ColletArrow

I'm not fully decided whether this should be here or in Town, but I created it with trains in mind so I've put it here. "Create a garden for your theme"... well, that's clearly going to be trains, so I can either put a garden in a train or a train in a garden. With only a 16x16 area, I thought a railway wagon might be a a bit small (but @Pdaitabird proved me wrong, so I'm glad I didn't try it!). However, I thought a LEGO minifig-sized garden railway might work... and it does! The young and the old railway entusiasts watch as an unidentified BR tank engine hauls a pair of Carmine-and-cream MK1s around the loop, endlessly... The garden features every LEGO plant, flower and shrub I own! It also features a miniature station building, a bench for Grandad to rest on, and a small workshed - complete with toolbox and cup of tea/coffee/hot beverage. Behind the shed is the control gear, that via a few bevel gears turns the green disc the train is fixed to, causing it to rotate. In an ideal world the turning disc would be grey and the the central "island" green, but I don't have the parts in the right colour so they're the other way around! Finally, you can see it in action below! If the GIF doesn't work, try clicking here: https://gph.is/g/aev79Nk And as ever, more photos are hosted at Bricksafe: https://bricksafe.com/pages/Collet22/ebfs-garden-railway- Thanks for looking!

That's where my thoughts went too, but then you've just invented an impossible-to-steer monowheel rather than a railway...

Fantastic! I love the section along the edge of the patio, it feels like it's on an embankment or quay wall. I'd love to do something similar but I have a single circle of track. Maybe a system of lifting up the track behind the train and re-laying it in front, Wallace-&-Gromit style...

It looks like a lovely little digital model, even if some of it can't be built in those colours. The greebling for the engine and chassis look excellent, I might have to steal them at some point!

An interesting idea, so I had to try it out... First of all, the cable from the secondary IR receiver is pretty short; partly because it's far away, and partly because it broke once and was repaired. Lifting off the receiver exposes this mess: The short cable forces the receiver to point forwards, so the lens is against the battery box rather than out in the open. Snot-wise it's not that tricky; a couple of jumper plates on the deck interface with the technic holes on the front of the receiver, and an extra 1x4 snot brick holds it in from behind. After the cable was crammed in fitted neatly, I decorated it up. I also took the opportunity to tidy the deck with some grille walkways and general clutter. Still fairly receiver-like, but miles better than it was! It's a lower profile and the cables are far neater. The IR signal doesn't seem terrible; you have to be a little more careful with aiming the controller at the lens, but since it's only controlling travel, the one function I don't use that much, it's not that inconvenient. Thanks for the tip! Thank you! I'm very happy with how the wagons turned out, I think they complement the crane nicely. Thanks! I always enjoy trying to make my models work realistically, and trains are usually big enough I can fit power functions in too. And I should admit it was seeing @Feuer Zug's machinery that reminded me I needed to post this, I took the photos about a month ago! Thanks! This model really shows my progress with integrating Power Functions into models. The first was very slap-dash, but the latest is much neater! Its worth noting I was happy with every version at the time I built it, but when I built the next one the older ones seem terrible to me! I'm also glad I moved away from the standard cab window I used on the first two, it was far too limiting.

It's a very smart looking engine and train, and absolutely rammed with details. I especially love the locomotive, and that you've included the option for working headlights. I share other's concerns about the small wheels, mainly because combined with the well-detailed but therefore heavy coaches there will be a lot of resistance, much of which could be relieved by switching to the standard axle assembly. But then you don't get to see the lovely bogie details you've built up, so you can't have everything I suppose. Good work overall!

Nice work with such clean colours and lines, and a very low profile to the machine! The handrails and textured walkways look awesome. I agree the cab looks a little unusual from the side; I'd say it needs to be a couple of studs longer so it matches the underbelly and the roof. That would also give a little more space inside, but you wouldn't be able to use those window pieces. I've also just noticed it's an odd number of studs long, and there's some interesting techniques where the cab meets the bonnets. You've not made things easy for yourself, but overall it's a tidy little engine!

