McWaffel
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Everything posted by McWaffel
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There's Brickcoaster, you could check that out. Alex Nunes has one on his YouTube channel if you want to see a good video of one. It's motorized too
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Which is exactly what I suggested
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Welcome to the forum! Here's some info: The absolute minimum space for a 180° turn on standard track pieces is 72cm outside-to-outside for the track. Then you need an additional 1-3cm of space between the track and say a wall, for trains that come around the corner to safely clear the wall, because they overhang quite a bit in some cases. If you want to use narrow track, you have to do extremely heavy modifications on the winter holiday train to allow this. I highly doubt, that you could still make the tree-mechanism function on narrow track. Most Lego trains will not turn in radii smaller than the standard turn radius (R44 if I'm not mistaking). This is because the bogies' turning is limited by the very fact that they are essentially inside the actual base plate. You would need to raise the base plate above the bogie fully to allow a smaller turning radius to work. Again, this means modifying the train. The cars on the winter village train are short so you might not have to modify those. The bogie on the engine needs modifications for sure though. Flexible track has the same radius as standard track, afaik. If you make your own track you're still left with the same issue that you need to modify the engine for the bogie to make the turn. In my opinion it would be a LOT easier to just make a single track, no turns, and run the train back and forth. If you're a tad into making stuff, you just need to set up two IR LEDs, two light sensors and I can give you a little bit of code I wrote for an Arduino to go along. Combine those and you have a fully automated winter train running from one end to the other and then back. It's really simple. That's what I would do.
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What trains could be rereleased if Lego goes the Legends route?
McWaffel replied to Doom2099's topic in LEGO Train Tech
If Lego really did re-release a Santa Fe, I'd be the first in line. Although, admittedly, I would dislike a redesign of the train. I own the original Santa Fe engine and a redesign would look strange, if I had two different looking Santa Fe engines on the same train, imo :D Would totally buy one though :D -
When I was running the new trains in the office today I noticed how the new couplers have studs on the top and bottom. So could you not just clip a 1x2 plate there and you'd be done? No more issues with long trains decoupling.
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I highly doubt they'll bring anything narrow gauge, if that's what you're thinking of.
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That's pretty cool! Much cheaper alternative to the official Lego stuff... Maybe that's something I could power the Christmas train with! I hate the battery pack in the tender...
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I could imagine a steam train, although since the Winter Holiday Train came out just last year I think that's rather unlikely. I also doubt we'll get an American style cargo train. I could however see a European style commuter train or shunter engines coming out. Personally though I would love a come back of the Santa Fe (so I can buy myself another one and some cars to go with it since 12 year old me only got the engine and one car at the time). Also a Emerald Night Style Hogwartsexpress would be absolutely fantastic! I would want to buy two of those but that wouldn't make much sense. A railway crossing and some auxiliary buildings like a shed, a water tower, a cleaning facility, a cargo hub or something else that could go along would be nice... wishful thinking. If there's something really really awesome, I'm definitely going to spend good money on new trains. If only I knew beforehand what was going to come, I would probably buy another one of the blue cargo trains (since those are pretty damn awesome) if I didn't like what was coming out next year... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Thanks, I will upload a video and post it here soon. I just have to edit some stuff out first... Accidentally filmed parts of my computer screens so those have to go lol Luckly not yet! But even if, you can open those up. It's just very dusty down there lol.
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Do you have any pictures of how you placed the batteries inside? And how you modified them?
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Two Swiss Alpine inspired trains designed with Pick a Brick
McWaffel replied to James Mathis's topic in LEGO Train Tech
Your parts list for the Swiss Rhaetian Railway is - unfortunately - not a .txt file. For me it just shows a random list of characters. Something broke there. You want to export this to pdf, I'm sure. -
Thanks for all your replies! We decided to run some smaller trains for now and I tested 8 carriages fully loaded with candy and the portable speaker and the Santa Fe engine was pulling it effortlessly. So I think adding a second 9V for more traction would easily be enough through one transformer. Here's a picture of the yard: There are more pictures here: https://imgur.com/a/44WA4 if you want to check them out. The pictures are of the yard because that's where most of the trains are. There's some of the MOC cars I've built. If you're interested I can take some pictures of the track across our desks tomorrow when I'm back in the office. As you can see, the Minifigs are hard at work with some railroad workers fixing things and shunting and shoveling coal to pre-heat the steam train boiler... While the Santa Fe is pulling the MOCs to supply us with music and candy once a minute when it passes by :D
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I would absolutely love an Emerald-Knight-Style Hogwarts Express. But also I would like to see something like an ES44DC or a LNER Class A4 that would be super cool
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Hmm but will one transformer even supply two 9V motors with enough power? I had the feeling that putting two 9V motors on the same track doesn't increase the overall "pulling power" of the whole train but rather "divide" the power onto the two motors, effectively doubling traction (because 8 wheels now turn instead of 4). So I thought adding a second transformer to give each motor the power it needs to actually double pulling power would be a good idea. The trains will be quite heavy...
