v6TransAM

TGV is officially our Christmas train. The boy finished building it tonight, so we set up an octagon consisting of 4 2 straight section and 4 2 curve sections. Looks really nice having two TGV sets together. 2 year old is in love with it. I'll try and take a decent picture tomorrow in some daylight.

I don't have any R-104 to test as I went with some smaller curve sizes instead from ME. However, having a set of cut Lego switches with the HORRIBLE geometry corrected is not a bad deal. Makes a lot of things possible that were not before. I appreciate the switches since modifying them and they make placement much easier.

Interesting. I was goofing with something similar when I built the bridge and incline with my boy. Was using a couple of the tilt pieces and goofing with them a bit to see what would work. The sliding piece is what was missing, so that's some nice engineering there.

As soon as my 5 yr old finishes building our other Horizon Express(end car to finish and he built it all solo) I plan on building another connector truck to make it one complete train set and then run it around the bottom of the tree.

I like it. Definitely more fun actually building it than doing it on a screen. I just cannot get used to that and I've tried. Beside I have the boy for help(and his little brother)

Nice, looking good.

I vote for keeping the stripe. Looks good on the bottom and breaks up the colors some.

If you think about it they are already doing it..... Changing colors on bricks and base plates, anyone that thinks it is anything else than a money grab has issues. Boxes are big, price tags are higher and parts count is down....I'm amazed when they announce "record profits". I love building "fill in the blank" and never having enough bricks, plates, tiles, flats out the wazoo. Notice I said brick, not some dumb garbage flat panel or a 1*2 brick that is 5 tall and solid. All the useless pieces that get used for one set or two or the countless stupid heads; capes,cups, winglets, canopies, tires, rims, jet/thruster and other parts that are usually useless in 99% of the things I build. I do this for my kids who are 5 and 2(5yr old can build anything, 2 is just getting started), it is frustrating running out of bricks all the time and dad is pretty good about finding deals, yard sale finds and sniping ebay auctions for some pretty big lots, record so far is a 42lb one. Lack of bricks is getting to be disturbing and continuing to become worse. All but the largest sets, simply lack them. Look at what they have done to the trains, I get and understand that it is not a Lego profit driver, but why do something so dumb as to pack straights and flex track together? Someone was taking advantage of some of the Danish laws regarding smoking stuff there. Hey no one wants this and no one has enough straights, so lets package it together. Seriously? I look at the stupid Star Wars tax and wonder why people even buy the sets. Parts counts are down and you pay extra to boot. If we quit simply playing into their hands a lot of this stupidity would stop but people are to busy with "me,myself and I" and have to have it now mentality. I can count on one hand the amount of Lego sets I have bought at retail price anywhere. It was one for my sons birthday since we took him to TRU. The rest I wait for sales, BOGO 50% off, clearance and the like. I have to buy some things direct from Lego because they are not in any store close, like switches and PF train, motors, battery boxes etc and I wait for sale or 2 for 1 points on them all. Maybe one day when I run a company and can decrease playability and parts count while making record profits and advertising my eco-friendly wind farm...... I understand they are a business and need to make a profit. Lego has now jumped on the more is better just like everything else and given time it will start hurting them where it counts and they will be too dumb to notice.

I was thinking about it, obviously I have tons of curves left over(who doesn't???). I still have another 15-20 straight Enlighten tracks and I never dipped into any of the ME stuff from the Kickstarter package I got either lol So far bridge and runs have proven quite sturdy minus one incursion based off the 2 yr old :-) They put it all back together while I was at work, so all is good. The two bozos love it.

Yeah! The little goof was good today and helped her clean up the house. So when I got home from work we were able to con her into part of the living room to set up shop. So we have one giant loop with one side being the trestle and bridge and a longish siding on the other side. Have a switch off of that to go under the bridge than connect back to itself where the trestle transitions back to level ground.

Preliminary testing is looking good, Emerald Night works okay and we loaded up the diesel from the cargo set, with 2 long cars and piled PF motors, remotes and tenders in them for weight and all was good. Need to rebuild good supports for one run and assemble it all in one piece, might not be until tomorrow

Thanks man, that means a lot coming from you. With the little bozos, simplicity/strength/looks is the adage. I think we kind of created a very nice yet realistic design. I know we can get away with setting it up for demo purposes, just want to see what else he will do on his own once we get it all put up.

Looking good marook. That working drawbridge is pretty awesome to see in action. I have to build what he wants/likes and it has to meet the 5 yr old maxim of not falling apart under use(also sees a 2 yr old on occasion). I knew it was going to take up a lot of room, but geez, the approach and descent are 14 straight tracks each and 2 more for the actual bridge itself. I'm going to end up digging out the rest of the Enlighten track he doesn't know about and some of the ME model track.

