Toastie

Welcome to EB! Google fails me to find a model 710 12V LEGO transformer - it finds 740, 741 ... but then others here may know better! As far as I am concerned, any adjustable 12V DC power supply providing high enough amperage will do the trick. If you have a Voltmeter, I'd check the output voltage first. On the other hand, when you have a 110V -> 220V adapter at hand, suitable for driving inductive loads(!) (a transformer is an inductive load and some older voltage converters don't like that, they were designed for driving resistive loads only, such as old incandescent light bulbs), that sounds also good to me. Best regards, Thorsten

Chemistry largely IS black magic. PChemists use thermodynamics, kinetics, quantum mechanics, modelling etc. to touch it up as natural science That is why I like it PChem so much (and hopefully none of my colleagues are on EB ) Best, Thorsten

Damned, forgot: The TLG website talks about attempts to do exactly that. I believe - just from reading between the lines of this TLG text: "In 2021 we had an exciting breakthrough and created a protype brick made from PET plastic bottles. However, after two years of continuous development it did not deliver the overall carbon reduction required to realise our ambitions" (https://www.lego.com/en-us/sustainability/environment/sustainable-materials). They continue with: "We’re proud of our achievements with the prototype and will apply the learnings as we continue to develop new materials and explore other ways to make our bricks more sustainable." OK, my conclusion is: There is a breakthrough, and they are proud. But they do not use regrinded/recycled material to make LEGO parts. Which is absolutely fine - as >we< want that the parts "endure decades of play and be passed down from generation to generation." (same reference). See below for CO2 balance ... It simply does not work that way. Chemistry-wise. Well, there is also Thermodynamics telling you: Yeah, can be done. But look at your energy balance. Hint: "The first and second law". Well, that happens, when you "invent" (TLG did certainly not, they simply use it) a material, that is way down on the thermodynamic scale with regard to "endurance" and need ultimately clean and defined starting materials. Recycling without indefinite energy supply means: Degradation. Not tolerable in LEGO world. Don't you agree? With very best regards, Thorsten

And what about the owner of the machine? "They" (TLG's research department) can surely fine-tune, couldn't they? I'd do it, if I were the owner. Secret recipes provide IP. For sure! But again, that is part of the research of the owner of the machine, isn't it? And there we come to custom engineering. Precision is only one aspect, size and location of injection points, as you point out, is another. But these designs are again in the realm of the owner of the machine, right? I may piss off people here, but I had a "web-look" at the GoBricks site. These uncountable blocks of metal resembling "molds" ... I am asking, because I am really curious (nerd here!). I gather my information from the web for sure, no real-world experience how molding really works. Yes, it takes a little longer, as I am not fine with one reference only, and I like to see some consistency, coherence and logic. The only field, I feel somewhat confident, is chemistry, polymers, companies in that field. And OK, maybe some >limited< machining experience; we need to make optical and vacuum parts that rely on the micron scale and below in our research. Way more importantly: Thank you a lot for your insights, which I sincerely value! All the best, Thorsten

Hi Thomas, thank you very much, I really appreciate that - from a master builder you are (and a very polite individual of course). As we are in the Circuit Cube thread, I'd like to share just a few experiences with regard to BLE access to the cubes. Legoino for sure has it (potentially) all, but in this case it is >completely< overblown: All the numerous service routines even the "small" LEGO City hub provides is breathtaking and Legoino handles them all. However, CC's are aiming at a totally different target: small, very small efficient builds or better: driving mechanisms, which simply don't need all that Legoino overhead. Steffen's (@Asper's) really slick code is perfectly matching with that target. I do not understand >any< of the BLE related code Steffen provided us with, nor do see any parallel to Cornelius' code other than, as Steffen pointed out, gathering information from Legoino. Steffen's code feels (have to use "feel" because I can't rationalize it) to be so on target, it is fun to simply read the code lines. Moreover, when leaving this "deeper" code layer and resurfacing to the "user level" (Steffen's main.cpp) - it still remains being slick and very elegant. As said, I am in awe. Steffen's code should get a name - Circuino would be lovely, IMHO. But it does not compile in the Arduino IDE (file extension .ino); I believe this is caused by the different BLE libraries used(???). Steffen uses "BLEDevice.h" (from library ???), Cornelius the NimBLE-Arduino library. I bet, Steffen's code will run within the Arduino IDE as well, when changing a few (or more ^^) things. Circuino - sounds like the magic you experience in a circus ... absolutely appropriate name! What I am saying is that yes, VSCode/PlatformIO are certainly (much) more powerful than the Arduino IDE, but the latter - this is my view only - seems to be more in line with some one-time, small breadboard solutions (I know, you can do so much more with it). What I am really saying is: Any chance, that Steffen will provide us with Circuino? Wait - someone in the ... what was it ... CaDA Forum, talking about retro-brighting, offered me a "Kasten Bier", if I could tell him how to bright-up some LEGO pieces, which so far, remained unfavorable attempts of doing so. So, Steffen: Would a Kasten Bier do it? (OK, I know, probably not) All the best, Thorsten