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It's 7 weeks till Christmas week from now and you know what that means? Tis Christmas Train season coming up quickly! Some of you may remember me setting up a little train layout in my office last year. All colleagues loved it very much and so this year me and some colleagues are expanding the office train for this year! Compared to last year the new office train will be about 60% more track, 70% more cars and can carry more than 50% more "real cargo" than last years train! This year's office train will feature the following: - T-Shaped 9V layout with 3 stations (calling at 3 different desks, so everyone in this particular office has access to the train) - 4 Track wide cargo cerminal and card - 20m of track length in total - 16 cars in total - Original Santa Fe Super Chief Engine upgraded with the original light brick - Candy wagon for storing and transporting real eatable candy - Band wagon for transporting a bluetooth speaker and stage for the BrickBand - PF shunting engine for the Power Functions yard - A small handcar (this is an inside joke with colleagues) - Winter Holiday Train which I built yesterday I'm super excited - construction will begin this week. We'll see how far we can build it during lunch breaks. Pictures will follow shortly after! But to get me started, I have a couple of questions: How does one operate a 9V layout with two transformers? Do they plug in parallel (i.e. exactly the same way on both transformers)? What power settings do I use when running a train with two 9V motors (power setting the same on both transformers)? Do I have to unplug one of them if I run a smaller train with only one 9V motor, or do I just not bring up power on one of them? Thanks in advance for answering my questions! Here's the planned layout for this year's office train:
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Nice, I'm super thrilled for new trains! :O I have to find a way to either display the trains or get a layout running. I still only have my 3m circle set up for testing automation. Insufficient!
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The system needs to know which direction the trains are traveling in. Or lets say, the system needs to know which would be the trains next block, if it made the train go forward. If there are two trains facing each other on a single-track line, you have a race condition. So you need to make sure that something like that can't happen in the first place. If two trains are behind each other, the sensor that is between them mustn't be triggered at all. Since the sensors are always shared by two blocks, you could easily figure this out. If two blocks are occupied next to each other and the sensor that is shared by both of them is triggered, then you know there's been illegal train-movement. If any of those cases appear, the system is programmed to lock down all blocks and shut down all the trains instantly. This is displayed by a double-red on all signals.
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I looked there, but there was no delete button :/
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Does anyone know how to delete attachments? As in free up space for new attachments to upload?
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That's the plan. Probably the only reason I'm doing this
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Thanks! I'm actually not really using sensors with signals directly. It's a bit more complicated. I'll try to explain it in a simple way: The track (in this example a circle) is split into different sections called "blocks". Every block owns two signals (one for each end of the block). In my video you can see only one signal per block (I haven't built the signals for the other direction yet), so every block would have two signals. And also every block has two sensors. One at each end. Which also means that two conjoining blocks share the same sensor. The signals and the sensors never communicate with each other. Sensors influence the block's data and this in return influences the signals. This way I have to run way less wires and it saves money. The downside is, that the software is a lot more complicated this way.
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I'm getting no warnings for me-models.com
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I give you that, but it's not failsafe. I guess with modern LED technology that's not so bad, but I can imagine it causing much havoc in the old days. Overlaps sounds like a neat concept! I have not thought of that yet but it seems that I should give it a thought some time. My signals all stay red, until the train has fully cleared the block. Only then they change back to green. But generally yes, I'm building a fictional system which in my opinion works better for a fictional world with Lego figurines. Also it's probably the only opportunity you have, to be able to design such a signaling system for something and then actually see it work. The designing part of it is great fun I absolutely agree! I love to look at different types of signaling systems (Germany, UK, US, Japan, Sweden...) and think about them. Then I think about the parts that I don't like about them and parts that I like and get inspired.
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Thanks, the electronics are quite complicated. There's about 20-25m of wires on a 3m circle track. It's quite excessive. I've thought about yellow aspects but I haven't planned to add them yet. If I were to add any, I would probably hard-wire them to the main signals (red-red-green) so that when the red or red-red signal is shown, the according yellow lights come up automatically. I'll add them to the list of signals. I'm planning to use the color yellow on switches to show wether the track is diverging or not. I might change that though. //Edit: I thought of a better solution: Because the blocks on most Lego track are relatively short, adding a distant signal with yellow aspects doesn't necessarily help the driver. Instead what I think I'll do is I'll make the main signal green light flash, if the next main signal shows red. Since this is my own phantasy railway it works better for me anyway. I don't want to be too close to real life. I see it as a sort-of improvement on real life
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You should motorize it and make a video of the train arriving at a station then opening its doors :D that would be truly epic.
