Daedalus304

Looks good! It's interesting to me to see the differences between this CN unit prototype and the BNSF one I've been modelling. I too suggest using L-drivers for the fans up top. It must be SD40-2 season, because I am just finishing one up as well and have only stickers left to go! It would be neat, though geographically challenging, to get them all together and see the different styles side by side.

I use two very useful programs that you can find over in the LDD forum - LDDManager and Brickficiency. LDDManager lets you import your LDD files and view the parts in a helpful list. It will call out parts that don't exist or are particularly rare, so going through there can be a good way to check your design for things that aren't possible. It is a little outdated right now, but most parts are in its database and it is easy enough to check things that aren't. The most helpful thing LDDManager does is take your parts list and create an XML file so that you can export the entire thing into a Bricklink wanted list quickly and easily. I suggest that you save a second copy of your LDD file, and go through the file and delete any parts that you don't actually want or need - anything you've already got on hand that you don't want to buy more of; or stand-in parts like those trans-blue cylinders that your actual model will be using pneumatic pistons for. Consider this second file your hard copy "wanted list". Once you have this wanted list created, Brickficiency can look at it. What Brickficiency does is take a poll of every store selling every part on your list - with filters you can set ruling stores out or restricting seller regions - and it will calculate the cheapest possible combination of stores to get what you need, and then give you a list of exactly which parts to buy from where. This program can take a very long time to run, especially once it gets to looking into 4-5 store combinations, but if your computer is up for the task you can actually save a pretty good amount of money this way. If it has a hard time finding a solution, I would go through your wanted list and move all the most rare pieces (parts that can only be found at a very limited number of stores) into a separate list. If Brickficiency doesn't work for you for whatever reason, the other way you can go about it is to use the "view my wanted list by shop" option on Bricklink, and switch "Sort By" to "Lots (Unique). Check out the top five stores for which one has the best prices, and when you find the cheapest one add all the items they have to the cart (But don't checkout yet). Once you've done that, go through your wanted list and move all the items that you put into the cart into a secondary wanted list (You could just delete them from the wanted list, but I find this helps keep track of things better). Once that's done, go back to the Wanted List By Shop page and repeat the process until you've found all the parts you need. If you're really looking to save a penny, you can then compare prices between the shops adjust your cart accordingly. For example, something you put in your cart in Shop 1 might also be for sale in Shop 3, but for a cheaper price. Since you're buying from both shops anyways, you might as well take those parts out of your Shop 1 cart and by them from Shop 3 instead. Once you're satisfied with it all and have double checked that you're ordering all the parts you need, then you can checkout in each shop and you're on your way to trainsville. I know that's a lot to take in, and I'm not feeling too well so I might not be explaining things coherently - if you have any questions or want any more help let me know and I'll try to make a bit more sense.

This collab X-wing is looking really nice so far. Good job you guys! One thing though, I don't think those hinges you are using for the wings are going to come even close to holding position, especially with the bulky engines. I would go back to the click hinges, finger hinges and clip-and-bar hinges just won't hold right.

That freight house has got some tight turns! Looks like you found the real-life equivelent of an r40 curve! Also, i cannot imagine how much attention you would have to pay to do anything with that huge tower of switching layout. That's ridiculously compact.

No, that should be fine. The rear engine on my Mallet has the back two wheels plus the front right wheel Snot'd, and it has no problems. It was only when I had all four with the bullfrog snot that the problem cropped up.

I've used Bullfrog Snot on two of my engines now, and while it is tricky to apply perfectly it really does work wonders. One important thing to keep in mind - you only want to apply it to a single axle. Choose the axle that keeps the most consistent contact and carries the most weight. Because the Bullfrog Snot has such a good grip, applying it to two axles won't allow the wheels to slip enough to keep on track in a turn - it'll leap over the side. If two wheels just really won't cut it, I have found you can Snot a single, third wheel without any worry. As far as whether it works better than the lego O-rings, I'm not too sure. I haven't compared them side-by-side, but it seems pretty even to me. The biggest difference I think is that the o-rings will lift your wheels up a big further from the track than the Snot will. With the groove already in the LEGO drivers, I'd probably personally just go with the O-rings.

Very nice mod! I was a little worried it would be difficulty to get the beams lined up, but it actually went very smoothly and as far as I can tell nothing has been stressed at all. The gap isn't entirely gone, but the whole thing is locked into place nicely. Now I just need to find a quick fix to keep the sides from flaring out as much! One thing I did change from your mod was to use these instead of the 2-long technic pins inside the cockpit. This made it incredibly easy to lock the 5L liftarm into place without having to bend or strain anything. Thanks for sharing!