Yes, true, saw that also before starting to wonder into monorail world. The two things for me though were: How do I >not< need a support every single 4.5/12V rail connection? My monorail had to cross this LEGO water region ... and secondly: How do I mimic the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn approach, with this doubly flanged wheel running on top of the rail? In other words: This was not about using 4.5/12V track for a monorail, but rather how to get this Pantasy Steam Punk train moving in Schwebebahn fashion ... Best, Thorsten

Ouuu - Flensburger OK? You are talking about white pieces, right? Colored pieces are so much more difficult, as it depends on the "pigments" or "dyes" they used for coloring the polymer - you can easily oxidize these to colorless as well ... OK, when using H2O2 for retro-brighting, you don't need any heat - but UV light ("sunlight" slowly does it, but sunlight has more than 90% of radiation causing heat rather than H2O2 dissociation) or UV LEDs - they do it. Next: As high as possible concentrated H2O2 solution. The higher the concentration, the lower the UV exposure time required - otherwise H2O2 begins degrading the backbone of the polymer itself, not just the reactive sites causing yellowing. It seems there are two threads currently (actively, there are numerous non-active) discussing retro-brighting (https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/197611-questions-about-using-hydrogen-peroxide-and-other-methods-to-restore-colour-to-a-very-special-piece-expedition-balloon/) and this one - which may be prone to off-topic moderator flagging Vanish needs heat though to start producing active oxygen (= O atoms). Well, it is used in washing machines - and there is not much light in there. And sure enough: a) When the removal = saturation of active sites in the polymer is not deep enough, re-yellowing is swiftly occurring, b) when the polymer (as e.g. my Atari case) seem(!) to have many remaining double bonds - it simply will just start again. Depends on the ABS formulation they used when making the polymer. Some formulations are prone to yellowing (my Atari), some others are not (my IBM), and as far as I am concerned, this is due to the presence of non-aromatic double bonds in the outer molecular layers of the polymer. Hmmm - that blurb does certainly not qualify for receiving the Kasten, does it? Best of luck though - chemistry is fun, weird, but mostly experimental trial and error. Still in 2024. Best, Thorsten

I believe this whole retro-brighting approach has so many aspects, it is really tough to tell, what works in what "case". I just wrote a way too long post (and I bet I will get a lot of flak for that content) in the Technic forum/CaDA (https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/189501-cada-cada-general-discussion-topic/&amp;do=findComment&amp;comment=3681951), mostly touching on ABS as such and (scroll down - yellowing and retro-brighting. The entire process is based on oxidation - Vanish = "O2" oxidation, H2O2 = "OH" oxidation. The yellowing is - as far as I am concerned after extensive literature surveys - breaking double bonds in the ABS polymer, leaving a single bond and free or better delocalized electrons. These cause the absorption of a portion of the "white light" shining on them - leading to yellowing (white = no absorption of "white" light). And they can be "removed" upon oxidation = making a new bond with "O2" or "OH" which does not absorb any of the visible light wavelengths. In other words: Whatever active oxidation compound can penetrate through the ABS material to "remove" or better "bind" the free/delocalized electrons. H2O2 is quite good, but you need to crack it first into two OH radicals, which is easily done with UV light. Vanish is activated by heat to yield oxygen "in statu nascendi" = O atoms rapidly recombining to O2 (and then they are "dead" with regard to oxidation power). So the O atoms initially produced upon heat mediated decomposition of Vanish need to find these free electrons before recombining to O2. H2O2 does not decompose into 2 OH radicals with heat, but with UV light. In other words: H2O2 needs UV light to activate, Vanish heat. Mixing both + heat + UV light may accelerate the overall oxidation process. I'd use as high as possible concentrated H2O2 aqueous solutions + UV light (sun/LEDs). Problem is: The authorities don't like to let us easily get 80% H2O2 solutions - you can make so many really bad/cool things with it. Just look up "The Blue Flame" for example, which is totally cool. NASA is also fond of it. And: The 80% solution works fast - and then may bite into the plastic as well. As said, retro-brighting is an entire philosophy among the retro-folks (computers, game pads, whatnot) Best, Thorsten

