Beck

Very very nice train! The decals are fantastic! Out of curiosity where do you obtain bricks living in China? I agree that the trucks are slightly too short. After referencing a scale drawing each axle is 0.5 stud too close together. The distances from the central axle should be 4.5 and 5.5 studs respectively. This is very typical with lego trains. Sometimes it takes me ten iterations to perfect a bogie design. If you could take more pictures of the bogie itself, I'd be glad to design one in LDD for you.

Thanks! 70x8 studs is hardly small. https://www.flickr.com/photos/152818020@N02/49709201293/in/dateposted/ I'm also working on an EF64 1000 which will likely be finished sometime in September.

Thanks for the info! Its a technic brick 1x2 with two axle holes. I'll make a better render of just the bogie soon. It was very difficult, but it runs flawlessly. I forgot to add that I included three plate 1x2 rounded to secure the 3L bars. Believe it or not, the connection is really strong. It's nice to see another Japanese Railway enthusiast outside of Japan. Thanks!

I'm not familiar with that process, could you explain?

Absolutely! Anything below 1000mm, such as, Swedish 3ft (891mm) should be 4 stud track. I totally forgot to ask; any ideas on how to paint the wheels? Spray paint vs model paints?

Thanks very much! Are you referring to steve5010? The tiles connected with a single 1x1 tile with clip look quite weak. I'm not sure if they were built to look good or to run real train on them. Thanks very much! I have another Japanese train that I'm working on now that also runs on 5 wide track. If I ever get serious about creating more of a layout, I'll probably design my own track and 3d print it. The design is not quite final yet, so stay tuned.

Thank you! According to wikipedia the length of the entire train is 25000mm. That scales to 69.4 studs in 1:45. Each Locomotive is 34 studs long with a two stud gap between them. Pictures can be deceiving. I should also mention that the locomotive (#901) pictured in the original post is the preproduction prototype.

Hello everyone! Let’s start with some information about the real train. The EH800 was introduced into service in 2014 just before the Hokkaido Shinkansen service commenced in 2016. The line utilizes the Seikan Tunnel, which connects the island of Hokkaido to the mainland (Honshu). For the Shinkansen trains to be able to operate through the tunnel, the electrification was changed from 20kV to 25kV. Therefore, a new freight locomotive was needed to replace the EH500 that could operate at the two voltages. Now here’s the really interesting part; JR has been testing the feasibility of the loading the narrow gauge container cars on to larger standard gauge covered cars allowing for higher speeds through the tunnel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_on_Train About the design: All bogies are powered by M motors with the option of upgrading three to L motors if more torque is required since the L motor and M motor have nearly identical rpms at 9V (272 vs 275). The fourth M motor cannot be upgraded to an L motor because it is mounted vertically to allow for the battery box (buwizz). The bogies were also designed to run on 3 wide track to better replicate the 3ft 6in (1067mm) gauge. Here's quite a useful technique I discovered for coupler mountings. Alternatively, I could have mounted the coupler and lower frame assembly directly to the bogie; however, I just don’t like how that assembly would look when the bogie is turned. The coupler can be attached to the brown plate with hole, which is connected to the 2x2 bracket inverted in green. The two blue 3L bars are connected to the headlight bricks in black and to a 1x2 plate rounded (#35480) that is hidden from view. I used my old ME models R104 rails in conjunction with the newer Bricktracks R104s to create dual gauge track. What's left: - paint the 3D printed wheels light gray -continue the stripe around the front of the cab Here are some reference images/videos:

Having used Buwizz extensively on many trains, I feel I have accumulated enough experience to answer these questions. When the connection is lost, all motors will come to a stop and you have to reconnect to the buwizz to continue. The connection process takes about 5 seconds. If you put your phone to sleep or open another app, the connection will remain and will only fail if you cut the power to your phone. Sometimes I am able to run my train for ~1.5hr straight without any connectivity problems and other times, bluetooth fails within 10mins. Overall I totally recommend it due to it's size, power output, charge capacity, and rechargeability.

I checked and they're in LDD extended v4.3.11 (if you search "mini roller skate").