At this point, I probably have my next two or three years worth of MOCs filled up... For 2016 though, I have a few projects that are completely finished in the digital phase and are just waiting for money to actually build them. Up until now I've been almost 100% steam, but 2016 is looking like my "Year of the Diesel". I've got a few that I'm looking forward to getting to: My newest design, that I'm probably going to be building first, is a BNSF SD40-2. It's going to need a little sticker work, but nothing too intense. I'm also going to be building a pair each of Santa Fe F7s and Verde Canyon Railroad FP7s: I've also got a steam engine that's mostly, but not quite, LDD complete as well as a pair of steam tank engines that just need their rods, but those two are really just super late 2015 projects at this point.

Thanks for the review. I've wondered for a while now how well this all turned out, and how well it would work for trains. It sounds sounds about how I was expecting, aside from the much higher power cap which is incredibly interesting to me. Unfortunately, as much as I'd love a good solid bluetooth controller like this for my trains this just isn't what I'm looking for. $60 is just way too much of an increase over the IR receivers. I can see how the extra outputs would be a great boon for technic builders who load up on 4+ receivers with all sorts of functions going everywhere, but for trains it's a bit overkill. Add all the hoops you have to leap through just to set it up, and then even more hoops to set up the controller profile just to use it, and it kind of loses it's palatability for me. If they made a cheaper version closer to the $30 mark with only 2 outputs, and let you do everything you need software-wise through the app, I would be sold. For now, my dreams of bluetooth engines are going to have to wait a bit longer.

Hi Dwayne! I'm very glad you like it so much! I have made a few improvements and upgrades to this loco over the years, and I have also totally abandoned trying to power it with the train motor as that method is ridiculously weak and bad for the motor. Since it needed an extra car to hold the battery box and receiver anyways, this wasn't exactly a big loss as it's easy to move the motor over. I've updated the original post with a new LXF file containing my most recent and up to date edition of the engine - it is better optimized to use less parts while being sturdier, without changing the proportions or shape whatsoever. I'll also give you the link Right Here, so you don't have to go digging through the original post to find it. This new design should be superior in every way. Also, I also did GWR 1400 in London Transport red, built in the same scale. I don't think I've posted the LXF for that one, but if you are interested in building one to go with the 5700 then shoot me a PM when you hit 10 posts and I'll see if I can get an up to date LXF put together for you.

I have had great results with it! It is really tricky to apply properly, but it's also super easy to remove it if you mess up. I would suggest you set it up on the wheels before you put them on the engine. Also, you will want to only apply it to a single axle, otherwise your loco will have too much grip and hop off in turns. Find the flanged axle that seems to do most of the work and put the snot on that one. If you really just have to put on more, you can put some more on a single wheel of a second flanged axle - but only one. You should have absolutely no more than 3 wheels with Bullfrog Snot on them, but two should be enough.

Big Ben drivers do not have any grooves to hold O-Rings and they slide off rather easily. There have been many people who lathe a groove into the drivers themselves, and that works out rather well for them. If that isn`t to your fancy, there is a special product called Bullfrog Snot that lets you create basically a rubber tire on the driver. I've used it on two engines to great effect.

Funny enough, I've tried both ways on the same engine (At different times, though). Vertical is really nice, because if you get a good solid truck/bogie design then it's really compact and you can use XL motors as swivel points. You don't need a turntable, just have a 5x5 stud hole and put a couple of those technic ball pins on the motor to keep it from falling out. The downside to vertical is that it's really difficult to change the gearing without going into more complicated designs. Horizontal is a lot easier to change the gearing, but takes a little more work to reinforce the drive to keep gears from slipping or bricks from separating, at least when dealing with the power that is known as XL motors. It does indeed try to rotate the truck/bogie a bit this way, but I haven't found any problems operationally from it yet as the amount of force exerted trying to rotate the truck itself hasn't seemed very strong. I'm going to guess that longer wheelbases are going to be more likely to have this problem, and running on 9V track could bring it up as well; but you shouldn't have any problems with PF track so long as your gear train spins freely. I don't believe either method is inherently better, it really just boils down to making sure your gearing is very well reinforced and whichever one works best in the amount of space you have. If you're doing an XL motor, make strength your primary goal because these things will absolutely tear through any design that allows them to. Still not quite, I'm afraid. I'd say it's more like this - 2 M Motors / 2 XL Motors / 1 L Motor = 1 v1 Sensor, 1 battery box 2 L Motors = 1 v2 Sensor, 1 Battery Box 4 M Motors / 4 XL Motors = 2 v2 Sensor, 2 Battery Box 4 L Motors = 2 v2 Sensor, 2 Battery Box v2 Sensor works best for 2 L-Motors. Every motor gets a small boost in power from the v2, but it is a very small amount and (IMO) not be worth paying 2-3 times the price. Also important to note, the V2 Receiver cannot be used for 2 or more M-Motors due to their motor's startup power requirements overloading it. If you want to run 2 M-Motors on the same output, you have to use a V1. Also, the rechargeable battery box (I'm going to refer to it as the LiPo) vs the AAA box: The biggest difference between the two is that the LiPo delivers a pretty consistent voltage throughout, between 7-7.8 Volts during its entire power duration. The AAA box starts at 9 Volts and slowly wears down as low as 5. Starting both boxes fresh, the AAA box will deliver more power but near the end it will taper significantly lower and your performance will weaken noticeably. The LiPo will start out without quite as much "oomph", but it will be pretty much just as strong right up until the power's gone. In my experience, the LiPo's power lasts longer and it only takes about two or so hours to charge which is much quicker than the 8 or more it takes my rechargeable AAAs.