Well, I'd like to challenge that, knowing a little about ABS, yellowing of plastic material, regarding reaction mechanisms - it is part of my daytime job. I am not saying that I know anything to the extent that it is "true". No way. However, there are few things, that the chemical industry delivers to customers that I know of for sure. First: ABS is characterized to the "last digit", when it comes to "arriving at desired properties". Desired as in: You, the customer, provide a set of characteristics you want the ABS polymer to have after molding it with a temperature and pressure programmed adjusted process. The (usually large scale supplier) offers you a list of possible compositions. Then the trial and error process begins on your side - let's call it fine-tuning. This is up to you. In most cases, though, you get the (almost) right composition, depending on how "good" your list of your envisioned characteristics is, and the supplier said: Can be done. The molding process is up-to you, but the supplier of the molding machine certainly has a list of predefined temp/pressure profiles, at least for the later generations of machines out there. As ABS is all over the world since so many decades, companies have assembled good-sized databases of what mix does behave in what way when molded in a specific process. Making such a molding machine is one thing, knowing what it does with different starting materials is another. There is soft ABS, hard ABS, more dense ABS and so on and on; enclosures are made of ABS (many parts of my beautiful IBM XT from 1985, which has not yellowed a tiny bit; also my Atari 1040, which has yellowed to the extent that you could say it was spray-painted), and myriads of other things. And bricks, of course. You know all that, I know, I just want to put things into perspective. I have read that TLG page you referenced a thousand times, I believe. Starting next winter, the chemistry department at my university offers a B.Sc. course "Sustainable Chemistry". In preparation for that, I was looking around quite a bit, and my beloved hobby offers a lot of things to discuss with regard to "sustainable". Well, ABS and all the other polymers TLG lists on that page are persistent (non-bio-degradable) and simply accumulate. It's the whole purpose of using them, they talk about that on the very same page: "... to endure decades of play and be passed down from generation to generation." It is what we want. The only chance they (and competitors) have with regard to sustainability is energy/CO2 saving when making the pieces - if they, or better we, do not want to give up that they endure decades of play. You are absolutely right: ABS is only one of the highly persistent polymers, TLG and competitors are using. For ABS, they list bricks; I could be wrong, but Technic beams looks very much like being made of ABS as well, among other Technic pieces. Axles would be dumb; the torque, TLG themselves will stress these with during QA, will tell the ABS supplier: No sorry, there is no ABS formulation that can withstand that torque. Well, so on to POM: TLG says: " hard and stiff material that is also flexible and strong". Hmmm. Hard and stiff = strong, but not that flexible. Tested it: Upon bending a 10L Technic axle, not much flexibility is seen (perpendicular to its main axis) before it disintegrates. OK, yes, I know, it is a page, marketing has made. And that is OK. POM though is another non-biodegradable ... etc. etc. Of course not. We don't want to look at rotting LEGO. And all the other polymers are not. They are made from different monomer formulations to match with the desired characteristic (highly flexible = PE, transparent = MABS, polycarbonate works as well, but is not listed under transparent but hinges). And finally the yellowing. Man, so many articles delivering so many hypotheses ... I suggest though to drop the flame retardant argument, at least for bricks made after - let's make it 2000. The yellowing was presumably attributed to release of bromine, a brownish liquid at room temperature. That sounded good, but since 2000 "all" these bromine containing flame retardants (biphenyls and the like) suitable for usage in polymers have been phased out. The odor of bromine is, as the greek name bromos says, well, stinky. I bet you could smell bromine if a plastic piece yellows due to release of bromine. I guess the literature has settled on breaking remaining double bonds present (not in the aromatic ring systems) in ABS, which are then not easily saturated again (it is a solid material). The then "free" electrons - they are not free but delocalized - shift the absorption of light towards higher wavelengths = towards the red. And all that in the upper molecular layers of the polymer. In fact, when you ablate the upper layers (scratching is not good, it mechanically changes too many things) of yellowed ABS with nanosecond UV pulse laser radiation, the irradiated surface becomes swiftly white again, as the upper layers are non-thermally removed. Yes, did that in the lab, but it just proves that there was "something" changing in the upper molecular layers, which we already know. This also goes along very well with H2O2 mediated whitening, some call retro-brighting: H2O2 in aqueous solution (the higher %age the better) + UV light generates, among other things, OH radicals. These love electrons, delocalized or not, and thus saturate the formerly broken double bond by addition. Which removes the red shift and thus becomes "white" = non-absorbing again. However, only in the very upper molecular layers - if not the uppermost - since water or water/H2O2 solutions can't penetrate deeply into a polymer (on the timescale of treatment!). Maybe two or three layers, but that's it. Which also leads to the conclusion that it can't be bromine causing the yellowing, you would smell it, as it would sit in the upper molecular layer. Well, that is what I arrived at, when plowing the literature for quite some time and doing some (non-conclusive) experiments. Who knows, it may be all garbage - maybe others have other information/references. I would love to hear of! All the best, Thorsten

