XG BC

you can use a triangle file and spin the wheels with a motor to essentially make your own v grove that is straight fyi.

there is a way to get a fully 6-wide engine in that style. it uses rubber bands around the small wheels for drive. you probably can even fit a powered up motor instead of the servo motor...

depends on what you want to do. old laptop or pc power supplies are fairly cheap and can deliver a lot of power, and much more power? not really. its just supplied from one supply vs from various batteries inside the trains. the power draw is the same. you can even build your own DCC encoder with an arduino nowadays. its no longer wildly expensive.

I personally dislike it because batteries need to be changed, charged etc, and take up space (although with cirquitcubes the space thing is kind of a moot point, atleast for normal gauge models). track power is just more flexible with models, especially if you use custom pickups from model railroad companies like märklin. regarding contact: lenz has an awesome solution if you use DCC. i currently dont, but my dad does, he is into h0 scale model trains, he has an h0 scale model köf II from that company. It has a supercap that powers the decoder through dead spots while still remaining controllable (i guess through capacitive coupling). its super wild, here is a Video (not my dad): it can literally drive over a piece of paper and keep going. of course this is more involved than just plugging a hub in and stuff, but its still incredibly cool.

yeah, quite sad to see but they have their reasons yes, but of course no one is stopping us for just making models anyways.

it was too expensive to make, and lego was struggling financially at that time. all plastic was cheaper to make, and thus here we are. i dont like it either (hence why i still use 9v with custom power pickups and copper tape on plastic track)

by diode bridge you mean a bridge rectifier. these are available in one package, preassembled, you just need to connect the ~ inputs to the wheelset and the + and - output to your hub. something like this: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/vishay-general-semiconductor-diodes-division/W04G-E4-51/754892

no you cannot, since you cant input power into the hub via that port. thats only a power output. it still wont be that simple. either go wheelset -> powerfunctions rechargable battery box -> powered up hub battery compartment. or go wheelset -> big capacitor and powered up hub (the capacitor is just to make the track power more stable, you might not even need it)

Its awesome, the level of detail is insane.

I have now made a smaller version of the diorama irl, some details arent perfect yet.

very nice! the small bogie is very cool, i have an idea for you how to make both axles driven: this drive works well, my 4 wide monorail uses it exterior looks the same

now changed the front to be similar to the köf 2:

thank you!

Here are some pictures of the real thing: the cab: the other side of the cab: This locomotive is part of a small monument, to show where a now demolished part of a railway began, that part is now a bicycle path, on the other side is the remaining active Part, where a lint dmu runs once an hour out of the valley to connect to the main tracks. I decided to make that scenery in lego: the gray crane was once at the station at some other place, but the area has since been redeveloped and only one track remains of the former station.

yes, but u think these are actually transistors, given that they are labelled Q something. idk id just check the supply voltage of the chips on the other side, if thats all good, then look for hot spots.

They are usually small 3 pin ics, sometimes 4 pin, the best way usually is to check the supply voltage of for example the arm chip on the board, or any other chip (should be specified in the Datasheet which pin you need to check. if that looks okay (like no 9v where there should be 5v or something) look for what gets hot.

thats a good idea aswell, try and limit the current a bit, but otherwise go ahead. if you can, try and check the supply voltages for the individual chips, maybe some voltage regulator blew.

hmm thats weird, you have to find a chip with the same pinout (i.e. which of the pins does what) and the same (or greater) specifications otherwise. the short can be anything, either in one of the ICs, a capacitor being shorted out, hard to tell.

does it now power on? if yes, that specific chip might be broken

yes, exactly, some of the pins look bridged in the image, but not sure.

on the 2nd image on the bottom left ic (the L8something one) i see some Pads shorted together, might see what that is

now i changed the front, looks better

Thank you!

thank you! even going through switches is not an issue , the lenght of the pick up ski is longer than the gap in the switch, it doesnt get caught on things either.

Today i installed both pickups, it works very well, after adjusting the pickups a bit to be (close to) flat.