UltraViolet

I have three 60800 pieces in Dark Pink. They look kind of like engine access doors. I'm going to see if I can incorporate them into my build to add some detail.

Normally I wouldn't build stuff like this, but it looks great and so 'fun-sized' that I really am tempted to!

I think I like the model more that the prototype! Very nice.

Chicago Screws were invented in Chicago by the Chicago Screw Company in 1872. Sounds simple enough, but it seems to have really just been a nickname it picked up because of that. They acquired many other names over the years, such as Chicago Fasteners, Chicago Bolts, Screw Post, Binding Post (books), Tee Nuts, and one I'd never heard of until now, Sex Bolts. Perhaps we should not attempt to translate that into German! (I learned of these fasteners first from a workshop I used to be employed by which had a section dedicated to leatherworking. Perhaps this does not help distance myself from that latter term... )

You got me thinking, sorta on a related note.- it would be really great if there was something like a Chicago Screw for Technic, especially if the heads were machined to fit flush in the recessed holes of the beams and any other parts with Technic holes. I presume no one has ever made such a thing. It would be akin to the old threaded axles and nut-bushings (3705b/3737b/4698). (Which reminds me that I really should buy some of those, as I've never owned or tried any, but I'm sure they can be extremely useful.)

Great illustration! I'm definitely not a fan of this format of tram, as there are many compromises that have to be made just for the sake of achieving 100% low-floor,. I do, however, have a great appreciation for the engineering that goes into making it work, and it's all very interesting.

It is a delicious irony that the cited example, the 1st-gen Siemens Combino, infamously tore its articulation frames and body structure apart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Combino "On March 12, 2004, Siemens admitted to problems concerning the stability of the car bodies and, as a precautionary measure, instructed all public transportation services to take all Combinos with a service distance of more than 120,000 kilometres (74,565 mi) out of service. Torsion forces generated in S-curves were much higher than anticipated, leading to cracks around the articulations between the car modules. Subsequently, hairline cracks were found in the joints of the aluminium bodies, which could cause the roof to collapse in the case of an accident." Of course I say this in good-natured jest, as I'm not disputing your technical assessment - I just find it funny that the illustrative example chosen had such horrible design flaws. I've had the opportunity to visit Amsterdam and to ride these cars myself. The elastic oscillating whiplash they exhibit when navigating turns at speed has to been experienced to be believed. Much of this is was a result of the stiff rubber-cone-bushing mounting system for the bogies, though this dynamic behavior is a common issue to many trams of this segmented design. Multi-segmented articulation is quite the interesting and complex engineering topic. On the Bombardier Flexity 5-segment vehicle I have been building in LEGO, I had to face significant challenges in making it both flexible and rigid enough to function. I decided it was easier to rigidly mount the motor bogies than to have movement in both the bogie mounts and the articulations. This required full flexibility at every articulation joint while still maintaining balance and level body segment alignment. Such is the nature of the game when 'approximating' complex engineered systems in coarse, simplified LEGO at reasonable scale. My next project is thankfully a two-segment, single articulation light rail model - so much easier! So far, all my headaches on that build have been limited to pure 'cosmetics'.

Huge kudos to you for presenting this in a way that should allow just about anyone to get over the knowledge or fear barrier of using this (or PyBricks in general). It is such a relief to see this project still in development, so much thanks again also to the rest of you guys working on the coding! I'm wondering if it's possible to add another parameter to the code. One of my build applications is single-ended trams. Under normal circumstances, no 'driver' should ever be permitted to move in the reverse direction. Is there a way to provide a hard code flag that could enable/disable reverse direction (even if two motors set opposite are connected)? Alternatively, or in addition to this, can an additional parameter be provided where a separate maximum speed level can be set for each direction, so by this I could at least heavily limit the reverse speed? These parameters would help me 'get over the fear barrier' of handing the remote to my young nephews or to anyone at a show, as otherwise someone's quickly going to do a lot of damage no matter what I try to tell them.

