Redimus

Moved the weights to directly above the flanged wheels (and under the motors). This has killed the wheelspin, although it did still pop it's con rods once. Will also make it a lot easier when I design the boiler, as there shouldn't be any light grey showing under it now. Might try 2 weights on each side, but that may be overkill, and will make attaching the footplate much more difficult.

My first attempt at an Un-Specific Pacific (USP) was met with only partial success, it wasn't very fast or powerfull, it looked too toylike for my tastes and it was mechanically unreliable. The chassis and drive was basically a stretched and bastardised EN chassis and it was clearly not fit for purpose. I've been planning a v2 for a long time now, and have finally started. The XL motor is getting replaced with 2 L motors and the gearing has been simplified significantly. This has vastly improved the speed and (i think) the power to the wheels, but the has come at the expence of grip, causing not only significant wheel spin but also it to routinely pop the con rod from the leading wheels. It's powered through the centre (flangless) wheels, which drive the outer (flanged) wheels via the con rod. I did this in an effort to maximize the weight and power applied to the two flanged wheels, but that's looking like a dead end right now. Any ideas, suggestions or tips would be greatly received. Current build (tender will probably stay largely the same as the original build, although I'm toying with seeing if those little baring will make the standard Lego train wheel assembly a little less draggy). And v1 (before all the bits had arrived). Once I have it mechanically where I want it, I want to give it a smaller boiler and a more tapered cab roof, plus any and all grebelings I can think of.

Yeah, that should work.

How are the upper set of fence pieces used as the grills attached to the rest of the loco?

Looks awesome, but you'll probably need to do some work on the drawbar between the loco and the tender unless you're using very wide radius curves.

I've just received some. As well trying them in standard technic holes, I'm gonna see if I can't get the standard wheelset to run smoother with the inclusion of bearings between the axle and the housing (because at 7 wide, there's not much space for brick built wheelside details.

Honestly, even a quick search of Lego Ideas would show more accomplished interpretations of the same source material. Sadly, none of those are likely to get made by Lego either. What you need to do is build your designs, see what works and what doesn't, develop new ideas, try them out, trust me, some day you will be be able to build something awesome, and in the mean time, enjoy what you have built. Also, it's worth pointing out that, while designing something that is from an existing IP makes it more likely to reach the number of votes needed, it also makes it a lot harder for Lego to go any further with the design.

It's a nice idea, but if they want to really get the Lego crowd, they need to start offering Lego compatible wheelsets and couplings etc, having seen Tenderlok's own fantastic Gscale Lego builds, i'd certainly be interested in dabbling with G if it was *fully* compatible with Lego. Would give me an excellent jumping on point.

A good moc is horrendously expensive, lol.

No one who knows about Bricklink uses pickabrick. It's *FAR* too expensive, and *FAR* too limited.

Can I point something out to those who are angry that someone has cloned this set: It's not available from Lego anywhere. Lego cannot lose money on a clone of a set they no longer sell. Hell, a lot of the specific pieces in the required colours are no longer sold either, and if most of us were to collect the bricks and build the set ourselves, we'd buy them all from Bricklink, meaning, again, Lego wouldn't see any extra income anyway. There's a parallel to this in the Transformers fandom. For the last decade or so, hundreds of small companies have sprung up to provide (generally very expensive) collector quality updates of transformers characters that the fans loved but Hasbro and Takara had no interest in updating. After a while, they started to notice that not only were these guys making money, they were making enough money that 4 or 5 companies could make their own version of the same characters at the same time and still make ends meet. As a result, Hasbro and Takara responded with a renewed enthusiasm for their Masterpiece line, the Generations line, and more recently, Combiner Wars and Titans Returns, which are 100% aimed squarely at the fans and are incredibly popular as a result. If Lego sees that this knock off Emerald Night is selling well, it might encourage them to reissue the set themselves or (better still) make a similarly priced set with a locomotive that isn't actually crap (I picked up Emerald Night a couple of months ago, and I was not impressed). I don't condone the cloning of current sets, and I realise the Transformers example was companies who at least made their own toys rather than direct clones, but I feel the comparison is a fair one for this situation. Side note (and I've seen this in the Transformers fandom too) 'righteous indignation' from people who have the original and are butthurt about having paid more for something that is now available for less wins very few friends... People (like myself) who got into Lego trains after EN was retired never had a chance to pick it up. I was lucky and found it for a price I was willing to pay (although it still wasn't cheap), but why shouldn't they take this option if it's available? EDIT: Having looked at most of the rest of their catalogue, I suspect that this one defendable inclusion to their range is somewhat outweighed by the vast majority of their sets that are current and not exceptionally sought after...

I know what I wanted was something steam based which is a little less disappointing than Emerald Night.... This is not that.

Disappointing, but predictable. Pass.

What makes you say that? Also, I suspected it'll be a pass for me, and yes, it is a total pass for me.

Goddamn. Stop making such awesome locos, you're making the rest of us look bad! lol

Looking at his wheel arrangements, I'd say they should manage fine on Lego curves. I'm more interested in how much they can pull and how fast.

How about "Meals on Wheels" or "The Rolling Stock Cube"?

I really like the idea, but would it not be easier to use the 9v style of power transfer? It would allow the much less invasive 9v system on the bogie, which can easily be transferred to the more modern wiring in the train it's self using the pf wire that is explicitly designed to transfer between the two systems. Also I feel if you're gonna have metal wheels, you need all of them being metal, seeing noticeably different wheels on the same bogie is a real put off for me.

How are the doors held together? Having mucked about with doors made of 2 arches myself, I have no idea how you've pulled that off!

Do the classic TGV shaped Thalys predate the more iconic chubby ones? I'd never run across them until now.

It is in no way a re colour of the yellow freight train. The only similarity is the use of the canopy pieces, other than that it is a completely different train. And honestly, I liked it a *lot* more than the blue train, who's loco has long since been dismantled for parts, and who's wagons, overall, aren't, as interesting as the red freight train's wagons (particularly that hopper, which is my favorite wagon since the yellow train's tanker). The only real check against the red train is slightly less track (the plastic track is useless to me anyway) and a slightly smaller piece of scenery (or more accurately, slightly less bits for MOC fodder).

Looks cool. I may try out that 060 tank of yours.

PF 2.0?

The designs are vastly superior and the one thing I have noticed about Lego over the likes of Megabloks (if I'm comparing like for like) or Transformers (Hasbro, Takara or third party, if I were to compare to my other obsession), is that the quality of the pieces and the care given to making sure everything that should be there is there is second to none. I've no doubt errors have surfaced, anything with humans involved inevitably has errors, but to say modern sets are plagued with them is utterly untrue (especially when they are far more complex and have far larger parts counts these days).

What are the gaps under the white line?