I agree with Zephyr, design your trains to work with R40 even if most of your layout is going to be using a bigger radius. Right now, no matter how many r104 or r88 curves you have going, at the end of the day you're going to have to deal with using LEGO's switches (Unless you're venturing into custom-building your own, of course), and those are R40 s-curves. I would say that you shouldn't worry too much about the radius of your curves when it comes to trying to get LEGO trains to seem like a legitimate hobby. I did a presentation to the New Mexico model railroaders earlier this year on LEGO model railroading, and they didn't seem to think the tight turns made the hobby any less 'legit'; if anything they were really impressed that so many LEGO train builders could build such good looking engines that still took such absurd turns. Ultimately what wins train hobbyists over is the details; if your locomotives, rolling stock, and landscaping look great you're a good deal of the way there. Getting working signals and yard maneuvers that don't require "the hand of god" is the next big thing after that.

Well, Flickr user Shuppiluliumis recently built an excellent Challenger Locomotive using 4 L-motors, and that engine has a really good balance of speed and strength. 4 L-Motors will be quick and strong without needing to worry too much about gearing, but will be more than twice as expensive 2 XL motors will be incredibly powerful and can be geared to go faster if need be, and can both be run off a single battery box and a standard IR receiver To be honest, though, for what you've listed that you want to pull you can probably just use 2 L-motors. My Mallet uses two L-Motors geared down and it's insanely powerful, more powerful than it has the tractive effort to make use of some times. If you're using XL Drivers, you're going to get a lot better speed than my mallet (2.5 times faster or so?), so you may want to try to design your engine so that it can use four, but start off with just two and see if that's good enough.

The L-Motors are a little more power hungry than the M or XL motors. Just one is fine, but a V1 receiver can't deliver enough for two and so they won't run to their full potential. The V2 receiver can deliver three times as much current to them, but is still limited by the battery box. http://philohome.com/pfrec/pfrec.htm has more info

If you use 4 L-Motors, you will need two receivers and two battery packs, but even then; running two L-Motors together doesn't give you their full power unless you use the V2 Receiver or an SBrick, both of which are 3 times as expensive or higher. I would reccomend you use a pair XL motors, geared up 2:1 with a 24t and a 12t gear. A single XL should still be stronger than two L Motors, though not quite as fast. Two XL motors without any gearing changes has an insane amount of power, so even gearing them to be faster still gives an incredibly strong engine. XL motors can be paired without any special requirement, so you get more for your money if you can fit them. If you're just really looking to be crazy you could try going 2 Batteries, 2 IR Receivers, and 4 XL Motors, but that's overkill. 2 XLs will break magnetic connections long before they so much as slow down, so 4... it would be nuts, really, and you'd have to hard connect everything to use that power.

Yes, with the normal "small" wheels the PF train motor is great, especially when you have two of them in tandem. I definitely did not mean to make it seem like the motor itself was bad - it's only when you put the Large drivers or bigger on it. The large drivers end up giving you a little less than half the torque, which makes starting a train tough and corners are bad too. My first PF train MOC was originally using Large drivers on a PF train motor and after 6-10 minutes with a single EN coach and a caboose it was throwing the overheat switch. Even using two of the Train Motors with Large drivers still won't get you the same amount of power. From what I've tried, the BBB Medium drivers fare much better, but you are still dealing with a loss of strength; just not nearly as bad as you'd get dealing with L drivers. Well, if you go the Train Motor route for a big boy you're going to want more than one, and you're probably going to want to get some better o-rings on the wheels for improved traction. 4 Medium PF motors should be giving you a decent amount of strength, so if traction is your big concern I would suggest you try some traction bands like the EN had and see if that improves your performance. I would only put them on one axle per engine, though, if you put too many traction bands on you're going to run into other issues. If you really want to avoid traction bands because the bright gaudy red is an eyesore - I'd suggest you look into something called Bullfrog Snot which basically lets you create a tire that ends up drying almost completely clear and is really, really easy to remove. EDIT AGAIN: Just saw your question about the white walls. I use white acrylic paint with a very small brush to paint them on, then after it dries you can use a hobby knife very carefully to scrape off anything that got where it shouldn't. It's hard to do with unsteady hands like mine, but it may be easier for others. I've been thinking of trying putting a decent layer of paint on a piece of paper on a flat surface and trying to sort of reverse-stamp the driver on it, but I haven't got around to giving it a go. The nice thing with acrylic paint is that it stays on pretty well under normal use, but if you need to touch it up or redo it entirely it's really easy to remove and doesn't damage your parts.