Obviously yes, you can do that, but I meant if someone wanted to use the stock PF battery box without modification or any further external adaptation. Many members of the forum are not very 'electronically inclined.' I am trying to offer straightforward solutions for the average builder that fit within their skill set, particularly if they have demonstrated inadequate knowledge in their posts. At the very least, I'm attempting to ensure that even some of the least skilled builders don't immediately go and blow up their Circuit Cubes motors without thinking (as has already happened to some members with inadvertent polarity screwups when attempting PF wire hacking experiments on other gear in past discussions). The phrasing of your response implies You are qualified to make your own modifications with little risk or difficulty. I would however note that, unless you are seeking extreme run time, adding a buck converter to a PF battery box is quite likely a much bulkier solution than necessary. It appears the vast majority of builders working with the Circuit Cubes motors do so because they need physically smaller components than are otherwise available. The Circuit Cubes motors exhibit extremely low power consumption. In my view, using a lithium-ion battery, even a single cell, with an adjustable boost converter, is more than likely adequate for the job, while keeping physical size and weight to a minimum. I have some very small cells which have been extracted from various scrap e-waste devices, many of these from discarded vaping pens (just to be clear, I don't vape.). The energy density of these cells never fails to impress, even when driving full-size 9V motors. Safety is a key concern when drawing large motor loads from small lithium-ion cells, obviously, so either my experiments are brief, or I take care to balance the cell current output rating against that of the target draw when going for extended run time. The Circuit Cubes motors use so little power at a small amount of boost voltage, finding this balance point is not difficult with some cells smaller than a common 18650. Whether using round cell or flat-pack, there are nearly endless size and capacity variations out there to work with. I don't know what size the flat-pack cell is inside the Circuit Cubes Bluetooth Module, but it is quite obviously tiny, and yet still offers practical run time for multiple motors. For the 'non-electronically inclined', if the most 'daring' thing they ever attempt is splicing a PF cable to a Circuit Cubes cable (and probably without solder), spacers in a PF battery box to lower the maximum output voltage are a simple and viable solution to enable use of the Circuit Cubes motors without instantly destroying them. P.S. If any of the 'electronically inclined' out there know of a production PWM-to-voltage converter circuit which tolerates a power supply input down to 7.2V and has an adjustable maximum output voltage, I'm very interested to know of it. (What I've seen so far need 12-15V minimum DC supply.) Something like that could accept the four-wire PF input from any PF device for fixed supply voltage and PWM control signal, and function as a universal PF-to-Circuit-Cubes motor driver, as it would work with a fixed battery box voltage or any of the PWM-based boxes or controllers. Is it complete overkill? Absolutely. Is it virtually idiot-proof? Probably. Would it amuse me? Most definitely!

Yes, that's the seller I was referring to. They seem to have cornered the market for 9V train motors. I bought a number of them from that seller a few years ago when the price was nearly half what is today, and that was for undamaged ones at the time. If I were buying damaged ones now, I really don't think $90 Canadian Dollars plus shipping is a sensible use of money. It's still possible to get them for less on Bricklink, but I would want to find a store where I can buy enough other parts I need at the same time in order to justify the shipping cost. With the prices what they are now, I'm leaning towards investing in the FX Bricks motors when they are finally released.

If anyone has working 9V motors with a broken pivot pin, I'd gladly buy them. I have six of them installed in builds that don't require the pin, so they could be better used in other builds that would need them. The going rate on eBay even for one with a broken pin is now up to $90 Canadian plus shipping. While Bricklink is still less for damaged ones, it's most often that the clips are what's broken. Also, there's virtually none available within Canada, and shipping from the US got outrageously expensive recently, so I'd have to order from Europe at very similar expense. The main reason I like these motors versus what's in development, aside from the simplicity of direct electrical pickup, is that they can be pushed manually when off. The new motors will have worm gear drive, which cannot be pushed manually when off. I am hoping that the worm drive will vastly improve the low speed performance, which would be a great benefit, so then I can live with not being able to push them.

