legotownlinz

The city sets names of the second half year have leaked (see city forum), but unfortunately nothing train-related. There's still hope for a D2C set...

Injection molded curved tracks R56 are also available now from TrixBrix.

Indeed! No chance, it would drive me mad knowing that the wheel is missing. Maybe I'm milling the Lego wheels to remove the flange, that should give the best look. Thanks for sharing all these details! Wow, that's a really expensive part.

I made tests today and must correct myself. The Lego wheel, although visually identical, are at least twice as good. And the old Lego wheels with metal axle are much better than the pastic-only wheels. I'm now using the metal axle wheels and now the coaches run quite well. Unfortunately I found no solution for the middle axle of the three-axle-bogies yet nor a solution to increase the speed. Are there good reference designs for three-axle-bogies? I guess many people with more talent already thought about it...

All companies offering Lego-compatible parts rip off Lego in some way. For example, all the third party track manufacturers copied the design of the Lego tracks, nevertheless they are welcome here. Copies of entire sets are a no-go and there are good reasons such sets are illegal in Europe and the US, but everything else should be allowed to be discussed.

Thank you for the infos!

No.

Don't complain and appreciate it's just tan and not pink.

Take a look here. The train window frames are available in several colors, too.

I'd like to add better axles to some of my coaches. BrickTracks and HABricks offer wheels, axles and technic bricks with ball bearings. https://www.bricktracks.com/product-page/wheels-and-axles-6-sets https://www.habricks.com/product/ball-bearing-wheel-sets/ I'm now wondering how they are meant to be used. There are no instructions on the product pages. Can I use them with the new Lego train wheel holders or do I have to build new bogies? The problem I see with the train wheel holder is that I cannot put the technic bricks with the ball bearings at a distance of two studs, so there will be some lateral movement of the wheels and fiction between the side of the wheels and the wheel holders.

Very interesting. It explains why the quality of the bricks is on par with Lego's. If only they handled the bricks more carefully to avoid the scratches... Is Bluebrixx using Gobricks parts?

I completely missed that there are more options when scrolling to the right... The Mouldking battery box supports more than just on/off indeed when using the app instead of the remote control! This makes it a cheap alternative to the very similar BuWizz.

I got the app working. Like the remote control, it supports only 0% and 100% speed.

All the electronics are PF compatible. The motor looks identical to the Lego XL PF motor. I've connected a Lego IR receiver and train motor to the LiIon battery box and it works. I don't think the wheels are worse than the Lego wheels, they are identical. For the coaches, the new plastic wheel type without metal axle is used. I doubt that replacing the wheels with Lego parts solves the issues. Using the old wheels with metal axles might help a bit, but in general the engine and coaches are too heavy to use axles without ball bearings. I assume MOCers building in 7- or 8-wide also use ball bearings? The engine definitely needs a second motor, one motor is not sufficient for such a huge train. Other motors or gears should be used to increase the speed, the engine is annoyingly slow, even without coaches. It has black bogie plates. But those are also available from Bluebrixx. The other interesting parts are the 2 x 6 x 2 weight brick (two are included in the set), the LiIon battery box (it can be used with the PF IR receiver, no need to use the crappy Mouldking remotre control) and the PF XL motor. The LEDs might be of interest, too, but they are not the same as Lego's PF LEDs. They are very delicate and I didn't mount them yet because I'm worried that they get danaged when I open the engine often. I'll order metal axles and ball bearings when I make the next order at HABricks / Bricktracks. This should fix the coaches. Not sure what to do with the engine yet. The parts are not the problem, replacing them with Lego parts would neither fix the gear problem nor would it solve the traction issue. The motorization is flawed, there is no easy way to fix it, a redesign of the entire model would be required but I don't have enough time to do it.

All powered wheels have o-rings.

