Daedalus304

It's this part from the old Knights Kingdom action figures: https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=47474&idColor=86#T=C&C=86

I have considered it a little bit. The model is very small, but to balance all three functions it actually needs a lot of precision that I worry would be hard to express in an instruction manual. Certain details like the sway crank for the body need to be timed pretty specifically to the motion of the rods, making sure that spacings are just right for the rest of the technic bits, etc. Once it's all together correctly it works very reliably, but it takes a lot of trial and error to get it calibrated just right. I don't think it would be a good building experience, and I wouldn't want people to end up frustrated with it. If I were to take out the side-to-side sway of the upper body, leaving the piston motion and the popping smokestack, it would greatly simplify things and I could make instructions for that pretty easily. But would it still have the same charm, and would anyone want that version? I'm not sure. So, I haven't really planned to do it. But if a lot of people want them, and would be ok with a version with less motion, let me know and I can look into it. I can't/won't make any promises, but I'd at the very least consider it and see what it would take to get something good out.

Thanks! I'm really glad that it all came together and ended up working. I have to admit I was starting to really worry near the end there. I don't blame you for not expecting much!! Casey Jr. Is probably among the most common of subjects for people to build, and it was kind of a risky choice for a contest because it's been done to death. I've been really blown away to hear all the positive feedback on it. Thank you for taking the time to check it out! I'm really glad to have managed to leave an impression.

It depends on what you want to use them for. I've got a model on an A1 Peppercorn, powered through the Drivers, that uses them without traction bands and it can pull a few cars just fine. It has got a pretty fair amount of weight to it, though. If you're looking to pull a lot of cars or have a relatively light engine, you might want to check out something with traction bands. BigBenBricks offers Medium Drivers with O-Rings and it looks like the grooves are actually lathed into the wheel instead of a new mold, so perhaps he will have O-ring compatible drivers for other sizes soon too. Couldn't hurt to ask!

Flickr's embed for videos is pretty bad, but that last image is the video. I'll upload it to YouTube later and post with that so it's more clear. Update: The video has been uploaded to my YouTube channel and is now right at the start of the post.

