Daedalus304

I did an 8-wide mod to the Emerald Night a long time ago, as well as an 8-wide mod to the Lone Ranger "Constitution" engine. The complexity of the project depends on what you're really after with going to 8-wide. The steam engines are generally easy enough to mod unless you're changing the drivers, trucks/bogies, or pistons. Their proportions don't look too poor widened out, either, at least not worse than the default builds. Engines such as the Maersk engine or the Horizon Express I would say are not easy "mod to 8 wide" models. Horizon Express because the entire nose area uses prefab 6-wide parts, and to rework that you may as well do the rest from scratch as well for a better overall result. The nose is the hardest part, so if you can customize an 8-wide version of that it's easy street to do the rest. The Maersk engine, if simply fattened out to 8-wide, would look quite pudgy IMO. If you are okay with that it should be an easy enough mod. If you are wanting something more realistically detailed and proportioned you would want to also extend it to make it longer, and the engine hoods would need a good number of other mods to get all the details and proportions lined up. The build posted above by Ralph_S can really in no way be considered a mod of 10219 and is a scratch built model of the same real-life engine. There are a lot of good LEGO models out there of EMD hood units like the Maersk locomotive that you could use for inspiration to build your own. In addition to that, BMR should at some point be releasing instructions for an 8-wide EMD SD40-2, which is the exact type of locomotive that wore the Maersk paint scheme in the real world, if you would rather go that route instead of designing it yourself. I don't know if or how much that helps. It's hard to say for sure without knowing exactly what you're after - but there are a lot of people here who would be happy to help with advice and input along the way.

That sounds awesome, actually, and to be honest it's the first I've heard of it. I haven't seen or heard anyone else talking about that, either. I'll see if I can look into it and figure out if/where there's documentation for it - if you have any pointers on where to look, that would be awesome. I really do think a lot of the stuff that PUp brings to the table is really cool and when it first showed up I was looking forward to it hitting a maturity where it would be a no-brainer to switch to, but PF got killed off before PUp hit that point - oof. Certain PF items like the L-Motor are quickly becoming very expensive and hard to find in the US, so the secondhand market is a temporary bandage on that at best. I really hope TLG can smooth out and fix their issues soon - I really would prefer to stay "on brand" for motors. I'll look into the controller thing you mentioned - it doesn't solve the big problems, but it's a good feature to know about.

