Redimus

I liked the look of what we saw, especially the passenger set that reminded me of the prototype HST.

Cheers for the quick response! :)

I didn't realise he was on these boards!

So I've decided to take advantage of the instructions provided by his book, but I've run into a colour issue. Which brown is it? I had assumed Reddish Brown, but the finger joint hinges simply do not exist in that colour (at least according to Bricklink). Is it meant to be the old Brown (which they do exist in, but I'd suspect some of the more modern parts don't)? Is there a suitable alternative to this without completely redesigning the ends (the modern ratcheted ones are too tall)? As is usually the case, I'm finding the building a parts wanted list on Bricklink frustrating as all hell (I'm not sure why the hell we need to identify what kind of piece we're looking for when we have the number already), and I want to get this parts list *right* so I can share it, meaning everyone else who has the book doesn't have to go through the same fart on.

I have 2 sets, powered by a motor in each powercar. I use only one battery box (rechargeable) and have some old 9v cables running between the lead and rear powercars to provide power to the second motor/rear lights. On normal track it lasts for ever and goes *really* fast. In the yard (with multiple iterations of the standard Lego points), it's a bloody liability (the middle bogies were replaced with one jacobs bogie too, which I think is the biggest reason for it's hatred of fiddly point layouts. Not entirely relevant here, but I have also learned that a longish train, that is very fast, with motors at both ends, that needs line of sight to start/stop, on a loop of track near the edge of it's table, and is *very* permanently coupled is a disaster waiting to happen if your cats are even slightly inquisitive. I've rebuilt it a *lot* of times, and when the collection of trains became too large for my space on the layout, it was the first train to be sacrificed static display.

They often do that on British mainline steam hauled trains too. For heating (as mentioned) and also sometimes the breaking system.

It's *WAY* better than Emerald Night (which I really don't like, there's too many things wrong with it for me). Maersk is better, because it looks more like the prototype (to my eyes at least) than either of the other two, and is operationally much easier to use (EN looks really ugly with it's power functions nonsense in the tender, and requires heavy modification to be 9v capable, and while HE is easy to convert to either way of powering, it has issues with the articulation and stability in general over some points (especially if, like me, you insist on articulating the entire train).

I've never felt the need to to go away from the default magnetic couplers, I feel they're part of the charm of Lego and are pretty reliable.

Decided the road was too narrow with the curb stones on the road module (plus it'd be easier to transfer modulars to this system if I'm not having to find even more tiles to replace their curbs), so here's 2.2:

That was my first idea. The problem I had with ti was without extensive modification of some modulars (corner ones in particular) it kind of damages the modularity of them, especially if (as I at one point considered) you just have the bases under the buildings where they fall instead of in a uniform manner. To be honest, I've never been a big fan of the road plates either.

So, been working on this, and we now have modular v2.1: I'm not 100% happy with it yet. Not only is the road a considerably more expensive piece now, but so is every other module, plus the additional height that's had to be added. Initially I was going to carry the road to the side of the module, with snot building to give the side road markings, but that would result in the loss of far too many attachment points (ie the city would effectively be a series floating islands in a sea of roads). Might still move the curb stones back to the building modules. Until very recently, you were right, then they introduced these three tiles: I think with a little bit of strategic parts swapping, these parts will work out just fine. Admittedly, it does mean it won't be 100% pure modular (the larger curves would have to go over multiple modules) but it should prove really useful.

Hmm, that looks really good, but part of my brief was that I wanted the city to hold it's self together (because wobbly tables, the layout being next to a passageway in the room and roaming cats mainly). How do you find the system allows for flexibility in layout of your city? Does rearranging the buildings often cause awkward gaps?

Thanks for the links guys! I'll definitely be looking into that those. I'll probably not jump onto their standards (unlikely ever gonna need to combine my city with anyone else's, and I wanted less pavement from the start), but if I can get a satisfactory road in the width without adding too much extra height (and therefore parts) to the modular bases, I may well use that.

Aye, I couldn't think of any other way of doing it without either using stickers or breaking the strict rules on measurements. It shouldn't be too expensive, as the majority of the bits don't need to be a specific colour, and are bits I have loads of. Probably the only costly bit (other than the baseplates I'd have to buy anyway) is the large plates

