Imanol
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About Imanol
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Exactly More than I imagined, I first did a test with only the PF metal axles and the train was constantly suffering from wheelslip issues even with only the locomotive. After changing the axles on the locomotive the train runs perfectly with no adherence problems
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Thank you Thanks, the trailers have the 2878 RC wheels with the metal axles that are currently being produced by LEGO. On the powercars I used the bearing wheelsets from BrickTrainDepot
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Hi everyone, for the first time in almost two years I can say that the S-130 is finished and is working as expected. Yesterday I finally received the bearing wheelsets and after fitting them to the train (and changing the hub batteries) everything worked as expected. Right now the only thing that is left is to finish cutting the axles for the close coupling articulation (right now there is a problem when taking curves) and reapplying the stickers. For now I want to thank all of you who have helped this project giving me ideas to solve small issues or in other cases redoing part of the cars @Hod Carrier. I hope that next week I will have the train ready for a photoshoot and I will post the official presentation of the train. Right now I will leave here a video of the train running (apologies for the camera quality): Thanks for all of the help, Imanol
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Well, I´ve finally made the piece order and apart from almost forgetting all of the metal axles (thanks to the seller for allowing me to modify the order after being placed) everything should be fine and I´m expecting to receive it over the next weeks. I will update it when I receive everything and hopefully everything will work fine. Thanks for all the help, Imanol
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Okay, right now my idea is to buy one set of wheels with bearings for the front bogie of the powercars which were already designed for it and the change the wheels in the train cars for the 2878. I might look at some lube oil but I might need to be more careful applying as I´m still having issues with wheelslip as I accidentally covered the wheel flanges with oil and it´s not very easy to clean. For now, I haven´t been able to move the train without the wheels slipping although I don´t know if this is caused only by the oil or it might be something else so I will continue testing and see if I can solve it. The price might be similar but right now my main concern is if the bearings are available in Europe as all of the ones that I have found come from the US so I don´t know if right now they can be shipped. Also the use of bearings relies entirely on the possibility of being able to take apart the assembly as there isn´t any other way of incorporating it to my design. The part about the train suddenly moving concerns me the most as right now the train is located at 1.5 m over the floor on top of a drawer chest with no barriers on either side so I might need to make some type of buffer. I hope I can solve any issues on the design today and maybe even make the piece order tomorrow Thanks, Imanol
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Okay, I think I have found a "solution" to the issue which is much simpler (and stupid) that anything else. After all of the issues that were raised about the 38339 wheels I decided to try and reduce their friction with the only thing I could get a hold off at home, which is olive oil. So after applying a bit of oil on both the wheels and their holders I have been able to move the train past a switch with the powercar pulling 3 other cars. Of course this was only a temporary solution and I will order bearing wheelsets but for now I know that with that might be enough. At the same time (and due to the applying method) I have experienced wheelslip although I hope that will only be temporary. So right now I´m going to change the main focus to redesigning the wheels on the cars to be able to use bearings and replace all of the wheels in the train with them. Apart from that I will also order the required pieces to fix the bogie gear issues but for now I will keep the motors as it looks that right now they might be able to work just fine. Also I´m wondering if changing the 38339 for the 2878 (with metal axles) will be enough or if it´s better to use bearings on all of the axles. I will keep you updated as I´m going to wait a few hours to see if the oil on the flanges disappears and the wheelslip stops. Thanks for all the help, Imanol
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I have continued with the testing and have some new and partially good information. First, I have tried making the scrapiest possible "locomotive" to test the motor and it was suffering from the same issue when reaching a switch pulling the 3 cars. Then I decided to try and pull the other locomotive (without the gearing) as it weighed the same to test if the problem was on the cars or in the power car itself. The result was the same as with previous tests with the motor struggling to pull on the straight track and failing to traverse the switch. At the same time I also tried pulling ony two cars and the results was the same. This leaves me with the conclusion that the motor looks to be underpowered and it doesn´t look like they are faulty as part of the tests have been carried out with the other motor and hub. I haven´t tried using the motor itself on the rear bogie as the only designs that I tested were with the motor in the front bogie (with the previous power car frame) and now with the geared bogie connected to the motor on the rear axle Right now, it looks very likely that the next step might be to order a bigger motor and see if it can work although it will require a