Off the top of my head, sets like the Carousel and the Vestas Wind Turbine in the old PF days would also, with Powered Up, need the "technic" motors to be treated akin to the train motor. For current Powered Up stock sets - Ok, the Crocodile. They had to make an app profile for that to work properly where in the old system you click a couple plugs together and you're off. Being able to use a controller as a control device for an app completely misses the point of wanting a controller. LEGO produces a controller for Powered Up that has a lot of really cool things about it - I would love to use LEGO's products. I don't want to have to drain my phone battery to run a train. It's a shame that trying to use LEGO's Powered Up controller to control LEGO's Powered Up Train set is an obnoxious step back. It's a shame that for the first time in LEGO's history, they've switched to a motor and electronics system that has no inter-connectivity with the older LEGO power/motor systems. It's a shame that LEGO's decided that if you want to use their hardware, you're pigeonholed into one single use type - Power Functions had two types of controllers, one for each functionality. They're clever enough to come up with rotating button sets for the PUp controller but can't include some sort of mode switch between "bang bang" mode and a proportional control option? Augh. It's also a shame to hear even just the insinuation that LEGO may currently be in a mindset of "Play our way". If the only sort of compatibility or use that they care about for this product is specifically what they outline in their sets, I'd say that feels quite uncharacteristic of them. I'm aware that the app allows for custom control programming, but for the average user, let alone the average child, it's inexplicable. The vast majority of people who play with LEGO don't do it because they want to spend hours on end staring at a computer or phone screen learning how to program. And if that's really LEGO's answer to somebody ages 4-99, that they need to figure that out, I honestly don't think the cool new potential of the Powered Up system is worth it. If this "you have to program it yourself" model is how LEGO wants to do it, fine. At the very least make it easier to understand. Put in some sort of intermediary programming in there, that's easier to digest than the full "Okay kids and grandparents, it's time to learn about variables and motor direction increments". Make it possible for people to share the Powered Up control programs they've made with each other so that someone new coming in doesn't have to reinvent the wheel for every single model. You know what else would be a great quality of life fix? Let the hub remember the control profiles used with it. If someone goes through the rigmarole of setting up a control profile and then uses it with a hub, the hub can and should save that and then use that same control profile when a LEGO Powered Up controller connects to that hub. It's an easy fix. It's all software. The Hubs get updates from the app anyways. I would love to be able to love LEGO's new Powered Up system. I loved PF, despite the issues other people have. I am not, in fact, a person who generally complains at all about LEGO or its business practices. I get that trains are a niche, I don't think it makes sense for LEGO to invest a lot in train specific stuff and I don't whine about it if the new train stuff isn't to my taste. This new Powered Up system is, component for component, around 2-3 times as expensive as Power Functions was. That's a tough pill to swallow, it's hard to justify, but you know what? If it worked well and was even more feature rich than PF, I'd take it. But this whole Powered Up/Control+/WeDo nonsense is confusing and for all the advanced stuff that it can potentially do, it's a massive step back in so many basic fundamental ways that seem like they'd be nearly trivial to fix if the company cared at all. That said - if I am being unreasonable with my expectations (Those being set by LEGO's own previous product releases, mind you), and LEGO really has no interest in providing a product that'll do those things... ok. I'll go find a product that does do those very basic yet essential things. Chances are it'll be cheaper than what LEGO's charging, too. And when I'm at shows, and people ask about the motor system, frankly, it's going to suck to have to tell people "LEGO's current power system is missing a lot of good basic features and is kind of a mess, but here's another brand that works great instead". I think that's a conversation that a lot of people are going to be having at conventions and shows soon. I've been hearing good stuff about Bluebrixx's electronic component offerings - perhaps it's time I go learn about that.

Not just the crocodile, custom locomotives in general. There are a ton of locomotives out there that need to use M, L, or XL motors, sometimes a pair of them, and right now the only way to do that with PUp is either build something that can use the Croc profile with 1 L-Motor plugged in to slot B, or the user has to delve in to learning the PUp programming blocks. That's a huge learning curve and a lot of setup just to match something that was literally as easy as stacking two plugs in PF. Not to mention, I'd really love to be able to properly control my trains using M/L/XL motors with an actual controller instead of my phone. Being able to tell the box to treat all motors the same as the train motors would be fantastic. I think powered up has a lot of cool potential, but it's just absolutely terrible right now for any train that doesn't use 1 single train motor, and 80% of that trouble is just down to the controls being bad.

PF is going to be a little harder maybe to track down the components for at this point, so Powered Up does get a plus for availability. Otherwise, in this application, Powered Up has these two issues: 1, you're going to need to be okay with using the Phone App to control the engine, and 2, the tender will need to be modified slightly to accommodate for the fact that the PU wire comes out the side of the battery box and not the top. I'd say that, sourcing parts aside, PF is probably the easiest route to go in a lot of ways and I'd personally go with PF. But if you have a hard time finding the PF parts and don't mind those two stipulations that come with using Powered Up, you know what components you need. :D

Ah, for the EN you need either the XL Motor (8882) or the L-Motor (88003), since it uses gearing to power the drivers directly. For the Emerald Night, you could also use PUp with the Crocodile's control program in the powered up app. For that you just need a hub (88009) and an L-Motor (88013).

Very nicely done engine. Designing a streamlining shroud that can articulate properly, through r40 turns no less, is no simple feat. I also really appreciate that you've got detailing work in the area between the chassis and the boiler. It's not something easy to see, but at those certain angles, it really helps complete the look.

