lostcarpark

Wow, great review! I love the tiny turbos because they tend to have such great parts. My favourite is the TunerX (yellow version of the lime green car from this set), followed by Flame Glider (orange version of the yellow car from this set), both of which have great parts. I used three of the latter for parts for a black and orange train I was building. I actually had this set in my hand in a shop before Christmas and I decided not to buy it because the parts in the shop didn't look that useful. Now I find myself in need of lime green cheesers and really regretting that decision! If I see it again, it's mine. Otherwise, I might have to do another S@H order...

Thanks, but I don't think I'm long enough out of my "dark ages" to be considered an "expert". I have managed to pull together a few MOCs, though. Judge for yourself. You're probably right. The one good thing about the crossover is that it should be cheap enough that relative beginners could have a go at converting to 9V without risking a small fortune worth of (increasingly rare) parts.Cladding the rails with metal foil should be relatively straightforward, and unlike the regular 9V points, it shouldn't be necessary to tie the electrical connections into the switch as for most purpose both tracks should be independently powered. I don't know that more bases is the answer - simply uncouple the battery box and IR sensor from the base and make them separate components. This allows builders to put them wherever best suits their particular train. A couple of different types of battery box would be handy for maximum flexibility (e.g. one around 20x4x2 that can be hidden below the windowline of a coach, or a shorter but chunkier 8x6x4). For steam trains, the battery box might best go in the tender, but the motor may be better off in the loco, like the old 4.5V ones. This would even open up the intriguing (at least for me) possibility of dispensing with the train motor altogether and using a micromotor and gears to power BBB wheels directly.

Okay, I'm obviously on my own regarding the backless buildings. My interest is more in trains than town, so most of my buildings are intended to add realism to the train layout. The beauty of the Creator sets is that they give you the parts and you can let your imagination run riot. There are instructions for several models, but you don't have to follow them, and if you don't fancy one big house, you should be able to get two smaller houses out of the one set. Or better still, pool a few of them and build a whole street. I particularly like the new tan (or to use Lego's official name, "brick yellow") set as for me it's a more realistic colour for city houses (and the dark blue car is nice too). Maybe next year we'll get one in dark orange, which for me is the closest we have to red brick.

It's a nice little suburban station, which makes a change from big city centre ones. I think it's a good compliment to 7822 and 7824, which are my favourite stations. 4554 is a nice station, but it shares a complaint that I have about a lot of recent Lego buildings - no back. 7997 seems to have all its sides (although we won't know for sure until we see the back). I have 7900, which is also 8-wide, and while I agree it's difficult to marry with old 4-wide trucks, it is a beautiful model in its own right. Lovely detail on the cab. Build it and it's very hard to hate. In short, I'm torn. As big chunky pieces go, they're not bad, but I do prefer the brick-and-plate construction of the new station (though I expect I will be extending it to a more respectable length). I'm afraid I have very little time for the new plane and passenger train pieces. The plane does look very nice when built, but it's just too darn Playmobil. The big plastic pieces just aren't Lego in my opinion. The RC passenger train is worse. There was some kind of manufacturing error, and you'll see there's a big gap of about a millimetre between the nose and the body. The roof pieces aren't great either (though I could forgive that if they had done a better nose (with some building in it). But I think the RC freight train is very nicely done. In comparison the bridge pieces and dumper pieces are just one piece of an otherwise very elegant model, so I can give them some leeway.

Given the number of sets that have no alternative models on the back of the box (and some that don't even have alternatives in the box), I think your comment is justified. There are lots of good things about the City range, but quite a lot of the sets have big ugly single-use pieces - the platforms of Grand Central Station, the plane pieces in the airport sets, the dumper from the construction dumper truck (I think it's the same part as the new double tipper), the bridge pieces from the heavy loader (although they are potentially quite useful), the roof and nose pieces of the RC passenger train. There's also the new Cement Mixer, which I'm kinda hoping is built out of curved bricks, but I suspect I may be disappointed. The male dominance of the city sets is rather bizarre. I would have thought we should have female truck drivers and construction workers and doctors by now. There is one ray of hope that Lego remains a construction toy, which is the Creator line. From a Town/City perspective the house building sets are spot on, as they are minifig scale, and have some excellent designs. I thought the first 2007 one (in white and red) was a little too close to the 2005 one, though I think it is a better design. The newly leaked tan and black one is even better, and quite different from anything on offer before.