If you look really closely at my photo you'll see two tiny little stress marks where I grabbed the plastic springs with very small needle-nose pliers and bent them outwards slightly more by twisting. If you attempt this, be extremely gentle, as it felt like they would break easily (or at least stress crack and break later). I would have attempted to progressively bend them in more places along their length to lessen the stress, but I was afraid I'd weaken them too much after seeing how soft the plastic is. I'm considering putting dry graphite powder lubricant (the stuff typically used to lubricate key locks) in the channel to further reduce any remaining friction (rubbing the tip of a soft pencil inside the channel would probably accomplish the same thing). I think the tiebar might have been better off made in a slightly stiffer type of plastic, as I'm afraid it will abrade too quickly after many cycles. Perhaps I will experiment with making my own. I will note, as an aside, that all these things identified are miniscule when compared against the main design flaw LEGO made in their original genuine switch. Their tiebar position locking was so extreme that it created an epidemic of broken posts for holding the yellow throw handle in place. Even moving the throw without the yellow handle is absurdly over-stiff. The other major flaw they had was if you had two switches connected point-end-to-point-end and drove a motor through both curved routes, it would create an electrically dead spot where both wheels of a 9V train motor on the point side would be touching only plastic and could easily stall out the motor at low speed. So, yes, even the 'big guys' make mistakes, but for some reason they chose not to address them. Michael is beating LEGO's customer service by a mile!

I forgot to come back and post a thanks for the additional photos. Very nice!

Hi Michael, I have this issue on the ones shipped to me, but I had already figured out the nature of the problem and fixed it myself by reaming an elongation into the slot by hand with a drill bit, similar to your official production change. This was only necessary on one of the two holes on a given switch hand, however. (I refrained from posting about it here prior so I didn't seem like a nitpicker/party-pooper.) I will add though that in troubleshooting the issue, I found that the lettering on the tiebar was also raised just enough above the surface as to run slightly rough in the channel where is passes over the outer edge. Scraping the lettering gently with the edge of a sharp blade dealt with it and allowed the tiebar to move fully smoothly. I also tightened the springs a tiny bit to snug up the snap of the throw. Through this fine-tuning I have the first pair working the way I was expecting them to. Having the correct tiebar replacements would be appreciated though, as it will leave me with the old ones free to experiment with. One other minor observation is that the low ride clearance of the original 9V train motors can catch the leading edge of the metal conductor on the top surface of the moving points, as this metal edge is not recessed like most of the others. I very lightly filed the edge of the metal to help with this, although it didn't completely eliminate the problem. The points work their way loose from the tiebar and have a small amount of room to lift up before they hit the vertical stops. Shimming the points fully down under the square hooks above the tiebar with brass shim-stock pretty well fixed the problem. I will note that all of my 9V train motors have pre-existing scrapes and nicks under the the bottom edges of the housings, so it just seems to be par for the course with LEGO's original design choice, as all of the scrapes occurred with use on their own genuine switches and mostly prior to me acquiring them second-hand. As such, I may end up filing the frame edges of the old motors to improve the ride height anyway. I believe that any later model motor should not exhibit this clearance issue.

I will simply say, you can have the product available to you at the going rate, or you can have nothing. Personally, I was willing to pay the price for this product because it's much better than not having it at all. As someone who has paid large sums of money to have custom-modified 9V tracks assembled by a service provider in the US, by comparison these are not expensive. I may end up even modifying some of the FX Bricks switches to suit my needs, which is a lot easier with them in-hand than not having them available as a foundation. Given that some of the other track components routinely sell out, particularly the S32 straight tracks, I think we can safely conclude that the market is quite well willing to bear the expense. I understand that these prices put the system out of reach of some (if not many) people, but I never had ANY LEGO trains in my childhood for the same reason - price, and can only now, in my 40's, afford to occasionally splurge on the FX Track products. I sympathize with those who cannot afford it, but complaining about it isn't going to change the financial realities behind the manufacturer's costs, and any particular consumer's ability to pay. I fully understand the eye-wateringly high costs of tooling development. I work in retail currently, and I frequently have to pull out this fact on my customers when they want to rage-argue about why 'X' product should exist or why 'Y' product costs more than they want to pay. It is incredible how much volume of a product needs to sell just to recover the start-up costs, let alone any of the other on-going costs of the supply chain and storefronts. This is why Kickstarter fundraising campaigns have become so commonplace, whether for niche products or mass market. Michael took a huge risk on footing the bill for developing this product, and much of the funds raised from them will go to rolling out the other promised companion products that are still to come. The fact that his business and product development survived COVID is incredible, given how many others have shut down during that time due to all the challenges and cost pressures. I eagerly await the new track feeders and motor bogies, the existing LEGO originals of which are now outrageously expensive on the resale market, approaching or even exceeding what the FX Bricks releases will cost. I consider my past FX Bricks purchases an investment in development of everything that has been released so far, and those still to come, not to mention supporting a Canadian company in my home province.