Right, and getting the drivers and trucks and all of that to navigate track properly can be a very difficult task (Especially once pushing/pulling forces come into the mix) in ways that you really just need physical experience with. Not to mention development of solid, well braced gear trains. It's easy to be sure it'll work, and then, under some load.... Click, click, click - the gears are slipping. Unless someone's looking to just sell static models, you need to at the very least test build the mechanics of it before going and taking someone's money for it. Some problems are solved easily - some problems take huge amounts of rework, some of which may have impacts on how the rest of the model is designed or detailed. Running reliability is maybe the most important thing. The Emerald Night had a couple minor and easily fixed issues, but it really was not a bad engine, especially for $145 (factoring in PF). Despite that, to hear the community talk about it, you'd think it was basically un-runable. People who pay $800+ for a locomotive model do so with the expectations that it's going to work, and work well. It's not just the cost of physical materials that people are paying for, it's the experience and reliability in the development. I've seen a lot of train models sold and bought happily that are relatively light on the fine details. Other models where the proportions are off a bit. Even still, most everyone who buys those is happy with doing so because despite the visual simplicity, the engine just runs well and they don't have to worry about it. I'm not trying to tell anybody not to look into doing stuff like this, by the way. If you think you can or want to try, absolutely give it a shot. Just be sure that, at whatever you decide to charge, $300, $500, $800+, you definitely need to have the experience to be sure that they're not going to feel ripped off by their purchase. Customers talk, especially unhappy ones - if none of them get something that works, there won't be many.

Eh, I'd check out any of the official promotional pictures of LEGO train sets in and around the 90s. Seems "in spirit" to me. Plus, I doubt the engine would have ranked any differently even on regular undecorated track. It's kind of a silly thing to try to split hairs over.

I don't think there's a thing wrong with the model, tbh. The amount of modded parts seems pretty small, the custom parts are wheels and rods, but the biggest thing for me is this: Ewout did a fantastic job capturing a lot of very complex and difficult shapes and has a model that's nothing short of stellar with or without the decals, custom rods, or the couple modded handrails. Replacing those with more "purist" solutions would still leave an incredibly impressive model. Compound, rounded angles and shapes like this model has are not easy, and doing them without seams is a real task. The roof of the cab has a subtle angle to it. Don't be fooled by the smooth surfaces and don't get distracted by the "extras" - this is a complicated build underneath it all, and I'm not at all surprised that it's done well.

My assumption would have been something that it's more like an early booster truck - use the small drivers for better low-speed power to help get it started or just better low-speed operations in general

Ah, I see. The Google Translated version of the mobile site was not so clearly laid out. I'll join you two in waiting for the official answer to "how much capacity is there?"

First thing of note to me is that the Bluebrixx battery is advertised as having a 500mAh capacity, whereas the LEGO PF Rechargeable was 1100mAh. While I definitely love the concept of a third-party filling the Rechargables void, less than half the capacity/run time is just not a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

32 studs, the length of a standard Baseplate, works out to be 25.6 cm. In practice, they are ever so slightly smaller than that, but when you start building on them the bricks make sure they're spaced properly.

I don't know about the older motors, but, the Power Functions IR Receivers use PWM (This is responsible for the whining sound made when not at full power). So, Power Functions motors and probably PUp motors should be able to handle it just fine.

As for other manufacturers selling similar items without paying royalties - they either have presumably have done the design work on their own and are NOT profiting off of somebody else's work, or they've decided that they are happy to make money from somebody else's work without compensating them for it. Could be they have permission to use it royalty free, could be they don't care about supporting the person who made their business possible. I don't know about anyone else, but one of those feels an awful lot like stealing to me.

The "ideal" arrangement depends a lot on both your prototype and your layout. Fixed rear engines are definitely viable for shorter articulated engines, but your two most important factors for that are overhang and balance. Long articulated Locomotives with fixed rear engines absolutely can do some serious deforestation to your layout, and wipe out your second line at worst; unless of course you're running nothing but wide-radius turns. Finding the right way to articulate an engine takes a lot of work. In general, the further out your pivots are the less overhang you get, but it can make it harder to clear your pistons and detailing. You also need to balance the weight properly on your drivers, make sure the swinging engine works over height variances, curves, and a combination of the two. If you're serious about building an articulated engine, you really won't be able to know what the best way to articulate it is unless you build a chassis and run it through some tests. That will make it apparent fairly quickly what sorts of clearances you need, give you an idea of overhang, let you know what your tracking characteristics are, and also let you get started on figuring out what power options work best. Powering both engines? Just one? Forward or rear? Pushing with the tender? Each of those options probably needs a slightly different system, especially once balance is involved. And it's tricky (though not at all impossible) to get an articulated Locomotive to track really reliably if you're pushing it.