I am not surprised. ABS is ABS and such a well-known and described plastic material; in China they make so many different products from ABS ... And brick-wise it is all a matter of molding machine precision and maintenance - and guess what: They can do that as well. The latest GoBricks elements: Same thing - 100% not distinguishable, I stopped sorting them into different bins. Wait - there is a clear difference: No LEGO "print" on the studs or elsewhere ... Best regards, Thorsten

Well, what they produce from "plant based" pieces, according to the LEGO websites, is all that stuff, that was and is made using polyethylene; plant pieces, minifig accessories; that is all the soft stuff, that does not do any tough work. There is no difference at all in the final PE product: PE is made from polymerized ethylene, ethylene is made from dehydration of ethanol, and ethanol can be made from many, many bio-sources containing sugar, just go to a liquor store; rum (sugar cane, as the LEGO stuff is as well ;) vodka (serial grains, potatoes, also corn, sugar cane ...) and so on and so forth - all you need is the ethanol ... The "bio" or "sustainable" in this route is the CO2 that the plants consumed when they grew, nothing else. The final plastic product is exactly the same as before and non-biodegradable. Not always the best idea, as you can eat all these bio sources as well. And drink the ethanol, of course . I bet that everything else that needs to be structurally tough, such as Technic beams and what not, is and will be for long made using ABS. Should the look and feel of such parts change, they changed the recipe to make the ABS, but it remains ABS. Bio-sources for acrylonitrile, butadiene, and styrene are currently not available in sizeable amounts, as far as I know - so I guess the new soft feel is purposely made, maybe to make it feel better. Best, Thorsten

It always depends, what you gauge as offensive. PC important or not? Men (which implies not women), important or not? Germans, important or not? What I don't get (at all): Why is this necessary to even typed into the editor? Is there a demand? Every paragraph would be fine without doing so. Opinions are fine. Putting emojis next to such a phrase may not be enough to pipe down, well, emotions. Most importantly, though: We are discussing the merit of buying (some call "getting" or "brought to us" ^^) sets from a Chinese company in this thread. This entire forum tends to go ballistic, when doing so. And there are good reasons why CaDA is here and others are not. But you know what? There may be other Chinese companies acting in the same manner as CaDA. And of course others that >certainly< do not. What I don't get: Why does it need acting like a "real man" (and thus not woman) to ... what, have an opinion? Or be "tough"? "Ballsy"? Crap. My goodness. This all is about totally stupid ABS pieces put together in a certain way. And inventing new pieces of ABS (*sigh* - "new") to eventually put an assembled super car (or whatever CaDA makes) into a cabinet and then admire it. Yes, I know, the cracks here do make even superior MOCs. ABS. Hobby. Fun. Building. Inventing. All that "License" crap goes really so much on my nerves. Maybe necessary, who knows - I doubt it, but what do I know.

I got it to work!!! Thank you again @Asper and @Ts__ for your help and motivation to dive into VSCode with the PlatformIO (PIO) extension and the Arduino CLI installed (which is an option you have upon adding the Arduino extension to the VSC framework: Either Arduino IDE or CLI). It works perfectly well - thank you guys so much. The code runs flawlessly on the ESP32 Dev kit board as server, which means I can now hook up sensors, push buttons, displays, and what not. All the best and thank you very much again, Thorsten

This is so unbelievably cool! Wow. Oh yes, the "ceremonial head of the state" has exactly the right-sized ship Thank you so much for sharing! I'd love to put some of these randomly in my LEGO "room". Really nice. All the best, Thorsten

It really is. Welcome to Eurobricks! Good to know that you will be around. Here is to simply feeling good All the best, Thorsten

Well, I am not that patient Sooo many times, TLG released a piece that I desperately wanted "back then". "Then" = about 1996, when I got back into the hobby, which started in 1965, when I was 3 years old. I was taking a "pause" between about 1978 and 1996, just to find out what happened in between ;) And, since about 2010 I just cut and paste "remodel", to get what I need. Mainly small pieces that is, 9V track as well (TLG simply abandoned ages ago ^^) - and panels missing holes for LEDs and this and that. Only after trying hard. And with much love to do it right. And then ... TLG releases that part I needed so much - back then. So no, I don't replace desperately needed parts (at the time), I make them. Best, Thorsten

