idlemarvel

In an earlier life I had a small indoor G scale layout which required quite hefty baseboards given the weight of the track and trains. I still have these in my shed but they are a bit overkill for Lego trains, at least my simple 6-wide short trains. I wanted a simple baseboard that I could easily dismantle and if necessary transport in my car. This is what I have come up with. Basically it is 4 sheets of 2' x 4' 6 mm MDF*. They are held together by gluing a baton along one edge, and bolting the batons together, along with a backdrop to separate the scenic area from the rest of the layout. The diagram below shows how it is assembled. Not much to it. It does require a solid table underneath (which I have) but if you had a smaller table you could probably get away with a foot overhang before you got any serious warping. The MDF is covered in green baize on the scenic area. The friction of the cloth prevents the track from sliding around too much. I'm not a big fan of having wall-to-wall brick scenery, apart from the cost and time to create it, so the green baize is a cheep and cheerful way of hiding the baseboard until I get around to making some buildings etc. This doesn't allow for any under baseboard wiring but as I have battery powered trains and manual points I don't have a need for it. This will not suit everyone but it might give you some ideas, and it's better than a table top!

Wonderful model. If that's just 7wide you've worked miracles, if it's only 6 wide you're a magician! I love the way you've hidden the wheels. Are there just the two bogies for the whole unit? Great work.

Lots of detail in 6-wide. The grain cars with the grain store loots great. Thanks for sharing.

Very good end result. Thanks for the explanations behind your eventual designs. Have you uploaded your LDD designs somewhere?

Excellent rendition and a remarkable amount of detail in 6-wide. Good job!

Both 88005 and 88012 are back on the menu and showing as available on en-gb site so all is well. For some reason the Technic Hub is marked as "New.

Love the way you have done the livery and numbers in bricks. I don't like using stickers so I'll be using some of your ideas! Thanks for posting and sharing stud.io files.

Very good indeed and as you say an unusual source of prototype. Thanks for posting. Do you have details of the swinging cab frame? That could be useful for other long steam locos.

What an achievement. Well done, and good luck with this year's Brick Awards.

That must be one heck of a 3D printer! Fantastic result. I have a non-Lego 5" gauge ride on railway and it is great fun for kids of all ages. To combine that with Lego then... wow.

Excellent rendition of the prototype. Thanks for sharing.

Very very good. You've really captured the essence of these narrow gauge locos. The rollwagen and truck are equally good. If you have some photos of the prototype you can see they were sometimes dwarfed by the standard gauge trucks on the rollwagons, particularly coal hoppers. Is this to be a "shelf queen" or will it get some run time?

A beautiful model with an astonishing amount of detail. Conside that a job well done! :-)

Wasn't sure whether to start a new thread or add to this one, but as it is quite recent I chose the latter. I got this set #76423 "for my grandson" and we enjoyed making it together. He wanted it motorised. I have a Circuits Cube but I thought I'd see if I could use the more conventional Lego Train Motor and Smart Hub. There's no room for either of these in the loco but the motor fits nicely under the tender and plenty of room for the hub in the first carriage. The second picture shows the motor under the tender. This way around the motor is going "backwards" which you have to remember when using the handset - the cable is long enough to have put it the "right" way round. The third picture shows the carriage with the hub inside. Plenty of slack in the cable. The green thing is "the world's smallest Bluetooth speaker" an i-Star 79268 which is a 4 ohm 2 W speaker smaller than 4 studs square and 3 bricks deep. It is linked to the tablet with the Powered UP app so the sounds come from the train not the tablet. With more time I could have made a better job of the tender, like adding a row of dark red tiles under the tender sides to match the 6x8 plate that was removed, but it shows in principle that this approach will work. The tender needs more weight as there is quite a bit of wheel slip if you start on a bend, but there is no trouble pushing the loco through R40 points and S bends. Short video below:

Is something happending to these Powered Up items? They are not listed at all on lego.com (en-gb site) and on some european sites (eg. ch-de) the 88012 is listed as an "old product" ( I guess that means retired). I assume they are still being sold in sets that use those items. Have I missed something? You can still buy them of course on Bricklink etc via their part numbers, but should I start stocking up? :-)

Brilliant. A superb piece of engineering. And the video quality was just fine. Thanks.

