bsupnik

Breakdown -- thanks for posting these pics! I'll plan to have two studs of clearance all the way along the straight until the first car is fully on the straight part...I'm hoping 24 bricks is enough straight length.

Hi Y'all, First, thanks to everyone for the input and information! My preference is to -not- offset the track by a half-stud, although I could see picking up a small 1/2 plate gap by building the last stud of the platform by a SNOT plate and tile. (E.g. my goal is to keep the gap very narrow for realism.) I was planning to use rounded plates on the the platform end to provide guidance for the train into the platform. I am currently using 1x2x2 reinforced panels to form the wall of the platform, and it appears these provide clearance for the direction switches protruding from the motor. Breakdown, if you are able to measure 6399, it's almost exactly the same metrics as my custom train; my nose extends half a plate further (but has no forward-facing studs). My sister-in-law owned the monorail back in the day, but so far she has only located the track; if I can get access to the train and experiment I'll post results here. Cheers Ben

Hi Artanis, Thanks for the fast reply! That's what I was wondering. It seemed possible from LDraw that the front car might be straight while the motor is still slightly turned over the corner - I've tried to model that situation as best I can, but the LDraw part doesn't show the exact pivot point of the cars. Do you know if, in real life, the car can fit without too much friction next to a platform, or does it tend to wobble side to side too much? Thanks Ben

Hi Y'all, I am working on a digital MoC that uses the lego 4-wide monorail. From this picture, we can see that (like all lego trains) when the monorail goes around a turn, the front of the train is outside the bounds of the 4-wide track. http://cd8ba0b44a15c10065fd-24461f391e20b7336331d5789078af53.r23.cf1.rackcdn.com/brickset.vanillaforums.com/editor/le/6m0gj5dlrmdz.jpg I was hoping someone who has physical access to the monorail could tell me how many studs worth of straight track I need to have the train fully within the 4-wide track. In my current design, platforms are on the outside edge of turns, too close to the turn; I believe the train front will crash into the platform, but I do not know how far I have to move each platform to fix the problem. Thanks! Ben

Hi JTLan and Commander Wolf, First, these builds are totally cool! I got really excited when I saw how little space the battery, motor, and driving gears had been crammed into. I've been working on 6-wide designs, so fitting batteries and motors gets tight. I didn't even know the micro-motor exists. But then I looked up the micro-motor on Brick Link and it looks like it's $20 for just the motor, used but known working, vs $13 for a brand new power functions powered truck. It looks to me like maybe the big win here is the ability to build a powered truck with tighter wheel spacing. I built a mock-up of the moving parts for a faux Boeing-Vertol LRV but the Power Functions motor has the wheels spaced too far apart. Two questions: - Can the Power Functions IR receiver be placed between the old 9V battery box and the 9V micro-motor, or would I need to use a "real" power-functions battery box? - How well does the speed of a pair of micro-motors track? I'm thinking about a truck with only one powered axle, but two powered trucks in the vehicle; that way the wheels could be very tightly spaced. Thanks! Ben