This is true of all 9V and 12V trains - when the train stops, the light goes off, and as it slows it dims. I can't remember the specific sets you list there, but I have quite a few 9V trains, and I've never found one that I can't get up to full speed on the straights, but you often have to slow them around corners. As I mention, the relationship between the apparent brightness of a light and the voltage is not always linear, so you can have a slow running train still appear quite bright. When you crank up to the full 9V it can be quite dazzling. I must admit I'm not too familiar with them either, though I'm sure there are electrical experts who could give a list of suitable parts. One you could try is a pole reversing switch.

That's the gist of it. The speed of a motor or the brightness of a lamp is proportional to the voltage of the current from the transformer. The dial on the speed regulator simply varies the output voltage, so turning down the regulator will slow your motor as well as the train. Obviously if you're using one regulator to control both the train and the motor, their speeds will always be linked. Also, because of variations in motor and voltage, the relationship may not be perfectly linear. You could also consider adding a switch between the speed regulator and the motor to allow you to turn it off while keeping your train running.

Well, it doesn't hurt to dream, though I'm not getting my hopes up just yet. I do know that our hopes and dreams are being fed back to TLC through the LAs. Whether TLC will pay any notice is another question. It's hard to say for sure, but some of the recent developments don't make a whole lot of sense. The Holiday Train is an excellent set, and is easy to fit a 9V motor to (okay, you have to find the instructions online, but it doesn't take a whole lot of figuring out), and next to impossible to make work for the current RC setup. The fact that there was an kit containing the train+motor+track+controller is a good sign, even if it was only on S@H. On it's own, the crossover track doesn't seem to make sense. Most "play train" sets never get big enough to warrant such a thing. If it was designed in such a way that TLC could use the same moulds to make a plastic only version for the mass market, and to also produce a 9V version with metal cladding for hobbyists, then they could be onto a winner. On the other hand, if TLC wanted to make the RC system appeal to AFOLs, this is a good first step, but a lot more is required.

I'm aware of digital systems used for model railways, which I know can be expensive, and do generally require current and signals to be carried over the tracks, but I don't think Lego have to do anything quite so complicated. I think they could add a few specialist components that could be manufactured in relatively low volumes and sold through S@H for the hobbyist market, while keeping the current RC system more or less as it is for the kids market. The first thing would be to separate the battery box and IR receiver from the baseplate, so they can be used for more types of trains. This would allow builders to put them where they best suited the design of their particular train. This would also allow the receiver to be positioned in better places to get line of sight across a layout. Next, for a big layout you definitely need a lot more than three channels. At least ten would be a must. And a lot more if you want to allow other devices to be IR controlled. If you could have one set of "full" channels that could control the speed of trains, and combine them with a set of "simple" channels that only carried on/off signals for changing points or signals or anything else that people wanted to apply them to, it could be a powerful combination. Third, you need to do something about the IR range/line of sight. My thought is to have something that looks like a lamppost connected by a wire to a base station to transmit the IR signal. For small layouts, a single transmitter would suffice, but for larger layouts, or where obstacles like buildings or scenery were present, multiple transmitters could be positioned around the layout, all connected to the same base station. The base station could look a bit like the current controller, but would allow multiple trains to be controlled by a single device. Finally, if we had multiple curve radii and other interesting track options, it would open up a world of new options for AFOLs, and give us a reason to think about switching. As far as I'm concerned, 9V is still the system of choice, but if Lego gave me sufficient reason to switch, I'd certainly look at it seriously.

