Daedalus304

That's a fantastic price. I wouldn't have dreamed I'd be able to get all that for $40. I am very, very excited to convert over to these switches now. I was excited before, of course, but I thought it would take quite a while. Thanks for clarifying!!

Wait, $40 for a left AND right pack? Meaning both together for $40, or a right switch pack is $40 and a left switch pack is also $40?

I don't think that's quite right, really. It certainly looks like they're based off of the same real-life engine, but the submission was a much larger 10-wide model and this is only 7. It's definitely unfortunate for that contributor that his model wasn't selected, but what LEGO's offering is very different in almost every way it reasonably could be from a design and detailing perspective, given that they're models of the same real locomotive.

To be honest, to get any interest you're going to need to have something to show for it. We've had a lot of people come through promising big things and new innovations. A few, too, who put a ton of time, effort, and money into it and still didn't end up with a completely viable product. I don't know about the rest of the community but I really can't be interested over just an idea, especially since we do have some good options on the market already. Especially so with an experimental/theoretical manufacturing method, I think you really just have to supply something for people to be able to judge the content. We've seen actual injection-molded parts come through before that still had a myriad of issues, not to mention questions and concerns of long-term durability. Clutch is King when dealing with LEGO, and after seeing so many people/companies get it wrong (Including the majority of the large brand-name LEGO knockoffs, such as MegaBlox), coupled with being 3D printed... IMO there's just a lot to prove here. Personally, just having a lower price doesn't interest me without knowing the above information. I would much rather spend $100-$140 on a loop of Bricktracks rail than $60 on a similar loop of track that's going to be a pain to work with and degrade or break after a year or two. Not everybody looks at value that way, of course, we've had lots of people happily buy poorly-designed 3D printed stuff just because it's cheap. But even that, the market has in good saturation. If you can get and show something actually produced with great clutch and a good durability and still have a good price, of course, that would be great - but I would suggest you lead with that! Show us your exciting innovation in practice, instead of the numbers and words we've all seen pass through a dozen times.

It does seem a bit odd. 1 L motor or 2 M motors would hit the clutch gear's torque limit as well and probably consume less power than 2 XLs, surely? I don't think a clutch gear is necessary anyways - axle twisting like that is not likely in a Lego train. In those videos, you've got a very long axle (which is more likely to twist) rigidly secured on one extreme end (not applicable to a Lego train use case) being twisted by motors with an extreme down-gearing... Which you could do! But without the other two conditions, potential for damage to your axles is low. Even if the train was so heavy that the XL motors could not pull it, the wheels would slip and keep the motors from a stall condition. While I have seen Lego parts damaged in Lego trains, in memory it's only been gears and even then, it's very rare and probably from the geartrain itself having a lockup while running. I've had XL motors stall out a couple times during my drivetrain learning days and can't say I've ever damaged - let alone destroyed - any of the parts involved.

That photo, posted in 2015 by Steve B, is as far as I know exactly what Andy is crediting in the first post when he says "Original Code 100 idea by SteveB". I don't think there's any trouble here.

Just cost for parts, that seems ridiculously high. One thing I would strongly recommend is that you go through the list of parts and find out why - generally you'll find that it's probably because you've got several parts on your list that are incredibly rare and expensive because of it. Once you identify those high cost parts, there's two ways to deal with it. First step is to figure out if you've accidentally used a mold variant that's rare, but a near identical part is super cheap. Swap out anything you can. One example I can think of is a certain type of technic pin that's kinda spendy in Medium Stone Grey, but cheap cheap cheap in the old one. Your second stop after that is to review your model itself and see if you can work out the expensive parts for something else. At this stage I'd also recommend checking if you can streamline your parts used, too - see if you can reduce part count, and also see if you can optimize the amount of unique part types. I wouldn't expect it should be anywhere near that $600-$700 unless you were pushing over 5k parts at least. I've built several large engines and I don't think, for just the basic parts, I've hit even half that cost until I also added in motors and custom wheels.

