Srbandrews

I think it's fairly unlikely that Lego would be that ambiguous with its titling. I know some people have been a bit pessimistic about a new train coming out but I'm fairly confident that when Lego say a train they're pretty likely to mean something running on rails. I would love to see a shunter too. Anything that fits PF into as small a space as possible would be terrific.

Really cool build. Great stuff. I love all the features you've managed to pack into it. Coming from the UK, it's all too easy to forget that elsewhere people actually really get to ride in trains not entirely unlike this and they don't just exist in a hypothetical future.

Totally amazing. Brilliant layout and brilliant locos. I would love an attic full of Lego trains; unfortunately in London you're lucky if you have a whole attic to live in, so that might be a goal for a somewhat distant future (/retirement). If I'm completely honest, I did find myself fast-forwarding quite a lot of the bits where the camera is on the train - there are only so many times I can watch something going around an identical 90 degree bend. I much prefer the wider shots, especially when you have more than one running at a time.

Very nice work. I definitely think the Emerald Night is crying out for a bigger tender so I'm sure yours is a huge improvement, but it would be nice to see a shot of your engine and tender together to see how well the shapes balance. I only have the one EN and don't think I'll be modding it, but I always thought that if I did modify one, it would be to change the smoke deflector shape to something more like the Peppercorn A1 Pacific. The little snowy shack looks really nice. Seems a funny time of year to start a winter village.

Here she is with the Emerald Night passenger car. While my loco obviously isn't a patch on the EN aesthetically, I think it is better in proportion to this carriage: I've managed to make a few more adjustments: I got the cylinder level down all of one whole plate. It does make a slight difference to the balance of things down there. I've also rebuilt some of the detailing at the front end, really just simplifying things a bit on the bogie and clearing up some space for the 'rod' axles to slide forward: (This image was supposed to look a bit like Speed to the West by Charles Mayo but I couldn't quite recreate the angle, however if I do ever get around to making a GWR station MOC, I might think about revisiting this idea to make a mini poster for the platform) I've just ordered parts to make a start on a London Transport pannier tank engine, but really want to work on a second carriage for this ASAP.

I was thinking of doing something along those lines and I agree that probably is the way to go with this. I think I will 'rest' this one for a bit though and come back to it when I've gathered some more experience. I'm satisfied at least that I've done a much better job than I expected to do. Next project: after the Emerald Night arrives I will probably attempt a very small British station cca. late 40s/early 50s or a London Transport 5700 Pannier Tank (inside cylinders ^_^).

Awesome layout; really impressed with the way the snow is banked up around the track. What trains did you run on it? That seems to be the key missing deatail in your pictures.

I didn't even know that Glasgow had an underground railway. Really good work so far. The area above the cab at the front looks a bit clunky but I'm not really sure what to suggest. You could try replacing the tiles either side of the 'grey bit' with a small curved slope like this: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=11477

Thanks locoworks. In this case, I was aware of that as an issue. Unfortunately, given how tight lego corners are, the front bogie needs a much greater arc of movement than it would do in the prototype. That really limits where you can place the cylinder, so I had to move it both above and behind its correct position so as not to block the bogie. Because the cylinders are so high up, the wheel motion doesn't convert so well between the angles of the rods and often exerts a turning force on the 'piston', jamming the whole gear. To reduce this, I found that the best remedy was to use the longest possible rod (in the case a 7l thin liftarm) to reduce the angles, though this meant connecting it further away from the cylinders. With the setup as it is, I have very little friction and the gear never jams, though I admit it's not ideal for accuracy.

Thanks! I actually recently lost my mind somewhat and bought the Emerald Night. It's on its way in the post now so when it arrives next week I will of course take some snaps of this loco with the EN passenger carriage. I've also bought some a few parts in preparation of making a second similar car when it arrives, although I wasn't prepared to shell out for the tan train windows (so expensive) so I bought standard tan 1x4x3 windows. I might make something where the windows are less of a feature like a mail car or passenger brake car. After that, I don't think the bogie motor will pull more than two without struggling a bit.

Sorry to bump my own thread, but I've made some further improvements to the engine which I wanted to add: A couple of things have been changed on the engine itself: The rear pair of wheels on the front bogie has been changed to better match the inside bearings on the prototype; I've switched out the gold dome for a gold fez; The rods have been changed up a bit; I've made some minor improvements to the cab interior. One quite big concession I had to make was reducing the wheelbase of the drivers. I realised that spaced out over 11 studs they were dragging quite a lot around corners and I wanted the engine to run with as little friction as possible. I experimented with changing the position of the flanged wheels but, in the end, I found that there didn't seem to be a better alternative to reducing the wheelbase to 9 studs a la the Emerald Night. I've left the wheel arches where they were with the intention of creating a slight illusion of the wheels being in the right place and the maintain the proportions of the loco. I think it looks ok and it doesn't slow down too much on corners now. The main changes, though, are on the tender: I've extended the tender considerably. The main reason for this was to add power functions but it actually makes the tender much closer to the right sort of length compared with the engine. It's not perfect, but I didn't want to go as tall as I would need to go to completely hide the battery back and IR receiver. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and it runs beautifully now. Just need some British Railways roundel stickers and some carriages now -_-

You could do a nice job of the front end of a small terminus, similar to the town hall, but it would have to have platforms extending far beyond that behind.