They will fit, but it`s probably the worst way to power XL drivers. Using Large or XL drivers, the pf train motor has incredibly abysmal power. With Large drivers you can't pull than 2 or so cars without running into problems. This would be even worse with XL drivers - although you would have a ridiculously fast engine. I'd suggest either powering the drivers with an XL or L motor, or use a pair of train motors in the tender with the small wheels. It`s practically impossible to synchronize speeds between different size wheels - so you can't really do both.

If you think about it from a scale perspective, that big Death Star playset kind of already IS a microfighter! From a certain point of view.

Neat train. It bears an uncanny resemblance to one made by Zephyr1934 (http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102349). Any inspiration there?

I think this is the second train I`ve seen on Ideas that`s pretty much just a mod of the Constitution set. I don`t mean to be rude, but if I`m going to support a train project I want it to be an entirely new, well-engineered model. There are tons of great mocs out there, so why waste an opportunity like this on a set recolour?

Thanks. My original model of #12 had a lot of good side to side movement, but I had to redo a ton of the chassis to get it flexible up and down and I had to work around the gearing in the wheels, too. Truth be told, that was probably one of the hardest parts to figure out. I threw something together real quick, I'll send you a PM with it. As for the log cars, yes, I am hoping to make a whole bunch of them. In my mind, 20 sounds nice but I know that's impractical from both a money and space perspective. Perhaps I'll settle for five! Ah yes... The rickety is my fault, actually. I sort of mucked up a bit when applying the Bullfrog Snot traction tires and didn't get as smooth of a tire as I should have. I could have easily taken it off and redone the process, but the rickety-ness of it grew on me a lot as it seemed very fitting for a logging line loco, so ultimately I decided to keep it. It's kind of fun having that level of "imperfect" detail on there. I've been noticing lately that all my engines seem to have a different 'gait' if you will, some chug side to side rather strongly and then this one is a bit bumpy but very reliable. It's some fun personality to watch!

Sorry for my super late update, everyone, but I've added some short running videos to the first post. Yeah I'm looking forward to it! For now I have been making temporary ramps to play with, but it's not quite the same as having the scenery decked out. Thanks much! Probably like most crazy engineering, it started as a crazy realization that led to a crazy idea that ended up working better than it had any right to. My original plan had been to use the smaller M-motors until I remembered the pin holes on the L motor, which is also 3 wide. It solved so many problems it was too good not to try it out. As for the bullfrog snot, it's still working very well. Traction is good and the wheels just flat out won't slip without a lot of force on them. I was having a bit of a tough time on the ME models R72, where the wheels would slip a little, but my guess is that's because the drivers were probably on the flanges and not the wheel. Oddly enough, the 88 and 56 are just fine. It doesn't have any problems at all on official LEGO track, but the flanges have better clearance there. Well I suppose 1-brick-per is steep, and I'm not liable to go steeper than that on my layout, but 2-per is an intriguing milestone to me. Thanks much! I can't take credit for the rods, though I can take pride in them. Zephyr's got some good stuff. I'm glad the picture of the inside was interesting to see! I always love seeing how people tackle the challenges that come with powering drivers; and given how I could hardly believe that these L-motor shenanigans worked I figured I'd share a photo! Those L-motors are really versatile, and I don't think I could have pulled this off with a different kind just because of the structural support the front motor is providing. Ah, I don't have a good LDD file of it right now, but I could probably put a simple one together for you. I may someday try to make proper instructions for the whole model, but for now it shouldn't be too hard to put enough together on the file to give you the basics if you'd like. Well, other than that LDD doesn't have the L motors in it and I don't know how to show how I threaded the wires through the boiler top.

I was lucky and found a 7181 UCS TIE Interceptor for $150. It's cool to finally have one after a decade and a half!