Hello everybody! I'm back again with another build, but this one is quite different from my usual style. This year's OcTRAINber is themed around Technic, or more specifically using Technic to add extra motion to a train (Or train-related) build that isn't critical to its functionality - so something beyond just the usual wheels and rods. I knew immediately what I wanted to do! My son, currently 5, really loves the cartoon movie Dumbo and especially so Casey Jr., since he just generally loves trains (Lucky me!). I've wanted to build a LEGO Casey Jr. for a while now, but there are quite a lot of Casey Jr models out there already and I've wanted to take a different approach to the build. And so my concept for my entry this year was "Building a Cartoon", where my intention was to do some studying of animation and animation techniques - quickly, mind you, I'd only a month - and try to build a locomotive that moves like a cartoon does. The motions aren't meant to perfectly copy any one cartoon locomotive, rather, to take some of these animation principles and see if I couldn't apply them in a way mechanically that made the model feel like a cartoon. I'll go ahead and share a couple pictures of the completed model, and then share also my WIP progression - since one of the fun things I did as a part of OcTRAINber this year was to document the process, and what an unusual process it was this time! I also have a video, which I'll have at the end since for some reason when I try to embed Flickr videos it makes a very strange, enormous white space. My model of Casey Jr. is very small, but has a lot of functions. This is an entry into the Indirect Drive category - where the extra motions are not driven directly by a motor, but passively as the train moves. The locomotive has 3 special extra motions, which I will go over in the WIP summaries, and the passenger car contains the motor and other electronics to push the engine along. WIP Step 1 - "Key Frames" and the "Principles of Animation" So once I'd decided on what I wanted to do, I had an idea or two for what sorts of mechanisms I could try. But I wanted to learn more about animation and see if I could get some help or inspiration from that, and wouldn't you know it, Walt Disney himself had "12 Principles of Animation" that were used for all the cartoons. I'd also learned previously about a concept known as "Key Frames" in animation, when watching videos explaining animations for certain old NES games. From looking into these, I ended up deciding on three primary functions, which would actually mix together and create a more fluid and complex motion. #1 was a bobbing smoke stack - but I didn't want it to be a smooth motion, rather a sudden "pop" up. I also didn't want it to pop constantly, which led me to plan out the gearing so that it would only pop every 2-ish rotations of the drivers. #2 was a Back-and-Forth motion to the pistons, to sort of give the impression that the pistons themselves were sort of "rowing" the wheels to turn them. From my research into the Principles of Animation, I felt that this would feel a lot more dynamic if the pistons were on bars to sway, instead of rails to slide. Rotational motion feels more organic and an exaggerated rotational motion was going to be much more "Cartoony" than a straight front-to-back, since it would mean that the pistons would also vary slightly in how wide out away from the locomotive they were as well. #3 was a rotation sway of the entire upper half of the engine. In addition to having the extra liveliness of the rotational motion, proper timing of the sway could also enhance the "rowing" effect and make it look like the whole engine, not just the pistons, was putting effort into pushing those wheels. I did a test build of the engine in LDD, and got screenshots of my "Key Frames", including the mechanisms that would actuate them. Those can be seen here: With those set, it was time to test bench it. WIP Step 2: Mechanical Proof of Concept At this point, I'd already sketched out my functions and the way they should work and ordered my parts. But I needed to get a head start on making sure all these functions actually worked together in the brick - that's a lot of swaying about Casey Jr is going to be doing, and surely a lot of fine-tuning involved as well. The first thing to do was verify the motion of the pistons and swaying would work out. So this quick test rig was put together: This round of testing went really well, and I learned a few things about the proper spacing and timings needed to get the engine to function running both forwards and back. It ended up being pretty specific, actually. And so, the test build grew some more to include the 3rd function: It was at this point that I came to realize that I had a problem that I was going to have to figure out. Casey Jr is an incredibly small locomotive with very little weight (roughly 200 pieces, actually), and worse still - the weight was perfectly balanced over the middle driver. This meant that when pushing the engine, or when breathing too hard across the room, the engine would tip forward, and lose half the traction. Further still, BBB Medium drivers are very flat on the back and can add a lot of extra friction of their own. On a heavier engine or one powered directly by a motor, this isn't a huge issue, but it was taking a huge bite out of the very little tractive effort Casey Jr had. With no room to add any more weight, and also needing to avoid adding more weight above the turntable (to manage how much mass had to be shimmied around, and adding still more friction to the bill), I jumped straight into step 3. WIP Step 3: The Articulation Originally, I'd been planning on 4 flanged drivers and having the pilot truck be on a sway-arm. The lack of weight left me with only one option that I could see - and I immediately ordered 2 BBB Medium Drivers with O-Rings. The extra traction provided by the O-ring tires was the only way this was going to work - but how to apply them most efficiently? So again I went into a testing phase. I found that the mechanisms worked the smoothest when the rear axle was the one being directly driven, which makes sense since the rear axle drives both the piston function and the sway directly. But with the locomotive's weight distribution, the rear axle was the one that would lift off the track. Because of this, I tried out a new chassis - with the pilot truck fixed to the body and the front driver "blind". This seemed like it would keep the engine from tipping over the centerpoint. I would have 2 fewer drivers contributing to the power, but I was hopeful that the traction bands would more than make up for it. Keeping the first chassis style in mind as an option, I swapped the build from the one on the left, to the one on the right: By this point, BMR had announced an extension to the contest, coincidentally on the same day I found my BBB Drivers to were to arrive on the 31st. I could probably have hit that deadline, I thought, but I was glad to know I had more time if needed. It turns out, I did need it. One of my Drivers had arrived missing the o-ring, and one single O-ring just wasn't enough. (I did get in contact with Ben about this, and he sent off a new one - very awesome and quick support) So I made a trip down to the hardware store to pick up a replacement O-ring to use while I waited for the new one from Ben, and while I was there, I was thinking a lot about the other issue: The friction caused by the back of the drivers. It was still eating up a TON of my tractive effort - but what to do? And then I remembered BMR's Bearing Wheelsets, or more specifically, the little washer they have between the wheels and the Technic bricks. Worth a shot! So I picked up 4 washers in addition. With all of the new parts installed, and decals from OKBrickworks applied, I was finally able to do my final test run. Would this whole thing finally work smoothly? And boy, was I so excited to see that it did. After all that, Casey Jr ran smoothly and capably. I guess I forgot to mention that I had to build a passenger car there during all of that - a much less interesting story, except that it started out as a 6-wide until I saw the Disney Train coaches in person and realized how much better the passenger car would be in 8-wide. Speaking of the passenger car, it wasn't until after I'd ordered the stickers that I realized something interesting: I'd been using the HD re-release of Dumbo for my reference images, because I hoped it would have cleaner still images. What I hadn't realized is that at some point, the texture/design on the side of the passenger car changed - from a planked/ribbed look in the original film to the one you see now on my model in the HD re-release. Why they would change that, I do not know. I hope that this model does well in the OcTRAINber competition, but no matter the outcome, I'm very pleased with the end result. I really enjoy the way it turned out, and more importantly, my son who inspired me to build this engine absolutely loves it. The last two weeks, he's been singing Casey Jr.'s theme song, and as soon as I get home from work every day he wants to see, play with, and talk about Casey Jr.; and even more fun, he's gone and built one himself out of his Duplo. This has been such a fun thing to share with him, and to see him inspired to build something of his own makes me very happy. I can't wait to see what else he builds, someday.

