High_Admiral

I think I'd be worried about the differences in power between the two engine sets, maybe some sort of shared drive train with measures allowing a bit of slippage between the two driver sets would do better? Almost certainly, the L motors would probably be a benefit over a single XL, but as I said, power transmission to the drivers has me worried. The big Virginian looks great, and I think it should run as well as it looks. Can't wait to see it in the plastic.

Well, here I am, back again with this topic, nearly 1.75 years later. Been a bit busy, no physical model yet, but I do have some news regarding the engine's design. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/522666293732704258/742761549130629260/J156.png I've been learning Blender for a few different projects, so I decided to model the engine. As you can probably see, the design has changed a bit since the last time I posted. I hope to get back around to bricking this version of the engine up in Studio before long, just so I have a more up to date parts list and estimated price. Anyways, TLDR: Decided to play Necromancer and revive one of my threads, modeled the engine in Blender, hope to finally get around to a final design and physical model sometime soon. Thank you, and remember your children on the way out.

Very Nice. Can't wait to see what comes out of everyone's shops with these standards in mind!

Looks good! Glad to see you back, looking forward to seeing new exploits in the pneumatic fields.

Well, after a few frustrating days of rebuilding half of the power train in this and removing piping everywhere(because either I haven't figured out how to flextube in Studio or it doesn't do that anyways), she loks good, even with the suspension raising the body up a plate from where it should be.

Interesting. How well does this work?

Thanks! I did try the red buffer beam, but it just stood out too much against the BR Blue I chose. If I do a BR green or LNER Green, I might paint the beam red. One of the things I just laughed over when I finished the thing is the part count and how little it was over the part count of 10194. Granted, 10194 has much better playability where mine is built to run well and look good (plus I did rush the add on Mk1 and it wasn’t as good as I liked, design wise)

And after a few minutes of tinkering today, I got this beauty. I'm starting to like Studio, might try importing the big one in tomorrow and seeing how that comes out........

Thanks! It’s always awesome to have someone who knows what they’re doing answering some questions when you’re learning a new program!

The drivers are on backwards to simulate the Big ben Bricks XL drivers I'll be putting on her when she's actually built. The flange on the Lego drivers are about the same diameter as the XL Blind drivers so they make a pretty good facsimile. Hopefully, I can get the actual XL Driver part files to work on Studio here soon so I can actually post a proper picture of her. (They're in the program, just nothing's connecting to them, don't know why....) .

Thanks!

No I haven't, Where can I find Studio?

Nice Work!

Actually, I did build in a small bit of play into the pony truck so that that particular issue from the EN was negated a bit. The trailing truck, however, will be a small problem and one that I hope I can fix when I finally build this IRL.

Greetings Members of the Train Tech Forum! After the debut of my first creation on this site, I hit a bit of a slump in inspiration. However, when Redimus posted his rendition of the A3 class "Humorist", inspiration struck likea bolt of lighting striking a steak held up on a fifty foot tall steel pole in the middle of a thunderstorm. So before I start showing off the "Night Hawk", a quick thank you to Redimus for his excellent A3 and inspiring me to attempt my first British Locomotive ever. Night Hawk was first brought into service on October 24, 1924 as a LNER Class A1. She operated in this configuration until January of 1944 when she was rebuilt into a Class A3. In her A3 build, Night Hawk served LNER and British Railways until she was scrapped at Doncaster on May 9,1963. I've depicted Night Hawk as she appeared in her later years, complete with the vacuum exhaust ejector pipe on the left side of the boiler(signifying that she was converted to left hand drive compared to the original right hand), the German style Smoke Deflectors, and the Double Chimney. I decided to paint her in BR Blue, mainly because I like the color. Night Hawk was designed with multiple Lamp Irons to allow multiple lighting configurations( Including one where all three on her buffer beam and the one where the headboard attaches are filled) on both the engine and back of the tender. Speaking of that, I did go for the later more streamlined tender, but I chose the non-corridor version. The Headboard is also removable, allowing the engine to be able to sport many different train names. Say you don't want your A3 to be pulling the Flying Scotsman, with a quick change, it could be pulling The Coronation or The Aberdonian ! One thing I did leave off of my A3 was the nameplate over the middle splasher. As much as I wanted to put that in, the curved plate that the Hogwarts Express and Redimus uses for their plates isn't in LDD(Although I wish they still updated the thing so that people still using it would have an updated parts list.....). Now onto the guts of this model. As you can see, Night Hawk is powered by a single L motor geared to her first and third axle. Unfortunately, I didn't put in a cab interior which made it easier to route wires to the IR Receiver. As you can see, the IR Receiver pokes out of the tender and somewhat neatly camouflages with the coal. To access the power button for the Battery Box, Just pulling up on the water cap will pop the cap and the rest of the deck there off and the button will be right there. Well, that's about it. Night Hawk was designed and built from the ground up in about three days(let's hope that I didn't screw up anything), and the BR Mk1 in a day. Nothing really special about the MK1, and it was really built as a set piece to put behind this loco. Parts wise, Night Hawk has enough parts in her to equal the Emerald Night set total(Night Hawk is about 20 parts more), PF included. This means that one could reasonably estimate her "set price" to be about the same. And speaking of Emerald Night, I'll leave you all with this. Until Next time!