I've always been a fan of the modular buildings, and intend to build a layout that relies heavily on them. Unfortunately, I have never liked the standard way they interact with roads. The Lego road baseplates have several rows of studs on their outer edges, leading to the weird practice of most people's Lego cities having a random rough strip of land between the roads and the city center buildings. Add this to the fact that the roads themselves don't actually connect in a modular fashion. My first thought was just to have smaller baseplates with tilled roads. Whilst this works, I'd have to add an extra plate to the underside of *every* modular build to allow for the 1 plate height difference between the road and the pavement, and it still wouldn't actually result in a road attached to the rest of the city. My second thought was, what if I just remove the baseplates as they are currently aligned, and attach the font of each modular set to the side of the road plates. This solves the lose road issue, but results in a very difficult to disassemble city (something I've needed to do at least once a year). It also still has the downside of taking apart the bottom over every modular set, but I've kind of resigned myself to that. Still not happy, I stumbled upon a youtube video of micro scale modular cities, which included the road in each modular segment. Whilst not the perfect solution (for ease of reconfiguration, I'd like the roads completely separable) id did point me in the best direction to go forward. Using standard modular base ideas (as seen in yet more youtube videos) I've come up with a range of 'standard' and easily swapable bases, plus square road segments of various configurations. The logical plan is to base the system on the standard base plate widths (8, 16 and 32 studs). Unless I wanted extremely wide roads, I found that the only sensible width would be 16 studs. I could use the 8x16 tiles, but I don't want to have to add road markings, plus I liked the idea of having grills built into the road. The bases are basically hollow, with enough support to stop them sagging in the middle. And here's an example of how a section of city would look (minus the actual buildings). I've not yet got as far as considering how I'll squeeze my beloved railways into this system yet, but that'll be the next job (and the job I will *have* to do before I even think of actually using this). One advantage I see is when I have to disassemble my city, I'll be able to easily use things like stations as display settings for my trains without radically dismantling them. As usual, suggestions, feedback and criticisms are welcomed and encouraged.

In the UK, they tend to be under cover, so whilst there is something to see, it'd be heard to get a reasonable representation in Lego scale and actually have it cover the wires. Perhaps another solution would be to build a slightly raised trackbed, so the wires can disappear under the ground level. You could have them above ground level representing telegraph lines though.

Urgh, there are some great and not too complex steam locos on Lego Ideas, can we use them instead of recycling the extremely flawed Emerald Night...

I couldn't care less. Considering the sheer mass of custom designs out there, I'd be rather flattered if they found it and thought it was worth something. And the fact the Lego ideas community simply doesn't care about my area of interest, it's not like I'd ever expect to earn a penny on them anyway. That surprises me too. The thing looked pretty rubbish, and has the worst attempt at including PF ever.

I's long been my intention to do just that. Unfortunately, I don't feel that all of my mocs are worth it yet, and there are elements of instruction making I just don't know how to do. Sure, it's possible to just release the LDD instructions, but those are both rather counter intuitive, and can't show everything. I know how I felt when I first started dabbling, so many things I wanted to do, no idea how I could do them. I *really* wanted some high level instructions for really good UK based mocs. Sadly, those don't exist, but if you try yourself, either on LDD on in the bricks, and get this lot to help you when you're stuck, you'll be amazed what you can come up with.

I would buy the hell out of these designs if Lego did them

Really liking that Mk1.

Each brick can control 4 different functions, so that 64 would be over 16 bricks. To the best of my knowledge, I don't think you can control more than one channel with one slider (unfortunately I haven't got mine on hand to double check, but I don't remember being given the option when I've mucked about with it). The control schemes are completely customisable though, so if you have a couple of units you think you'll often use together, just put the sliders next to each other. If you're controlling a multiple unit that never separates, just run a wipe two both motors through the train from the same brick.

As someone who tends to stick to British trains, this sadly is of limited use, 8 wide is too wide. Possibly worth using for trackside stuff.

Do want!

At the moment, 'just' the two Pullman coaches (behind version 1 of the loco), which are both rather long, and heavy, with bogies that have the wheels as far apart as you can comfortably get them. On it's own it's a tad faster, but hardly uncontrollably so, but pulling those it really needs all the pulling power it can muster. The front bogie and cartazzi axle are both connected in the same way (roughly) as Emerald Night's were. At the moment, the whole front end is held on by a row of 4 studs, so it's probably not fantastically flat. The previous build started with the ride height of the front not being perfect but being OK, then as it got taken apart and reassembled, it got worse and worse until it was a real issue, unfortunately, I don't know of any better solutions right now. Will that not just add more drag and potential places of mechanical stress? The set up I have now is by far the simplest, and seems to be better than the previous iterations. The issue I see is this, either I power both flanged wheels independently, then you're relying on the con rods to keep them in sync with each other (potentially troublesome, but means less friction between the motor and the wheels), or have both sets of driving wheels powered from the same central point (which would be relatively easy to adapt the current build to), but is that not just adding extra friction for limited power to wheel gain? The motors are already directly above the wheels anyway, and I've moved the deadweights to under the motors, directly above the wheels too, so this seems like a potential solution, but I'll give your ideas a go in my next session on it. Also, I'll do a few photos at the same time.