Breakdown

My '95 Grand Prix battled through another rough year. It started well with two meets, one of them huge. Then fizzled out on the way back home when it started doing all sorts of terrible stuff. After a prolonged time at my mechanics' I had a friend flash an ECM for me and I was back on the road. Poor little beast barely got any road time in before the snow started to fall. Now she's keeping warm in the garage awaiting warmer weather.

I'm lacking in real life train knowledge. My knowledge goes as far as visiting the Train Museum in Sacramento, and nothing more, there aren't many trains around here, though my city is getting some sexy light rail trains. I think that the real life train that this is based off of is extremely ugly. I think that your model of it is actually very attractive. Not "attractive for basing it off of an ugly train" just good looking in general, I really like it. Great build!

Arjen, Huge props for this tidbit of help. I've been searching for a suitable mono-rail camera for a while now, and I remember reading your recommendation for this and then on Sunday my dad phoned demanding that I got to some cheap electronics store for him to get a factory refurb Kobo and while trying to find that on the flyer for the guy at the desk I came across the Ion. It's so perfect for Monorail it isn't funny!! I'm completely stoked at it's ability and how it as you said distributes weight. GoPro's crash those things and on top of that collide with any near the track accessories. My pilot video looks ABSOLUTELY incredible. Cannot thank you enough or recommend this product enough. Fortunately the factory refurb that I got was $49.99 CAD with no ship obviously. Still thrilled. Test drive was extremely promising, wide angle is good on these!!

I like your trains, but would love for you to back out, stand on a chair and make a video from up high in the middle and follow the train around the layout. I have a $10 tripod that would be perfect for this type of thing. Love the 12V stuff!

If someone on this forum actually created this train I my reviews wouldn't be so incredibly scathing. Since it's someone who's gainfully employed at Lego, sorry I'm coming down on this one hard. Let me start off by saying that I was really looking forward to this train. And despite my views about monotone building designs, though I do chicken out myself and take the easy road with colours. My top 3 dislikes of this train: 1.) Too many colours. I could genuinely accept that this is an old school, coal engine with it's dark components, but when you mix in piles of green it ruins that effect. My preference would be one way or the other. You have a bad-megablocks black old school steamer in black with red trim and a wreath hanging from either side near the windows, or . . . .you make the engine Christmas red with white stripes. There's about 10 ways to do this right, and they found an innovative way to do it wrong. There's an inconsistency in the colour themes. Red, white and Green fabolous for Christmas. Add gold, add blue, black is probably a necessary evil. The Christmas tree might actually pop and have pressence if the rainbow colours all over the remainder of the train didn't distract from it so much. 2.) Short wheelbase cars. As much as it's nice to have short cars, the wheels squeak so, so much on them. As a train that many people will be running around their Christmas trees in a decorative manner I could see this being a huge buzz-kill for the holidays. 3.) Where is Santa??? He could be on a big Christmasy armchair with a bunch of gifts. The requisite caboose is only Christmasy because it has snow flakes on it. Why isn't there green instead of blue? In fact minus the Christmas tree, the rear two cars look as if they belong to a different set. Props to Lego on the idea. I love Trains. I'm sure that some hate me because they love this train, and I do love the fact that the train contains an "Easter Egg" in the form of a rotating Christmas Tree. I was looking forward to this set, but apparently in concept only. I might eventually build my own Christmas Tree, though with time against me, it won't likely be this year.

I ran into an "Erector Set" on E-bay by accident. Sounds really, really kinky!!

I didn't used to have a set number, etc, but now I'm a flaming head - yes!! https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=15404#T=C

Very good advise, or at least a unique point of view When he's 6 I would challenge him to make the inventory lists of what's required for bricklink purchases for another car or two for the train. I was thinking of selling my second train, I'm glad that I didn't because by the time that I would have pieced together all of the wheels, bases and Power Function components for some MOC's I'd be out almost as much as the stupid train costed, everything else is kinda free at that point. One motor will pull a 4 car (six with the cabs) pretty good. You can then make an MOC out of the other motor.

I'm pretty sure that I have you all beat in terms of age. When my great-grandchildren and I play Lego together, I always give each one a Werther's Original and insist that it never touches their fingers or the Lego gets all gooey and sticky. I still remember when my grandpappy gave me my first Werther's original, just that buttery ooey-gooey caramelly taste, things were different back then. Sliced bread had just been invented and Lego was no where to be found, we used to play Able-Whackets to pass the time on the streets until someone needed their shoes polished . . . those were the days.

Hey . . . . thanks for taking the plunge. I'm tempted to buy that monorail extender to make a 4 car monorail, but that'll put me out $50 for the pair. How do your rails match up colour-wise? That's my biggest concern. Would love feedback on that aspect. Thanks again!