I can't help but feel that's the case, given the highlight image seems to focus quite more on it being a Canadian thing than it does on the subway itself.

That is very unfortunate! Reliability is even more important to me than efficiency, really. If the new wheels were merely a little less efficient, it wouldn't be great, but I would not necessarily mind using some if need be. But it seems clear now that, not only do these run worse, their performance degrades as well with use. If, after just a day or two of show conditions, they got bad enough to want to start locking up... Yep. I'm going to have to stick with the old axles. Or, better yet, roller bearings!

I definitely understand the appeal of the injection molded wheels he produces, but at this point - Maybe it's time to consider Shupp's 3D printed drivers. There's a good variety of designs and you can get them with or without grooves for O-Rings. They're more expensive, sure, but it seems like the best option now.

To be fair, a 9w engine pulling 8w cars isn't too big of a difference, being only a half stud per side. If it's a case where the Locomotive for real would end up "in-scale" at 9 wide, it probably was wider than the cars IRL as well. As to your counter - I wouldn't worry. PennLUG, and many other big Scale Modelling groups, generally now build to a scale and not a set stud width. You'll find that in the 1/48~ish modelling many, many examples of 9-wide engines running 8-wide stock.

"Minifig Scale" is a nebulous thing that has an enormous variety of what you'll get as answers. Figs proportions compared to a Human's are... Well, not really easy. Generally you scale them off width (In which case they're incredibly short folks) or height (in which case they're nearly 3 feet wide). Either way, I'd say 8-wide (Encompassing many scales around 1:48) is not really a perfect Minifig scale to either of the above methods, but it is a scale in which figs don't look overly incorrect alongside. In 1/48, of course, many locos do end up at 9 wide. My 2926 ended up there and so have several engines from much more well-known builders - I believe BMR's Reading T1 is 9-wide, actually.

A trick you could try with these is, instead of using an Axle, use a short bit of 3mm Rigid Hose. There is a little hole in them that the 3mm hose fits into perfectly that should be much more secure, then just use a bushing on the other end. If you are planning on getting Trained Bricks rods for it, you may be able to get some with slightly smaller holes to center it on the hose more precisely. Alternatively, you could try cutting some Track Sprues. You know, those funny pins that clamp your track together when you first unbox them? They're 3mm diameter as well, and the stopper in the end is the same diameter as the ring on a Technic pin, so it can keep everything perfectly aligned all on it's own if you trim the pin to size. Lego says to just throw them out, so modifying them a little doesn't seem to bad. ;D

It's a 9 wide Locomotive, but it and its passenger cars all use roller bearings. The weight of the engine really only gives it more traction and the tender is very smooth to pull, so with some engineering optimizations I don't think the size of the engine itself is what necessitates the amount of motors. In another build, an A1 Peppercorn, it also uses the XXL Drivers and 1 PF Large driver. That is geared 12:20 as well, and that is also a good balance, though definitely not as powerful. The two motors you have here look like together they are just about as strong as 1 L-motor. For the size/amount of coaches you're running and your engines I think those motors are fine, but I still would recommend gearing it down instead of up.

The absolute definitive source of information on Lego motors, in my experience, Philohome, has this page comparing just about every motor Lego has made: https://www.philohome.com/motors/motorcomp.htm It would appear that the Boost motor (Which seems to be the motor you used) has slightly more torque than the Medium Motor, but nowhere near as much as the Larges. I don't think they'll be strong enough for XXL Drivers with that gearing. I don't believe LDD has the PU Large or XL Motors in it. But they are 1 stud longer than the standard PF versions. In my most recent revision of my ATSF 2926, I have two PF Large Motors driving the XXL Drivers through a 12:20 gearbox. That is a pretty good balance between speed and strength. You may be able to get away with 1:1 gearing, but I'm not sure. It probably depends a lot on your loads and bearings/etc.