Hi Nat, thank you very much! Did not expect anyone to find this post here on the forbidden territory! I am using these posts mostly for documentation purposes - should EB go down the drain, my documentation goes as well ^^ but hey, it is a hobby. I promise: Should I ever I get the programming of the Circuit Cube going (aka use the LEGO PUp remote buttons to click speed up and down) I shall take another video. Lighting will remain crappy - I have no real video equipment, only this, wait, what does is say: Sony alpha 6000 photo camera. It constantly outsmarts me regarding its gazillion settings. So I just go to autopilot. Let this thing focus, what it wants to focus on . Oh, I really do fully agree with your quality and building experience judgement! Did also some (very small) changes here and there, mostly because this station is in operation. These metal gold pieces ... man, not one or ten, but sooo many. Thanks again, all the best, Thorsten

Thank you very much @Feuer Zug I remember that you actually took the Schwebebahn - I guess it was when I wrote somewhere here about Wuppertal ;) The 12V rails - other than giving strong support and grip, also lead to rather low rolling resistance. That is why the tiny Tenka Cubic motor sitting next to the wheels has no problem at all moving the quite heavy train hanging down from the monorail. And thank you very much, Dave! Oh yes, the gears - all these Technic sets I took apart when wandering into free-style studded train world about 15 years ago had so many of them. Now a few found a home - no tough forces, just free spinning. I shall operate a second Circuit Cube with the Cubic motors and attach one to this gear "rack". Well, it is a rack of gear, I guess. Programming wise (should I ever understand the really cool code @Asper wrote for the Circuit Cube ...) I plan on: You need to switch on the rack of gears first, before the V10 motor in the train can be fired up, which is needed to be able to let the train move. All the best, Thorsten