Christmas, yeah, that happened didn't it... Suddenly, I found myself with plenty of unused time, and not much to do in it. Let's get this thing built then... First up was the technic core of the model. This features two M-motors; one for the slewing and the other for the winch. This was followed by the rest of the chassis; the battery box sits on it's side over the train motor front bogie, whilst the rear bonnet houses a pair of switches to control the m-motors. The undisguised IR receiver on the deck controls the train motor on one output, and the switches on the other to limit the motor speeds. The motors have also had cowling built around the gearbox. The various brackets are to keep the PF cables roughly in place! Finally the superstructure was built, and she's finished. Since the WIP photos above, I have decided that the switches were too inconvenient, and swapped them out for a secondary IR receiver. I also slightly rearranged the rotation mechanism to eliminate some wobble, streamlined the winch cable path to eliminate friction, and added some bracing around the superstructure to stop it tilting forwards. The gear on the side controls mini LA that elevates the boom. It's still manual, but with a little gearing-up so it's not too slow to operate. The boom can be extended by hand, too. The black grille on the side near the front is the battery box switch; theoretically you can see the green light through it, but since the primary IR receiver is completely exposed it's much easier to see the light on that instead. I'm very happy with this angle; the rear of the superstructure barely hangs out, and I love the cab window for some reason. The cheese slopes on the rear bonnet are knock-off LEGO equivalents that are 1 brick tall rather than 2/3; somehow, the superstructure still clears them (by 1mm in a few places!), and can therefore rotate indefinitely. But she's a little plain on her own; since the vehicle is self-propelled it needed a wagon to tow along. After (too) much deliberation I settled on a short-wheelbase open wagon, with hinged side doors. I can't think of any BR prototypes where the entire side can be dropped like this, but it's just the right length to carry spare rails or other odds and ends. And then because this is 1970s British Railways, if this is going out for a run then it needs a brake van. So I rebuilt my trusty 20T brake van into Civil Engineers (commonly known as 'Dutch') livery, and it looks pretty smart too. Only, by this point I've used up all my standard axle assemblies and couplings. Therefore, the van runs on technic bricks and axles concealed by the running boards, and the buffers are in fact small train wheels mounted backwards. Be honest - did you spot that's what they were? Overall, I think the little works train looks a treat all together. At this point, I want to link a video. I carefully shot and edited one, but didn't count on the home WiFi being so poor that it would take many hours to upload, and finding a time when no-one else is trying to use it for work is difficult. So that may have to wait until October, when I'm back at Uni with faster and less stressed WiFi! **EDIT 8th July 2020 - Upgraded home WiFi means the video is finally here!** **Back to the original post** In the mean time, I've linked my bricksafe folders. These contain more photos and the as-built LDD file, if you're bored and want to dig deeper into this model! If anyone intends to try building this model from the LDD, I would recommend ignoring the instructions it generates (they're nearly always impossible to follow), and use the WIP photos here as a guide to the build order. The crane, including previous iterations and the LDD file: https://bricksafe.com/pages/Collet22/general-purpose-crane The rolling stock: https://bricksafe.com/pages/Collet22/rolling-stock Thanks for reading, and well done if you understood all of my ramblings!

Thanks! I love seeing the internals of things, especially when they're built into such an accurate-looking model. The trick with the matching cheese-slopes is very neat. Awesome work all over!

A very tidy model; it both looks good and works smoothly, something not always easy to achieve in LEGO! The under-the-track actuator is certainly a thorny problem. I wonder if you cut away some more sleepers (or used the 1x16 rail sections instead), a lever parallel with the rails could be pivoted up from an axle passing under the rails. The motor could then be surface-mounted under the tower. The end of the lever would move up in an arc rather than vertically, which might not work; it depends how your wagon is set up. Speaking of which, could we have some photos of the underside and internals of the wagon please? I'd love to see how you modified it!

The first thing that comes to mind is this video I came across a while ago: It's designed to look like regular coaching stock, but (put simply) with pop-up bits that reveal and launch the projectile. Motorising the functions could be challenging, but with linkages or even strings could mean the roof opening and the projectile raising could be achieved with one motor. Overall could be an interesting project, with a suitable loco and a few extra van wagons or coaching stock to support it all.

The storage built into Eurobricks is only for hosting your avatar picture; I think it keeps the forums running quickly if they don't have to bother with masses of image hosting as well. Any photos you want to share in forum topics and posts will have to be hosted elsewhere, and embedded here. Flickr is a popular choice, but other free LEGO-specific image-hosting sites exist such as Brickshelf and Bricksafe - I use the latter, and find it quite easy to organise and link images here. You mention you're using Google Photos; unfortunately, Google doesn't allow you to embed your photos elsewhere. I believe you can create a link to each individual photo, which whilst not ideal would be better than nothing. If you intend to share photos here regularly, which I recommend you do, setting up an account with one of the free image hosting sites is the way forward. I'm hoping you stick around, and look forward to seeing what creations you share!