I've finally received the Mouldking Qinghai–Tibet railway train (set #12001) and the additional coach (set #12001CX). I received both in one box without nice packaging. Combined, you get the engine and two coaches. The train is 7-wide and is larger than Lego trains. The quality of the bricks is excellent, the clutch power is better than Lego's and the gate marks are as small as those of Lego bricks. There are scratches on the bricks. No parts were missing, damaged or had a low quality. The instructions are ok, but the dark green color is hard to see. The set comes with a remote control, a rechargeable battery box, LEDs and a XL PF motor. A micro USB cable to charge the battery box is included. The remote control allows off and full speed only. There is a QR code to download an app, but I couldn't install it on my Android phone. The building experience was good, lots of interesting building techniques are used. As a display model, the train is perfect. The problems started when I tried to run it. There were lots of cracking sounds from the 90° gears and after a few minutes they were damaged. I could fix that by adding two polyamide washers (see images) to bring the gears closer together. After this modification, there were no issues with the gears anymore, slipping only happens at the wheels but not between the gears. Two 2 x 6 x 2 weight bricks are used to increase the weight of the engine, but they do not prevent slipping. Slipping occurs as soon as a coach is added. The engine doesn't move at all with two coaches. Here's a video where you can see how the engine handles different track elements and an incline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRzCyEosS4 The middle axles of each bogie use the new wheel elements but they are not fixed. There is a high risk they get stuck in switches and derail the train (as can be seen in the video). I made two changes to the engine to make it more robust. I replaced the transparent brick round 1 x 1 with a plate 1 x 2 and two plate round 1 x 1. This prevents that the power-on knob falls out when you turn the engine around. And I've inserted several bars to the submodel below the engine's base. In summary, the train looks great, but unfortunately it doesn't work. It can only be used as a display model. To run it, a second motor would be needed as well as ball bearings for all unpowered axles of the engine and the coaches. The derailing issue caused by the middle axles would have to be solved as well. Therefore I do not recommend to buy it unless you are interested in the parts like the battery box and the weight bricks.

The LEGO IR system works fine. The receiver takes additional space and the IR technology has limitations, but the quality of the products is good. The Bluebrixx handset, however, has severe issues, it does not respond to input reliably.

If it is allowed on Eurobricks... One thing I already know is that the Mould King remote control supports only 0% and 100% speed. This needs to be changed.

It is not only motorized, it comes with a LiIon battery similar to the Lego Power Functions rechargeable battery box that Lego always sold separately, at a higher price than the entire Mould King train with >2000 pcs, motor and remote control. It will be my first Non-Lego train. I've ignored all the low quality ripoffs, but it seems things have improved a lot during the last few months, both original designs and brick quality, so it is worth to give it a try. If the quality is good it would be stupid to buy Lego only, especially since Lego has neglected trains fans and actually forced us to buy third party products like BrickTracks/TrixBricks tracks or black BlueBrixx bogie plates and train windows. Lego gave me absolutely no reason to be a loyal Lego-only train fan.

This week I ordered the Tibet railway train. No idea what the quality will be, but the design is great and if there are no serious issues with this set then it competes with Lego's Creator Expert trains. And there are more such trains. I have not bought any of the Bluebrixx trains because they are not designed well and the quality of the bricks is said to be mediocre. I don't understand why they have chosen 6-wide over 7- or 8-wide despite claiming that their sets are made for AFOLs.

It could also be a typo. But I'm confident we will get a train. My hope for a train set is mostly based on strong competition.

Designing own MOCs requires talent and buying MOCs lots of money and patience (for the Bricklink orders). This is about to change with offers from other companies, but there is no good police station yet. The one from Bluebrixx looks rather bad. There, I assume very few people have a police station so far and consequently it will be a success for Lego.

In the pictures I do not like the look of the new road plates. The problem is that they have no texture, which makes the connector plates stand out. For AFOLs, using small tiles will still be the way to go. The small 4-wide cars are bad. Even children will notice that they don't fit their 6-wide cars.

Sorting parts can be fun indeed. But in your case, I think it is a waste of talent. Please focus on your track system, the next months will decide which company will be the main supplier of molded tracks. It's obvious that TrixBrix and BlueBrixx have ambitious plans. Use your lead position and be the first to offer other elements.

I agree that a new engine this year is not very likely. But maybe a product that complements the Crocodile instead of competing with it? There are several Creator Expert cars on shelves at the same time, same should be possible for trains. Wishful thinking... Anyway, I will get this and this in 2021 if Lego doesn't want my money. ;-)