Hi all, I happened to catch a little bit of the St Trinian's Train Robbery over the Christmas break and was intrigued by the tiny, self-powered rail trolley that featured occasionally. I looked it up and discovered it was a Track Inspection vehicle made by a company called Wickham. Looking at some of their other designs, I thought this completely different type of trolley looked totally amazing and immediately resolved to build it in Lego: It's not a remotely complicated build, and at this size you don't have very many options for details. It became very quickly apparent that I would need to build it with the canvas roof rolled down. It would have been nice to build it in dark red, but the bonnet part doesn't exist in that colour as far as I'm aware. That's pretty much all there is to say about it:

Actually, I meant the fixed drivers being spaced over 11 studs as opposed to the Emerald Night's 9. That's not to say it jams, but it does drag.

Beautiful design! How many studs long is it? Looks huge. The way you've managed to get some of those curves into the design is amazing. Great work. You almost certainly have more experience of this than I do but, having just started building locos, it seemed to me that having 6 drivers along an 11 stud wheelbase with the front and back pairs flanged created quite a bit of resistance on corners.

Oh yes, you're absolutely right. Well no, it's not at all difficult but I don't have the right kind of wheel. Thanks a lot for pointing that out. Thanks! Couple more edits: I've made both the engine and the tender taller by one plate, lengthened the firebox and bogie by one stud, and raised the top of the boiler. This allowed me to get a continuous line running along through the handrail and the black stripe on the tender. I decided that, for me, the drop in the curved bricks at the dome gives enough of the tapering effect so straightened the top of the silhouette. The dip in the middle of the boiler was, I felt, making the loco look less 'powerful', and really more like the more tapered Hall class boiler. I'm pretty happy with the way the boiler looks now - seems sleeker.

Thanks guys. I have to say I'm really enjoying tinkering with this build and trying to refine it bit by bit. Last night I added some details to the tender and cab interior. I also made my first attempt at 'working' rods. I didn't have any 'thin' lift arms so had to settle for some black tiles for now. Added yesterday's advent surprise General Rieekan for scale. It seems to work ok and doesn't appear to add too much friction but it does 'feel' a bit bulky, so I'm considering replacing the piston rod axle piece with a 6L bar instead. This is how it looks running: Like I said, it seems to work well but I'm just wondering if I missed anything obvious with my setup? Thanks for reminding me. I did order enough parts to do that but couldn't find the curved slope pieces when it came to building it. Thankfully I've found them now so that's fixed. As for the tender wheel configuration; that's exactly the problem I encountered when I was working on getting the chassis round corners and the reason the tender is so short now. Not sure if I care enough about tenders to tackle this yet.

I'm fairly new and have only made one proper train so far, but I agree with a lot of the advice here. Looking right to your eye is the most important thing I think. If there are particular elements that you know you're going to use to represent significant parts of the shape you might want to adapt the scale to match that. Might be an important window piece or, certainly in my case, a certain wheel size. I'd like to see your ICE build, though, sounds interesting.

Thanks again for the tip Redimus. This is how the tender looks now - with a couple of other minor improvements. I think it looks a lot better: What I didn't mention, and something that substantially informed my design choices (especially in terms of colour and level of detail I was trying to achieve), is that my main inspiration for building this was an original BR(W) poster that my partner bought me for my birthday a couple of weeks ago. In a sense I was as much trying to model the loco in the image as I was the prototype for it.

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Lots to think about. Redimus: You're totally right about it being too short and the main offender is the tender. When I was building the chassis, I ended up intentionally building the tender shorter than it should be just because making it to the correct length required additional points if articulation. It's definitely something I'll look at changing in the future. I will definitely change the back of the tender - I don't think I have enough green plates to build it up the way you have but for the timebeing I can at least compromise using cheese wedges on headlight bricks. Jtlan: I agree with you about the firebox shape. Those curved-top bricks could have been made for that particular cross-section, and so it was a shame not to get a better contrast with the boiler. In the end though, it just came down to the fact that I liked how this looked better when compared with both the octagonal boiler style of using sloped bricks and the round 4x4 bricks set on their side method. Just gives a better look along the top I feel.

I really love this. Very efficient use if space and overall a really nice looking little retro-lego style shunter.

Oh, I just have a motorized boxcar that I made for the Lone Range Constitution train that I use to run it around my little oval of track. I could fit the workings of that into the tender without much modification though, I'm just not quite ready to buy a whole new PF set.

Well this is my first attempt at a proper train MOC and by far the biggest MOC I've made to date, so go easy on me. Apologies for the crummy photos - phone camera only available. UPDATE: Recent Image I had to make a few compromises and fudges with scale to try to find a rough marriage between the right scale compared with the driver wheels, the gauge and an approximate minifig scale. Quite a few things not quite finished but I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out. In future I might move the cylinders onto the boiler plate and try to get it working, but I'm not sure there would be enough play in the bogey to round a corner.

I can't believe this is still causing confusion. MAB was, I believe, making the joke that all the email was confirming was that the Orthanc ent is not 'Three Beard', which we mostly all knew because 'Three Beard' is not the name of any character from the films or books.

I think the point being made was, albeit somewhat flippantly, that the ent included with Orthanc is not the non-existent 'Three beard'.