I had gone back and forth in my mind about increasing the thickness. There is just enough space in between the motor ports to fit a 2-pin JST RCY connector if the stock upper housing is 'nibbled' into a bit and the connector is aligned vertically. I'm undecided about it. As to the screw heads, I realize the height issue interfering, and while some of the anti-studs would be compromised even on a version one plate thicker, even the stock battery base has two points on it like that, and LEGO even omitted most of the middle row of tubes (that was a terrible design choice on their part which has been really annoying, as it has caused me build compromises, and the clutch is not always ideal depending on placement). Overall, it would be great to have the option of a version of the base with complete anti-studs. Anything you are planning with firmware and other modifications is greatly appreciated. The prior PyBricks code project that had been posted on this forum, which allowed standalone use of the hub with a remote (no mobile device) and acceleration/deceleration profiles useful for trains, showed a lot of promise, but somewhat stagnated. This would have been super-useful for me, but just as I finally got it working, PyBricks changed the frequency of the motor drive pulse rate much higher, which seems to have crippled the torque of the motors and made them unusably prone to stalling or not even starting in my trials. If you could solve this problem, I'd be ever grateful. While I can interpret the program code enough to understand how a finished program is working, and tinker with it a bit, I'm not versed enough in this stuff to be recompiling the source libraries. Your efforts are appreciated no matter what you choose to come up with.

I was planning on creating this exact solution myself for my own purposes, but I didn't have the time to get very far with it up until now. You've just saved me a ton of trouble by doing the design work for me! I was originally going to machine down the stock casing and glue in a plate as a functional new bottom, but having your 3D model available to print will save me from permanently altering my stock casings. In my plot, I was going to build my own battery source, most likely based on 18650 lithium cell(s) and a voltage boost board, but the key thing is that once you've separated the original battery housing, now your battery can be just about anything. Capacity and dimensions can be customized to the needs of a particular build. Flat pouch lithium might suit the situation better than a cylindrical cell, or vice versa. You can also use just about any battery chemistry. I have a pile of JST RCY 2-pin connectors at my disposal which I was planning to try using for my application. I was also considering mounting the connector inside the shallow base of the hub rather than having the wire pigtail out of it, but a pigtail might turn out to be more practical in terms of build flexibility. Alternatively I could have multiple openings in the base so the connector could be presented on any of the four faces, sorta like the approach Circuit Cubes took with the multiple connectors (three) on their cubit motors. I noticed you didn't include anti-studs on the bottom of your base design. This would be the only addition I'd like to see, if possible. I know tolerances for clutch can be a royal pain though. I have two of the Keybrick One battery modules, and the anti-stud clutch on them is barely useable (otherwise, they are a great product). My skills in 3D CAD are non-existent, so unfortunately I can't add the anti-studs myself. I will nonetheless look into getting one of these parts printed through a professional service like Shapeways, as my 3D printer at home is too crude to produce good enough results for this.

The production P40 switch is no longer a unicorn! Maybe I'll actually get mine in Canada in time for Christmas.