redesign of the inside as I don´t see how I can make it fit right now. Fortunately the money is not the bigger issue, it´s the fact that it might not work and then find myself with multiple "useless" motors and back to square one. This is something which I might need more data about as right now I don´t have any way of knowing how much difference there is in friction in each case although i doubt this will be the key of the problem Looks like at some point I might need to take my time and understand the app. That was the way I used to make the first tests and it wasn´t much difficult although if I keep the gears I might invert one of the bogies to avoid needing to do that Well, that´s the problem, both locomotives are already powered. As I said right now I don´t have enough pieces to "fix" both locomotives but I have been doing tests with one of them and half the load and I´m still suffering the same issues. Right now, it looks like the key might be looking for new axles (maybe order the one with bearings) for the unpowered bogie and then try and fit a PU L motor which might not require much modifications to be done. I still need to check if there is a simple way of attaching the motor but it looks easy enough. At the same time I want to inform that even though the problem hasn´t been solved there has been major advances. For example, I tried moving the other power car (without any modifications) and the gearing mechanism failed instantly even without applying power. Unfortunately I don´t have enough pieces to make the necessary changes on both powercars so I won´t be able to test it. Thanks, Imanol
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Thank you for the words. I have had previous "light bulb" moments that have made possible other trains and even cases of delaying so much the solution that the right piece was produced. I know at some point I will find the issue like when I previously discovered why the bricks were cracking but the main trouble is that I don´t know how much time I will have starting on september so that´s definetely not helping
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I would like to do something like that but the fact is that right now I have very limited quantities of pieces available, specially technic components, so is very difficult to make something simple. When I only had one power car built I was able to take the other motor bogie and making some kind of contraption put the motor on top but it wasn´t very stable and I only used it to control the rear of the train when testing the main locomotive. I have already tried adding weight on top of the motor but there hasn´t been any improvements with an added 120 g. This is something that can be used but I don´t know how much will improve as the passenger train cars are built with the 38339 wheel holder instead which in theory doesn´t have as much friction. This unfortunately won´t never work with this design. This train is based on a real train made by Talgo, the main thing about this trains are that there is only one axle per car with the other side of the car resting on the following car. This is completely different from conventional train cars which have two bogies which could be motorized in this situation. Here is a picture of how it looks (the final axle should be part of the next car): At the same time this design is supposed to be lighter than any other type of train but that doesn´t translate well into LEGO as the cars required a complete technic frame on the inside to prevent them from buckling. There is also the wheel guidance issue which I suppose is the problem that is experiencing when reaching the switch but after doing tests pushing the cars by hand they can go through the switch with no trouble. RIght now I need to find a way of attaching the pin from the motor bogie on the front of the power car but this doesn´t look to be easy as there is 5 1x16 technic beams used as reinforcement which need to be partially removed and then I need to see how to add another technic contraption to connect the bogie. Apart from that the only thing I can try is to look for a way of building a one bogie "shunter" to try and pull the cars but I won´t be able to make anything close to the size of the current power car. Thanks for all of the help, Imanol
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Well, yesterday I continued doing testing and I was able to rig my phone to move with the train and film the gear on the bogie axle. After reviewing the videos I noticed that the gear was moving constantly and that there wasn´t any wheelslip. But at the same time, I was able to see on the hub that the low voltage indicator was coming on constantly (even though the batteries are new) and when reaching a switch the train was stuck and not moving at all. I also tried putting the other hub with batteries on top of the rear axle (adding like 120 grams) but it didn´t change anything. The only time I experienced the wheelslip was when trying to reverse the train after getting stuck on the switch although the motor stopped turning almost immediately. When I first received the motors I did a bit of testing with the previous setup which included using the train motor in the front bogie and even though the problem wasn´t as big I already noticed that it was struggling to pull the 3 cars although there wasn´t much issue traversing the switch apart from the rear of the train derailing due to the low weight and lack of guidance. Right now it will take some work to rearrange everything on the power car to test again this setup and it might require some pieces as the bogie attachment components have been reused in other parts. Looking at the data I think the difference in performance between both motors is negligible and I don´t know if I want to take the risk and end up having the same trouble. Looking at the stats for the motors on here: https://motors.sariel.pl/ it looks like the 88013 has much more