Awesome work! I think it's a good balance in size - everything has space to run and breathe, but it's still a fairly compact layout. Although there's plenty of accurate detail such as the different coloured sleepers and the harbour wall clutter, I wonder if you could add a few of the lineside features @Hod Carrier has been designing (even if they are UK outline, I'm sure you could take them as inspiration if nothing else). And I'd love to see some trains running!

I don't blame you at all, since I do the same with many of my LEGO models. It's a bit of a cop-out, but by not trying to replicate a prototype exactly in the first place then it doesn't matter when the end result looks a little different! And as for not referencing off models - you never know what slight misrepresentation the designer of that model has made, maybe stretched here to fit an existing chassis piece, simplified there to make production easier... Whilst modern models are typically very good, building off images or plans of the real thing guarantees accuracy - if that's what your aiming for!

As far as I'm concerned, you've done a rather nifty job at reproducing a very not-LEGO-friendly-shaped prototype in LEGO! I agree with LEGO Train 12 Volts above that the black livery looks better, but that may just be due to the LDD screenshots - a render, e.g. from Stud.Io, might give a different impression. As for looking skunk-like - looking at your excellent work as critically as I can, I'd say that predominantly the nose is too low and long, whilst the "forehead" above the cab windows is too high. Compare your screenshots with this similarly-angled photo of a model I found in a quick Google Images search: (Image source: https://www.historicrail.com/BF-16-A-Sharknose-Diesel-Locomotive-w_-DCC-Sound/productinfo/0R69296/) Although I would never recommend using a model as a reference to build a model, this does show the nose shape a lot better. But I wouldn't blame you for not wanting to redo your work on that unusually shaped nose, and ultimately it's your model; you can do whatever you like with it!

It looks like it's a good build. With those large drivers on the train motor it can go at a fair pace around the track, and with a good rake of British-style wagons to boot. Unfortunately, I think your photos are a bit too dark to show off the lovely dark green and black in detail. If you can take some near a bright, indirect light source like a north-facing window, she'd look fantastic. I'm looking forward to what else you can produce!

Your engine is spot on, the just coaches look so incredibly smart, and the whole train is jam-packed with detail. Perfect job all over!

I thought this was a LEGO forum, and that can't be LEGO... . It's a stupendous build with a fantastic amount of detail. I can't wait to see trains running through it!

The.. wha...heh? I didn't even know BR had an 'experimental purple' livery, but so they did! It also seems no-one quite knows exactly what hue it was... Personally, I'm not a fan; I'd stick to BR Brunswick Green, she looked very tidy to me with the gold details. Although I do think both liveries would look better with the red/dark red stripes, even though they're difficult to impossible to achieve in brick with the boiler construction you've used. Perhaps try dark blue or dark red if you're really not a fan of the green? But ultimately of course it's your model & money, I can't make you do anything!

Very nice little shunting layout, @Pdaitabird - if only the loco could run a little slower, the sudden rocket-like movement does detract from the realism somewhat. The rolling stock looks great together though. And these funnel designs... they're so elegant and victorian, and fit the slightly-earlier feel of your locos perfectly; I'm definitely going to have to try some of them sometime. If you fancy a fatter chimney as often used on later-designed locos, then these tyres fit neatly over cylinders/technic tube things/mini wheels...

A good and amusingly-presented selection there! The lower quadrant semaphores could easily be of GWR stock, and the signal box looks like a tidy, could-fit-anywhere model. If the 'box is operating these signals mechanically then the lower room should be full of the interlocking equipment, along with all manner of tools and equipment piled up in the dry. And for your next challenge, why not try to make some of these signals work!

She looks perfect! Up until those eyes appeared, anyway... It's right at home with the mineral wagon & brake van. Overall I like what you're doing, creating freelance but perfectly plausible-looking models. Keep up the good work!

Very Jinty-like! The brick-built lining and little details certainly make her model stand out, although I can't help thinking that the bunker is a bit too large and featureless in comparison; perhaps some access steps, or clips to store shovels and shunting poles under the overhang like the GWR pannier tanks had. How big is she in comparison with rolling stock?

We normally discourage joining and posting on EuroBricks just to advertise your LEGO ideas project, but this model is a mechanical masterpiece. I love watching the minifigure doing the unloading "manually"! To make the post more engaging could you add some more of the photos and videos of it in operation? You'll need to host the photos somewhere like Flickr or Bricksafe and embed them here by copy-pasting the link, the forum storage is only for profile/signature photos.

Fantastic, she'll be one impressive monster when she's finished! How do you plan on moving her, other than "with difficulty"?