One thing I remember that was quite obviously a problem in San Francisco was the potential for wildly imbalanced passenger loads on multi-route coupled trains in the subway section. At one point, I was riding Outbound in the PM rush hour, and nearly everyone crammed into the cars of the train that would continue onto their desired route and street destination, rather than boarding a car from another route with a lighter load and hopping to the necessary car at the last station before the exit portals. I distinctly recall on the crush-loaded cars, multiple passengers actually sitting down in the front stairwell of the Boeing cars destined for the busier route, knowing that the front set of doors would not open in the subway because it did not have the mechanically raised stairs for the subway's high-level platforms (those were only available on the middle sets of doors on those cars). It's a striking contrast to the operating model of a very similar system in Boston, the Green Line, where vehicles or two-car trains from a particular route entering the subway section don't couple-up to those of other routes. They simply all chase each other at the available headway enforced by the fixed-block signaling system. I had been planning to visit there, but then COVID threw a wrench in that. In the end, I'm better off going now anyway because the Type 9 vehicles have since entered service. My personal favorite of the fleet is the Type 7. Back on the topic of another Green Line, the Dublin Luas trams, I gather, from what I've read, that the first generation vehicles were built without a provision for coupling into a train. With that decision constraining service expansion, they later elected to simply grow the length of the vehicles progressively to accommodate increased demand rather than increasing frequency solely through more vehicles. Once that direction was chosen, the vehicles eventually mutated into the 55m monsters of today. The Green Line was supposed to have been designed to eventually be upgraded to a full-scale metro, and if this were to occur, the existing trams would likely be replaced.by a metro-style train of larger loading gauge. The story goes that the line was purposely prepared with a wider track spacing in order to simplify the upgrade. At risk of sounding poetic, it's kinda like a caterpillar growing bigger and bigger over time, then eventually morphing into a butterfly.

Queueing on the Croydon trams?? I made a point of riding the entire system a while back, and I never imagined that was possible with the 'sparse' service at the time (I forget the year of my last trip, but the vehicles still wore the original red-white-black scheme, so pre-2008). It felt like the once-in-a-blue-moon level of service typical of many transit entities in America. Maybe rush hour was better. Has frequency improved since then? (BTW, when I say entire system, I'm also counting the entire Underground and DLR. Over the course of my last two visits to London, I've traveled over every bit of every line, including the East London Line before Overground conversion, with the tiny exception of a few minor system extensions/alterations that happened subsequently. This is a feat 99.9 percent of the locals can't claim, although nor would they want to. When I describe myself as "committed," I really mean I should be 'committed'. ) I should note that, in the example of Hanover, the 'half/half' configuration of the TW 2500 must not have been viewed as worthwhile in the end, as it was not repeated in the subsequent TW 3000 model which returned to roughly the same length as the TW 2000. Another interesting operating approach is San Francisco, where one or two-car trains operate on the street, but couple to form mixed route three or four-car trains when entering the central subway. The newest cars from Siemens are actually slightly shorter than their predecessors, after the awful Breda cars that were built slightly too long to fit four-car trains in the subway, speaking of a major "Oops". The Siemens are even shorter than the also 'cursed' Boeings. (And, yes, as you may have guessed, I've ridden the entire MUNI rail, cable car and BART systems in one trip, again with the exception of subsequent extensions. )

Everything said on this 'drift' I'm in full agreement with. Such talk is directly up my alley - usually I'd be the one starting the technical rambling! Hopefully the Mods don't mind a little tram-geek indulgence. I my city, two successive generations of longer trams have been used to progressively reduce service frequency and reduce fleet size. The longer vehicles now cause backed up queues of trams to form at the entrances to many subway station transfer platforms such that passengers often have to wait many minutes just to be able to exit their tram. They are also generally operated slower than historically with shorter trams, and they often have to wait an extra traffic signal cycle at intersections because their extra length often can't clear them when traffic is heavy or can't complete turns in a timely manner. BTW, transit signal priority is a joke in Toronto. If a system is designed from the ground up to function properly with longer vehicles, then that is certainly fine. If there are only a couple long-distance lines operated at high speed with much or total private right of way, perhaps longer vehicles make more sense. I still say from my experience and knowledge of the inner workings of many rail systems, modularity in the form of shorter vehicles or MU sets, whether coupled in trains or running solo, seems to have far more operational benefit in most cases. I also feel that any vehicle too long to be lifted by a crane in the event of a major accident really is too long.

