JopieK

Ha Ben, you did a shopping spree at Sparkfun ;) Good to see you here!

Don't listen to it too often, you might become enchanted :p

The Palace of the Flying Fakir When preparing for this contest we were trying to get some inspiration. We thought that a flying fakir would be nice! The Dutch funpark "de Efteling" has an attraction that is already 50+ years old! It is called "The flying fakir" ("de vliegende fakir" in Dutch). For this contest, I made a LEGO set inspired on that attraction. My girlfriend made the nice mosaik floor and the flowers. The attraction works like this: the flying fakir moves from one side to the other on his flying carpet. Then the window in front of one of the sides is opened and a horrible noise emerges: the fakir is playing his magical flute. On the left side, yellow flowers start to blossom. On the right side, the flowers will be red. After playing that horrible tune, the window closes and the fakir goes to the other side on his flying carpet again. We made some jokes on the floor like: - a women that is attacking another fluting fakir with a frying pan - a market booth - a fakir that is about to become beheaded (for some reason most people don't like fakirs playing the flute, if you click , you understand why)At this moment the fakir is not motorised yet. Also we did not print the stickers yet, but maybe for LEGOWorld Zwolle next Autumn, we will do that. We thought this would be a nice expansion of the theme, although it will be quite costly so it will need to be a factory set or something like that. Only non-LEGO item: nylon string for the fakir, the carpet is genuine LEGO. Inspiration: Fakir pictures

A bit late, but better late than never... I made a line follower for educational purposes. It is almost fully functional now. But do you manage to detect signals from a LEGO IR sender? I used the train version. It seems to be not reliable using an IRM38BL ir receiver...

Maybe http://bricks.argz.com/part/3046a but then a 3 x 3 version would be handy also?!

Hi guys, I came across this: !maybe it has been posted here already, but anyway. Greetings Johan

On Mac OS the instructions don't always work like that. You can right click the application bundle (in my case in /Applications/) and then select "Show Package Content", then go to Contents/Resources/Assets/ and open that preferences.ini in the text editor (make sure you save it as plain text, that is why I used Smultron as texteditor). Add that line (file was empty before) and save the file. Restart LDD and Voilà

Really, really nice! Also the golden tulip with mister Fish

Hi Kolaf, have you taken your Train project already to the next level? I have an Arduino + LEGO robot now. Maybe adding an IR receiver / transmittor to it would be a nice idea. Greetings Johan

Indeed very nice! don't know him unfortunately

Very nice MOC! Like this era.

We print it on transparant polyester using a special printer (that is used in printing shops) (examples at our ministickers site). Unfortuntely printing white seems to stay difficult even with such a device and special ink.

Well, there was a save 9V trains initiative, that didn't work, so why should it work now. B.t.w. 9V never came as far as 12V :)

really nice job!

So EB is not a LUG? And why then are other LUGs like LowLUG etc. LUGs? I'm both BeLUG and 1000steine member, but don't know yet how they will work it out.

Well, this looks promising! Good idea from LEGO.

Probably it will work without any problems, there is always a chance, but when it overheats you can still replace it. I haven't had the controller yet, hope LEGO ships it soon to me. It seems to be quite easy to do it yourself, I'm working on that, but probably wont finish before the end of september.

Nice MOC, Fabuland is always special! Cute little story, maybe you can work it out a little further?!

I especially like the pantograph. I'm wondering however where the tram has it's engine (middle car?).

Not bad! I visited the Bochum-Dahlhausen eisenbahn museum (Germany) today (new inspiration for the contest, too bad I have an exam next week) and it looks just like one of the trains there ;) I have found out that a train looks even better with a lot of stuff (what was the term those space and steampunk people used for useless but nice looking technical accessories?! [it was still somewhere in my mind, they call it greeble]). Although in train terms the accessories are totally necessary to let e.g. a real stream engine run, this is quite crucial for LEGO trains (maybe that is the Achilles' heel of the emerald b.t.w.). I think you have added some details in this scale that help making it attractive, but it still can be improved of course.

Indeed, why not join the reviewers academy. I think this review will pass right away, but you get better tips from 'experts' there. Greetings Johan

Yups, it turns, it goes very slow because of the gearing (see here). Last year we suscribed to a Dutch Railhobby magazine and those people are much more into things like realistic scale speed etc, so that was why I decided to make it turn quite slow (but it is therefore also strong enough to handle large trains like the emerald. A full turntable is usually made up out of two bridges that are connected at the kings chair. A pictures that shows this quite well can be found here and that is much more difficult to do in LEGO (although, some people have experience with it (like Ben Beneke). The PF used, allow me at this moment to connect an IR receiver and control it using the normal PF remote. My wish is however to make it fully automatic: pressing left on the IR remote will then move the bridge one track to the left, pressing right will move it to the right. Using reed sensors, the chip can determine whether the bridge has already reached the desired destination.

I can help you with that ;) but, for the other parts, it would be nice to have means to make the railroad more realistic without modding (points, signals, etc. etc.), I'm afraid LEGO is not going to give us the 12V era experience very soon (or maybe some insiders know more about next year regarding that stuff).

ENTERED Oldebrick Junction This is my contribution to the contest for the third category. What is going on there?! Oldebrick Junction is a medium size railroad emplacement from around 1950. As Holland is recovering from WW2 and trying to rebuild damaged railroad infrastructures and old allied army trains are being transferred to the public railroad companies, Oldebrick is enriched with a new segment turntable that is large enough to turn trains of the Emerald type (shipped just after D-Day and recently repainted and made suitable for the Dutch Railroad company NS). As you can see, the bridge of the turntable is already placed and the railworkers are now trying to finish it off. Since the contest requires just one picture, not all the details of this scene are too clear, but one of the NS employees was kind enough to upload some pictures of this historic event to brickshelf, so that we are able to elaborate more on this. First of all, mr. Goudriaan, before and after WW2 president director of the Dutch Railroad company (see wikipedia [note: in Dutch]), seen inspecting the new turntable. Two workers are installing the turntable signal according to Dutch railroad specifications even as we speak. The signal shows a yellow circle when the turntable is moving (or at least not locked) or an arrow pointing to the right when the turntable is locked in place and it is safe to drive a train onto the bridge (custom vinyl stickers). As you can see it takes a lot of workers to get such a large structure done in time. Also casualties now and then happen (a worker tripped over the hose of the burner and fell down on his nose). To make life a little easier for the turntable operator in a quite often rainy country like Holland, NS also decided to fit the bridge with an operator shed. The shed is at this moment just about to be lifted up by a modern (in those days standards) crane truck. The insets show the gearing of the bridge. It is equipped with a small PF motor. Large advantage of a segment turntable is that it is easy to connect it to the 'mainland' without the need for special tricks. The 'kings chair' is positioned to the far end and the other end has some wheels to help it turn smooth. About the project I have never before seen a segment turntable in LEGO, although there are some existing railroad model ones. In the large train world, those turntables are also rare. For LEGO purposes they are convenient however: they don't take up too much space and allow e.g. simple access to sanding tower, water tower and recoaling installation, but also to the engine shed without a lot of space devouring 9V points. You don't need to make a lot of difficult elektronics to switch the polarity of the track, or make an ingenious system to power the track at the turntable bridge. Hope you have enjoyed this project. I hope to fit it with an atmega8 processor and custorm circuit board in near future to make it automatically controlable by e.g. the PF remote and/or an NXT. As this moment the bridge is fully functioning using the PF switch, although the 9V tracks are not yet connected.

LEGO is an odd company. That happens to a lot more parts if you search bricklink etc.