Snapshot

Join the Brickish Association which is a (the?) national LUG for the UK. We have exhibitions and get-togethers all over the place so there should be something for you.

I was just trying out ideas at that stage and I've gone back to the standard layout now but I don't think it looks quite as good. The engine units are finished and I'm waiting for a few bits to finish some other things before I have a photo session. Unfortunately 13 studs is the shortest the bogies can be unless I drill more holes in the baseplates.... I'd buy 28-stud baseplates to extend the coaches if they were available in white. The alternative would be changing the white to dark bley but I'm trying to keep things reasonably interchangeable wit the standard train.

This is the sort of thing the ambassadors should be feeding back to TLG. If you belong to a LUG, raise it with your ambassador - it's what they're for. I shall raise it with Doctor Sinister....

You ain't seen nothing yet, Dr D! I'm unashamedly nicking this idea for my 7938.5 train and I reckon those large red roof slabs are going to look truly hideous when boosted further up. Have to see if I finish mine before andythenorth. Jonathan

I took the first option but it was expensive, working out at £40 per coach. I built five so it was a large investment. The second option would have been much better in retrospect but I didn't have any coaches as I'd bought my EN engine from someone who had already decided on option two. Jonathan

I don't think anyone here would disagree with that.

Same here. The one that's on sale here is 9833 which is the old NXT version. The old NXT battery was on sale too but has disappeared now they've had a tidy-up and removed most of the 'sold out' items.

Agreed 100%. If you're starting from scratch then PF is the only rational choice. Are you sure that's the right charger? The UK sale may be different from the US but the only one I can see is the 9V one for the old NXT battery, not the 10V one for PF & new NXT battery. The voltage would be okay but the connector is different.Jonathan

a 7938.5! I'm not that keen on the 'jaggies' at the side of the 7938 driver's cab so wondered what it would look like with a 7939 cab instead. I'm quite pleased with the result but it's still very much a WIP and I'm waiting for some Bricklink deliveries for some parts in the right colour, like the clips for the door rails. This is the trailing power car, blacked out to mirror the leading car. I don't have enough spare PF parts at the moment so this was easier to see how it looked. Some roof details may change when I build the leading car and have to work round a real IR receiver. I'll also probably change it back to the standard wheel layout, keeping the shared bogies for the carriages only, as I suspect the weight distribution in the leading car won't be right for good traction. Note that the first shared bogie splits to allow the leading car to be decoupled. I'm going to use this version on every other carriage in the rake (there are six at the moment) so they fit in my storage boxes..... One thing that became obvious is that the utilities boxes under the carriages need improvement - Bricklink order submitted for this. And I've even fought with LDD4 to create .LXF files for the two versions of the shared bogies. Jonathan

Don't worry, curves are cheap on Bricklink at the moment. They're often a tenth the price of straights. Alternatively, I expect most of us have surplus curves we'd be happy to shift....Jonathan

I think the way round this is to add a bridge rectifier across C1 & C2, leading to the sound board. I'm pretty sure that's how the PF lights work. In fact, replacing the LEDs with the sound card might do all the work for you.

I suppose we could have MOM - My Own Modification.

No problem. You've got a job to do and it could have been the start of a SW discussion.

I've added to the sequence and the last five frames are train-based. They're here

Okay, I suppose I'd better post in here as I've already posted a few times in the forum. I'd been away from Lego for over forty years when I started collecting Star Wars stormtroopers earlier this year to photograph them doing silly things. I then started looking for something more complex to build and found Brick Express's GWR 5101 Large Prairie. I bought the plans and built one (and another in red) and that was the start of a downward spiral into Lego train ownership. As a late starter, I'm using exclusively RC/PF tracks and power although I do have a couple of 9V motors powered from a PF IR receiver. Due to advanced age and senility, I have immense difficulty producing a MOC but MOD quite well. In fact, I'm not usually happy unless I've MODded something. I'll now start posting the odd MOD or two in the forum..... Jonathan

I agree. The red engine in the foreground is how it should have been but was 'cost reduced'. This is the engine used for the HP game and we were all hoping it would become the new HE model. You can see some details like the arches over the drivers have been used but the wheels haven't. It was made by Carl 'Bricktrix' Greatrex and there are probably better shots of it in his flickr stream.

They're just that - spares - so use them for whatever you want. The machines at TLG make a set of four flanged driver and two blind drivers as used (in black) by the Emerald Night. It's less hassle (i.e. cheaper) to do the same in red for the TS3 train than to re-jig things to just make the flanged drivers.

That had better be 180 degrees or you'll probably short out the battery! Jonathan

Everything the others have said is, in theory, true but there are severe limitations on space inside the 7938 front car. The first problem is that there's no space under the roof to piggyback the connectors on the IR receiver so you'd need to use a short extension cable on the IR receiver and stack on the end of that. This leads to the second problem that there's very little space inside to take all the extra cabling. I've fitted lights to the front but had to put them on the red channel of the receiver rather than the blue that's used to control the speed. I didn't even consider putting lights in the rear car. Jonathan