Great work @efferman! Having previously tried to build a self erecting tower crane, I can understand how difficult this project must have been. Pretty sure that's a liebherr mk140/110/100. The company appears to be mediaco from France.

Thank you! I am too! It's taken me quite some time to be able to finally build it IRL, but I'm really pleased with the result.

The 7x11 frame is the wrong dimension; I would need a 9x10 frame minimum.

It's complete! Only one change was made from the digital model; the cheese slopes along the side of the windscreen was lengthened by 1 stud to cover the side of the red curved slopes. I'm really pleased with the performance and appearance. If anyone has any ideas regarding the possible decals on the side, please let me know. I've ran it for at least a total of three hours now and an hour continuously without any mechanical issues whatsoever. I'll get to posting a video sometime in the near future. Possible Reference for the decal: https://www.modellbahnshop-lippe.com/article_data/images/97/264116_b.jpg

While working on a new project I created an axle for 1:16-17 scale trucks that places the motor directly inside of the axle. The design creates more space below the chassis that would otherwise be occupied by the motor, driveshaft, and transfer case. LXF: https://bricksafe.com/pages/Beck/technic_mocs/miscellaneous

Update 8: After an entire year, it's about time that I updated this thread. I mounted the rear steered axle and the rear wheel arches. Next I tested the central outrigger system and decided that I couldn't make the assembly sturdy enough without enlarging it beyond scale. So I scrapped the motorized piston rotation mechanism and designed a more compact and robust outrigger assembly. After examining some reference photos, I noticed that the crane was mounted slightly off center from the chassis. This presented an issue; the turntable had to be secured to the chassis without considerably increasing its height or unbalancing the chassis. Many hours later I found a solution of which I will render later. Then I completed the crane's first stage and began work on the second; however, I'm unsure whether I want to have the second stage extension be driven mechanically or pneumatically. Lastly I adapted the central outrigger assembly for the rear and mounted it on the chassis. Up next: - finish the second stage and design the third stage - connect the pneumatics - build the loading box on the rear. - probably some other stuff I'm forgetting at the moment

Thank you! Hilarious idea! Although I am not really apart of any LUG, I'd be happy to share the LXF if someone else wants to take this to a show. I'm well aware of this problem; pretty much everything I make has some sort of issue with R40s.

For this year's OcTRAINtober challenge I decided to build a single unit of SBB’s firefighting train. Given the time constraints of the challenge, I knew that I would only be able to complete one unit of the LRZ consist. Therefore, I chose the largest unit with a water cannon. I would need the space to house, the battery/receiver, pump, water tank, drive motor, and cannon rotation mechanism. I began the design in LDD and quickly drafted the frame, cab and container. This gave me a rough idea of the space I had to work with. I tried to position the pump motor as low as possible to allow for the maximum amount of height for the cylinder. Since there was only one option for the drive motor placement and cabin space was already limited, the placement of the cannon rotation mechanism and drive motor had to be placed in the container. Due to the vertical distances between the cannon rotation motor and cabin, I opted to use a pulley system because the string could be guided through a series of holes to account for the vertical displacement. When I eventually started building the model IRL, I encountered some unexpected setbacks; namely two parts I had used did not exist in the colors I had used in LDD. This required some time to redesign. In addition to a bricklink kerfuffle, I had lost valuable time to complete the model. Again, due to the limited time, I prioritized functionality over aesthetics and realism. Although the model is less detailed than I would like it to be, pleased with the progress I made in just over one month. Note: The train is not specifically based on either the Xtmas 99 or Xtmas 80, rather a blend of the two. Information/Scale Drawing: https://company.sbb.ch/en/the-company/responsibility-society-environment/customers/sbb-and-safety/intervention.html VIDEO: https://www.flickr.com/photos/152818020@N02/49058471766/in/photostream/

Although I digitally finalized the design over two weeks ago, my bricklink orders just arrived a couple days ago. Extending the time limit to Nov 4 would likely allow me to complete the model IRL.

