Stereo

Mostly no real difference when used as spur gears, but the thin bevels are probably a bit worse as bevels. Larger also better, I've pretty much only had 8 and 12 teeth gears skipping as long as the engagement's ok. With less ideal loose engagement, spur gears might work better, but it's going to be still quite easy to skip.

I suppose you could probe your layout for good feed locations by running a battery-powered (or push) train with a multimeter connected to power pickup wheels. You'd just short the feeder at the power supply end, instead of connecting it, then measure resistance. A dynamometer car that just passively shows the voltage across the rails could be interesting too. Might take a bit of running to get used to interpreting it.

I wound up getting a bunch of misprint/short shot parts in one bulk lot, which makes me suspect the previous owner was collecting them back in the day: Mis-aligned to the point you see the print from the next brick over, and double-printed, did you know they still print the white outline onto white classic space bricks? Yeah. I don't know how someone found and kept the short shot that's only a single stud. The bricks are old enough to have been injected from the side, so probably early 80s.

I don't think this kind of mix is supposed to pass Quality Control, I've only had 2-3 pieces that showed any sign of it, all from the 80s or older. Except for one case of Anakin Skywalker who must be from around 2000. I uploaded a picture of him to Rebrickable; green streak in his left leg. It does look pretty cool though. I believe this is black, most obvious one I have for photos - another is white+light gray and just looks discoloured.

I thought about that more, and another direction to go with it could be to pick a smaller set with 2+ figures and helmets, and get uniformity through having multiple copies of the set. As an example, 71826 could turn into "gold faction" and "black faction" and both look fine in space. More ideally they'd have 2 actual heads so you can swap those to create variety within the groups.

I'm definitely thinking more oriented towards interesting parts and workable colours than the minifigs. The extent I thought about figures, the plan was "get out some Classic Space figs to pose in the build." In terms of buying a set for this purpose I guess what I'd say is that in general I'm trying to cut back the growth of my collection, so if I'm buying a set (or even multiple copies) I want to be happy with the A-model as a fallback when I'm done messing around with MOCs. So in that regard Dreamzzz is better than a random Harry Potter display set that happens to come with canopies. I'd just rather make specific suggestions than say "yeah that's a good idea, anything can be a spaceship." I'm fine designing digitally but I do consider that only the first 80% of making a MOC, the last fine tune has to be in actual parts if there's anything at all functional in the build.

The "remix" City sets might be good for this, their main downside I see is hard to make a consistent colour theme. Maybe you could flip that on its head and say it leaves room for multiple factions from the same set. But a mix of land/sea/air means all the types of parts you need for Space. Just scanning through "new for 2026," 76461 has the ingredients of a good ship, but I'm not going to pay retail for it. I might mess around in Studio with its parts and hope to catch one on sale.

It depends on what things cost, but I expect my minimum order specific to trains is the power pickup axles and track connection wire, so I can combine it with PF remote control. Most likely IR receiver onboard the train, for DCC-like behaviour, but if that turns out to be unreliable (no idea how much the receiver tolerates gaps in power for maintaining speed settings), wall power into the receiver into the tracks is a backup plan. Aside from being what's available first, it just makes more sense budget-wise to continue to use the working PF motors I have. Though I suppose for this specific task there is one thing - the PF 9V adapters don't connect to the "constant" side of the PF plug, which is what the IR receiver input needs. Obviously the workaround is just wire my own adapters the other way. So I might also order some short FX wires to get spare 9V plugs.

Several Powered Up sets have a non-remote hub where you just turn the motors on with switches on the hub - the Lighthouse, red/white Airbus helicopter, and most recently the EC500 Excavator. It's part 85825. I've used one with a battery-replacement set similar to this one: https://www.amazon.ca/T-HOT-Adjustable-Battery-Eliminator-Batteries/dp/B08QVLCCXG It needed cutting a small groove to get the wire out of the battery case cover, but after that, no more batteries, just put it in USB when I want to run it. (this example goes to a wall socket, the one I actually own provides 5V usb, which is enough for what I use it on) I haven't tried this specific product, it's just to give an idea what they look like.

"Double shear" linkage (one link shaped like a fork, connecting both sides of the other link) will improve mechanism smoothness quite a lot, cause it gets rid of twisting forces, which make all the pins bind up a little bit. You have lots of space to work with, so instead of the single blue pin-axle connecting rods, you could put two of those around each slider. Or you could have one lead to 2 sliders. When that's not possible, using thin liftarms gets the centres closer (along with the axle-pin connector that's only a half-thickness pin) Dimensionally, the connecting rod should be as long as possible, as the straighter a line it travels in, the less side-friction it generates on the slider. Likewise, the farther apart the 2 guides for the slider, the less force ends up sideways on each. Though of course to do both at once you'd need a taller mechanism. If you have ability to get modern parts, the 60474 round 4x4 plate with hole in the middle has rounded off edges to the underside of the hole, so they'll work more smoothly than classic Technic plates - I can't say how much this would improve things but the lower slider hole is where I'd test them.

It would probably have one of the mini ones, similar to https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?C=m90usto depending where it was sold. Small sets in that era generally used these single-page ones.

The tan seatback pieces are the only change I made, couldn't get them into a cart with the other parts so I used a different handle piece. I would say she's likely the daughter of the original purchaser of the car. These tires suit old cars better than the previous style. Hopefully they'll get a bit cheaper soon, I paid a dollar each for these ones.

The weird thing is it's right next to a brown 1x1 Technic brick with a stud stuck in it, so they obviously know there are other parts available... why is it a headlight brick? I have heard that Technic brick pinholes don't line up with SNOT, but... surely that's a smaller problem than what they did do.

My optimist outlook is that the cars are easier to leak because people recognize them. The heavy equipment names don't mean as much and the sets look more "the same" (eg. if we get another Volvo, it'll likely be black and yellow).

https://rebrickable.com/parts/6596/tyre-816-x-142-motorcycle-z-racing-tread/ Really looks like the same size as these tires (~10 stud * 2 stud), interesting. I wonder if they'll use them in black for a motorcycle. Windshield is I guess dual molded with bars at the end. Stuck into half-pins.