Oh, I hadn't meant to imply that you hadn't changed or modified it; I'd been trying to refer to the technique of framing the glass panes in the grille tiles and didn't intent to suggest that you'd just copied the whole construction wholesale. Poor wording on my part - I apologize!

Honestly, it adds up really fast. It's easy to know as a untested fact that these things are more expensive than they may seem, but even knowing that the actual costs of a full set don't really hit you until you actually try doing it. "$380" is itself a ridiculously low part cost estimate, given how many parts are Dark Red and Dark Green, the fact that these are all coming from the second-hand market and not directly from LEGO (And the fact that LEGO themselves don't really ascribe to 10c per Part, any set with large parts, custom molds, intricate parts, or low-production parts hit above this average - something easily seen in official LEGO train sets). Then you have to factor in shipping costs from lord-knows-how-many stores, plus all the train specific parts tend to be in the "Dollars per part" range and not "cents per part", throw in the loop of track, the PF equipment, the printed parts, and I could easily see this thing hitting $800+ bucks before you get to anything else involved. Throwing in high quality printed instructions, packaging, shipping on top all adds up too. The biggest thing nobody accounts for when talking about the prices of the custom kit stuff though is the time it takes. And like, holy crap, the time it takes. I've in the past sold some stuff as full kits, the easy ones were little 200 part ornament sets and I've done a 800~ part diesel locomotive for somebody. The amount of time and effort that went into designing and testing a reliable model, making the instructions, sourcing the parts, sorting, counting, double-checking, triple checking, from start to finish, even for a run of small kits, was enormous. And the costs were well above what I expected, even with my expectation being that it would be more expensive than I thought. A huge advantage to buying these custom "Full Sets" is that, for the buyer, all that work is taken out of the equation AND you get a much more premium experience. Someone still has to do the work - and the cost of labor needs to be factored in, too. But like, ok, that still leaves us at the end of the day with "This is still expensive" and "I could get a brass loco for less". Which is true! You could. And if you want to, you ought to. But different items in different markets will, well, have different values. And even in the same space, "Industrialized" versus "Custom" products have a huge difference as well. Custom work is always more expensive in anything out there - models, art, maintenance, you name it. Industries have advantages of production, scale, marketing, and make enough to be able to pay people to focus on the products full-time. You just don't have those advantages with custom work, in anything. And in any scenario, trying to cut down the expected costs to just the costs of the raw material just doesn't work out. You have to remember that you're paying for the time and experience of the people who are offering their service. The cost for this is high, but for everything involved and keeping in mind too the time spent, I personally think it's very fairly priced. Out of my budget right now? Sure. But maybe I can get one later. I'd certainly like to get one. But just because I can't afford it, doesn't mean it's not worth the cost. Could Bricktracks decide to cut down the price to something just barely above what they expect (But have no guarantee) that the raw materials cost will be? I mean, I guess. Would it be worth it to them to then sell that for no profit after hundreds of hours of work? Not really. The cost for this is high, but for everything involved and keeping in mind too the time spent, I personally think it's very fairly priced. Out of my budget right now? Sure. But maybe I can get one later. I'd certainly like to get one. But just because I can't afford it, doesn't mean it's not worth the cost. I think the general LEGO community in particular suffers from this blindspot really badly. Looking at a custom products, from just plain instructions to full sets like this one, there are always people who go "That's too expensive", and usually it's followed up with "I could do that myself for a lot cheaper". Sure, that's true in theory. When I go to Comic-Con, there's tons of artists there selling pictures of all sorts. Hand drawn stuff, paintings, digital art, etc., nobody looks at these and goes "Wow, $30? The paper is like 20 cents and the ink couldn't have cost more than another 50 cents. I'll do it myself!". Most people recognize that what's in front of them is more than the sum of the raw materials - it takes a lot of time, skill, and dedication to be able to take $1.50 of raw material and turn it into what you see there. Not even the artists who conceivably could do it themselves act this way. Most other communities understand and respect what goes into the artistry of the thing, and I just don't see that in the LEGO community. There are a lot of individuals who do, but it's definitely not typical of the community as a whole. Maybe we'll get there someday.

