Daedalus304

Oh, sure glad I got the Constitution on Black Friday then! I'll have to keep an eye on the sets and see if I can pick up a couple of the mine set (And maybe another Constitution) before they're sold out.

Thanks LEGO Train 12 Volts! To be honest, I have spent a lot of time (Perhaps more than I care to admit) staring at pictures of train MOCs that just blow me away, and indeed Sava's steamers are among my favorites. I will freely say that I have taken a ton of inspiration from Anthony Sava, Cale Leiphart, and yourself; as you were the one who got me on this big valve gear craze that led to me creating this internal mechanism. So it is no surprise to me that you will recognize things like Cale's bell design (A truly perfect design I could not hope to improve!), or see the influence Tony has had on my build style, or even the crazy little "how-on-earth-did-he-make-that-actually-work" mechanisms like you tend to do. I am very thankful to be part of such a creative and inspiring community, and can only hope that I can bring fun new things to the table as you guys have.

Thanks much everybody! I'm very glad to hear you all think the snow photos turned out well, as they were a lot of fun to do (Especially the one where it's plowing through!) Sad Clown indeed! I wasn't sure whether to get too much into the mechanism here or post a topic about it some other time, but once I get back home from Thanksgiving vacation I'll take pictures of it either way. And thanks about the wheels. I do wish the small wheels had turned out better, but I seem to be too shaky-handed to get them perfect!

Hello there Train Tech! Today I'd like to present to you my newest steam engine, a little 2-8-0 from Flagstaff Arizona. I've actually wanted to build this engine for a while, and when I decided I was going to model it I had a very special goal in mind: it had to have working, internal valve gear that was 100% purist. Some of you may remember that my last engine had this feature. It was a little tricky adapting it for this engine, as it uses the Med BBB drivers instead of Large Drivers, and this engine is powered through the tender meaning the mechanism cannot have any friction that would hinder the fluid motion of the rods. Tricky, but it works like a charm now. This slope-backed tender was really fun to build, and luckily enough is just barely big enough that I could fit ALL the PF gear inside. With only one PF motor and not a whole lot of weight in the tender (Even with the AAA Battery Box), it doesn't have an incredible amount of power or traction, but it can pull a few EN couches and runs smoothly too. Having a PF train motor is nice though, since it will make it easy to put a powered coach behind and have their speeds match. The wheels on the front truck are actually two of those tiny LEGO train wheels turned around backwards, acting as blind wheels. This not only helped me get the right size of wheel, but also let me avoid screwing up the proportions of the loco's front trying to articulate it. I tried to get a nice white rim but, sadly, these small wheels are harder to get right. I may try it again later, but in motion it's impossible to tell. Each side of the engine is actually very different, not even the running boards match! In this picture you can also see the undercarriage detail, which really is mostly just the springs. Zephyr's custom rods really do add that perfect finishing touch. And finally.... it's time to put that snow plow to good use: You can also visit my Flickr page, where you can see more pictures plus a short but terrible video of the valve gear in motion. Hopefully soon I can get a better video! http://www.flickr.co...s/90900478@N08/ Thanks for reading!

Oh wow, these are all great cars, but that Plymouth Fury is awesome. It might just be my natural love for cars of that style, but that is just beautiful! Any place I could see more pictures of that?

I'm glad you did, last year I tried to use that file for something and discovered that it was built entirely incorrectly the the point that I found it unsalvageable. I've been meaning for a while now to sit down and put together an accurate one, but my desk is strewn with LEGO and I could never get myself to spend the lengthy amount of time putting the file together. I'll be downloading this soon, I bet you!

That was my first thought, too, when I got it. But no, sadly, the shipping sticker was Amazon Fulfillment Services and I did indeed purchase it from Amazon themselves. What really sucks is that I ordered it from Amazon instead of Bricklink specifically because I expected to be able to trust that they would be very careful with the packaging and I'd get my UCS box in great condition - UCS sets are really the only ones that I care about keeping the boxes for. The discovery that bags inside were ripped and missing pieces was of course the last straw. I did get a 40% refund on it, so they at least handled the follow up well, but I have no reason to trust their shipping again.

Yes, actually, i recently bought a ucs b wing off amazon and they simply put the shipping sticker right on the box!! Needless to say, my box was crushed, bags were torn, and parts missing. I'm rather disappointed to hear that this sort of unacceptable shipping behavior is their new mode of operations. Doubt i'll buy anything from them again.

I think the simplest solution would be to have a sliding axle. So, have a 3 axle truck, with the middle axle able to move left and right to negotiate the curves. Then all you have to do is position a touch sensor over said axle. Whenever you're in a turn, the axle will slide and touch the sensor, and any touch of the sensor will mean you're in a turn.

