Tube Map Central

So this upsets you then? https://ideas.lego.com/projects/acc7c4c8-3967-4563-8fb5-a49859fa7755

Thanks for all the replies, really good suggestions here (apologies for not thanking individually, but all were genuinely appreciated). Looks like it will be safe for me to go ahead as planned but this will be a big project for next winter. Spring has finally arrived on the Essex Sunshine Coast and the great outdoors beckons.

The next project brewing in my head will be a place for my tube trains to call, two through tracks and side platforms. I would really like to be able to use 32 stud baseplates for this (four of them end to end). The question is, can I narrow the gap between long lengths of straight track, e.g four stud gap rather than eight, and easily bring them back to geometry at the ends, not necessarily using standard Lego curves/straights, and avoiding flexible track if possible?

Sorry to send you off topic, but you started me looking up Glencoe stations. The one in Illinois must be the sweetest US Station I've ever seen. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glencoe_station The one in Ontario is rather nice too https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glencoe_station_(Ontario)

Curves for me, so many details on Lego trains get exaggerated, a bit of extra curve to the tumblehome is almost necessary to blend in with the exaggeration elsewhere

Under certain circumstances, yes you do https://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-rights-act-aKJYx8n5KiSl Stop trying to instill fake emotions and motives, you are not my counsellor, nor are you psychologically trained.

Didn't want to destroy a certain other thread completely. So, here goes, new thread. A simple logical analysis of TLG teaming up with Bricklink to bring trashed Ideas models to us raised all sorts of issues with me. First, the claimed teaming up with Bricklink is a logistical fiction, Bricklink is a clearing house for private Lego parts sellers. Bricklink itself does not carry inventory, sort bricks, or distribute parts. This pairing up would make as much sense as TLG pairing up with eBay. Second, the fact that Bricklink offered something like this in the past is irrelevant. That was an old private initiative, Bricklink is now owned by TLG. Third, the eventual claim in the other thread was that this would be the equivalent of a Bricks & Pieces order that happened to make a set, minus printed instructions and (presumably) box. My issue here is that we are long being told that trains are too niche (15,000 votes, 4th place in Ideas poll) and so any wider range of train-related sets created by TLG would not be profitable enough. And yet, here is TLG doing something - parting out complicated small-run sets - that we are continually being told is too complex/labour-intensive/unprofitable for them to do. Especially Studgate, which looks like it will be quite hard work on that count. So what to conclude from this? I assert, and none of the TLG cheerleaders can refute this, that something fishy is happening from a marketing perspective. The link with Bricklink is logistically bogus, and these sets will have to have TLG design department QA. If not, who do I get the refund from if the set is not up to TLG design standards (a real issue if some of these Ideas projects have never been built for real)? I suggest that TLG is merely trying to distance itself conceptually, i.e. from a branding perspective, from this activity. It is perfectly capable of creating many small-run sets sufficiently profitably, but this is not compatible with its core marketing strategy. This is why clone manufacturers can do this (complete with instructions and box) but TLG do not. TLG could do it sufficiently profitably, but their instinctive control-freakery means that they do not want to. Even a supposedly democratic activity like the 'Bricklink' initiative has been turned into an exercise in marketing-led rationing. There were two stations that got to 10,000, but we have only been offered one. Might the other interfere with their Creator Expert Modular Building brand? We cannot have that! Bottom line, we do not have more train-related sets because TLG marketing does not want us to have more train-related sets. Wrong image, wrong fans. In immediate practical terms, for the next TLG passenger train set, I expect to be able to order, direct from TLG, complete extra individual coaches from a simple menu structure with a basic single click, because that seems equivalent to what is happening here. We will know that all the relevant parts will have availability, because they are part of a production set, and we know that basic small-run parts compilations are profitable enough because that is happening right now.

There has to be basic QA somewhere, if the set turns out to have illegal or impossible builds then someone has to carry the can, that is fundamental consumer law. I can't imagine that TLG would do nothing to ensure that all is well for their branded products, especially as many of these Ideas sets seem to exist as renders only. But you are still putting yourself in a place where 3,000 unit sets are sufficiently profitable for TLG to issue them as long as there are downloadable instructions rather than hard copy. One might have expected that such sets be disproportionately expensive to part out and distribute because of the smaller numbers, which leads me back to my original point. Why restrict fans by giving them virtually nothing, when a 3,000 unit set with downloadable instructions can be parted out, sorted, and distributed sufficiently easily/efficiently for TLG to make sufficient profit? If this so-called Bricklink collaboration is sufficiently logistical/profitable for TLG then they have no excuse to ration supply in the way that they currently do.