You'd be surprised. I run some 85 stud long Pullmans with these turntables and they're able to track very well even with a couple plates of height variance. I'd say unless you're planning to run your trains in a BMX course the turntables are fine.

Out of curiosity, why have you gone away from having the pistons at the right shape/height and raised them up so incredibly high?

I've not run into these issues with the small train wheels, actually. I have run into it on some locos running larger wheels, BBB Med or larger. In those cases, I actually found removing 1 O-ring and having a total of 3 fixed it. You only need 1 single wheel to be able to 'slip'. Another interesting fact is that you are less likely to run into this issue on wide-radius curves. I have a 4-8-4 using XXL drivers, F-B-B-F, with O-Rings on all four flanged drivers. You'd think this would be asking for trouble, but I run it primarily on r72+ and it doesn't have the issue.

That's very cool - easily the best rotary dumper I've seen. Very clean and "real" feeling to the design. I was amazed, too, to see that your diesel locomotives fit through the rings. Wow! Very good work on the clearances with those.

Ah, so, sometimes having traction tires on 4 wheels prevents the wheels from having the small amount of rail slip they actually need in a turn. This causes it to climb up and over the rail. The best way to stop this is actually to remove a traction tire, either one or two. You need at least one wheel to be able to slip a little bit. If you do two, I'd recommend removing them from the same axle. Keep in mind that this will introduce a little bit of a slope to the way the engine sits, so make sure that your pilot truck still has enough clearance.

Ah, that's the "ShrikeArghast" I remember...

The number of rotation points, and where they are located, is key. For a 1-axle leading truck, you must have only 1 point of rotation, or it'll bunch up and derail. Ideally, you would have that point of rotation as close to the nearest flanged driver as possible. For 2-axle truck, you need 2 points of rotation as in the EN.

I think any efficiency advantage a split axle may bring are going to be more than eaten up by the massive increase in friction, unfortunately.

Toy or not, switching to something with massively worse objective performance feels like a real undercut to that whole "Only the best is good enough" motto that used to drive their quality. I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume there's some safety issue or something this is meant to address, but... Between the gutting of the versatility that came with the switch to Powered Up from PF and this, it's mostly seeming like LEGO has just decided to become incredibly out of touch with the AFOL scene. I say 'decided' because given how much work used to go into it, with reaching out to the AFOL community for workshops etc, they clearly made a decision to do things without that part of the old process. That is, of course, their own perogative - but it does put us in an odd spot, doesn't it? When people at train shows ask me how to get started, now I not only have to tell them to look for the old electronic system, I also have to tell them the wheelsets in the base sets are garbage too, hm? That's going to be a real tough sell. I'm not going to recommend to anybody something I don't *want* to buy.

Yes, the LEGO train sets are a good place to start. People use that LEGO train motor for lots of custom engines. The motor will start to struggle with too much weight behind it or too many axles (too much friction) to pull. You should be ok for probably double what comes in the set before it starts to have a hard time. In previous generations of LEGO trains, it was easy to add a second motor, but with the new Powered Up system that's more difficult to pull off. I think there might be custom control options to make it easier but I'll let someone more knowledgeable than me chime in if that's the case.

Funny thing is, PF motors are stronger than 9v train motors basically across the board, and you've got way more options available too. You really haven't missed out on anything!

Honestly, if the PFx Brick had some sort of rotation sensor add-on to time the chuffs properly then it would be very nearly perfect.

That someone would rip him off like this is just shameful, greedy, and disrespectful. I am never going to purchase anything from this 'certain someone else'. These sorts of predatory, selfish, and dishonest habits can really only be stopped by not supporting the goons who do this sort of thing. I won't name names here out of respect for you guys also not doing so, but: People, be aware of and knowledgeable about who you buy products from. There are some very greedy and selfish companies/people out there who happily steal ideas and hard work from the people who are actually trying to innovate for us. The only way to stop these [respectfully derogatory term] practices is to not purchase the knockoffs. Lowa has made something really cool again and, once again, this work has been pilfered to peddle elsewhere.

It was this Locomotive by The_Brown_Hornet that I was thinking of. It was an entry for the TC10 competition. There was another locomotive entry as well, but it didn't run anywhere near as smoothly as this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNgqKKNttBw

Good to see you back at it again!! :D There was a pneumatic locomotive posted a while back in the Technic forum that ran amazingly smoothly, you might want to look that up and see how he did his timing gear!