Yes, I was planning on using the LiPo, solely because I haven't got enough 9v track to amount to anything worthwhile. Alainneke, who makes those wheelsets you linked to, I believe connects the wheels straight to the motors like you're wanting to do. Since I'm more in the world of plastic tracks and power functions I'm making mine what I call "Electronically amphibious", equally as at home on both powered and plastic rails and able to take advantage of both. Only downside is, as you said, those LiPo batteries are indeed one hell of an investment. A little more on topic, how well does the copper tape hold up over time and through heavy usage? I expect after a while it will wear through, but if the tape isn't too expensive I may try and give that a look as an option for more powered rail. Especially since ME rails and BBB rails seem to be a dream just out of reach...

Actually, yes! Railbricks Issue 7 has an article by Thorsten Benter about doing just that - and I'm actually about to embark on exactly the same journey with the engine I'm working on. http://railbricks.com/magazine/issue-7/

Really great engine there, LT12V! Before the video I did not look close enough to realize that it was motorized, very impressive! Having the skills to hook your engines up to a 9v battery and avoid the bulky LEGO battery boxes really opens up a lot of options for you, and you certainly take advantage of every one!

Hello! I would like to sign up to take part in this game. After reading the description out of sheer curiosity and with no initial intent to join in - well, this just seems like a little too much fun to pass up on it. I don't have my sig fig yet, but I will attend to that right after the last of my brick sorting is finished tonight. So if you would be so kind, please sign up one Rebel Pilot "Daedalus304" to partake in the next mission!

Man, the stuff that can be done with Technic is just cool. I had wondered if that was possible, but dropped the idea. While an adder would be great to include, I won't be able to fit that into a 4x4x3 size area inside an engine boiler.... XD

Actually, looking at it, it seems the L-motor has nearly double the torque of the m-motor, so I'm thinking one L-motor should do just as well. An M-motor's torque is 3.6 N.cm, vs a L-motor's 6.5 N.cm. I think I'll try that, then, and avoid doubling up. Thanks for that link!

So here's a question I have to ask. Recently I was doing some maintenance work on one of my engines after a show, and found that one of my 2 M-motors was spinning probably 20% faster than the other. Now, given that these motors were both feeding into the same gearbox that is a pretty obvious problem, as I'm worried that the slower motor will cause more resistance and indeed, the engine's abilities have suffered from it. One of the motors I bought new, but the other was given to me by a cousin and may have had some wear that I wasn't aware of, and my guess it it probably got worse over the course of time. Now as for the question, what I'm trying to decide is whether I should replace both M-motors and keep the drive system as it is, hoping that if both the motors are brand new that this issue will be avoided. My other option is to do a little bit of engine redesign to allow it to fit in a single L-Motor, which I believe theoretically can provide the same performance as the 2 M-motors. Would I be correct in thinking that one L-motor can do the job just as well as 2 M-motors? And if not, are the motors generally consistent enough that I can pair 2 brand new M-motors again without having to worry?

Welcome to both EB and the world of LEGO trains, Stu808. I've had some HO trains and have been seriously eyeing some N-gauge stuff as of late, but LEGO trains are just too much fun to divert any money away. Trains are dangerous things, for a wallet.

There is no good way to change the gearing on a PF motor, and I have been unsatisfied in the past with the pulling power of the PF motor with Large drivers. I imagine you'd run out of power even faster with XL drivers, so I wouldn't recommend this approach if you're wanting to pull anything substantial. Not know what you're building, I will suggest the possibility of instead using the train motor for your lead truck or putting it in the tender, or if you're storing the batteries and receiver in the tender anyways, try using a geared-down M-Motor for your drivers. It will take a little more work, but I can say with reasonable certainty the resulting locomotive will preform much more satisfactorily.

Well, after reading everyone's reactions around the web I was expecting it to be awful, but after going and looking around at it I actually have to say I like it. Being able to look at more of an album at once is kind of cool, I think it looks nice. Plus, the new increased storage space is really welcome to me, so even if the layout change bothered me I imagine the massive amount of picture space we now get would be enough to make me happy. Then again, I'm not one of those people who freaks out and screams (Or even notices, generally) changes to Facebook, so perhaps I'm a little too hard to phase in this regard. Now all I have to do is make a cover photo for the top. A train, most likely.

You can use either one for trains, but the 88000 is IMO far better for trains as it's smaller and much, much easier to hide away inside. I think the 8881 lasts a little longer because it uses AA batteries instead of AAA, but unless you're building a boxcar or a giant tender I don't know that it would be worth trying to deal with.

Hi Duq! I actually had the same problem at first with my 2-6-6-2 mallet, but I managed to fix it. Zephyr's got a lot of really helpful tips there, but I figured I would share what I did because it's really easy. What I did was take the connecting rods, and very gently bend them "outwards". Do be careful not to break or visibly kink them, just a wee bit will do. The other thing I did was turn my technic half pins around backwards, so that the stud portion of the pin was hooked into the rod. I don't know how to explain it clearly, so I'll share a picture. That engines runs beautifully now without issue, and way better than it could have before. I hope this advice can be helpful to you!

