kyphur

Having acquired all of the mining sets I must say this is one of my favorites. I don’mind the odd colors here and there as it seems to be a "Lego thing" as long as the big picture view is mostly correct.

Interesting subject matter. Never knew about spite houses until I found your thread...

I just wish it was available as a pdf (even watermarked) as that’how I prefer my digital books these days...

I'm really glad I got in on this series while I could still get all of the sets... I definately won't miss this one...

Within 20 hrs we'll be on the road from Northern Illinois to Savannah Georgia! All 40ish cubic feet of lego are securely packed in the truck witheverything else we own... Sorry I've been scarce on the forum lately, hope to get more active once we've settled in down there...

Welcome to Train Tech for all of the recent members. You'll find an amazing wealth of knowledge here...

Thanks for the vote of agreement but if there's one thing I've learned over the years it's that there is always more than 1 "right" way to do most things. This is one of those situations were this applies...

I certianly won't buy it in the current form as it simply isn't practical for train building unless you’re building like 10 wide...

I really enjoy seeing interesting pieces of equipment like this. Thanks for posting it.

Oh, my bad... I needs ver connect the lights to the second channel as that reduces the numbers mber of trains I can control at a time.

Great mod, too bad the lights will brighten & dim with the speed of the Engine. It's unfortunate that there isn't enough room to connect the lights directly to the battery...

I think your problem is that you have rolling stock in all four corners which is causeing too much resistance. If you're going to continue to run such long trains insrease the straights so you're in no more than 2 corners at any given time.

Yes, you can use 1 x 2 tiles for a secure mechanical connection, if you derail the whole train follows though... I agree but it's realistic to have a pusher engine (or two) at the tail end for really long trains, maybe it's time to add a foruth Maersk Loco (even if it's not powered) so there's 3 up front for the looks and a pusher. I was able to pull about 10 of the container cars all double loaded before I started having de-coupling issues. Once I started running trains up the incline that number dropped to about 6...

I just noticed that you're using all 3 engines in the front of the train. If you put one in the rear then it will help with decoupling of long trains by taking up slack a releiving the stress of the magnetic coupling connections.

Maybe it isn't time for a BT receiver in every train then. I like the idea of using my iPad tondrive my trains but not at $100 (after shipping) per train. Maybe a hybrid solution would be best for the time being: BT to RF device? This would allow cheaper RF receivers in our trains and only require 1 BT transceiver. For a low cost solution coms to the train could be 1 way only requiring a receiver in the train or a more expensive option would be RF transceivers in the train so that itncould report back to the base which would ofmcourse relay the info to the phone/tablet. Of course the rf receivers/transceivers would need to be addressable but that's just a little bit of data in transmission (id prefix)

I know $30 is probably wishful thinking but maybe $50 would be obtainable? It's just that with the quantities we'd buy the price would have to be ess and it should also be better suited for our building environment (fit inside 6 wide bodies). Maybe they would give bulk discounts so a train club could get together and order 20 or more at a time for savings of $5 per unit.

Get the set that has both flex & straight track. Here are some examples of uses for flex track: The Many Uses of Flex Track. Personally I own over 1,300 pieces of flex track. 4 pieces = 1straight.

The Maersk Container Cars would probably work very well with shared bogies to give you a fine multi-modal setup. I know the 10219 Container are larger than 7939 containers but honestly I prefer Maersk's container scale. In fact I converted my 7939 containers to 10219 size and rebuilt the container car to the longer size. I also use copies of the Maersk container car (colored Gray & Black).

Looks awesome but at $87 per unit that would be a costly train conversion! I fear we'd be paying for a lot of features that would never be used in a train: 5 non-proportional connectors: I could see using 2, 1 for the lights and second 1 for custom features like doors etc.. 3 proportional connectors, we'd only need 1 for our throttle. Another issue I see with ths product is The connectors face the wires outward, if they were turned in then it would be easer to build into 6 wide trains. Then there's the fact that the bottom is smooth and LEGO connection options are limited to using technic pins from below or the front/back. The final issue (for trains) is that the device is 6 wide. If they could make a scaled down version that had only 1 proportional & 2 non-proportional outputs, is 4 wide and the connector wires are routed toward on end instead of off all four sides which sold for about $30 then I'd be the first one here to convert all of my trains. While the gyro is a cool feature I could do without it but if it could be in the cheaper "train" version then we could use it for automaticlly throttling up & down for slopes.

Or simply mount the track pieces with a 4 stud gap instead of the 2 stud gap used in the Mine Set...

That looks like te train wheels used for all rolling stock since the 9v days. I'd imagine that there wasn't a proper part in LDraw for the metal axle when the instructions were produced so they subbed a 4L bar.

Here is the size I think I'd do this prototype in:

I agree with Pinioncorp on all points except I think maybe the issue is that it's too short not too tall... Maybe if you lengthen it by 3 or 4 studs then you can address the minor issues: Build a geared truck that puts the wheels further apart (like the prototype). Allow better access to the 9v battery. I do love these little switchers/shunters/yard engines and will probably build my own version of this great little prototype.

Strickly speaking LEGO we don't talk scale (HO, O, G, N, etc)in gauges as those are commercial model railroad scales. Lego 6-wide is often times referred to as L Gauge. In the world of LEGO Trains the scale we commonly speak is X (Studs) Wide. Standard TLG Train Models are all 6-Wide meaning the engine & rolling stock are build on bases thatnare six studs wide. It looks like the new mining sets have some small ore trains that are only 4-Wide (just like the old Indiana Jones Temple of Doom ore car set). Some AFOL Train buildes have built in scales ranging fron 1-Wide to 12-Wide!

In my opinion... All 3 versions of Hogwarts Express are in the same category as the Toy Story Train, they were all designed not from the angle of making a good train but rather of making a set that fits into the theme (eitervHP or TS). The effect of this is that as a train they are simplistic. A good example of this is that while both trains are steam engines neither had the steam pistions that drive the wheels on a real steam engine. Now look at the emerald night, it has the drivers. Granted the few steam locomotives from the 90's are also lacking the steam drivers but those models are from 15 plus years ago not the current era like the emerald night. I think this is the problem with "theme trains", they are more about the theme and don't really care much about being good trains. This doesn't mean that I look down on any of them, I just don't see them fitting into my LEGO Train collection.