Redimus

It's a really fun build. Kind of a shame you waited until now, you'd have picked it up for a good £50 less not that long ago. That said, the price is only going to go up, and £240 doesn't sound too bad for an out of print large set.

And still have a stud's space on the side for a minifig? And still be (roughly) 6 studs wide? A tall order that.

That's pretty awesome. Have you ever considered building an automated layout for Lego/model shows?

Also, it's hard to come up with *that* many generic 'modern' locomotives before you start becoming a little too specific for a train that is meant to sell world wide.

Hmm. If that doesn't work, maybe you could try making the frames narrower (2 studs wide, side to side) then include an extra set of flangless driving wheels behind the first ones, effectively giving you 2 stud wide driving wheels to (hopefully) allow more chance of them supporting the weight.

I wouldn't hold your breath...

I notice from your sig that you've designed some coaches to go with the A4, do you have any photos of those? I'm trying to come up with some 7wide generic Southern coaches and am really struggling for inspiration. Wilst these will obviously be too wide for my purposes, and the wrong company, I'm still interest to see how you've tackled this type of coach.

What's the piece? I Don't recognise it.

The PF one wasn't my original design, and ironically enough, is not welcome on my layout (I want all my locos to be self powered so I can shunt). I was really hoping I could get some helpful ideas for improvements or preferences, because I'm not entirely happy with any of the designs yet.

I bought some from an eBay seller (I was feeling lazy that day), and they're pretty good (click the picture for link). It's reasonably sturdy (more so in the direction the train will hit than in others) and comes with the strait track which is a bonus.

As someone who has some trains, I'd go for the 6 wide one, just because trams aren't supposed to be wider than trains, lol. Otherwise both are nice simple builds.

I'm not a massive fan of the base build, but having recently bought a second hand one and I really think there's some scope for a nice train with a bit or modding.

Looks really good. My only question is how stable is the loco with only the front bogie and rear axle for guidance?

It's not unheard of in the UK, although generally on slower routes. I think it's mostly a visibility case, as large locos tend to have tenders that fully fill the loading gauge (although the huge megablocks if narrower boilers were hardly conducive to visibility too).

lol, good luck fueling the monster he's modelling by just chucking coal in any available space!

It would have to, you'd need one hell of a mechanical stoker to get coal from the tender (at the 'back' of that extremely long boiler) to the firebox (at the 'front')!

....oh... I stand corrected! lol

So I've been steadily increasing my collection of steam era 7 wide wagons over the last few months. Most of them came out remarkably well and remarkably quickly and needed little or no modifications to the original design, others (well the brakevan) needed a little work but didn't take too long all the same. Then there's the van conundrum. I just can't get these right, and it continues to bug me that the most simple shape a railway wagon can be is causing me the most issues. The original design took a lot of time to perfect, and in LDD looked pretty good, but it turned out to be less than solid in the bricks, and whilst it basically looks really good, it's also a bit too short compared to the other rolling stock I have and am designing. After a fair bit of faffing, I was still not altogether happy, so I decided to pad around the net for other people's ideas, and I stumbled across H.A.Brick's PF battery van kit. It arrived, and I enjoyed building it (there's an extra instruction book and some extra pieces to build it without the sensor hole), but it only served to highlight the problems with my existing design (too short, not sturdy enough). Never the less, it gave me some ideas, such as using some black Lego to represent the frames the van is sat on to bulk up it's height, so after slightly modifying the (upper part of the) build to closer fit my needs, I set upon one of my existing vans to have a look at the idea with my standard truck chassis design. The height was good, but the bufferbeam was terrible, in order to line up with the rest of my rolling stock, it needed to be lower than the 'frames' which just doesn't look right at all. The current line up, L-R: modified H.A.Bricks van, modified version of my cattlevan MOC (with some random colours and random gaps), my original standard van MOC. The modified H.A.Bricks design. Internally strengthened and black plate/rail removed from between the body and the roof to bring down to my preferred height. (See also the rather ugly bufferbeam of the truck next to it.) Modified version of my cattle van. Although now the correct hight, I really don't like the fact the bufferbeam isn't inline with the 'frames'. Original design. See the less than perfect panel alignment due to less than perfect internal structure plus old and chewed bricks. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Still not exactly happy with any of the designs, I went back to LDD. First I married the H.A.Bricks design with my own frames, and it wasn't bad but I was still not sure it was right for my preferred style and level of detail. Another thought I had was to add an extra plank to my existing design (and drastically redesign it internally). I've come up with several variations, none of which feels like a complete winner to me. H.A.Bricks inspired vans, both short and long bodied (whichever style I settle on, I will eventually produce long and short bodied versions). Several variations on the 7 high version of my van and cattle van. At the moment, my preferred normal van is the one with the 1x8 tiles running down the side and preferred cattle van will probably be a long bodied version of the one with the 1x8 tiles hanging down the side (although I can't decide on plain doors (middle version) or slatted doors (other two). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Any ideas or suggestions are very welcome, also if anybody wants the LDD files to play with (complete with engine and brakevan), feel free to PM me.

Aye, I am far more interested in European (well, British) trains, but of all the Lego train sets there have been, it is easily the best designed, and most successful. I've seen people go to great effort to improve the HE, and EN, going to the point of building a completely new design to avoid the many problems each design had, and been very tempted to copy them. I've seen very few for Maersk, and the one I did see (a completely new design), while looking great, really didn't encourage me to even think about doing something similar to my one.

I think the real issue on any layout of any real size is cost. You can argue the relative merits of Lego 1x1 round plates looking better (or not) than actual gravel until the cows come home because there is no obvious answer, but gravel is a *hell* of a lot cheaper than thousands of 1x1 round plates.

I doubt it, they've only re-released one train set in their entire history to the best of my knowledge.

Nope... still swiping at each train that goes by! Although he's less keen on attacking the HE than he was. Haha, cat's will be cats.

Forever jealous of you Yanks... The only Lego show I know of is hundreds of miles away and nowhere near anybody I know... :(

Don't completely discount them. Some of the geometry of the standard Lego track is... Well it's bloody awful (looking at you points...)... It's fine if you stick to standard Lego designs, and don't modify them at all, which is why I recommended to you to start with just the standard stuff, but if ME ever do better points with metal topped (or just plain metal) rails, I'll bite their hands off!

So, one of my cats (Schrödinger) finally got over the noise of the railway and decided to inspect further. After merely observing for a while, then following behind, he decided it was time to try to actively effect this new and strange beast. I'm sure you can all imagine what happened next, and sure enough, one round trip after the photograph... Let's just say that red van didn't take well to it's swift trip to the floor, nor did the cat who got somewhat deluged in a shower of Lego fright wagons!