bogieman

I have a book given to me by a German bogie designer colleague called "Drehgestelle-Bogies" by Karl Gerhard Baur that has a nice line drawing of the Girlitz III Light bogie. Although it doesn't label the bogie parts, there is a flat strap with two intermediate safety hangers that connects the lower ends of the inboard axle pedestals. I can only surmise that this a tension member that increases the bending stiffness of the bogie frame, which appears to be very light in construction. It is not involved in the brake rigging. Dave

Thanks! I recognized early on that the blocks would be much tougher than using balls but I wanted to maintain a better resemblance to the Lionel. That chimney affair that the blocks are loaded into was the only solution I came up that would keep the blocks from jamming so I gave up any idea to auto-reload. Thanks to all for the comments. Dave

The ice bricks just pass thru the car and end up in a slide-out tray under the track, you can see where one tie is cut out in the track (non-Lego brand track). The link to the OCDP's thread on the PF unloading box car in the first post here does just that.

Thanks. That was my original plan but I decided it just wasn't practical, would have required the track to be raised to fit a conveyor under it, and then another conveyor to take it up to the loader. But seeing some of the ball machine contraptions, I'm sure it could be done. Feuer Zug's Coal Tower might be inspiration to do something... Here's some pictures of the car, I didn't want to tear it down too far but I think you get the idea how it's constructed. The bottom side showing the actuator and the bottom of the chute to direct the ice blocks into the tray under the track. The two slopes match a pair on the undertrack actuator to center the car below the chute. The crank connected via a lift arm to the plunger turns the axle connected thru two U-joints to the axle/lift arm that opens the hatch. The rubber band on the right insures the hatch closes. Dave

Thanks for all your comments. I admit I'm not much in historical accuracy, mostly interested in the motion, fascinated by what's possible with all the technic pieces. I did try a number of alternatives but wanted to maintain purely vertical action on the actuator; everything I tried required about 4 bricks in height and with this located on a spur track only 4 straights from the switch, the grade was too steep. Now that I put a 1.5" hole in the table, there's no going back. I'll have to partly disassemble the car, being careful not to mess up the decals. I should have grabbed some pictures as I was building it but I will get some. Dave

Thanks. I didn't mention it but some plates required modifying a bit to get the hatch to open and close smoothly, a little filing here, a little glue there. I'm not a purist so it didn't bother me.

When I saw OCDP's post on an automated unloading box car, it immediately brought back memories of a Lionel accessory from my childhood in the 1950's that I begged my parents for (and got) for Christmas. I found these pictures of the original Lionel on a listing on ebay: The worker was operated by a solenoid acting on a long arm underneath the ice house and he pushed the ice blocks one at a time, very quickly, into the roof hatch of the refer, which had a side door that flipped down to remove the ice. So now that I've gotten into Lego trains, I decided to see if I could build one myself. For the refer, I bought Jeffery Fonda's Pacific Fruit Express car plans from BrickTrainDepot ( I don't see it listed currently) and modified it with a mechanism to open one of the roof hatches. The hatch is opened when a plunger rises from between the rails and pushes a plunger on the bottom of the car upward which is linked internal to a lever that opens the hatch. The plunger also centers the car under the loading chute. The loading station consists of two conveyors, the outside one is actuated to move toward the track after the hatch is opened. Another conveyor inside the ice house moves the ice blocks onto the outside conveyor. Here's the finished loading station: This video shows it in action: The roof removes to load the ice blocks into the chimney-like structure over the conveyor: A Control+ Hub in the structure controls the four motors that make it function. There are doors for changing the batteries and pressing the hub power button. zz The ice blocks pass thru the car and land in between the rails in a slide-out tray, the actuator can be seen here too, unfortunately, to keep the track a reasonable height of 1 2/3 bricks over the table, I had to drill a hole in the table for the motor to be under the table. Someone smarter than me with Technic could probably make it work without cutting a hole while limiting the height. The plunger extends 3 brick widths using a linear actuator. This simple Lego program times the actuation of the motors, my first programming experience with the app. Dave

I don't know if it is a copy or a competing development, but there is an ebay seller who has 3D printed monorail straights in full and 1/4 length at a lower price than 4DBrix, a search for Lego Monorail will bring it up. I was all set to buy some straights from 4DBrix when he came out of his temporary shutdown last month. When he came out with the notice he was shutting down permanently, I emailed him offering to buy any monorail track he had left over but I never got a reply. So I ended up buying 8 lengths from the ebay seller - cheaper than 4DBrix and the quality seems very good. Dave

To overcome the plastic axle limitation, this ebay seller has stainless steel axles: https://www.ebay.com/itm/19-units-long-stainless-steel-axle-X-style-works-with-Lego-Technic-gears/262583950400

@coaster: Looking forward to your R104 switches and wondering if two of the same hand switches are put back to back making a crossover between parallel tracks what track spacing results? Also, will you be at Brickworld Indianapolis with samples (I'm anxious)?

Thanks for the reply Thorsten. Makes sense. Dave

What size o-ring are you using on the XL wheels? I have a set on order from BBB and would like to get some o-rings on order as well. Dave

That's really outstanding, Tony. I'll have to visit the museum the next time I'm in Houston to visit my son. Dave

I'm wondering when Lego will put their parts inventory on bricklink to compete with the independents. Could be a bad or good thing for consumers.

