Hrw-Amen

That would be a much better polybag than the cake and probably more suitable as subject matter for the anniversary.

I do not have space for a permanent track and although flexi track is useful I find on a hard wood floor it does slide around alot during operation and tends to come apart as a result. I expect a fixed track layout would solve that if room allowed?

I am thinking about making some green coaches. I'd like them to be similar to the old Southern Rail colours, however it will require the purchase of more green bits for that. I think it will be a long term project. At the moment I am also working on a couple of goods wagons which are also using many green and natural colours and I can't have too many things on the go at once as I don't have room on my desk.

I have recently finished building my latest steam engine. It is based on a Hughes 4-6-0 built for the L&YR. I would have liked to make the boiler area mostly out of green bricks, but unfortunately I did not have anything like enough in green to do this so I decided to go for mainly black as I had a lot of this. I think to be more realistic though it needs to be the other way round. This train is based around the normal PF train motor but coupled to the large drivers. I have had trouble getting it around curves and over points/switches, but having rearranged the wheels so that the front two pairs of the larger wheels are the drivers it does much better. Still it slows a lot on standard curves though. Following my other recent thread though discussing how other's drive their steam trains I am thinking about placing the motor in a rebuilt tender though as this already contains the battery and IR Unit. It should not be too hard to do and may enable me to get the engines wheels a little closer together which will hopefully enable it to run through curves better. The trouble is that I do not really want them cramped up like in the EN build as I do not think this looks realistic. Also they are the same distance apart as the wheels on the red steam engine (This uses 4-4-0 set up but still has the same number and same spaced large drivers but uses the 4.5V motor.) and that goes through them fine so I'm not sure what the issue is? It goes through fine when being pushed by hand, it is just when powered. I am hoping that a new powered tender may help solve the issue. I am uncertain as to whether to try leaving a motor in the engine itself as well as having one on the tender. The wheels will be different sizes though so I am thinking that may be an issue as they will therefore be going at different speeds I assume? Bricklink Gallery: My link Flickr Gallery: My link

So do you actually know how far that is in an approximate scale for that little engine, as in if it were life size scaled up how many KM would it be?

Thanks for the replies, maybe I will try the powered tender route, I could probably rebuild the green train to do that quite easy, apart from the tender is a three axle one, not quite sure how I'd manage that as at the moment it is the middle set of wheels that are set up to slide (So as to speak.) to enable it to go round corners. Do the old 12V 'middle' wheels fit into the middle hole in the current PF train motors as that would be an easy solution, if not I'd have to figure out how to get it round bends, maybe just give it a four axle tender? Also, does anyone know, if I used a powered coach behind the engine rather than powering the tender, would it make a huge difference as in pushing faster/slower leading to derailment/decoupling and so on, as this would be running on standard sized train wheels whilst the main engine was running on the large drivers? Or is it such a small difference that it is likely to not matter that much?

When I read the review of the set using this new motor I also thought straight away of using it for powered switch tracks. I would like to think that TLG would come up with a set comprising of a switch using this as it is at least in my mind one of the most obvious uses for that type of motor. But then again I am in train mode so that is probably why!

I have now built a few engines both steam and diesel. I wanted to ask people (Especially those who build steam.) about their experiences of doing this. So far i have three MOC steam engines, (I will post my latest when Brickshelf is up.) and have used three different motor types. First of all I built a 4-6-2 tank loco using the same wheel and motor set-up as the EN and obviously it therefore has similar performance which would be expected. My second steam MOC is the red 4-4-0 steam engine I posted here a while ago. This seems to actually run quite well and is using a 4.5V motor and battery box (Although adapted with the PF IR unit.)it is slow, but sure, it pulls a few goods trucks (Or I guess a couple of coaches but not yet tried.) and goes at a steady rate around straights and curves through switches and the like. Slow but steady. It doe eat the batteries though, good job I am using rechargeable ones. Now looking at photographs of steam trains I actually felt that the wheels needed to be a little more spaced out than on the standard EN set up. I decided on my latest build to try and normal train motor but with the large drivers. This is a 4-6-0 engine. I tried using the blind drivers as the middle pair but found it would not go through the switches and did not like the curves, so I have settled for using the blind drivers as the third (Rear set.) of wheels. This runs a lot better (Although still is not too keen on switches.) but even so the motor is not that quick compared to when it is using the smaller wheels on standard LEGO trains. So I am wondering what motor set-up do other builders of steam trains use most commonly for MOCs? I have thought about trying to get two medium PF motors into an engine but am not sure about gearing? I have built a small shunting diesel using the medium motor but it is very slow, OK for a shunter but not for a main line engine. The other solution I thought about was to construct a passenger coach (Like a baggage version.) and hide an extra motor in that to give the engine a bit of a push, but that seamed like cheating really. I would be interested to hear what others use and what solutions you have come up with please?

As a general rule in WH Smith I find that you can purchase one actual paper but pay for however many you want just scanning the barcode over and over again, then take that number of LEGO polybags. You do not actually have to take all those newspapers, but you do have to pay for them.

Always wanted this as I was into Space back then and it seemed to fit the space theme so well. Never could afford it though. I imagined it as some futuristic train whizzing people to a space port somewhere or even on an alien planet, similar to the monorail which I could also not afford. Nice to see it again though,thanks for the review.