Dear All, one of my favorite themes (in many regards) is Steam Punk. Steam-propelled futuristic technology, in shiny brass, gold and silver, leaning towards Jules Verne's "fiction". Not the dirty dark, maybe original punk. I am not sure whether the shiny stuff is Steam Punk at all; this genre has taken on so many forms and interpretations … Whatever, it may well be that my affection for Steam Punk comes from my admiration for Thermodynamics – in chemistry of course So guess what happened, when in late 2023 I became aware of the #85007 set “Steam Punk Railway Station” from Pantasy/China? Yes, I got sort of positively nervous. It quickly turned out that the title of the set is misleading: They use the railway station shown on the front of the box and the two instruction booklets simply to hide the Steam Punk locomotive along with one carriage. I almost freaked out, when I saw the train. And finally I passed out when I saw that the train is of the suspended monorail type … for more than two decades I was dreaming of a suspended LEGO monorail train – read more about that here: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/150261-wip-lego-monorails-custom-rail-systems-crs/&amp;do=findComment&amp;comment=3680627. With respect to the Dark Side: Pantasy is using GoBricks pieces (as per advertisement on the box) – and these have reached the 100%(+) LEGO quality level, no doubts. OK, as expected, has been discussed on EB. Very small injections points (barely visible), perfect colors, perfect clutch, same “softness” as the latest LEGO bricks and plates have, metal gold and silver pieces all over the place. On their website (https://pantasy.com/blogs/news), they talk about their approach, which is a quite nice read. Building that set was pure and utter fun. It was as if the Pantasy management said to the designers: “Folks, go Steam Punk nuts – no restrictions, just freak out and have fun. When you need more pieces to make it even more glitzy and punky – just do it”. 2723 pieces, BlueBrixx asks for €140, you can get it much cheaper – it is currently almost everywhere sold out, though. No surprise. This set is a blast in every regard. Motorization of the engine From day one, I wanted to motorize this model – it appears to be designed for display only. There are a couple of challenges to do so, though: For one, any propulsion system needs to turn the wheels on any of the four roller brackets the locomotive and the carriage are attached to. Second, available space is rather restricted, as the locomotive is essentially one “solid” piece of snotted ABS – except for the magic glass boiler: (At first, I thought: OK, TLG's well known color vomit coding here as well – but then was told that I was totally wrong: It is right here, where the Steam Punk magic generates the power to propel the locomotive: Inside the glass boiler. Attached is a 10 cylinder V-motor connected to the 8 blade pearl gold propeller on its back side – which actually propels the train. Well, there is no color coding at all in the entire set, except for the boiler brackets. So yes, these colors very well may represent the Steam Punk magic). Third, the elevated track Pantasy used is of the roller coaster type, JK Brickworks also employed for their suspended train (https://jkbrickworks.com/suspended-train/) and thus may be no good choice for motorizing a 700+ g heavy Steam Punk train; this will certainly will fail in roller coaster curves. The original (four individual) roller brackets look like this (Stud.io render) In conclusion, there wasn’t any space other than within the boiler for motorization, but I had no clue how to get any gears, axles, rubber bands to the wheels of the roller brackets. A medium PUp motor may fit in there, but the next challenge would have been PUp cabling and powering. The carriage also provides some space, but no LEGO hub fits in there, even after hefty modding, at least in the lower league I do my builds. But then I remembered a post not mentioning the elephant in the room, a thread @zephyr1934 created back in early 2021 on EB (https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/184036-a-review-of-circuit-cubes-without-mentioning-the-elephant-in-the-room/), which deals – in addition to the Elephant in the room – also with the Circuit Cube BLE hub and Cubic motors from Tenka (https://circuitcubes.com/). Furthermore, @Asper reported on using these (@HoMa called “critters” ) for train automation of his four wide trains, whereas @Ts__ showed a prototype truck for train displays. I looked at the dimensions of the motors (the Cubic motor is 2x 2x4) and the hub (2x 4x4) – and … BOOM – brain currents got ballistic. Furthermore, the wiring between the motors and hub is done with Dupont connectors. Tenka uses 2-wire sockets receiving the corresponding two pins of the hub outputs and motor inputs; however, these sockets are too large to fit through a Technic hole. One can easily make single socket wire ends, which then do