Yeah, I've seen those, and they are absolutely amazing, but they cost an arm and a leg in terms of both doner parts and labour. I don't feel confident enough in my skills with a dremil saw to attempt one myself, and my current budget doesn't stretch to paying someone else to make them. But if there's an inexpensive part that's moddable to 9V, it could be the perfect answer. Apart from anything else, the mod is likely to be a lot less destructive, so if it doesn't work out the part should still be more or less intact. And if the worst comes to the worst, and I ended up destroying one, I'd much rather be destroying a relatively inexpensive part than several sets of 9V points that might not be available for very much longer. There's another possibility worth considering. If Lego brought out a version of the IR system that actually offered benefits for AFOLs, we might start looking at it seriously. Independent control of multiple trains on the same track could be quite useful, but we need the ability to control more than 3 trains. We need IR receivers and battery boxes that aren't tied to a fixed train base. And we need a system that can reliably transmit signals to trains over the distance of a large layout with scenery. If we got this, and a few more interesting track pieces, and perhaps some nice to haves like IR controlled motorised point switches, AFOLs could start looking at IR as a serious alternative to 9V.

I highly recommend a visit to Hamley's, but it's quite pricey for Lego. It is worth spending some time browsing all six floors (Lego can be found in the basement), though. They do tend to have quite a good range and occasionally have items reduced that can be good value. They did have a small pick-a-brick section, but last time I was there they only had about 3 brick types, and most of them had migrated to the play tables. The range of other shops in central London seems quite limited. There's Harrod's in Knightsbridge, which is another posh shop, but they have a fairly big toy department and sometimes has a good Lego section. There's a nice model shop on New Oxford Street near Holborn (I forget the name now), which tends to focus on model kits, model trains and Scalextric cars, but occasionally have a small selection of Lego. Worth a visit for the O-Guage train running around the ceiling. There are various branches of Woolworths around the city which can occasionally have quite a good selection of Lego, and sometimes have good discounts. I think there are still a few branches of The Entertainer around, but a lot of them seem to have closed down in the last few years. The only one I currently know is all the way out in Uxbridge, and last time I was there it was a Sunday and I was quite annoyed to discover they don't open on Sundays. Finally, there are various branches of Toys-R-Us, but I think they're all on the outskirts of the city. If anyone knows of any I've missed, please fill me in.

Hey, great idea, but if you want it to be somewhat accurate, head to a library and do some research first! "Prehistoric" could theoretically mean any time from when the Earth cooled and the fist single celled lifeforms appeared 4.5 billion years ago to the start of recorded history, about 5000 years ago. It could be quite interesting to build a series of dioramas showing different geological eras. You could have cambrian sea monsters, permian sail backed reptiles, different dinosaur eras, then move on to early mammals, and finally show early humans and the creatures surrounding them. The trouble is they would have to be separate scenes and couldn't cross over, so wouldn't really be a "theme". If you're thinking of a "caveman" theme, I think that would be really cool, but again there are many different species that could be considered "cavemen", from "Lucy" (Australopithecus afarensis) about 3 million years ago to early modern humans. If you want to do a single theme, you need to pick one caveman species and find out what animals lived alongside them. For example, a Neanderthal theme could be really interesting, but you'll need to check what animals actually lived alongside them. Some examples include Mammoths and Mastodons, Woolly Rhinos, deer, reindeer, bears, lions and sabre-tooth tigers. Although horses would be on the planet and Neanderthal humans might occasionally come into contact with them, Neandertahals were mostly restricted to the frozen expanses of Europe while horses would have been mainly on the plains of Africa and southern Asia.

To keep both motors running over the dead section, you would need a fairly long wire connecting them, otherwise the unpowered motor would stop and drag over the section, so the second motor would have to work very hard. Two connected motors should work quite well, though. I would be seriously tempted to have a go at modding this into a 9V version. The metal wrapping of the rails should be easy enough. The tricky part would be the wiring that would be needed to carry the current the way it's switched. I quite like the station. It's small, but that's okay, railways need small stations too. I would have preferred if the building was tan, and the platform could do with lengthening. I'm really glad that they've gone back to brick and plate platforms rather than big ugly platform pieces (BUPPs).