Redimus

OK, now I feel like an idiot.

That's an interesting looking train, god knows how you're supposed to pull off a half convincing Lego version of that nose though.

It's kind of weird, you design completely new bits to replicate stuff you couldn't make in Lego, and go out of your way to include some studs on top, meanwhile I've built entirely in base Lego so far, and spend all my time trying to hide as many of the studs as possible!

Wasn't entirely happy with the first attempt, so have cut a stud in width of the upper section, and brought in the footboard for the SR brakevan (the BR one would need a complete redesign to move the footboards in). Overall, I think it's an improvement, I think once I've finished building coaches, this'll form the start of a 7-wide steam era freight set. This means I may need to consider updating my other MOCs to 7 wide too, but for now, I'll just stick with a mix of 6 and 7 wide.

On that note... The HST is almost as important a train as the TGV, it is still officially the world's fastest diesel train, although there are a few unverified faster ones, and like the TGV, it was exported with a different shell, to Australia, and above all else, I love HSTs... So yeah, HST should totally be a Creator set, although perhaps not the next one (2 high speed trains seems a little overkill). Side note on British diesels: Most of the first couple of generations of British diesel ended up being scrapped early due to poor reliability or horrible maintenance costs or plain none standard parts. This is because instead of planning the dieselisation as soon as the war ended, and doing it in a gradual and sensible manner over say 20 years, they continued to order Steam engines, then suddenly decided that steam was rubbish, and started scrapping perfectly good (if expensive to run) locos decades before their sell by date and replaced them with dozens of rushed out classes none of which had been properly developed. Then replaced half of those with slightly better slightly less rushed designs.

The problem with the Deltics were they were far too expensive to run, what with their maritime engine!

Deltic would be awesome, although I think the prototype would an even cooler choice, and would appeal to Americans as well because it was very much inspired by American design (and it looks really cool).

I've a feeling they have.

Perhaps more importantly, because of it's relatively small size, they should be able to provide a fair rake of coaches and/or trucks to go with it without having too high a parts count.

Couple of break van experiments: Light grey one is a generic BR brakevan (would be the more common brown, but the brackets used to connect the ends to the sides don't come in that colour) and the dark grey with red ends one is a generic Southern Railway brakevan. Both use the same basic build, with slight alterations on the ends, sides and footboards (the tiles on the track next to the SR one are intended to fit in between the wheels in the 4 modified tiles). I originally intended them to be 7 wide, but they've ended up 8 wide, and with the rest of my current stock still being only 6 wide, I think this renders them too wide to actually build yet, although I may look into either narrowing them, or creating a full steam era train of stock then starting to build them.

Yeah, it captures the overall shape really well but does look a bit short, an extra 2 studs is probably the way to go.

Once you've got the hang of Bricklink, it's really useful. I've built a few things and got a lot of odds n sods from there, and apart from the odd missing piece (which is always sent out post haste as soon as you email the seller) I've never had a problem. Totally recommend it.

Cheers, I'll give it a go!

That'd be a beast of a model by offcial Lego loco standards. Mind, so would pretty much *anything* American that's been suggested.

I've not had that problem, but for a multiple unit that's intended to stay coupled together, it wouldn't hurt to replace the stock magnet couplers with purpose built permanent coupling.

How do you achieve the step along the side of the brake vans. I've been trying to perfect that for a while with limited success. Also I may well be borrowing some of your truck ideas!

The Condor? I had to look that up on Google, and as far as I can tell, it was some fast freight service normally run by Co-Bos. A pretty obscure service run by some pretty obscure (if rather unique) locos. As for me? I'd like to see all of the trains! :P

You will probably have to move the bogies further out towards the ends if you want to couple it to anything (also the ends will stick out too far on the sharp Lego track corners).

I have a fully articulated 4 coach/2 logo set, with no modification to length, and with other Lego trains it looks great, and has the major advantage of actually fitting in my passing loop and one of the sidings, meaning it doesn't make it impossible to operate the layout if it's on the track. In other words, you should only lengthen you're HE if you think it'll fit on your layout.

Well I'm halfway to completing a full rake of my Mk 0.5s (photos eventually), but I've already decided to go on to the next project (because I fancied designing something). I'm a great admirer of youtube user 's Lego locos but I am nowhere near ready to try his level of detail. I also rather like his Pullmans, and that is something I feel I can tackle. So having taken a lot of inspiration both from his own ideas and many others I found on google (both for Pullman coaches and other ideas used on coaches), plus use my own imposed limitations (same basic size (especially height and width) as the rest of my stock), and here's the result! I'm rather happy with it, but I need to build one before I know if it's solid enough (had a lot of trouble getting the 5 wide SNOT door sections securely connected with the 6 wide everything else).Couple of quick notes, there will be a tube on each side to act as the underframes which isn't show, and the turntables and clear tiles are intended to sit in the door and toilet cavities. Like my Mk 0.5s, the coach contains roughly half a real coach (the way I built the toilet sections, plus my wish to have the tables line up with the windows without the length being too much longer than the Mk 0.5s made that pretty much a given). I'm a bit disapointed I couldn't make it more symmetrically laid out, but unfortunately the limitations I put on the build meant that was how it has to be. In other news, I've pretty much finished my modifications on Horizon Express, so I should really show that off too.

Yeah, but I suspect a 3rd party product that isn't *that* cheap and isn't available directly with Lego sets for kids is unlikely to help the overall sales of Lego trains amongst their core audience, children. I, however, rather interested.

Metroliners arent *that* expensive to geth old of, and I'd rather something new and different come out over something that already exists but is now a little better and a little cheaper. Also, far too simple for a Creator set.

You have to wonder how the popularity of Lego trains would be affected by replacing the IR receiver and remote with a cheap and nasty Bluetooth receiver and a simple piece of software for Android/iPhone platforms. Suddenly you have a building toy you can control from your mobile phone or tablet (I can;'t remember the last time I met a child that didn't have one), and Lego don't need to make quite as much technology, because there's no longer a need for a separate controller. I dunno if it'd be a massive boost, but kids do love technology (at least, I know boys do, and I suspect girls do too). (Side note, a Bluetooth connection would probably be a lot more reliable than the line of site IR set up.)

It's worth pointing out that it's not a loco that is intended to run a million miles an hour long distances, so shouldn't be as big an issue as say the drag caused by the technic axles in the HE set.

Nah, you'd hope that'd be a Lego Ideas set.