fit very well. After some tinkering, MLCad suggested: It may work. My plan was to a) motorize the 10 cylinder V-engine from “within” the boiler section, b) propel the entire train with a motor mounted on a 2-axle monorail bracket assembly, c) route the cables somehow to the hub, which is to be mounted in the carriage in a way that one can easily turn it on and off – and d) easily recharge the hub … so far, a) to c) have been accomplished; d) is on the to-do list, see below. Here we go: New roller brackets for the locomotive and the carriage, and the entire driving motor assembly (render and photographs below). I used two stacked 9V train wheels arranged in the same direction – this way, the (custom) rubber band on the driving wheel has good grip. The rubber O-ring on the powered axle for enhanced traction is one I found in the lab – the white LEGO O-rings do not provide sufficient grip, even on the 12V rails “with teeth”. Here is what I use as my monorail track (no Dark Side elements to be seen, all pure LEGO): https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/150261-wip-lego-monorails-custom-rail-systems-crs/&do=findComment&comment=3680627. Photograph below: One Tenka Cubic motor “inside” the boiler, with an attached axle extending all the way to the front, rubber band connecting to the 10-cylinder motor driving axle. (Custom) cables attaching to the motor are routed through Technic holes in the boiler bracket and locomotive frame. They extend to the Circuit Cube hub mounted in the carriage. Pantasy designed the boiler essentially as an all-four-side-studded central structural element. All other parts attach to this element and, at the same time, the “side panels” secure the whole model from falling apart when lifted through snotted connections. You can remove the two large “side panels” - and are left with this when they are put together (and yes, good clutch power really shows): This is the entire engine … ... and the lightly modded carriage: The photographs below are showing the Pantasy railway station, designed as a terminal station. Some folks were complaining that the four platforms (labeled 2 to 5, prints of course - there are no stickers in this set) don’t make any sense, as the monorail runs perpendicularly to the apparent platforms. Of course this makes sense : Below are four tracks terminating at the station: (track 2) 4.5V track – coal delivery for steam locomotives on track 4 and maintenance; (track 3) 9V track – passenger and freight trains; (track 4) 9V track – real steam passenger trains; (track 5) 9V track – freight trains. The monorail is of course floating above all that; when the suspended train is leaving, all these tracks can be serviced ... duh. I thought this is the whole point … The Pantasy Railway Station … Station “unfolded”: Have a look inside: Ticket counter (right) and barista coffee stand (left) … when you push the 3-elements revolving door, the golden (Technic break) disc and the clock hands are spinning as well – this calls for additional motorization … Train 85-007 ready to depart … no surprise, should James Bond be on board … After arrival at the other terminal station: This is the Circuit Cube doing all the work; charging is from the top (see below, though), the on/off switch is easily accessible from the back of the car. To-Do list: I need to find a way of controlling the Circuit Cube hub with an ESP32. This has been demonstrated by @Asper; he has provided his code on GitHub (https://github.com/asperka/LEGORemoteCircuitCube). Steffen used a tiny M5Stack Atom and used the Visual Studio Code IDE with the Platform.IO extension described by him here: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/184878-controlling-two-circuit-cubes-with-one-lego-remote/. I’d like to use the same program I wrote for my Crocodile; this was done using the Arduino IDE and Cornelius Munz’ Legoino code (https://github.com/corneliusmunz/legoino). The reason is simple: It works with 4 optical sensors I want to use again for stopping at both terminals and acceleration/deceleration phases. We will see how that shakes out For charging the Circuit Cube, I need to make a custom USB cable (space … need a flat top USB-B plug). Make a longer video showing how powerful the Circuit Cube stuff really is. It is simply amazing. Video wise, I only have this less than 30 sec clip: First, the 10-cylinder engine fires up, then the train departs, totally loses focus, stops somewhere , V10 stops as well as it needs to kick into reverse (yes, the motor goes into reverse, this is a Steam Punk motor, no gear box here – you can see that by carefully looking at the pistons, they go down and up upon return, not up and down when it started), train reappears, totally out of focus, stops and gains focus, motor shuts down. I suck at taking videos, I know. https://bricksafe.com/files/Toastie/pantasy-steam-punk-railway-/Pantasy Steam Punk Train.mp4 (Updates will go into this thread) All the best, Thorsten