The trouble with the original 9V train motors is that the gearing is a bit too high for a city street tram. They can struggle to start smoothly and don't maintain speed well when transitioning into curves with heavier models, hence why I ended up with three of them in my model. The FX Bricks train motor should help with this because the first gear on the motor shaft is a worm, meaning it should have much more mechanical advantage while bringing the gear ratio down a bit. It will be of greater quality than the original also. I am hoping this can at least reduce the motor count to two while still giving me satisfactory performance. We will see when they ever get released.

From a maintenance standpoint, I feel like these monster-long 7+ segment vehicles must be a maintenance headache. Just jacking them up off the rails in the depots is an extraordinary undertaking. You would think it would be better to make them more modular. In my home city of Toronto, we now have subway trains on one line which are six-car walkthrough units that are not designed to be easily separated. The other major line uses married pairs that run in six-car sets, but are routinely uncoupled for servicing because the older workshop buildings cannot accommodate the length of a complete train. The future order specification for new trains on the second line calls for a specially-modified version of the six-car walkthrough trains which will allow them to be uncoupled and driven in pairs within the yards and workshops, due to the existing limitations. Very interesting from a nerdy technical standpoint! I just recently learned about the existence of a different solution to modular trams, and it is quite novel and fascinating. The TW 2500 variant of the TW 2000 trams in Hanover, Germany, works similarly to the modular walkthrough subway trains I described above. Basically, they uncouple in the middle at one of the articulation joints for maintenance purposes. Each vehicle is actually only half a tram, and they only ever operate in service as a coupled pair, but any two 'half' vehicles can form a pair. It's really cool and weird at the same time! On a related note, I personally feel that the Hanover TW 2000/2500 vehicles are some of the most strikingly attractive modern trams ever designed. There's a lot of truly hideous modern trams out there, and these completely blow them out of the water. I don't think there would be a way to do them justice in a LEGO model, unfortunately, due to shape of the front end and all the curved windows, but I'd certainly like to see someone try. BTW, I had solved the problem of the floating sections issue on my five-section Bombardier Flexity Outlook model (three bogie sections, two floating sections), but I will wait until the model is 100% complete before I try to explain how it works. The solution was deceptively simple, but it took a lot of screwing around to arrive at. Also, creating suitable-looking articulation accordions which did not impede the functionality of all of this was a major headache. The thing that's held me up finishing is the need for a few customized/altered parts to finish the signature front and rear glass. I got about a third of the way into the work on it but haven't had the time for a while to complete the rest of it. I'm also hoping to eventually retrofit the worm-drive FX Bricks motor(s) once they are finally released, as the old 9V motors struggle with the weight of the model at low-enough speeds (I had to use three of them for somewhat acceptable performance).

So, this is the original Citadis 301 30-meter model, correct? Certainly far less 'unwieldly' than the latest 402/502 models at a whopping 55-meters long with nine body sections! I really appreciate the effort you've gone to including all the proper detail of the roof-mounted equipment and the articulations, while keeping exposed studs to a minimum. That is what steps it up to the level of looking more like a genuine model than a LEGO build. Is your build 7-wide? Would you be able to post a full-length photo of the roof detail in an overhead view? You're really temping me to build a Citidis of my own now, but I must restrain myself until I get my Bombardier Flexity Outlook fully finished (a somewhat less-wieldly 30m vehicle with five body sections). You've used a very similar technique to mine on your pantograph, BTW.

Apparently, Mother Nature is angry and does not want you to have your P40 switches: https://shop.fxbricks.com/blogs/news/pre-order-product-status-update Michael will be fighting back through the cunning use of jumbo jets!