(will try and update with pics trow hopefully) My son(5 yrs old) and I have started working on a few Lego train projects and kicking around some ideas. For now his idea(wants a working Shay since we went to hesston.org this past weekend) will have to wait a bit since I am trying to get him to do his own parts hunting and figure out his own solutions to problems and how to make more complicated stuff than he has been working with. So as I compromise, for now we are working on a bridge for a train to go over and room to go under. He did all the counting and sorting after showing him three plates = 1 brick tall, etc. We ended up with a height of 12 bricks + 1 plate tall to clear the headlight on the Emerald Night clone since it is our tallest engine. It is short, at only 2 straight sections in length, but I was trying to lean him toward the side of caution because I know he is only 5 and it does need to be a little extra sturdy Letting him goof around we have piers at each end that look like an capital I, with a large flat plate on the bottom. The part we kind of stumbled upon and he loved was finding the extra single rail pieces we pulled out of the grey bin. He ended up sticking them on the bridge sides from the center section. We both likes it better than the technic beams you usually see on the sides. After some engineering ideas we found a nice way to make it work as the cross braces from the center to the piers. Worked great until we tried to fit the engine underneath to find out we we too low by about 2 plates........ So I did have to help him rework it and we have one side test fitted currently and all engine clear with 1-2 plate clearance now. So tomorrow it will be completed and I will be beating geometry into the head of a 5 yr old as we work on the approach sections Think we went about an hour straight tonight with him searching for pieces, counting out the correct heights of all the sections involved. He will be learning his addition and subtraction a lot faster now. I'll try and get a pic or two to this tomorrow, been busy and started a new job today actually, so it was weird being home from work by 3:30pm and only a 8 hour day. This is my son Ben, we built it using his ideas and what he wanted to try or we stumbled upon. Side view where you can see how we used the old style rail as the side reinforcement, that was all him sticking parts on stuff as I was trying a couple other things. Top view where you can see how we did the deck and used the old style rail as the guard rail on the deck bridge Just a general show of how much of a mess we make in his room lol. We were mostly jury rigging the supports and the approaches. We used a 1 block per track section for the rise. I think it was a successful first project. I get a good hour to hour and a half out of Ben when we work on stuff like this. Maybe tomorrow we an con Mom into letting us use the living room.

Very nice. I'm not a European fan, but you sure nailed that spot on Lego style. Love the interior details also

Since Lego has blessed us with a money grab for new ugly base plates that do not match the old and it seems the price has risen on the as well. I hope everyone here gives the knock off ones a shot. I'm tempted especially if the color matches and they prove to be an adequate replacement.

Ok, that was pretty cool

How about we skip a train set and get a decent C truck so we can have a decent looking 3 axle setup for building on? I see one more thing that is 6 axle built with 4 I'm gonna puke Barring the above, steam wise an American 4-6-2 or 4-8-4 would be doable and nice. Diesel wise maybe something from Alco like a Century series or an early Geep build. There are lots of others I would like, but I'm being realistic on stuff Lego has a hope in heck of making. It has to have mass market appeal.

That's pretty damned nice. I challenge you to do a B32 in the original colors Nice front end design and digging the Amfleet car as well.

More info on stuff in the pictures u posted, interesting....

Great design on both F units in this post. The round portholes are kind of iconic however and detracts heavily from the real thing without it. I would assume somewhere, somehow, you could get some tape or transfer to go over the window glass pieces so you could cut out a porthole.

That's great. I laughed

I get it man Here is what I do know, my main hobby is my cars first, then Transformers(G1 forever) and then comes Lego with the boy, only indulgence on my part with the Lego is 2 HE's I got a deal on and the Ecto-1. Transformers collectors and Lego collectors have two things in common. They feel they are entitled for Lego to build this and that for them(Hasbro/Takara for Transformers) and they think the adult buying community has an impact on their decisions beyond a rather small insignificant amount. The reality is they throw a few things each year at you to shut you up. For everyone one of us there are 50 more kids, parents and grandparents buying stuff. I'll even go out on a limb and tell you Lego are overpriced and always have been. They were expensive with cheap oil, they were expensive with expensive oil and they are expensive after moving a good amount of production to other cheaper countries. Add in surprise when profit surges as oil drops by 60% . I would go further on the hosing that are the new Star Wars sets but the Warsies would get mad. I want new trains to keep coming out and I wouldn't mind some real alternatives to them as well as other Creator sets. If I said I wanted anything other than US prototypes I would be lying as I would love to see Lego do something Union Pacific related as that's my road. Actually saw the new red freight set in person, it doesn't do a lot for me, but I think my 5 yr old would love it, but that won't happen unless there is a serious sale on it, so I have to bide my time. I want to see a new Creator set, I'll even settle for something European as long as it is done nicely I will survive and eventually build the evil MOCs that I have plans for.

I've had Lego trains since the 80's. I rocked the 4.5v Always had train layouts mostly HO with some N scale. Now its mostly cause I have a 5 yr old and a 2 yr old though. We build stuff, wreck stuff, rebuild stuff, make giant messes and repeat Now with it appearing I have landed the new job, money should be very nice within a yr or two, so I can start working on a few things for dad, like the Daylight and putting together some UP stuff like my own 844, 3985 or 4014 :-) That picture of a turbine is interesting to me as well, the Big Blows were cool locomotives. Maybe a GP35-DD35-GP35 combo as well. Although the C855 would be awesome to behold as well.

I'm down for that. Then next year and year after they could do a DD35 and then a DDA40X Centennial. Them turbines be kind of sexy.