I have started building a motor block with battery and hub inside my 4-wide RhB Ge 2/4 shown earlier. I needed to rebuild my prototype motor block to be one stud longer. So far I have used 4262 Technic, Plate 1 x 6 with Toothed Ends to hold the drive wheels in place but I have since tried 32063 Technic, Liftarm Thin 1 x 6 which gives a much stronger connection. I may have to switch to 5L Technic axle as the wheels keep coming free from the Technic Plates / Liftarms. The whole body rests on a 2 x 4 plate between the two motors (circled in yellow). I will have to rebuild the entire body to fit around the motors and Circuit Cube hub/battery box. At the moment the hub/battery box is at one end of the loco, but to hide that behind tiles means I lose the door features, so I may have to move it between the motors, or lose one of the motors. I'm reluctant to lose a motor because that would mean only one powered axle, but to keep two motors with the cube in between I may have to move the drive axles another stud further apart. The pony trucks pivot on more Technic Liftarms held on place by the drive shaft from the motors. The loco as it stands runs around the test track nicely, but I haven't finished the motor train design yet.

I think we need a picture to pass judgement! :-)

Thanks @XG BC for your very clear explanation. I'm not sure everyone can build 8 wide models, but I do agree that modelling 4 wide trains is an art form!

Brilliantly done. To get the right number and size of windows in this scale is quite an achievement. As I am a beginner, can you explain why you needed to build 90% upside down? Are the wheels able to articulate? With that length of wheelbase I don't think it would go around R24 curves. Or is it a display model? Again, great models.

Thanks @zephyr1934 that tip about wiring the motors in series from one port will make it a lot easier to control. Ref hiding the cube, my model is already 4 + 2 x tiles wide (so not strictly speaking 4 wide) so hiding with tiles is probably the way I will go.

Not sure if I should create a new thread for this but I've started so I'll finish! As I said I earlier (2 posts back) I was going to order a Circuit Cubes motor and try to motorise my 4-wide model. The Circuit Cubes Bluetooth set arrived today, so I had a go at building an 0-4-0 train chassis to see how it all works and if it has the power to drive a loco on narrow gauge track with/without any rolling stock behind. Here is my first crude attempt. Side view Under view Front view I had to use two motors, one didn't really have enough power. I've tried to minimise any transmission loss by connecting each motor almost directly to the axle. A couple of videos, one as "light engine" and one pulling a coach. https://www.flickr.com/photos/194726814@N08/51989867092/in/dateposted-public/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/194726814@N08/51991139174/in/dateposted-public/ This test is a challenge with the R24 narrow gauge track curves and the 4 axle coach. My thoughts so far: Like a dog walking on hind legs, the wonder is that it walks at all! This is showing max speed so it's a bit slow but maybe not unlike real narrow gauge locos(!) - I'll try and work out the scale speed. The loco slows down considerably pulling the coach, understandably. I doubt it could pull more than two coaches of this size, but I will test it later. However although it is slow there is not much difference in speed on the straights versus the curves, which was a pleasant surprise. The motors were not as noisy as I had been led to believe, no worse than Lego train motor really. The motors as positioned are only two studs wide so no problem hiding those in a 4-wide body shell, but the Bluetooth receiver/battery box will be quite tricky to hide. Not a bad start. I did most of the test in "battery mode" where you just switch on the Circuit Cubes controller and off it goes at full speed. I did have a go at setting up a custom controller in the Circuit Cubes app. I didn't spend long on this, so the simplest way I found to drive two motors at once (they were on ports A and C) was something like this. There is a coding option but I haven't found any instructions for that so far.

My 0-6-0 Powered Up tank engine has two powered axles and the third driven by coupling rod, and the middle axle was blind driver. However I used a Technic large motor not the train motor. I didn’t have any issues starting on R40 curves but it did go slighty slower. https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/189724-moc-zillertalbahn-uh-class-0-6-2-tank-engine-6-wide/

Thanks, I've ordered a Circuit Cubes set and I will have a go at motorising this model in the next few weeks.

Very nice. I love the red and cream livery version. I think that is the current livery on the Mariazellerbahn?