faph

Oops, no I did not. I think it does deserve to be bumped up though. It’s pretty awesome. :)

Fantastic shunter. Very creative drive mechanism! I wonder if we could achieve something similar with Powered Up?

I think this layout would suit a rail bridge like this: It doesn’t need much hight over the water. Would be a fun play element too!

Outstanding attention to detail!

Interesting @Mr Hobbles! It made me think about the issue that Pybricks uses a higher PWM frequency than LEGO PoweredUp firmware. That could also be making it worse at low speed. I don’t think we can vary the frequency with Pybricks.

I have done this with one motor only. But I have would think that with the rotation sensor fitted motors performance at low speed should be pretty consistent? If I get a chance I might try to take a video of the engine running for some distance at the lowest speed setting. The cable fitting under the window frame was an accidental discovery. I had originally assumed I would have to cut a hole in one of the centre glass panels!

@Mr Hobbles The code is available here: https://github.com/faph/pybricks-train You will need to upload both Python files to the Hub. The "train.py" is the main (executable) file. My logic is a little bit complicated. That's by design because I like making things more complicated :). Seems I applied a minimum motor speed of 45 deg/s with a 1:1 gear ratio. At that speed the engine just about moves but not entirely smoothly. But you don't really notice when you are accelerating further or fully breaking. --- @XG BC Thanks! I have been following your 6-wide Köf thread. Very well done.

Train pulling into the station: When I say "station", it's more like a halt. But it does have a smoothy van! Father Christmas pushing his bike into the luggage compartment. And after the train has moved forward the local farmer is able to board too. Standing room only by the looks of it. No idea why there is a rabbit on the carriage floor...

It did cross my mind to replace the magnets with a different coupler, a technic lift arm or something. I didn't think about Jacob's bogies though. I guess I could use that trick to upgrade my engine + single car to a full train with rear car too without having to purchase any new wheels. The play factor is really important though in our family. The engine from the cargo train set 60198 might need to pull some coaches too some day...

Started off with 28 studs with 4 doors per car. Then I established that 2 doors are sufficient which allowed me to bring it down to a 24 studs base plate without reducing seating capacity! I actually quite like optimizing the design like that. Here specifically I wanted to figure out how cheap I could make this. So yes, I go through the process of selecting the cheapest colours and mold variants. I don't mind that bit. On Bricklink, it become a bit harder to optimise costs. Partially because shipping costs are not taken into account the algorithm to select stores (or am I wrong?). I do see a lot of sellers also adding handling fees etc. Also, in my country shipping costs are very expensive. The tiniest domestic parcel is close to EUR 10. That's off course the price individuals and small enterprises have to pay. I guess we are so used to cheap shipping costs from big merchants...

Pieces for engine + 1 car have been ordered. Bricks: EUR 107 Postage: EUR 29 Total: EUR 136 @zephyr1934 Should have followed your advice and buy this set https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?S=60197-1 for EUR 80 instead... Phase 2 will get us a car with cab:

Yeah it’s not necessarily a cashflow problem. It’s more of an experiment about getting back to basics. And at this rate it’s becoming a bit of a “luxury”. I mean paying EUR 30 in total for just the shipping… Maybe one approach to make this more of a low-key thing would be to start with engine and 1 carriage. Then later design another carriage with a cab-end. (Mmh I think work thinking is taking over my hobbies…)

Thanks! Our family treasurer first wants some more data and asked what money can buy off the shelves: Hogwarts Express Train Set #76423: EUR 130, 1100 parts (not motorized, includes station) Express Passenger Train #60337: EUR 160, 800 parts (ugly) Downtown Streetcar and Station #60423: EUR 90, 800 parts (not motorized, very playable, with small station/halt) So even if we were to motorize 1 and 3, you would still pay at least EUR 130. The streetcar set would probably be more value for money but after motorization it would no longer be the same thing as 1 car would have to be used for the battery unit.

Extracting some stats from my actual shopping baskets: (values in EUR, rounded) Battery unit: 32 Wheels: 25 Buffers: 11 Windows: 10 Motor: 9 Doors: 6 Total part is about 600 across 100 lots.

A passenger train has been on our family's wishlist for some time now. To date, cargo trains only. So I wanted to design something that was fun to play with and inspired by trains when I was a kid myself... I was also trying to figure out how cheap I could go while still having something that is good looking. On that front, not so much of a success: currently I have for EUR 150 in shopping baskets in Bricklink. That's excluding 5 times shipping costs... I was hoping I could do this for under EUR 100. I guess I could remove 1 carriage but then I'm not sure I can still call it a train.