Agreed, but I didn't become aware of those until recently, and the ship had already sailed...

I've repeatedly connected 14 PUP hubs to my BAP pc with this ioGear Bluetooth dongle: https://www.newegg.com/iogear-gbu521-usb/p/N82E16833139027?Item=N82E16833139027. If I try to connect one more it crashes the program. I had planned to control all my switches with BAP but with 20+ switches, 14 hubs was not enough for all the switches as well as the locomotives so I'm going a different route for switch control and just using BAP for locomotive control. Dave

I think what you've created here and with the Century is terrific. I'm firmly in the camp of modifying, drilling, etc. if that's what it takes to get the look you want, so I say go for it. Dave

I love the MZ, nice work. I was a new engineer at EMD when these were built, my boss got a trip to Sweden to participate in the testing on the cab noise levels - these were some of the first locomotives built with isolated cabs.

I'm using a USB Bluetooth 4.0 adapter based on a Broadcom chip. 12 is the maximum I can connect - if I try to add a 13th they all disconnect.

I just finished testing with my non-upgraded Hubs No.4, I connected 11 of them and all worked as before so nothing is broken, at least with train motors, WeDo 2.0 motors and LED's. I upgraded one hub and it works along side the non-upgraded hubs so all looks well to me.

Thanks for the positive reply. What I was thinking was to treat the LED as a motor and linked to the adjacent motor control so when the motor is commanded to go forward the light gets a forward full on motor signal and it would get a full reversed polarity motor signal when reverse of the propulsion motor is commanded. This would require splicing in to the Lego LED wires 1 & 2 between the plug and the little mid-cable junction box as that seems to light the LED's in one polarity regardless of the input to it, at least that's how I think it works. Hope that makes sense.

Hi Cosmik42, I love your software, I've now have a 24" touchscreen monitor to use to control my Lego layout. Thanks so much for creating this. A couple of suggestions I'll put out there for your consideration: I have a steam loco with a WeDo 2.0 motor on a Hub4 but it runs in reverse due to the gearing setup when commanded to run forward. Could there be a check box on the hub setup page to reverse the direction of the controls for motors? When a motor is set up as a standard switch, could there be a similar check box to reverse the right and left action? Perhaps the right and left directions could be called straight and diverging. Also, could the buttons change color when pressed, so the last one pressed becomes green and the other changes to red and they maintain the colors when the focus changes away from those buttons? It would make it easy to see which way the switches are set. Could each switch have a user entered name rather than just naming the hub? Would it be possible to allow repositioning the hubs on the screen, rather than having their position set by the order they are activated? Being able to arrange the hubs in two rows, for example one for locomotive controls and a second row for switch controls would be helpful. For locomotive light controls, could the LED polarity change when the locomotive direction is changed? I'm thinking I could wire the front headlight LED's to be reversed polarity from the rear, so they would light in the direction of travel when the operating direction is set or I could use bi-color LED's that would change from white to red based on polarity. I've been taking the LEGO 88005 LED set and cutting off their LED's and adding my own 3mm ones that fit much easier. Not being a programmer I don't know how much work this entails but I wanted to make the suggestions. I've run up against a 12 hub limit on my Bluetooth adapter which is based on the same Broadcom chip that the one you posted uses. When I try to add a 13th, the connected ones all disconnect. I've searched for ways to have two adapters on one PC but haven't found any way to do that. Do you or anyone have a workaround to add more than 12 devices? Thanks, Dave G

Just finished reading this thread. It's interesting that you've found self-centering couplers to be a solution. Not sure how versed you are on NA railroading but all freight cars and freight locomotives are equipped with what are called alignment control draft gears that the couplers pull/push on and pivot from. The draft gears are designed such that at at a small angle of rotation of the couplers, at about 4 to 5 degrees rotation or so of the coupler relative to the draft gear, the draft gear imparts a progressive restoring force to keep the coupler near the centered position. This is necessary to prevent "jackknifing" of the train during application of independent air or dynamic braking on the locomotives going down grades. As it is, the RR's still have to limit the total dynamic brake force generated by the lead consist to avoid jackknifing, with DC traction locomotives generally 20 operating axles, less with AC traction. This is part of the reason why heavy haul RR's use distributed power, where the locomotives are placed at intervals within the train. Because passenger locomotives haul short, comparatively lightweight trains, alignment control draft gears are not used on those cars and locos. This has caused problems when delivering passenger locomotives dead-in-train at the head of the train - I can remember at least two derailments when we delivered F40PH's to customers via freight RR's. Switcher locomotives also do not use alignment control draft gears because they don't typically have dynamic brakes and it can be hard to couple to cars on a curve because the coupler has to be forced to angularly align with the car coupler. Dave

After the simple mod, it behaves likes it's a train motor so the PUP remote controls it like any other train. Here's my Shay, I changed the color of the stack for the model Murdoch posted otherwise it's a complete copy. I really liked the dark green, brass look, and brown so just stuck with it. It's really impressive how smooth it runs; I thought all the gearing would sap all the power that tiny motor generates. Shay Locomotive by David Goding, on Flickr

The last post currently on page 15 you link to is mine after I made the switch inside the motor. Was really easy to do, hardest part is getting the motor cover off without destroying it.