Oh yes I see. I have to say I was a little confused as to what was being discussed. Using stickers maybe a good solution. I do not have any rechargeable battery boxes (Although I do use rechargeable batteries.) but I have wondered if they will produce the covers in a variety of colours in the future as it is a good solution for those slim engines that are almost impossible to build on that scale if you need to hide a battery box of any sort in the mix somewhere. If they do not produce actual covers maybe a selection of appropriately coloured stickers could be the answer?

Is this something just in the USA then as when I go to the website and change location to UK it no longer appears? It seems that we are not getting anything or will there be something up soon, anyone know?

Very good model of the real thing, looks just like it.

Or if you use a self service check out!

It appears to depend on the mood of my cat. Sometimes he will show an interest in them, other times they are just ignored. He never really attacks them, but a couple of times has followed them around the track. More often than not though he simply decides the track is a good place to sit, which is really annoying as it is not somewhere he would normally sit. I expect he is doing it just to annoy me! Interestingly back in the days of 4.5V blue track when I was a kid I had a pet rabbit called Ruddie. Ruddie used to often be in the house as he was trained not to do his business on the carpet. But try as I may i could not train him to leave the track alone. He would run after the trains hopping all over them and his best trick was to get ahead of it, pick up a single bit of track (They were individual rails back then.)and take it to hide it behind the sideboard. He seemed to amass quite a stash of them as it was a small space and I could not get my arm in to get them back out.

Is there such a thing as LEGO string? I mean do LEGO actually make the string themselves or do they buy it pre-made? If they buy it have they used the same string supplier for the last forty/fifty years? If you knew who supplied LEGO with string and bought some of it from them direct and used on your LEGO models would it be the genuine article or does it somehow passing through a LEGO processing/packing warehouse transform it in some way into an official product even if it is not in any way changed? I am not suggesting this as a course of action for reselling or for lying to people about a products authenticity, just wondering A: Where does the string originate and B: Just what makes it into proper LEGO string as opposed to string supplied to them by someone else and repackaged?

Thanks. I do not think I have come across that wheel arrangement before, not in the UK anyway. I should have thought of it though as it is exactly what I am playing with right now for a three axle tender that would not fit the LEGO curves. I guess I just considered that something we did to get by in a model with tight rails to negotiate rather than a real world solution. You learn something every day.

True that is crazy! The things some people will do. But, i always thought Chile was in America albeit the Southern part?

I would have liked it to have been about a brick lower, but it was impossible as far as I could tell with fitting everything in. Also it would have had to loose some of the detailing which I did not want to do. Having said that the engines in real life are rather block like and short and stubby. I have run it on a section of straight track set up on my desk on which it pulled and pushed three wagons without any issues. There do not seem to be any traction problems that I could tell, although it has not run around a proper circuit yet. Like I said it is nowhere near as fast as the smaller diesels made with the standard train motor, but that is not a problem as it is for shunting. In fact I would like to slow the other two down a bit if possible as they should not be racing about like an express train.

I find the nose quite well done given the attempted shape and the train overall looks good. I may have gone with the rills sideways though as suggested, but generally it looks similar to the real one so good job. I have been looking at this though and images of the real train and have to ask as I just cannot work it out. With three sets of wheels like that how does it handle corners? Not just your version, but as I said the real one as well, it does not look articulated and seems very long?

This is the most chunky of my British Rail shunters so far, in that respect I guess it matches the real thing as they are rather 'Brick' like in appearance. When I was a small child I remember seeing these running locally I think they still use them even though it was some 40 odd years ago that I saw them near where I live? I am pretty sure I saw a black one in Southampton back last year, but I could have been dreaming! Anyway, this one inspite of its brick like appearance does have a lot of details that I have tried to capture on the model. Hopefully it will be recognisable to most fans of small British Diesels? It uses a medium motor so it does not run very fast at top speed, but then again it is not supped to as it is for shunting. It is quite heavy actually! I have also used BBB medium wheels as these seemed more in keeping to the real thing than the smaller wheels used on the smaller diesels I built. Here is the Brickshelf gallery:http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=508464 Here is the flickr gallery: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hrw-amen/sets/72157630710076818/

Pretty good that you did it. I hope the engine derailing just before the end did not disqualify you from the official record, or did several of the other trains running make it anyway? (Or was the 5m irrelevant as you had already broken the record?)

From the diagram that seems a bit tightly packed. How much floor space will it take in reality? Also how many trains do you plan running on it at any given time? I have never had a train running for a long time and only on small tracks so I am wondering how many circuits they will do on one set of batteries or one charge, or is this going to be 9/12V? Looks very interesting though and hopefully you will manage to pull it off. Good luck! Lets see some photos when it is done.

I do like these sort of things, I just wish I had the technical know how to make them or understand what they are going on about. At the end of the day I am sure they are relatively simple once you have the basics, but I don't and so they baffle me. If only they had this kind of stuff when I was a kid. Looking at it I feel compelled to understand how baffled my father used to get when I wired up several lights, signals and so on on our model railway at home using just one wire in parallel when he had used two wires there and back for every single one. I must be old! But a good idea to those who know.

I've no idea but I know LEGO can be very heavy when made up into something large like a modular building. I was wondering if you make a 1-1 scale model of something from LEGO, say an average family car for example would it have more mass than the original? As to what a gallon of LEGO weighs, well there are so many variables as has been discussed, how is it packed and which bits are used being the two obvious ones that spring to mind. Can you e-mail them to establish the parameters of the gallon and the pack'ed'ness of the bricks?