Redimus

It'd be a tight fit if it did fit at all. However, lowering the window would fix that, and possibly fix my only real gripe with the design, the grey stripe should roughly half the height of the coach side. Lowering the windows would allow the band to be thicker without the windows being too high.

Nicked your idea for how the actual tank is formed, but otherwise made up the rest as I went along. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In other news, the loco is now complete except for the connecting rods. Photos to come as soon as the rods arrive.

^Reasons I'm not rushing to build a HST anytime soon... lol ^

I think I've already got the well wagon from one of your other posts, but I need to modify it as the standard height I've (arbitrarily) set for the buffer beam (based entirely on where the buffer beam ended up on the Q class) is noticeably different to your design. Not had a real chance to see if I can modify it to fit of if I'll have to start from scratch. I may well use elements of your tank wagon design too, although whatever I do will be based on a variant of the existing wagon base I have designed. To be honest though, the hardest part is deciding what to order bits for first, and how many I should do at a time!

While I wait for the few remaining bits, I've been designing the train it'll haul. First, the (somewhat generic) Southern Railway owned stock: And then some equally generic Private Owner wagons: I'll probably try and design a tanker wagon too (which will be PO only), and maybe a well wagon too.

A few more bits have landed since the photo, the tender is now structurally complete, just needs a few tiles to finish it off, and the loco isn't far off either.

Well, I got bored of waiting for parts, so decided to throw together what I have so far (with, it has to be said, the help of a fair few rather old rather chewed utterly the wrong colour parts). So far so good! It's looking rather spiffing all things considered, and seems to work fine running around the layout.

Oh, either way, it tends to be tender powered. Sticking the battery box in the tender is fine as long as the tender is big enough. So far I have built one generic loco which looked daft with a big tender (which is what sparked me into buying up 9v in the first place, the newer lower tender is a big improvement) and the one I'm currently working on is based on a real loco with a tender that is just plain too small. Really need to get one for my HE, as that tends to be run for long fast stints. The only other loco I have that uses a battery box can do without rechargeable for now. I think he's referring to the first IR sets, which had a train frame with built in receiver stuff. and

ScotNick: Looks-wise, I love it, but the boiler is a little too small. Also, I did toy with similar (although not using whatever you used for the main part of the boiler), and got frustrated with my inability to find a way of supporting the front of the boiler, I'd be surprised if it didn't sag in real life. As for jtlan's suggestion, here's my take on it your idea: The left side one has a slightly taller firebox and cab, the one on the right slightly lower. Ideally I'd like the rifebox to be half a plate higher but that's rather difficult to achieve. I'll probably end up building it using my previous design, simply because the bits are ordered, but I may well rebuild at a later date so I can evaluate it in real life. Which version of the fire box do you guys prefer, and do you prefer the closer to round boiler of the slightly more accurate boiler/smokebox combo?

As someone who wants to mostly MoC British Steam, and refuses point blank to rely on dummy locos with powered wagons behind them (I like to shunt) I pretty much have to stick to 9v until the receiver and battery packs become significantly smaller (unlikely in the near future).

I don't disagree about the splashers (in fact, I kind of wish I could have done that on my version) it's just several other considerations were more important to me/more obvious to me. By keeping the cab/tender 6 wide, it allows for a more pronounced step between the footplate and the the sides (which was pretty much the first thing I noticed in the photos), and it allows a closer profile when compared to any future 7 wide coaching stock (it's noticeably slightly narrower than BR Mk1 coaches, which are pretty much British standard loading gauge, partly because of the flat sides and possibly because of the Southern Railway's Hastings line which had a narrower loading gauge than the rest of the network). Also, as a bonus, it means it won't stand out too much compared to my existing 6 wide stock. I intentionally picked a simpler narrower loco for my first foray into doing a 7 wide moc of an actual loco because both skills and size wise, it's a nice stepping stone between the two. As for the boiler, even though I have ordered the majority of the bits, I may well have to steal that idea! Goddamn your tardy ideas! :P

To be fair, I only got into Lego trains this year, and it wasn't too hard to pick up all the 9v stuff I need, so unless the old stuff happened to be on reduced to clear, I don't think stocking up would have been particularly necessary.

