things with. Being fair, the B model has some 'interesting' ideas, even if it looks ugly as sin and is useless to play with. I think the A model design is thoughtful (even if the tyres look daft), and the colour scheme is striking. With the new long slim pneumatic pump, and new tyres from the Skip Truck (http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?S=42024-1) it could have been much more cohesive. As it is I wanted to strip it for useful parts, but my 5 year-old won't let me, and wants me to rebuild the B model back to the A model. So it has fans in the core target market I guess. Maybe it needs modding. Take an ugly duckling and fix the flaws?

The parts cracking is, almost certainly, as described earlier in the thread multiple times, caused by the axle being a little too thick for the moulded opening. This will cause a slight bending moment across the end of the part, which will eventually, probably spontaneously, shear, causing a crack to form. Storage conditions do make a difference to Lego longevity, but the known issue is the poor resistance of ABS to ultraviolet. It is unlikely, but not impossible that humidity or pressure have any significant effect, at least within 'normal' ranges. I looked and I have stacks of these broken connectors. The common cause is that all have been left assembled with axles in place. These models have been stored in a wide range of conditions (light, dark, hot, cold, varying temperature, constant temperature). I have hundreds of other connectors unused (no axle through them) that are not cracked.

Videos of it going over obstacles. It's not built for crawling (limited suspension travel), but it will climb small vertical obstacles. Obstacle height is limited by the bumper / chassis height, and not much clearance under the steered axles. Slow: https://www.flickr.c...57633468817167/ Faster: https://www.flickr.c...57633468817167/ And an oops (gets hung up, no diff locks on steered axles): https://www.flickr.c...57633468817167/ @Saberwing yeah, I might rebuild with the portal axle part, if it will fit, or add a little more rigidity to the current design. It's the liftarms that are suffering. Mostly due to raw torque I think - check out the twist in the soft 5.5 axle as well

So this is a big Mammoet truck: 8x8, former tank transporter prime mover, now converted to heavy haul tractor, based on MB Actros, heavily adapted, probably by Titan Special trucks http://www.titan-sf.com/index.php/en/ (or by MB special vehicles unit, I'm not sure). http://s697.photobuc...3kopie.jpg.html Brickshelf user Spacey did this full PF one http://www.brickshel...y.cgi?i=5868908 Anyway, my build has hanging around since 2008, what with kids etc, it's been slow (and redesigned entirely once), but it's getting closer to done. Cab is stolen from 8258 temporarily, right size, but doesn't look like an Actros, and needs to be black Rear wheels have one PF XL motor per axle. Diffs lock with small pneumatic cylinders (design stolen from Sariel). Front wheels have one PF XL driving both axle, no diff locks. Reduction gears front and rear. Front and rear bogies are pendular (rocking towards front and rear of vehicle), and everything flexes. It's built for pulling power, rather than crawling, but it will go over moderate rough terrain. Two AA battery packs for more power, driving via 3 IR receivers (V1), reason for using 3 is to try and maximise power to the motors, the IR receiver is a limiting factor; using more of them is better in this case. Steering is with one PF M motor, driving an unusual arrangement with worm gears. Both axles turn at same angle, no proportional steer on second axle, no room here. There are twin winches driven by shared L motor, winches can be engaged with clutches, and can free-spool for running out line. Colour-vomit needs rebuilding, this is prototype. All major components are modular and can be stripped off the chassis. The front and rear bogies can also be dropped out by pulling 4 pins. This is handy because the powertrain eats gears, and is also snapping triangle liftarms, so part replacement needs to be easy. It has been tested pretty extensively, for a while I handed it over to my elite tester (2 yr old) to see what he did with it.

Me neither Scania have V8s, dunno beyond that. The US truck engines I found were straight 6 (Mack, Paccar). My guess would be that there are a range of V and straight engine choices available both sides of the Atlantic, also some engine suppliers are global. Anyway, it's off-topic. Just curious.

Do they?

I'm not buying this valuable collectable item for adults if it's not proper. Thank you for this valued information.

Silly David. You can see who cares, they keep posting in these threads.

I'm with Conor, I think there are more than 4 cylinders there. That's based on counting studs, but because of the camera angles, I could be counting wrong. 4, 5, or 6, doesn't really matter to me, to me it's a nice toy either way, but eh.

If I find these on UK discount, I'm buying 2. No question, my kids will like it.

Just found this on Youtube randomly. Awesome video Imagine the Bricklink value of those trains, there's over €1000 of crash there (at a guess)

Longer than that, 32 studs or so. -- Bucket wheel excavator - using the new buckets from the Arocs (the clamshell halves)? I am +1 to the little red car.

Longer pneumatics.

[Off-topic] It's just ABS. Official sets, I couldn't care less if they're in one piece, or totally disassembled - as long as the parts can be found any official set can be reconstructed any time. The MOCs I've built I'd be more sad about junking, because a lot of work was sunk into them. This one particularly, took fricking ages just to build the rear bed, so many pins https://www.flickr.c...rth/4826895221/