Thank you. It's good to hear that I was able to "capture the surface" of the locomotive. I, too, am quite pleased with the sides. I really spent waaaay too much time on the front, but the result was realistic. Yeah, I had quite a difficult time finding reference images of the top of the train. Eventually, I settled for a couple of photos of an H0 model of the same train. https://vasutmodell-szemle.blog.hu/2019/06/25/traxx_3_az_a_c_m_e_-tol (pictures near the bottom of the page)

Thank you! I really tried to model the "aggressive" stance of the locomotive. No worries!

Hello Everyone, After about two years of design, my third prototype of the TRAXX AC3 is finally complete. I built my first version in 2015 which was my first Lego train I had ever attempted to model. I wasn’t aware of any technical drawings as I had just begun the hobby, so I just eyeballed it and did my best. It was powered by two lego train motors and the technic AA battery box. After about a year, I slowly began to notice it wasn’t quite as proportional as I had wanted it to be, so I redesigned it in 2016. Since I had designed my first version entirely in LDD I had used the battery box as as structural member, which made it very difficult to replace. I was also disappointed with the performance of the train motor, so I used 2 XL motors in my second version; however, this meant that I could not accurately model the ribbing on the side that I had modeled in my first version. I made a couple of visual improvements to the cab of the locomotive including the addition of the footplates below the front lights and rescaled the windscreen. To my surprise, the XL motors did not significantly improve the locomotive’s performance; Lego battery boxes just wouldn’t cut it. I also improved the battery box accessibility and overall rigidity of the model. Although I was pleased with the improvements in my second revision, I still wanted to improve the aesthetics without compromising the performance. Up until now, I had used the standard lego PF train wheels, but after a suggestion from @jtlan, I considered using a more larger and more realistic wheel. To me, the large wheels were one of the defining features of the TRAXX, so I knew that I had to include them in my third version. I also wanted to improve the sloping on either side of the windscreen to more accurately represent the curves. I replaced the 4x1 curved slopes with angled 1x2 cheese slopes connected to a 1x1 tile with clip in conjunction with part #25893. The livery was also changed from the rather bland Railpool livery to the eye-catching SwissRail livery. Regarding the motorization, I downgraded from the XL motors to the L motors and replaced the standard lego battery box with a BuWizz. When I tested it on the rails, it was able to pull my nine 8-wide wagons with ease. The video will have to wait because my ME models track came apart due to the unevenly distributed load combined with lateral forces on the rails. Photos of older versions: https://bricksafe.com/pages/Beck/train_mocs I think this is my final version... for now. Thank you for reading.

I haven't forgotten about the pantographs. It's just that my pantograph design requires minifig hands to be inserted into cut 3mm tubing, which cannot be built digitally.

Yes it was the handrails. Honestly I have no experience with decals and am not sure what I would do when I do eventually build this model.

Well, it's been over two years and I haven't updated this thread. I sort of forgot about the model as I hit a roadblock with regards to its design. Well during those two years I redesigned my TRAXX AC3 (which I will be sharing soon) using larger wheels. After finishing my TRAXX, I decided to redesign the Vectron using the new techniques I had learned with the TRAXX. About the Design: Although the larger wheels are more proportional, they did create several challenges. Unlike many North American locomotives, I have noticed that many European locomotives' bogies are mounted in such a way that the wheels protrude upwards into the main frame of the locomotive (Ex: Re420, Re460, TRAXX, Vectron, etc). In reality this is not really a problem because the minimum curve radius is so large and the frame's sides can be made very thin; however in lego it is very difficult to design a bogie and frame with sufficient rotational clearance to navigate even the largest of curves. I had to sacrifice a couple of details on the locomotive (ie: the recessed step below the door and the various holes along the side) to accommodate the thin side frame. I also chose to use thinner 3D printed wheels to allow for more clearance. Although I have not built the model IRL yet, I have tested a similar bogie and frame on my TRAXX with great success. Consequently the locomotive can only navigate R104 and R120 curves. It might be able to negotiate R88 curves, but I cannot test this as I do not own R88 curves. The second obstacle was the compromised structural rigidity of the frame. I ended up using the two L motors as structural members to compensate. I missed something in the second render. Can you spot it? I really have to thank @jtlan for suggesting to use larger wheels.