"Most profitable lines" Exactly my point, whatever Lego does it has to be "most" profitable, otherwise the less profitable activity is effectively a drain on profits that could have been made by doing something else more profitable instead. So, let's try and square that off with the so-called Bricklink collaboration - remember that Bricklink is part of TLG - and that these ideas were rejected, presumably because they would not be profitable enough when released as Lego Ideas sets. So, how is this activity supposed to yield sufficient profit for Lego when it has already been rejected as being non-profitable? Here is a clue: 1) Low volume sets can be sufficiently profitable for Lego too, and of course they have the capacity to issue them, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it via Bricklink, so let's have lots more low volume sets, castles, trains, whatever, time to stop rationing supply, or is this the world of communist dictatorships? 2) Low volume sets can be profitable enough for Lego if they get lots of free/low wage assistance. In which case that is TLG being exploitative of labour, so perhaps the clone manufacturers are not so bad after all.

I don't have a grudge with TLG, I merely observe the illogic of their behaviour. Stop making false claims about my emotions. You don't have to research to expose illogic, you just gave to consider the arguments and activities carefully. I suggest you engage with my logical analysis rather trying to deflect and obfuscate my accusations. If you can't answer the points I am making then you are not putting yourself in a very good light. Let's go through this step by step, question 1, why is there a shortage of train products in the Lego range?

No, you are making huge assumptions about the business model. Either TLG has to make humungous profits with everything they do, that is why the train people get little or nothing. Or else TLG do not have to make humungous profits. Either way, you cannot compare what Bricklink have done in the past with what Bricklink do now TLG own them. You don't seem to post on train tech very often, so maybe you don't understand the issues

I do wish you could make your points without writing extraordinarily long essays, And in comparison, I will keep it short. Us train people are continually told that we are not profitable enough, and so we should not expect TLG to give us anything. And yet TLG launches a programme that is either niche/not very profitable, or else it relies upon charity pickers working at less than minimum wage for the benefit of TLG profits. Seems like the looking glass world of marketing believes it can make us believe anything.

Sorry, this is really getting to me. The traditional working of Bricklink is utterly uneconomic for parting out complex builds, the more complex the sets are, the more the Bricklink premium stacks up. Lego, so we are told, utterly cannot cope with small run sets, they are not profitable enough for the mass market. Picking out pieces for small run sets is too labour intensive for a company that needs to watch the bottom line. And yet this seems to be something that clone manufacturers seem to manage effortlessly. And so it seems the same sort of thing can also happen if TLG hides its activities amongst Bricklink. Or is Lego taking a loss, or has Bricklink engaged an army of charity pickers to create sets for all our benefit?

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But I liked this one too ... https://ideas.lego.com/projects/879f2041-22ea-4b06-9e34-ed074c4ce83a In fact, sorry, this whole programme does not make sense to me in any way: how can TLG team up with Bricklink? I know that Lego has bought Bricklink months ago, but Bricklink is a clearing house for Lego parts, it is utterly unsuited for large numbers of people to converge on it and all try and buy the same set. So who is doing the sorting and the parting out? is this a way of TLG trying to engage with MOCs without having to admit to it in public? Ninjagoyo nailed it on another forum years ago: "IDEAS is a classic example of a legacy company trying and failing to create a platform to come to grips with a new marketplace reality that they don't believe in and are very uncomfortable with. In LEGO's, the ability and demand of fans to dictate what they want made for them in the age of Kickstarter, Patreon, and so forth. TLG's response has basically been to gravitate more and more toward the only industry that is managing to cling by its fingernails to a dictatorial monopoly: Hollywood."

It's an amazing build, and getting something like that so that it so that it can go round Lego's crazy curves is a real skill, certainly someplace I'm not at yet. All that panelling likewise, I'm always wary of SNOT because whenever I use it it takes up too much space and takes away too much strength. Looking forward to seeing more of your creations.

Wouldn't Märklin have been the equivalent of religion in the HO trains world?

Looking at the current Ideas front page, you sort of get the idea of which projects they would like you to vote for ...