Thank you very much! Me too - but they are from the Mindstorms Mars Mission set. I really had a hard time figuring out what to do with theses when not on Mars ... these trans greenish 2x2 round bricks are from Yoda's light saber Best, Thorsten

Masao Hidaka-type LEGO elevated track for suspended monorail trains Dear all, for many years, actually more than two decades ;) I dreamt of a LEGO monorail for operation of suspended trains – I now have one: Why such weird dreams? Because since 2001, I am working at the University of Wuppertal in Germany and the city of Wuppertal has a public transportation system called “Schwebebahn”, I believe some people here on EB have heard of or actually rode it. It is a monorail operating suspended trains – and a very efficient means of moving thousands of people every day from one location of the city to another. Along the river “Wupper” that is, which in thousands of years has created a valley (“Wuppertal” translates to “valley of the Wupper”). The development of this mass transportation system began as early as 1887, and it came into operation in 1901 – you can read all the details here (press “EN” on the top right of the webpage) https://schwebebahn.de/en/geschichte-der-schwebebahn. Since then, it remains in operation. The Schwebebahn survived WW1 and WW2 (although it was very badly damaged in WW2). Today, it is by far the most efficient way of traveling the 13 km long stretch of the city, mostly over the river Wupper. In other words: I am deeply in love with that ingenious system. Every day when I am biking 15 km to work (we live close to Wuppertal in a town called Gruiten, which is located about 500 m away from the Neanderthal, history hits hard there), I do cross the “Sonnborner Kreuz”, a fairly large Autobahn intersection, over a rather narrow bridge and then descend into Wuppertal Sonnborn, where the Schwebebahn track is directly above me (or I am directly underneath it ;) Upon passing the Schwebebahn station “Zoo/Stadion” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn#/media/File:Wuppertaler_Schwebebahn_Karte.png) I leave the river/valley and climb up to the “Schwarzer Weg” (which provides a very nice view on part of the city) and then finally turn towards the university. What I experience on this journey: The Schwebebahn trains – nicely swinging in curved sections of the track; the elevated track itself with the beautiful supports and posts; the wonderfully restored stations; and I am always looking at more than 100 years of operation. Every day, I am in awe – it simply does not stop … Then came the LEGO IDEAS Schwebebahn entry in December 2021 (https://ideas.lego.com/projects/f013b46e-db4d-48f6-bf9f-e8e52ffbd747) – and in no time reached 10k votes. I had a look (of course) and thought: TLG will never approve this entry. Why not? Too big, too many pieces, too nice to be true – and not enough people crazy enough to shell out 300++ Euros. Never. Guess what. It was never happening. Well, two independent startups took on the idea of providing a (of course non-LEGO) brick-built Schwebebahn – and that is a total blast [1) https://wprtal.de/products/klemmbaustein-schwebebahn-gtw72; 2) https://stone-heap.com/b2b-seite-wuppertal/]. EDIT: There is a third one: 3) https://schwuppidieschwebebahn.de/shop/vorbestellung-klemmbausteinset-schwebebahn-schwuppi/ But with these models – something was missing (for me) – I want them to move. The Schwebebahn is all about efficiently moving people, and I had a hard time in figuring out a way to motorize these two nice renditions. And then, in late 2023, German Youtuber “Steinküste” presented the “Pantasy Steam Punk Railway Station”. Many others have reviewed that set as well, but I saw it for the first time on his channel. This is what Pantasy calls their set: A railway station. Literally “on the side”, even not shown on the front of the box, you also get a suspended monorail Steam Punk train, with one carriage … there simply was a nuclear type of eruption in my head … 1887 – steam – punk – suspended – train – running – on – a – monorail. Believe me, a lot of gears began to turn up there … I tore my X-Mas wish list (yes, old school here) to shreds and just wrote the order number from BlueBrixx (they do sell Pantasy sets in Germany – no hassle with waiting for the order and custom issues, all taken care of by BB) on it. Santa, aka my wife, fulfilled my wish … BUT: The train and railway station are not the point in this post: This needs to go to the Community Forum as the set is from a Dark Side Company (which is utter nonsense – but read on over there). Here, in the LEGO monorail thread, I want to just briefly present my monorail track approach (for a rather heavy suspended train, which weighs a bit over 700 g of ABS). The track design is heavily (I’d say 95%) borrowing from @Masao Hidaka’s design, also many others are using. In contrast to his flat top monorails, I am using the (outer) 12V train track rails with the little teeth on the surface for better grip. These rails provide a lot of additional stability. For the curved sections I only need two layers of brick (either all 1x2’s or, as in the photographs below, 1x2’s on top of 2x2’s just because I had not enough 1x2’s) and one layer of 1x2 plates at the bottom. The top layer is secured by the 12V rails. Using this approach, the monorail track needs posts/supports about every two 12V rail sections only. I am dealing with severe space related constraints in my attic – it simply is occupied by ABS all over the place, including vintage computer cases (with the original electronics inside of course ;) – and, well, my office stuff is also in there. The cool thing of elevated track is – it is elevated. No problems when crossing other tracks, “open (ABS) water” or whatever – just the pedestals need to find some small, but free area on the ground. That was exactly what gave the “go” more than a hundred years ago in Wuppertal: A valley is a valley and when the area is stuffed with streets, buildings, factories etc.: Just open up a new level. And even better, the Schwebebahn did not need any supports interfering with car/street traffic: They secured most of the supports on the riverbanks of the Wupper. On my layout, I just built a small section of elevated track, about 2 m (6 feet) long and U-shaped, see first photograph. There is absolutely no problem in mixing straight sections with right and left turns – but not in my room. I believe switch points are really difficult to realize using this approach, though. Regarding the supports: These are essentially made from two Technic 1x10 bricks directly integrated into the 1x2/2x2 structure along with some Technic lift arms to fasten them to the posts, see render below. I made the posts from beech wood – as did Ole K. Christiansen when he made his toys back in the 1930s – also the pedestals. The reasons are simple: a) I had not enough LEGO pieces, b) two posts are mounted to a “water” surface and that was too much of a challenge for me, c) when the founder of LEGO used beech wood back then, doesn’t this count as a totally purist approach? I used 15x15 mm2 beech wood strips, almost having the width/depth of a 2x2 brick (16x16 mm2). After cutting them to length, I drilled the holes for two Technic axles; a sharp 5.0 mm metal drill on a drill press does the job quite well. The posts/pedestals are then sanded and coated twice with black acrylic paint. The 16L long straight section, combining the two “90° almost R40” curves, features some gears – Steam Punk is about gears … you turn one, they all move. This needs motorization, of course … The light gray axles in the render above are used to fasten the support to the wooden post. The axles are black on the real posts. I made a second “train station” as well – on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 10 though, this one doesn’t even show up, when compared to the Pantasy railway station (which is at 10). Guess this is it. I will have posted more photographs showing the Pantasy railway station and the motorized train in the Community Forum: So far, I took a very brief 30 sec video with the suspended train departing from and arriving at the station. Problem is that I can’t film and operate the cell phone at the same time – the train is propelled by a Tenka Circuit Cube/Cubic motor combo. As with the LEGO hubs, it is also controlled by a smart device. This needs to be changed of course … Best regards, Thorsten

Holy Smokes, this is insane(ly nice) - and yes, as others said: As if one would ride this beauty. I like the complexity of the entire structure!!! Thanks a lot for sharing Best, Thorsten

Bad times - but the price increase is reported in Euros ... Best, Thorsten

of 35%? Difficult: https://www.euromonitor.com/article/global-inflation-tracker-q3-2023-inflation-eases-while-global-divergence-accelerates Maybe some new technology is built into the set - a hydrogen propelled pull-back motor? Who knows . Best

THIS IS THE BEST I HAVE EVER SEEN ... Oh my - it does not get any better. This is my everyday life at work - and you nailed it. Each display is 100% spot on - I do not like OChem at all (I am a PChemist so that explains it ;) but wow do I like the rotary evaporator, and the furnace, and the diffractometer, and the workbench - everything!!! But what really tops it all is that periodic table ... this is completely blowing me off. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing! All the best, Thorsten