Looks great!

Very Nice!

Nice work! Any chance of seeing a F-Unit(or even an E-Unit) companion for ol ‘49 btw?

Thanks for the welcome. I’m glad I could inspire someone. I totally understand the whole testing process, I spent days working with mock ups of the J’s tender trucks and the progressive link system on the pilot trucks getting them running smoothly before even attempting to update the model and get her to where I have her now. I’m still not sure if she’ll run well even at this stage, but that’s what real life bricks are for! Hopefully, I can get around to building her(and aquiring some XL BoxPoc and rods) soon.

It honestly just made sense in my mind to do it that way.

So, here's how this works. The system attaches up above the two XL motors, which float inside the engine. Four shock absorbers attach the cradle to the attachment point. This allows the motors and wheelset to move one plate up or down when in the resting position. Here we can see the cradle itself without the mount and the shocks in the way. The XL motors drive the 20 tooth bevels which turn another 20 tooth which goes down to drive a 12 tooth on the third driver axle via another 12 tooth. I'm not sure if this all helps, but hopefully it sheds a little bit of light under the hood.

Part 6942, its a 5x5 Scala dish. Thank you! Pics of the suspension will be coming later when I have time to rip a driver set out of the loco.

He’s got a point there. Then again, maybe the standard switches would be used for space constraints?

Hello all! So, I've been lurking about the Train Tech forum for a little bit and I finally decided to introduce myself with a MOC! This is the Southern Pacific J Series Class 1 Experimental locomotive. A steamer of my own design. Designed to be a fast freight locomotive as well as a long distance passenger engine, the J1 has 16 massive driving wheels capable of putting every pound of tractive effort generated by the 350 psi boiler to the rails. Streamlined to fit the passenger trains of the era, the J1 proved to be a smooth runner. oddly, this engine was one of the few in the US to be fitted with the Caprotti poppet valve gear, and the only one to be fitted with the British Caprotti variant. Now enough with the "in- universe" info, on with the model! The J1 tops out at just under 3370 bricks, which is honestly quite alot of blue and black. Her drive train and parts of her running gear use techniques found in Jason Steinhurst's excellent Big Boy version 2. She features a suspension system based on, and probably not as good as, the one built into the previously mentioned Big Boy model, as well as the progessive gain link system for the pilot trucks, also from the Big Boy model. The J features a somewhat detailed interior with posable throttle and reverser levers. The cab is one of my favorite areas of this build because the backhead and the forward facing cab windows both slope. Jumping forward from the cab, we go to the four turbo-generators sticking out from the skyline casing. Now, this area was the most difficult part of the build, having to try to squeeze those bricks into what was originally a brick tall space, but I managed to give me an extra plate of wiggle room to make it all fit. For those who are wondering, those are the barbell weights from the minifigures line. Figured that they might make a decent looking generator. Moving forward, once again, we reach the number boards, which have two places that they can be attached, alongside the stacks(current position) or farther back near the middle of the boiler(transparent version). This was actually not intended to happen, but I needed to hide the PF IR receiver sticking out of the boiler, and given how the Espee irl moved the GS class number boards to mid-casing later in their service lives, it made sense to include this feature at the same time. Also, seen is the Hancock 3-chime steam whistle that I modeled. Technically, she should have two whistles, the Hancock and a SP 6-chime, but I decided to only mount the Hancock for the model. Moving back to the cab again, we can see just how close the tender really is to the loco. While I don't know if this gap will work irl, I'm pretty sure it won't, but it sure looks good! And yes, I see y'all eyeing those 5 axle trucks under the tender, and yes, they really do have 5 axles. So here we are in a somewhat secured facility with a copy of the rear truck from the J1 tender. Pretty basic looking right? Well, actually it really is. With the valence removed, you can see that there are indeed 5 axles and ten wheels under there! Now that we can see the basic frame from the top, we can see that the middle three axles float through that two wide frame, allowing the truck to have what I like to describe as the ALCO Lateral Motion Device. As y'all can probably guess, in curves and switches, the axles move from the center line to cope with the curves. Using the data from probably an hour or so of testing, I can say that this works pretty well. So that's pretty much it. Credit to Jason Steinhurst, Tony Sava, Cale Leiphart, and several others who without their innovations in their creations, I wouldn't have been able to make this one possible. So here's to all you Lego Train Greats out there who have constantly kept me and who knows how many others inspired and striving to build even better models! Until Next time!

Looks good! Very nice model of a very interesting prototype.