Yeah, it should work with any set of identical motors actually, with no need for a pole reverser. I would strongly recommend two things though: 1. Make sure your gearbox is extremely well reinforced. As it looks now, those half bezel gears are very likely to slip (click click click click) and/or ultimately fall off. Wherever possible/practical, try to use the full sized gears. You could switch the half's out for fulls, and change 1 of your 3-Long Axles for a 4, and put a bushing on the end between them. That should keep everything in place well. 2. Those look like Powered Up's equivalent of the Medium Motor. This motor is very quick but also fairly weak without small wheels and/or low gearing. If you're driving XXL Drivers off of them, their performance is going to be very underwhelming geared up the way you have it. I'd recommend putting the gear ratio the other way around - 12t gears off the motors feeding a 24t gear for the drive.

If you are planning to build this one and try to run it, there's a few problematic things you may want to try to modify while it's still in the digital phase. - The front "shield" is a little too low. It goes lower than the actual "tire" of your lead truck wheels, which means that when it goes through switches or really any curve at all (Because of overhang), that shield is going to impact the rail and either tear off or just derail the engine altogether... or both. - From what I can tell, also, your Engine Truck and Trailing Truck both seem to have only 1 point of articulation - a single ball joint from what I can tell. This is not likely to be enough articulation for either truck (For 2 axles, you need two points of rotation!), and in the case of your Engine Truck, is likely not going to angle it properly in curves to get around the pistons. - The other thing I would suggest to be aware of: If your engine is powered via the drivers, having some vertical play between the locomotive and the Engine/Trailing Trucks is going to be very important for smooth running. If your track is even slightly uneven, these trucks could lift your drivers off the rails enough to severely impact your performance. These things would be much better to take care of earlier, rather than later in your process, especially if you're going to need to order most of/all of your parts. Redesigns of these things can require a lot of extra tinkering and potentially change both the chassis and the surrounding parts significantly. It seems like a bit of a catch-22, "I need parts to know how these mechanisms will work in the real world" but also "I don't want/cannot afford to buy parts twice, especially in the case of a significant redesign". I would very strongly suggest you get some wheels first, and build yourself a test chassis with parts you have on-hand, if you can. It doesn't have to look nice - just get that real-world knowledge of how everything moves together and how it interacts with your track. Building a Locomotive model that looks accurately certainly is tough - it's another challenge altogether to build one that runs well, too. It can be very frustrating to build something that looks great and then learn that you really can't run it anywhere.

Ah, it is very possible that ScotNick and I have misinterpreted the image posted on the previous page - and I very much hope so. Showing a full motor bogie and listing the pickup specifically as a "Derivative" part, to me at least, very strongly suggested that as a "Derivative" it was going to be basically a variation of the motor bogie; and the rest of the image showing each unique type part that wasn't simply a variant seemed to reinforce that suggestion. Hopefully it is just a misunderstanding, then.

Hey! I agree that having everything in one unit like you've said was 9v's strong point - though IMO being limited to one single motor type, with set gearing and speed/strength characteristics was a weak point. Of course, it is true what you've said: You could place a dummy pickup in a tender. But I feel that comes with a huge asterisks - for most tenders, using a pickup the size of a full train motor requires a lot of sacrifices in detailing and the wheel spacing doesn't work well for a lot of tenders, if going for a high level of detail and accuracy. An enormous pickup block like this limits it's usefulness (In a proper scale-model build) to engines where you have two wheels 7 studs apart, as well as an enormous amount of room between and above them. When I think of having a power pickup option, that is not tied to a motor in the same block ala 9v, the most exciting thing is the ability to use it to power motors in models that wouldn't have room for a PF Battery Box, and would be losing detail or sacrificing motion if using a 9v Train motor. If the Pickups were like the ones shown previously (Minus the pre-fab decorative sides), where they were much smaller, you could do a small 2-4-0, or a 0-8-2, or what have you. You could also have done those style of pickups easily inside a trailing truck, or as discrete pickups for a passenger car, and you could have done all that without sacrificing detailing or making concessions in your shaping (Such as needing to make the floor above the motor block too high). I've build many, many 1/48th-1/45th models over the last several years, diesels, steam, passenger cars - and not a single one of them could use a full-size 9v Motor block without sacrificing the proportions and detailing (Except my EMD FP7, but even for that the axles are not far enough apart). Yes, concessions could be made to make it work, but if the goal is to enrich our options and make better possibilities for more variety and more realistic running then putting the pickup in an enormous motor block like this makes no sense to me. I would be delighted to buy good power pickups for nearly everything I run and would very much consider the slow conversion to metal track if doing so afforded me more options worth the cost. This proposed system simply does not do that for me - I could buy a dead 9v motor and gut it into a dummy pickup fairly easily already. As I see it right now, that option merely moves the bulk of the battery box into the trucks, where it is much more difficult to work with on a serious scale modeling level.