I like those.

I think they're designed to fit on the standard road wheel connectors most City cars and small trucks use. They certainly don't fit technic bars on LDD.

Cheers. Well the bits are ordered (including rods from your establishment). Hopefully it'll be ready to go within the next few weeks! The trucks (plus a few more I haven't yet designed) are to follow.

Yeah, I added a weight to the under frame detail of the yellow freight loco, and while not an ideal location compared to the motor, it has made a significant improvement to grip, especially on a layout where I tend to run 5-8 car fright trains and have a reasonable incline directly after a semi circle of standard radius curve.

You've got two problems, first off, on their own, the flexi track creates a fair bit of drag compared to normal rails because it is effectively a has a continuous check rail to lead the train round sharp curves causing more of the wheels to rub against the rail. Secondly, even normal Lego curves are quite prone to drag due to their sharp radius, and I suspect that flexi track can achieve slightly sharper curves (although I may be wrong on that one), add that to the incline, and I can see how trains are grinding to a halt. Also, how are you creating the incline? On normal track you can probably get away with just adding some plates at the end of each rail, but flexi track tends to be a bit too flexible in the up and down axis to do that, you may find that it isn't rising at a consistent level, rather it just rises sharply then levels out, which would make for a much harsher gradient.

Well, it's not perfect, and there's a lot of fudges employed to ensure it looks OK in Lego, even if it isn't all that accurate, but I think I'm gonna call it now. If anybody wants to tinker with it, here's the LDD File, and here's a selection of boiler ideas to play with. The disassembled one is the one used by the previous version of the second build (larger smokebox).

Hmm, I'm not sure it'd be that long. Anyway, time for version 2. I'm not too keen with the larger smokebox, the difference in size is too big, and the dish used for the smokebox door too small, so I'll probably make 2 more boilers, one completely the original size, the other completely based on ScotNick's idea. I'll also experiment with the height they sit at, I feel this one may sit a plate too high.

I really like the cylinder use!

It's a rather difficult question to answer, but with the provided traction tires, and the application of an old train weight brick as close to the motor as is possible (again to provide more traction), it has no problem reaching a decent speed with a couple of my (reasonably heavy moc coaches, and can happily pull (although not as quickly) 5 or 6 freight wagons (all default Lego designs and therefore relatively light), and that's on my less than level layout.

So, I've been playing with my original design, and have got to a point where, apart from the boiler, I'm reasonably happy with it... if I was modeling in 8 wide. Having studied some more prototype photos, it looks to me that the running plate should be the 7 stud point, not the cab/tender. I'm gonna take a closer look at jtlan's work, see what I can learn, but I think I'm going to end up with a slightly simplified/1 stud less wide version of the existing design (although I'm still probably going to do something about the boiler, the current one looks nice, but is in no way big enough). I also still feel the loco is too short, I'll probably add an extra stud in between the driving wheels. As for the tender, I will probably shorten it by a stud, and am still considering trying to do a representation of the frames (although that'd probably be something I'd do after the initial real world construction so I can work out how much of the frames I can get away with representing. Notes on the current version: The chimney will be held together either by a chopped up bit of tube or a choped up bit of the bar used to hold track together in package. Handrails will be shortened tubes. I am considering experimenting with chopping off the ends of the levers on either side of the boiler and feeding them into a tube to create the look of the bend pipe that existes either side of the real thing. A shortened length of tube will be used ot represent the brake handles either side of the open truck (and any other future short wheelbase wagons I design. The tiles next to the brakevan will be clipped on either side to form the foot boards.

Hmm, looking at this photo of the prototype, I think I need to at least lengthen the front of the engine so there is more of an overhang, and possibly put a little bit more space between the wheels too.

You got the LDD file so I can have a closer look?

If you can make it 7 wide at the footplate and still maintain the tender and cab step in from the footplate, I'm totally stealing your work! :P