Thank you! Thanks Annie, I'm really glad you enjoy it. It will be a good day when it's finished!

Thanks, Missing Brick. I don't imagine that should be much of a problem with this design - I haven't tested it with actual bricks, but my 2-6-6-2 mallet engine is pushed just fine from it's single axle trailing truck. I think the key is the amount of vertical movement the axle is capable of, and with this tender design and the way the EN is built, there isn't any room for those wheels to move up and jump the track, especially because of the weight they've got on them. Covering the wire completely is tricky yes, but less so on this version than the original EN, as there is a whole extra brick's worth of tender height to work with.

Hello everyone! I don't usually post my WIP models, but this one is rather close to done and thanks to a recent move to a new state it's going to be a while until the finishes touches come to pass. I've been rather excited about it too, which doesn't help my patience any! Link to the prototype: http://www.brickshel...y.cgi?i=5799734 This new engine is a 2-8-0 that I found at the Arizona Railway Museum, and it was something I simply had to build. Please do excuse that some of my pictures are a little lower-quality than usual, it's been a rather hectic season! I do have to admit to taking most of my bell design from Cale Leiphart - the minifig hands and rigid hose was too great of a technique to pass up. There were several things I want to do with this model, most of which I actually managed to pull off. First priority was for it to be self-powered, and contain all the PF bits. The boiler therefor contains 2 M-Motors, with a PF battery box and IR receiver in the tender. I had wanted to have a functional headlight as well, but it didn't light up satisfactorily and once I discovered that I had to also squeeze a boat weight in the front of the boiler as well as a ton of PF wire, I decided I was ok going without it. Getting this locomotive to run smoothly was a big challenge, as the last set of wheels is blind and there is no trailing truck. This complicated things in several ways: it was hard to connect the tender in a way which didn't require a high sacrifice of detail, and the center of gravity on the engine was far enough back that the front wheels liked to ride up and jump out of the curves. This was solved ultimately by finding a way to cram a 2x6x2 boat weight into the boiler, along with the dual M-motors. Now it runs very nicely and doesn't mind pulling several EN coaches, either. The prototype also had a very interesting style of tender (Which I learned from Zephyr's recent masterpiece is apparently called a Vanderbilt tender), and it was a blast to build with all it's interesting shapes. It also turned out to be the perfect size to fit a AAA/Rechargable battery box and the IR receiver in it, as shown here: The rear water hatch is actually loose and lifts out rather easy, which allows me to turn the power on/recharge the battery. It is currently running on AAA batteries until I get an 8788, but that's ok because the top half of the battery box lifts right out without need to disassemble the tender. You may be able to see the receiver right in front of the tender, though it's a bit obscured. Earlier I mentioned I was rather excited, and now it's time to explain why. Last year, LT12V posted an amazing engine with working external valve gear and shortly afterwards Zephyr pretty much headed the movement to make it easily accessible with custom rods and a reverse-engineering design contest. These two things inspired me, and with external gear taken care of I decided it was time to invent a purist solution for some internal Stephenson-style gear. As you may have noticed above the drive rods, each side has those two little valve rods. These rods both move opposite of each other in a way that is better to show than explain: http://www.flickr.co.../in/photostream Between the frames there are two swing arms hooked up to some eccentrics on the 3rd drive axle, these arms swing those timing bars back and forth like you see there. This system took several iterations to perfect, and I actually have a couple working variations on it which I'll post soon. As far as I know this sort of valve gear has never been done before without modified parts or custom parts, neither of which are a part of this train. Valve gear motion adds so much more to the steamers, and it seems we're entering a great age of Train MOCs that are coming closer and closer to standardizing it. I really do want to thank everyone who's been part of the effort to include it on their engines - you've simply inspired me!! There are a couple more pictures on my Brickshelf here: http://www.brickshel...ry.cgi?f=525051, once moderated, and hopefully this weekend I'll be able to take some better pictures with more detail shots. Perhaps a running video, too. Let me know if there are any shots you want, I'll make sure to snag those! One thing I'd like to add is some stickers, for the engine number and the "SOUTHERN PACIFIC" on the tender. Any advice on how to proceed in that regard would be great, I'm a sticker noob! Is it easier to self-print them or is there someone who sells custom sticker sheets? I hope you enjoy the engine despite it's incompleteness. Most of what's left is some hoses and hopefully the aforementioned stickers, plus a little more undercarriage work under the cab; which will hopefully be finished in time for the Phoenix Comicon in May. Please feel free to leave any suggestions or criticisms - I could use all the pointers I can get! Thanks for your time!

That's a great looking locomotive, Zephyr! I'm always happy to see working valve gear being put on LEGO engines, and your rods really help make it all the more elegant to include. There's so many nice details to enjoy, do try to post more pictures soon!