Bajajoaquin

Thank you. She plays with Lego a bit now, at my mother's house (she still has the box of Lego from when I was a kid). We're planning on another so I figure I still have 3-4 more years total available to me.... :) This matches my more limited experience. My daughter is 2-1/2, and she presses the button, understands that you stop the train before doing other things with it, as well as more complex interactions with the layout. I think more important, though was my wife's comment the first night we had it: "Wow. This is the longest we have all played with any toy all at once ever." Your son is a bit young, and expect him to lose interest fairly rapidly. But if you're fired up and engaged, it will probably extend the amount of time you're playing over all. Note that the dexterity required to fit the blocks together is still a ways off for him, and if he can't do that, engagement will be limited. As a rough guess, I'd say that mastering a shape-sorter is a prerequisite for enjoying Duplo. Sorry for the long post, but.... I put together a mock-up of the linked switch. Unfortunately, I realized it was even more limited than I'd originally hoped. Essentially, it's a crossing switch, but with moving parts. The only advantage I can see now is that A. I don't have any crossing switches, and B. longer term it might be nice to have a crossing switch that is separated by more straights and a longer linkage. Perhaps there are other uses for it that I haven't considered yet. Here's a video of it in action. (Looks like I don't yet know how to embed video, but I think I have the links right!) I made it from supplies I had lying around in my kitchen: JB Weld epoxy, plastic from a jar lid, and waxed paper for a washer to make sure the epoxy didn't seep in and lock everything up. For reference, here's what the switches do if unlinked: the train can go through, but then would get trapped in a loop. You could start the train in such a way so that it never reached one section of track at all: Definitely not APV. Interesting to note that if you rotate the same switch layout 90 degrees, it behaves totally differently. I thought of this as the "Walker Switch" until I remembered that he said linked switches were much more important than unlinked. Maybe it's a "Lazy Walker." You can also see clearly that it needs four cycles to complete, whereas the plain figure-8 really completes in 1. So as I said, I'm a bit disappointed that the very limited utility of my version of the linked switch. There may be some real use for it, but I haven't found it yet.

Hi, all. My name is Jonathan Moynes (the screen name is one I've used for a looong time now, sorry). I came across this forum topic recently when I bought my 2-1/2 year old daughter a Duplo train set and was looking for layout ideas beyond loops and figure-eights. I've made Guy Walker's double-lazy switch dogbone, and have been looking at some of his other layouts for other APV options. The first thing I thought about was adding a loop in to the center of the track (the horizontal section that ties the two loops together. But I couldn't figure out how to get it to return to the main line nor how to keep it APV, avoiding getting stuck or missing any tracks. I never managed to think of a simple switched layout, but what I did come up with is a varation on the linked lazy switch idea. The difference is that, rather than linking them in phase (IP), they would be linked out of phase (OP). That way, a train could come along, have the first switch allow it to follow the main line, and the second switch would be set to divert it to the branch line. Once the train went around, it would rejoin the main line from the first switch, and thereby change the setting of the switch. Since the switches are set OP, the second switch would then be reset to allow the train to remain on the main line. I don't have Guy's or Robert's illustration skills, so I just took some pictures of the switches "before" and "after." If the train were coming from left to right in this image, it would continue along the main line through this switch, and not move it. The second switch is set so it would go around the loop and return to the first switch. By rejoining the main line, it would move the switch. Once it did that, because the switches would be linked OP, before the train reached the next switch, it would look like this: If the switch was in place so the trains only came at it from the left to the right, then the approaching train would move the first switch when it stayed along the main line. This action would reset the second switch so that it diverted the train onto the loop. If the train came from the right, it would already be in position to route the train on the loop. It would be essentially the mirror image of the first photo. Of course, I haven't built the layout or even the switching system, but I'll need a bit more Duplo and Lego for that. If anyone thinks I'm missing something, or there's a way to do this unlinked, I'd love to know. Edited to add: An inauspicous start to my posting here, but I realized that I made a mistake. The switch is just 180-degrees off, so the switches are actually in phase. The only reason that I would need to make a linkage is because they're right next to each other. I guess I'll have to think harder to come up with something totally new!