I think that is one of the nice things about the Train Tech forum, we are aiming for different things, but we all can appreciate what other people are trying to achieve, it is a good melting pot. It does really hurt my ... outlook on life ... when I see that some colours have every clip imaginable but no headlights, and others have an abundance of SNOT bricks, and no clips whatsoever, how did we get this way? Deep down, I feel that Lego is too focused on sets, and not focused enough on systems (one day, a long post on curved bricks/plates/tiles/fences and another on arches will discuss this in detail). At the very least, for MOCers who, after all, show the world just how impressive Lego can be, there should be some sort of core colours/core parts availability. At the moment, the only colours that function vaguely like that are tan, black, white, reddish brown, and blayx2, hardly a palette to set the world on fire. And plain red, possibly plain blue and yellow, but not plain green or orange

It's not just a challenge, it's utterly crippling. I would love to make my tube train in a different colour. Dark green and tan would look fantastic, bright light blue and tan would look very elegant. I just about managed dark red and tan, but I think that's it, all the other good colours are just impossible. Sure individual problems can have compromises and workarounds, but I'm stuck even getting started because most colours are just useless. Below is my list of critical parts to make a Tube train motor coach. I don't consider these to be too esoteric, clips and headlights mainly, but no, it is almost impossible to do this even if I this even if I compromise on the window frames. 18980 Plate, Round Corner 2 x 6 Double For a 2x7 round-top door (one of pair) 27507 Tile, Round Corner 4 x 4 Macaroni Wide To smooth above door 2453b Brick 1 x 1 x 5 - Solid Stud For corner posts, 1x1x1s lack strength, and look awful 4970 Brick, Modified 1 x 1 with Headlight For fixing various things to the front, there are alternatives with studs on sides, but the destination tiles should be recessed, otherwise they don't look good 4085d Plate, Modified 1 x 1 with Open O Clip (Vertical Grip) To attach handrails next to door, I have tried other fixings such as 35480 1x2 plate with rounded edges, and it doesn't look good. There are other ways to get this sort of clip, but I've noticed that parts tend to be correlated. E.g. some colours have plentiful SNOT parts, but no clip parts and vice-versa 61252 Plate, Modified 1 x 1 with Open O Clip (Horizontal Grip) For front lamp holder. The 1x2 version would work, but there is the correlated part problem. The 2x1 version (and other 2x1 alternatives) won't fit 60592 Window 1 x 2 x 2 Flat Front I could use transparent panels, but they would look too modern, this unit is from 1905 60593 Window 1 x 2 x 3 Flat Front Ditto above, considering that Lego is often used to create building sets, their range of windows is useless 34103 Plate, Modified 1 x 3 with 2 Studs (Double Jumper) For seats inside, the easiest way for minifigures to stay in place and line them up with the 3x3 windows

Commuter rail has to be eight studs wide for minifigures, otherwise it's either luxury travel, or else inhumane pack-em-in

Believe me, this was not skilfully reverse engineered, If I ever created a build as bad as that, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night!

It's still on Ideas, therefore to sell the design elsewhere would be in breach of Ideas T&Cs.

Not sure who you are addressing this to, but every stud in the set has the manufacturer name "LOZ" on it.

Delivered and built ... The good Good quality bricks with mfg name on studs, plenty of clutch - perhaps too much (made pushing bricks down on delicate structures tricky, see later). All parts present, no deformed or dirty parts. Instructions were well-printed and straightforward to follow, including colours: no mistakes that I couldn't blame on myself. No impossible builds, Lego geometry almost spot on. The bad A few aspects of build possibly illegal. I hate mini-bricks: too small for children and older adults, how much of the construction blocks market does that wipe out? Incompatible with real Lego of course, so own supply of parts cannot be raided to rectify issues with the model. I won't be buying small bricks again. The ugly I supported IP theft, although at the price I paid, I figure no one was making much money on this, and I had scientific curiosity to satisfy. But the dealbreaker, this is one of the worst designs I have ever worked with. The original idea is a bit precarious and might have ah ... stability issues, but with the bad design this one dialed them up to 11. Any brick interlocking was by accident, and there was no building-in to support less stable structures, e.g. floor supported on two sides only. I finished the build, but towards the end it was so demoralising creating such a flawed structure that I was really just putting the thing out of its misery [Designer note, I am absolutely obsessive about interlocking, if any two stacked parts have a vertical line in common, I've failed, unless the design requires that, strength and stability of build is an absolute priority for me, which made assembling this design and not being able to fix it because of brick compatibility hurt!] Mitigating circumstances This wasn't a straightforward rip-off, so there were clear variations on the original, some of which I preferred. The knock-off had twice as many rats as the original, do they know something we don't? The ticket office is still open (TfL shut down all except a very few ticket offices years ago). I note, bizarrely, that trees grow underground, the escalator has a magic step-return, and that there seems to be a rubbish chute - surely, if you occupy an underground building, sending your rubbish DOWN is the worst thing possible. That's just storing up future trouble. Conclusion All in all, standard rules still apply - you always regret buying a non-Lego set, although the reasons for this are evolving. But, I can't see the original getting past the review because I can't see ways of making it more stable without making it much bigger or much smaller. So this was my only realistic opportunity to build something a bit like it.