Hod Carrier

The parts for the v1.1 chassis arrived and I have been able to add them to the prototype. After some head-scratching I found a way to include a boat weight to hopefully help with traction. The clearances are so tight that the only way it could fit is to attach it directly to the underside of the motor. I've also added a few more of the details to the roof, but yes, the pantographs are still missing. Traction has been improved, but only from non-existent to slight. It was able to move two SLT cars on a short straight track, but not without a lot of effort and wheelspin (video again on my Flickr page). Add any more weight or throw in a curve and it's going to slip to a stand. Some of this can be mitigated with a careful hand on the throttle, but what it really needs is more power, weight or, preferably, both and there really isn't enough space inside the model to add either, nor yet a way to transmit power to the second bogie. It would seem that the project has come to it's conclusion, unless anyone has any suggestions. What have I missed? What other solutions might there be?

Yes I remember. But at least it was all blue, unlike 4-wide track where straights have to be constructed from bley pieces. If the track was all one colour or another it would be fine, but sadly it's not. I'm not so worried about realism, but I'd like to see a unified track system suitable for narrow gauge or 4-wide models. But sadly LEGO don't see these pieces as being part of a railway system.

I'm not aware of the Ultra Agents line, but this looks like a very cool train indeed. Very imaginative with loads of play features. Love it!!

Azure or green, it doesn't make any difference. It's still the wrong colour. As for the dark bley; yes these pieces exist, but they are rare and therefore expensive.

This is hardly good news. Green is not going to be a good track colour. But then neither was black. I guess us narrow gauge/4-wide nuts are going to have to continue to make the best of what we can lay our hands on or compete over the dwindling stocks of grey curved pieces.

Deleted. I hadn't spotted that this was a two year old thread being resurrected with little more than a photo. Sorry.

Good grief!! I'd be more worried about it being cleared away with the snow or trodden on or driven over by someone carelessly. You might have to get out there with a shovel as soon as it's safe to do so and retrieve your property and worry about the damage later. Hopefully it should be OK if it's allowed to thaw and dry out thoroughly before attempting to use it next. In the meantime stay inside, stay warm and wait for the storm to pass. You might be close to the supermarket but the worry is whether or not it can be restocked. That's what normally drives people to go panic-buying.

Thanks guys. I think I'm going to have to borrow an official LEGO train from somewhere for some comparison shots to show the difference in size. BnB: Yes that is an SBrick. There simply wasn't any realistic way to package the Power Functions IR receiver in the space available without having to make other design compromises. The SBrick is smaller and easier to package. I'm just using a cheap alkaline PP3 battery bought from the supermarket for testing purposes at present but will upgrade to rechargeable batteries if everything goes well. I'm sure the different power source will have a bearing on performance, so I may not be able to give you the answers just yet. Watch this space, as they say.

Thanks Baard. I'm pleased with it so far. I'm just awaiting the parts for the v1.1 chassis and will check to see what the power and haulage capabilities are first and then develop from there. If it performs well I will have a think about what sort of railway I can build for it. Obviously I'm slightly limited by having only straights and one radius of curve to work with and no points/switches, but luckily the Dutch railways don't have many natural obstacles to negotiate so it might be OK.

It's not even possible to assign labels to each slider or show the slider name in the GUI. The only way I can see that this would be possible would be to include these on a custom background which you can upload to the web interface and then line up the control with them.

Thanks, Beck. I've spent so much time concentrating on the mechanical parts that I had neglected the details, but I had not forgotten the pantographs. I'm not a great fan of the LEGO part and have a design that I am happy with at this scale. Unfortunately I cannot replicate this in LDD which is why it isn't shown in the screenshot. I've since worked up a v1.1 chassis which will enable me to add some extra weight to the chassis which will hopefully help with traction. I have also turned my attention to improving the shape and appearance of the details still to be added. It looks nice in LDD but I do need to get onto Bricklink and get the relevant parts ordered.

What a clever idea. Neat, simple and elegant.

Yes the 9V battery should fit under the bonnet of your model, but you may need to change some of the construction around that area to accommodate it. I discovered that a 9V battery with connector would lay on it's side on a footprint of 4x7 studs and a vertical spacing of 7 plates, and the space at the front of your model is sufficient for that. At least, that's the space that I allowed in my 4-wide loco and it fits snugly. If you're looking for a ready-made connector for the battery rather than having to construct one yourself, you could use a MiniZip cable instead.

Fair enough. I get the same effect if I press the home key on my phone also, which is good as an emergency "all stop" button. I was just looking for something that works in the app as a reliable and smooth way of stopping an individual train under normal operating conditions. This works well for me although I understand and appreciate that it might not work so well for others.