If it's really dirty, I just park a big plastic bin (not too big) infront of the TV fill with water, add dish soap, and scrub every part with a toothbrush. Dunk, and throw into a salad bowl filled with water. Then from there, they get rinsed off lightly in the sink and dry on towels that are on the washroom floor - I have a couple of extra washrooms, so I can afford to take up most of all of the washroom floor. Dry studs up and organize 2-3 days later.

If you don't feel like trading your rails or going to hell for messing around with lego train rails you can also use a single lego wire and connect the two dead ends together and the dead section will be gone.

I bought two and you'll obviously have one middle carriage immediately. You'll be a couple of tinted windows and roof pieces from a second middle carriage. Then the third you'll need to buy more roof pieces, greys for the ends and windows, you'll need a bogie and a pair of wheels for this one!. All of that stuff is on bricklink and cheap, you can probably find. And then I redesigned the roof on my 7745 train and jammed the 2nd power functions motor on there.

Or . . .you could send them to me and I'll just send you two good straights. It's not a lego purist thing, but even straight conductor rails aren't worth too much online. You're removing versatility from the lego. Also, you should have a bunch of signals if you have the interrupt tracks.

I would have to think that some of the most epic stuff would happen between technology changes. So . . .perhaps it's because it's during my childhood years, but I would be curious if there were other Yellow castles planned prior to scrapping those plans and going grey with the pre-built castle panels. Further to that, the 4.5V/12V lego sets. Did they really stop in 1985, or were people designing future trains and stations which had to be scrapped at the design stage with the advent of 9V etc. Just my two cents. Things were probably less planned out in the 70's and 80's in terms of now where you might have more of a cohesive vision within TLG.

I wasn't thinking (and this was a completely honest mistake) and got blacklisted on my way into the US with my coupe once, and every crossing with the coupe after that was hell. As soon as they saw the plates, they just started to write me up for a complete inspection of the car. I don't mind the 48 hours thing, it's more heading down there that is the hassle. For the record, I was caught crossing with a couple of powder coated metal parts that I was bringing to a car meet. Net worth $80, but didn't think to declare them. I still have the coupe. In 2010 the transmission on the car died, In 2011, we put the car back on the road with a new engine/transmission. It was 2 months shy of my birthday, but the government wanted $100 for renewal of my plates for those 2 months. I told them that there had to be a better option. And there was. Buy new plates and pay a pro-rated portion of the year. That was about half the price so I did that, and at the time didn't realize it, but with the loss of the old plates, the border people also lost interest in the car.

http://www.therecord.com/news-story/6814976-burlington-skyway-video-daredevil-charged-with-trespassing/ So . . . . . someone decided to walk across the trusses on the top of the bridge and got arrested last week. I wish I had his courage/level of stupidity. That video would be completely worth the $250 trespassing fee. The only issue that I have is that if he had fallen onto the road, it could have caused multiple fatalities. I'm still working on re-assembling and cleaning some pieces. I've got one entire train done, and if I do say so myself, after replacing some sun-faded parts, it looks pretty spectacular, pics to come.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/4DBrix-Monorail-Full-Straight-Track-set-of-4-LEGO-compatible-/272269707705?hash=item3f648a09b9:g:p2wAAOSw9eVXU1Nm He's selling 4 long straights for $49.95 3D printed, 1/2 lengths and 1/4 lengths along with double-car carriages. To me this is very exciting! I realize that the quality won't be there, but at the same time I'm hoping that this makes straights more affordable/available if the quality is such that there are solid connections with studs, count me in. I wish that he could consider selling monorail sled wheels alone, those get lost from lego collections so easily!! If you go to the guy's website, he's also trying to make a laptop controlled switch automation. And for the record, I don't know the guy, I'm not the guy, etc, etc, just the work excites me!

Weekend trip & having fun. To be honest most of my lego trips are hockey trips. If you break out a map, I will routinely go to hockey games in Erie, PA, and used to just turn around and go home from them. They are a 3.5 hour drive. My friend's house is another 1.5 hours each way, I get to spend time with awesome friends, hang out and save on customs. One time I was a little over my allowance and it's ugly, if you're over they charge you the tariffs on EVERYTHING, not just the amount that you are over. So . . . . I jammed almost 3 or 4 complete Lego airports into a box and was like yes . . . . that was one auction worth. It's Lego they aren't going to dissect every piece! My last Lego cross-border haul in June was fun. I forgot to print out a nice manifest of what I had, and ended up making a list with dollar values on the back of a Bob Evans placemat in crayon. The border official was like, I see that you did all of this at Bob Evans, I had screen captures on my phone, he was more or less shocked that everything was $20 here and $30 there and then BOOM!! $275 - that was my 6399 Monorail in box, he was kinda shocked at that value that it was so high, I told him old, rare and desired and went on my way with the guy smiling.

