Imanol

Thanks, it was very crucial for me to make it work on R40 as right now I don´t have any room for a bigger curve radius. I imagine part of the reason that this train works is because is one stud thinner than yours so every single dimension has been scaled down. Even then, I feel this train is much more comfortable working on bigger curve radius, the overhangs when traversing a curve are quite noticeable. It was for sure not the correct choice for a first project but it gave me two important things, a lot of knowledge and a bin full of spare parts. The Rodal was entirely designed by @Hod Carrier, I just implemented it, but I´m amazed at well it works. I hope that will happen at some point, I think it will look impressive on a full size circuit. For now, I´m thinking of going to some events but only in Spain. Thanks, I need to share the merit with @Hod Carrier which was the one responsible for all of the running mechanism of the cars. With what he has shown me, I´m now able to work on other projects

Thank you very much, this has been a very long journey but I´ve learned many things throughout the process that I will be able to apply in future projects.

Thank you very much. The lenght of the train makes it look great but in this case is also necessary as the single-axle bogies need to be guided through the curves by the front power car, but without the rear power car they are so light that they will immediately jump the track. The design of the axles is the work of @Hod Carrier, to give you an idea on my knowledge about how they work, I only understood how they were supposed to move once I have then built in real life, it´s a very clever but complex design. Thanks Imanol

Thank you very much Oh, that´s for sure. I already mentioned that I´m waiting for the 1x3 or 1x4 chesse slopes to redo the door area, but who knows what else I will do. Imanol

Thanks, the trouble with the bogies is documented almost in it´s entirety on this thread, feel free to look at it, I can confirm it was one of the biggest headaches I had with the project. The roof of the engine and the doors were some of the latter additions to the train and I also think that they improved the look of the entire power car. Right now I´m waiting for LEGO to release the 1x3 or 1x4 cheese slope in white as that will allow me to redo the top of the door and make it sturdier.

Well, after almost 3 years since I started this project and more than 2 since I finish the first section, I can finally say that this project is complete (or almost). It has more than 5300 pieces, weights 4 kg and has a length of 2 m. I´m not going to lie, this was not the best project to choose as my first one but I think it has helped me learn quite a lot from all of the mistakes I have made during it. Since the last update in September I decided to ditch the transparent home printed stickers and go for something more professional ordering custom stickers, at the same time I decided to invest on rechargeable batteries as I went through two entire sets of AAA batteries just doing testing. Right now the train is able to move completely on it´s own on R40 tracks (I´m severely limited on the room available for the circuit) as it´s show on this video: The trainset is made up of 2 power cars (both of them motorized), an End Business Car, a PRM Business Car, a Cafe Car, an Economy Car and finally an End Economy Car. This was the only way of taking a picture of the entire train: The power car has suffered quite a lot of changes since I started the project, the main ones are the new bogie design (which is quite fragile) and the roof detailing: I also redesigned the end of the trailers as in real life they have a more rounded shape: The cafe car has some special characteristics, the most important one is that is the only trailer with two axles, which makes it possible to run the train. The second one is that the windows are much higher, in this case the are just below the roof assembly so the roof has less clutch power: The two new cars that were added since the last update are the Economy Cars. The End Economy Car is identical structurally to the End Business Car but the regular Economy Car has another set of windows on each side which makes it less strong (at least according to studio): All of the train has an interior, there is even a cab in the power cars. Below is the interior of the Cafe Car and the Economy Car, notice that in the second one the last row of seats camouflages the bracket assembly that acts as the interior structure of the car. I want to thank anyone that helped with this project, specially @Hod Carrier which is responsible (at least) for: the close coupling articulation, the entire internal structure of the cars and the design for the powered bogie. Right now there is only one other update planned for this project that is to include lighting as I think is a missed opportunity having a fully detailed interior that can only be seen through the darkness. I´ve looking at Light My Bricks as the design seems perfect to integrate without much thought but I will need to look further into the different offered components to see which might fit better into this design. At the same time I´m already planning a new build which is going to be the Shunting Tractor Renfe Class 309 that I also want to motorize. This is going to be another challenge due to the limited room available and the fact that is a rigid design with three axles so it´s going to require a swivel mechanism. I´m already thinking of making a small piece order to start testing on real life but I will leave more details for when (eventually) I made another thread for it. This is all for now, I´m hoping to make new updates sooner although I can´t promise anything. Imanol

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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