I agree - last I saw the plan was to make the pick up look like a full 9v wheelset, and even that was too bulky and impractical for more detailed work, especially US steam. I don't understand why instead of slimming that down by just taking off the decorative sides, it's instead quadrupled in size. I'd have been hard pressed to find a good way to use the old design - I will never be able to justify using this large of a part, especially since it's purely a power pickup. The great strength of the PF system, and other aftermarket systems/parts, is the versatility. A hybrid pf/9v system that shackles PF to the bulky and hard to use prefab 9v aesthetics is a hard sell.

The biggest issue I see is that it doesn't appear your piston is secured very well. You want the piston to stay rigid and the holes for the technic axles need to be lined up nice and straight - that should work smoothly once you get it aligned well. Once you've done that, you can also go down to only 1 technic brick with a hole per rod. You can use a 1x2 Wall Panel to cover up the gap. Hope this helps!

I don't remember where, but I do remember LEGO's stance being explained to me with more nuance than anyone seems to want to give them credit for - fans, huh? But it was explained that their aversion wasn't to violence or conflict straight out, more that they wanted to avoid realistic depictions of modern military equipment and modern weapons. And that reason makes sense if you think about it: almost nobody today has been skewered by a sword or fried by a laser blast. But there are people alive today who have been seriously wounded or have lost loved ones to modern military vehicles. These are real contemporary weapons that are or have been used recently to kill folks. Where LEGO, or any fan of LEGO, decides to draw the line on what they think is too far, or what they think is appropriate for a building toy which recommends 6-14 years old on most of the boxes is up to everyone to decide on their own. But it seems mighty insensitive and maybe a little ignorant to try and claim LEGO can't possibly have a real reason to want to avoid certain things like that. Things that clearly, you can purchase anyways if you really want to. As for LEGO buying Bricklink, all the custom stuff may or may not be allowed to continue to be sold there, but it's definitely still going to be available somewhere. I personally don't see that as being a huge deal. As for the rest of it, well, we'll see. I love their products. I've got nothing but good experiences from their customer service. Things will change, for sure, but not all change is bad and I'm going to give them a chance.

A 3x3 pulley is the same diameter, and two of them side-by-side is the exact dimensions of a Blind Medium driver. Putting the matching tire on one of the pulleys is almost the exact diameter of the flange, though a little thicker. It's definitely the closest match in LDD.

It looks great! I'm concerned about the gear train though. The coupler rod connecting the tender to the engine is going to mean that any weight the engine pulls is directly adding friction to the drive shaft, and since that 24t gear isn't well-braced, pulling anything is going to pull that gear backwards and it won't be able to mesh with the 12t gear. It's a very clever space to hide a motor though. It may be easier to get a good strong, and more compact, transmission with a "gear tower", depending on your spacing.

I believe this is because the back side of the drivers is flat, so you get a pretty significant area rubbing against the chassis, and the same for the front with the rods. It's a problem I've had with the Med drivers for a while and it was a serious issue with my latest build. I would suggest trying to find some very thin washers to put between the wheels and chassis. For me, this completely resolved the problem on my recent build. If there's still scrub from the rods, give Zephyr's rods a try. They are made to sit with a little extra distance from the wheel face and get around the scrub issue that way.