Welcome, I love your selection of old sets. I wanted the 740 as a kid. I had to settle for the 4.5 motor with the other battery box as a child.

I've done the math for some and it's ugly. Let's say that I have $800 in auction winnings. Ship to US and drive to pick up: $100 Domestic shipment (we'll call it 5-7 auction winnings) $100 1000km round trip to my buddies' house (price of gas) ================================================ $200 Ship to Canada. $180 International shipment cost (over 5-7 auctions) $104 Tariffs ($800 X 0.13) $110 in Custom's clearance fees from brokers, e-bay pretty much enforces that you pay this! ========================================================================= $394 Add to this . . . . the fact that 1/2 the US auctions will NOT ship to Canada. And the specific auction that I won was explicitly stated local pickup only, it would have been in very, very bad shape if it was shipped the way that they had it packed away. Some of the key is patience and some of it is having something to do while in the states. Usually the to-do is go to a baseball game or a hockey game. In this instance it was . . . abandoned highway. I usually take my buddy out to dinner or something as a thank-you. If I didn't have an amazing friend to visit, then I wouldn't be overly excited about visiting the US for 48 hours.

Some pics of my haul, just about everything is disassembled and washed and dried at this point. Now, the only thing from the haul is the two Shunters 7760, as far as I can tell both are complete, would never have anticipated having a pair of these things. I've always been a huge fan of those Shunters, but haven't been able to justify buying one because of the lack of other parts or cars. I have it pictured with my newest passenger car design and the 60050 station. I still have yet to tear down the Shunters and wash. I'm thinking of making light gray stickers for the bottoms of the doors on the passenger cars (I do intend to build others). I just got the red station a couple of months' back for about $10 US out of the US. I only grabbed it because it was cheap and I was buying other stuff from the same vendor and the price was excellent. It's really pretty radical having the America version (590) and the world version (374) together. Aside from the swapping of colours on the actual station, there's also opposite coloured ladders depending on what you have. Station No. 9 is the only set that I've torn down and rebuilt. It's the Train station #149 (background), that hasn't been disassembled and washed yet, and you can see the bus station (the bus has already been disassembled and washed) in the background as well. This is only a small portion of what was acquired, but some really exciting classic stuff!!

Not if the train is powered by the wall. Flex tracks like PF trains don't carry power, if you attached a PF battery pack to your 9V train it would work.

Stop #5: BURLINGTON SKYWAY If I haven't travelled over this thing 100 times, it's been 200, but I've never but underneath the stupid thing, after having done it once, I think that I'll try doing it often. It's not even a detour and the sights are fantastic. My only shot from the westside. The absolute last thing that I was expecting to see was a public beach under a massive highway, but there it was loads of people were enjoying it and there seemed to be piles of parking. You can see the lift bridge (which I always incorrectly thought was railroad since it's so industrial looking), you can also see the near original span of the skyway under construction. Some idiot driving completely drunk smashed a dump truck into the area that they are rehabing on the bridge, it was only of those very long dump trucks and he had the bucket up and while it terrified workers up there and closed the bridge for a week with concerns it could collapse, no one was hurt everyone was just really, really, really inconvienienced!! Closer look at the lift bridge that I would be using 45 minutes later. In all of my times passing it, I've only seen it up once on the skyway. Looks really weird seeing it while up there. My plans of starting a fire on the pier were immediately thwarted. See the little, boat on the far right, it was a spec, when I first showed up, and I was shocked at how quickly it closed the gap!! There's that boat again, which around this time meant alarms on the bridge. Looks higher than the skyway from this perspective, but they're about the same. You'll notice a lot of people in my photography (animals too) they are as important as minifigures in a Lego setup, the people bring the pics to life. The bridge will typically have 1 car cross every 45-60 seconds in either direction, there was a flood of traffic once the bridge came back down. I've just never stood in the middle of one of these and looked up. There's always weeds or some crap in the way. That's it from the trip, now all that's left is to chronicle my Lego haul. Couldn't have asked for a more wonderful summer mini-vacation. Especially thanks to great friends. An amazing couple that I met from E-bay, and some spectacular weather.

Until recently. . . . . I honestly thought that these things were a nuissance. They come in the straight track boxes, so you can't escape them. But then I built this: It would have taken forever in 12V track days to get them to line up . . . . . some of that is the fun in the game. But it's also torment. With lego trains are 50% adults, 50% kids, I can appreciate that this is a kid thing, I can also say that adults . . . such as myself - using the term lightly, can also enjoy these. Pretty sure that you can unload them on Ebay if they are that offensive to begin with.