torque but very low rpm so it might be quite slower. The fact that it can only be controlled by the app will make this impossible to control so I think this option might need to the discarded entirely The issue of trying to connect two hubs either with Pybricks software or with the LEGO app will create a lot of trouble as the only way I found to do that is to connect both hubs directly to the remote so I need them in different channels to make them go in opposite directions. If anyone has any idea how to solve this, it will be greatly appreciated. For now I will try to make modify the studio model to see if I can add the train motor on the front without requiring a new piece order and if possible test with this setup in both powercars and see if it´s enough. Right now the hard line will be with replacing the rear bogie as is not only the side detail that needs to be removed as the entire rear connection that will need to be changed to make way for another motor changing the appearance of the train quite a lot. Thanks for all the help, Imanol
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When I received the motors and hubs I tried using Pybricks or the LEGO app but neither option allowed for two hubs. The LEGO app was not able to detect the second hub and I was only able to use both hubs with only the remote with the LEGO software as with Pybricks it didn't let me connect the other hub
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I supposed there was some kind of issue with using the 88013. The problem with removing the bottom of the hub is that is where is connected to the train, the top is connected only to the roof so it´s not very secure and the roof needs to be removed to turn on or off the hub. I´ve continue doing testing and tried using a front axle without friction rings but the result it´s still the same. I have also tried searching what is the maximum load that the 88011 motor can pull but I wasn´t successful apart from finding the torque value and AI data which is not very clear. Looking at "testing" I´ve seen trains carrying up to 10 carriages of the 60197 with 1 motor with minor wheel slipping so it doesn´t make any sense that a combined weight of 2,5 kg is causing any trouble. I tried at some point to run two hubs at the same time and I wasn´t able to use it so that might become an issue with the setup of this train as the train has two powercars Right now I´m in a difficult situation as I will need to make a major redesign whatever the final solution chosen is but at the same time the two main ideas are quite different so I want to have the certainty that it works before making any piece order. Thanks for all of the help, Imanol
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There is also another issue which I completely forgot about it but took quite a lot of time to solve which is how to attach the train plate pin to the 7 stud wide train at the correct height. This required a very complex technic contraption which unfortunately I reused the pieces in other parts of the build so I will require to make a piece order only to test this. Right now my main doubt is knowing if it´s possible to use the 88013 motors like in the crocodile as I think there is enough room if I lower the battery box. If this is too difficult I may go back to using the two 88011 motors as proposed. Thanks, Imanol
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It's definetely possible, in fact the train was first built with that in mind and before modifying the design I tested it like with one motor bogie, although other issues prevented a more thorough test with the full load and it was suffering from a lack of power The train right now is powered by a sideways train motor located inside the frame. The main issue of using the motor directly is that is not very detailed and it's less customizable (I can't change it's direction by mirrroring a gear) and I don't if it's possible to fit two at the same time.
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Well, today I was able to resume testing with the train and my worst fears have come true. To summarize everything, the train is lacking power to move all of the cars. This is something that I had thought before but I didn´t have enough proof of it. Looking at the available material on the internet there is no indication that this can be a problem but the testing says otherwise. I have replaced the front axle assembly with the 4x6 technic brick and immediately I experienced wheel slipping and what I suppose is the anti-slipping feature of the motor which is to stop turning. When the train was able to move it was quite slow and it never was able to completely traverse through a switch as the wheel friction was enough to stop it. The tests have been done with a powercar with has a weight of 1 kg approximately pulling three train cars with a combined weight of 1.5 kg. This train has the particularity of being a Talgo and like it´s real counterpart, there is only one set of wheels per train car so that might also cause problems. Although hand pushing the cars show no issue at all. Due to the design of the powercar and the option chosen, there is only enough space for one motor powering the rear bogie. Here it can be seen the interior distribution of the power car: This looks like a major issue as right now there is not enough space for another motor and as I mentioned in a previous post it will require a complete redesign of the powercar. At this point the only other solution might be to look for aftermarket motors but I don´t know if it could be enough. For now all of the test have been carried out with only one power car and 3 of the 5 cars. In theory each power car should only need to pull 2,5 cars but I feel that the difference is too small to be the issue and unfortunately I only have the required pieces to fix the center axle problem on one of the two bogies. Thanks for all of the previous help, Imanol.