"Minifig scale". Nebulous thing. Also, in terms of precision, kind of meaningless. Minifigs don't fit cleanly into any scale. Scale off height, they're too wide, scale off width they're way too short. Scales where they look "Good" range from 1:38-1:55, really. You'll find dozens and dozens of models touted as "Minifig scale" that all look good with figs but are outrageously out of scale with each other. For something like train building, you need something more solidly defined or you'll end up all over the place. If you're scaling at 1:48, which is pretty standard for 8-wide, then 57/56 inch drivers should be just shy of 9.5 plates. The LEGO train drivers are basically perfect for that. In 1:48, you're looking at: XXL = 80"-ish XL = 70"-ish L = 56"-ish M = 45"-ish All of which are "give or take an inch or two". There are also wheels out there that are in between these sizes so you can get a bit closer to "perfect" as needed. For scaling calculations I'd recommend using http://studs.sariel.pl/. Enter the scale you want to work with, enter the measurements, and it'll let you know what to shoot for.

It's the same technique Shupp used in his E7. There's no glue needed, but it is tricky to assemble and eats up most of the cab.

I think that if I were to build anything for a track that's not compatible with regular LEGO track, I'd probably rather just go for one of the other pre-existing model railroad tracks. O-Gauge or G-Gauge are both fairly close and readily available.

I would say that right now, no, it is not worth investing in 9v with 1 slim exception. I'll explain. If you are excited about all the potential new 9v stuff that looks to be on the horizon, and are planning to get that stuff - the premiums you're going to be paying on current 9v track and motors is a waste (IMO). Expensive 9v train motors are also very underpowered compared to modern PF/PU motors of all types. Whether the new 3rd party stuff offers just a straight replacement for the old motors or a much more versatile power pickup, I don't see much sense in spending a ton of money chasing down the old equipment when you'll surely be able to get much better bang for your buck if the new stuff pans out. Which is sort of the second reason I'd say to hold off on investing in 9v right now - the old "Don't count your chickens before they hatch" adage. If you do invest some into 9v stuff now with the intention of supplementing it with the 3rd party stuff later, despite the costs thing mentioned before - you're kinda in a pickle if for some, any reason at all, the 3rd party stuff doesn't pan out the way you're wanting, hoping, or expecting it to. Good quality 3rd party LEGO train stuff has a lot of uphill battles and doesn't always come out the way anyone thinks it will - unless you've got money to burn and are ok going full-tilt into the current limited 9v options even if the 3rd party stuff doesn't come through, I'd stay away from it for now. That said, I don't think that means you have to put your whole hobby on pause while you wait to see what happens. Stuff like rolling stock, trackside structures, and your layout just don't care what your power option is. You can't go wrong building up more of that stuff. A lot of engines are pretty easy to retrofit - any engine you can build using the "Train Motor" can be swapped over to a 9v train easily later if you really want to, and depending on if/how a power pickup comes around, you may well be able to adapt a lot of other types of engines later, too. So basically, to sum up: There's a ton of really amazing potential on the horizon, for sure. If it works out perfectly, then there's little sense buying the much more expensive and old stuff available now. And if it doesn't work out, then you're stuck in an awkward position where you either have to keep going on the super expensive route or switch back to the PF/PU anyways. Patience seems to be the winning move right now.

I used some O-Scale Waterslide Decals several years ago when I built a PRR N8 Cabin Car for Cale. It took a little practice but they were not too bad to apply. I haven't asked how they've held up over the years, but I'd assume they should be ok. I also saw someone on Flickr use some Dry Transfer decals where you had to sort of "scrub" them from one surface to another. I can't say anything about how easy it is or how well it holds up, but they looked great.

Really disappointed in those motor prices. I really want to be excited for PU and I've been pretty content to be patient and wait for it to become really good... But $35-$40 for a single motor is ridiculous. If these things don't get some serious price drops I'll probably just stick with regular PF. It seems like it'll probably take a while for those motors to become as expensive even in the aftermarket after they're not in production.