Following the completion of my 4-wide Sprinter Light Train (SLT) model there was some discussion about whether or not it would be possible to power it using HO model railway components. This got the old grey matter working and had me thinking about the possibility of a powered 4-wide model. The notion of using model railway components fused with LEGO did not appeal as I wanted to use LEGO power components wherever possible. Some long nights followed where I basically tore down the SLT in LDD to try and find out what is or is not possible. Having seen AussieJimbo's excellent 4-wide diesel I knew it must be possible, but sadly the SLT was not a good candidate for motorisation. However, I did learn some valuable lessons and arrived at the conclusion that any such model would have to be designed from the ground up as a powered model, and that it would most likely have to be a loco rather than an EMU passenger train. I also decided that I wanted the loco to be fully enclosed and self-contained so that it could run independently and would not need to rely on a tender to carry the power supply and receiver. And so I used that as a starting point, fired up LDD and settled-in for some long nights of brainstorming. My original thoughts were to use PF components wherever possible but I immediately had to discard all the various battery boxes. Having designed the drivetrain using a single M Motor and Space2310's power bogie design from his narrow gauge Series 1000 Enoden train I set about creating enough space to accommodate a 9 volt PP3 battery. More problematic was the infra-red receiver which I could not package in such a way that it would not block the cable runs from the battery to the motor. In the end I relented and opted for the smaller SBrick. This is the stage that I am at now. The model is intended to be of a Dutch Bombardier TRAXX electric loco, although this chassis could conceivably be used for any Bo-Bo loco. I have translated the designs into a running prototype that is still awaiting detailing. I've been building the model in stages just in case I hit a fatal design flaw (which is also why it's been developed in secret up to this point). Drive is to a single bogie only which is sufficient for it to drive itself around a short test track (video on my Flickr page for those interested to see as well as some more detailed photos of the internals), but it remains to be seen whether or not it has sufficient grunt and, more importantly, adhesion to haul any sort of train. However, the initial signs are good. There's sufficient clearance to the bodywork to permit enough bogie articulation to take LEGO narrow gauge curves, the drivetrain is nice and smooth and everything seems to fit together and work well enough so far. I should obviously credit AussieJimbo for blazing the trail in powered 4-wide modelling and giving me the inspiration to see what could be achieved. Credit also goes to Space2310 for his excellent power bogie design. My model is evolutionary and could not have been realised without the foundations laid by others.

I was under the impression from Zephyr's information that this was already the case, which is what lead me to this solution. They can be configured in the settings menu and will take any user definition you like, including multiple controls on a single channel. In my case, the sliders are forward and reverse and the channel name is "throttle", and their behaviours are configured accordingly. I suppose a stop button could be added also using the same channel name, but I don't see this as necessary. There is still the problem mentioned above that the SBrick takes the last command received but does not update the position of the controls on the GUI to reflect this. So having a "stop" button will not reset the slider. Resetting this manually after the train has stopped is interpreted as a control input and results in a brief burst of power as you bring the slider back to it's zero position. However, I don't envisage this to be a problem unless I get the sliders themselves muddled up.

Sorry to bring this thread back to life. I've had an Sbrick for the last few days and have been having a bit of a play. In spite of the time elapsed since Zephyr last updated this thread, the issue of finding "Stop" in the centre of a slider has not yet been addressed. While the solution he outlines above does stop the train I wanted to see if there was some way to bring it to a stand gradually. Unfortunately it isn't possible to do so with a single slider so I've added a second, one for forward and the other for reverse with both on the same channel. Stopping the train is simply a matter of bringing the slider back to the zero position. Sorry if this has been outlined elsewhere already.

If the motors are old they might simply need a little light lubrication and running-in. Like anything mechanical, bringing something back into use after long periods of inactivity requires a little bit of fettling. Clean any parts that need cleaning then apply a very light oil very sparingly only where it is needed and wipe away any excess. Then just hook it up to a 9V supply for a few minutes and allow it to spin without any load.

Thanks. That's the look I was going for. I took a lot of inspiration from the 4.5 volt intercity train from set 7740 released in 1980. In fact, the passenger coach is lifted almost entirely from the set. Have gone a bit mad and extended it from what could have been an official LEGO set to a full-length monster. Thanks. The prototype train appeared in 1972 while the production trains, branded as InterCity 125, began to appear in 1975 and first entered service the following year. As nice as it would be, I'm not putting this forward as a proposal for an official LEGO set let alone an anniversary edition. It's just my idea for a way to mark the 50th anniversary of LEGO trains. But while the Metroliner may be the most iconic set in some parts of the world it doesn't necessarily have the same status elsewhere. And that's always going to be the problem with any LEGO trains release.

Hello. You might remember my terrible idea of a Golden Jubilee train building standard to mark the 50th anniversary of LEGO trains. My thinking was that rather than creating something wonderful, packed full of innovative techniques and bang up-to-date it would be nice to do something different by back-dating MOCs to the style of early LEGO train sets. To this end, I have knocked-up a prototype British HST. It uses no SNOT techniques and just those parts likely to have been available in decades past and is built on standard train bases, although it does have modern wheelsets and would have PF train motors and accessories. There is still work to be done on the interiors. Thoughts...?

I'll be honest and say that it looks more like a small diesel shunter than steam. You might want to remove the yellow safety valves near the cab and replace them with a small exhaust stack. That said, it is very cute. I'm guessing it would have to use a 9V motor rather than a PF one in order to be completely self-contained.

That is excellent work. I've been mulling over the concept of a suspended monorail for a while but yours is far better than I could ever have done. All you have to work out now is how to make it go around curves. Ha ha!!

Fabulous retro loco. As others have already said, the livery is excellent.

That's a very impressive build. Congratulations on packing in 3 cars of detailed goodness. I feel you could possibly make the roof-mounted equipment more prominent, but that's really just nit-picking.

As has been mentioned in the this thread, 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of LEGO trains. From the discussions there it seems likely that there won't be any official train launches in the New Year nor any indication that LEGO intend to celebrate this milestone. And so it begs the question. If LEGO isn't bothered about this anniversary, how do we as a community of fans feel about it? Is there any appetite to do something special or different from the usual during 2016 to celebrate? If so, what suggestions do people have? Or do we share LEGO's apathy and not bothered about it either? Over to you.