This project is very ambitious and I fear it's going to be a hard sell to most, especially with the "All-or-nothing" nature of powered rail meaning that person or LUG who's become invested in the plastic PF track over the last 10+ years is going to be really in for it, cost-wise. I think that, for me personally at the very least, two things would have to be true to make this something I could even consider: 1. There needs to be a way to charge the locomotive's battery from powered rail. This almost entirely removes the "All-or-nothing" strain of switching to metal rail, since it can then be done gradually and have some immediate benefits. 2. For me at least, the power pickup needs to be divorced from the 9v Wheelset design entirely. For serious train modeling, which this is clearly aimed at, the 9v wheelset is clunky to work around and entirely inaccurate for most places I could think of that I would need a power pickup. Perhaps one could be hidden on the trailing truck of a very large steamer, but for smaller locomotives it's nearly unusable. Smaller locomotives, and especially small steam engines, are held back the most by LEGO because of either the large battery box (PF) or the single solitary 9v motor choice being a huge block that in no way resembles steam drivers and is unable to be customized. These are the engines I'd most want a power pickup for, and unfortunately I just could never use one as large and unsightly as the 9v Wheelset. Sort of as an aside, I don't believe that pushing the hobby forward is really equivalent to gaining the respect of the traditional model railroaders. Traditional Model Railroaders, especially the ones that are still stubborn and disgruntled about LEGO trains, are likely not going to change their minds easily about the "legitimacy" of LEGO Model Railroading; and even if they do, they're probably not going to switch over. The traditional model railroading scene is fading out. I was at a local Model Railroaders meeting a few years ago and they themselves acknowledged the fact that the average age of their membership was over 60 years old, and they were losing members due to just old age. To push the hobby forward, we need to grow our audience, we need to make it more accessible to new people who aren't already interested; or, to people who ARE interested, sometimes desperately so, but kept out by high costs or a lack of a good introduction point. LEGO Model Railroading is already a legitimate hobby. We can see that it can be a serious art form, and it's one that's being pushed forward already. We don't need to scramble after the approval of the traditionalists, and that approval has nothing to do with the legitimacy of our hobby. We should still strive to push our hobby forward, to grow and expand, these 3rd party products and ideas and approaches are all great and certainly do help to enrich what we can do and where we can go. I'm in love with the new options available to us, and I do really look forward to seeing what comes of the FX Track systems - but no matter what happens, no matter whether the traditionalists are convinced, LEGO Model Railroading is a fantastic hobby, and there are already people who've proven it's a valid form of art. Best of luck to the FX Bricks team on their endeavor!

I'd recommend trying out using 5-Long Axles out instead of shaving down a perfectly good 6-long. They don't go completely flush with the outside of the wheels but the grip is just fine.

I tried to leave a comment on Flickr earlier but it's been acting up and I guess it didn't post properly. I'll try and recount my sentiments here - a little expanded, perhaps, since I'm more confident Eurobricks won't eat up my post. Just a little bit of constructive criticism I'd like to leave. I think that this model would be much improved if some more attention to detail was paid to the chassis area, specifically the parts between the wheels and the boiler. American Steam Engines do have a "light gap" between the boiler and the running gear, but this area is usually filled with lots of details such as the suspension that put really interesting silhouettes in the mix and help bring the locomotive together. Here in this model, this gap is a bit larger than on the real engine but it's also just tiled over and plain, tiles especially being so reflective, this gap draws the eye a lot and is very visually distracting. These empty gaps without detail unfortunately distract away from the good shaping and surface-level details on the rest of the locomotive, and the end impact is that there doesn't feel to be a lot of "depth" to the detail, and it's missing in the place on a locomotive that's perhaps one of the most interesting to look at - all the components and bits and bobs, but also the crucial impact to the overall silhouette and "character" of the build. If more attention were given to these areas, the model as a whole would feel much richer visually. I hope also that this doesn't come across rudely. It's a good model as it is, of course. Normally, I wouldn't say anything probably. But I thought to share this bit of constructive criticism for two reasons: Firstly, because I believe that the designer has the capability and skill to go the last mile of detail and help this model feel more complete. Secondly, of course, if someone is happy with their model then they certainly are allowed to enjoy their work, but as an item for sale, I feel like perhaps criticisms and advice are a little more acceptable. For an item being sold with so much care and attention put into the instructions, perhaps just a little more detail work would help add to the richness and value of the work as a product. I've found a picture of a Big Boy online that shows this sort of angle really well. Hopefully this helps to illustrate what I'm talking about:

I'm very happy to see you finally got the time to build an engine to run on your awesome track - doubly so since it's a very fine piece of work. Your mention of a Christmas train set my expectations for the model perfectly, it looks like an ideal little Christmas time engine and it's got that "familiar" feeling in the scale you chose. Of course, I'd take this in a heartbeat over any of the usual trains they sell around Christmas time.