Stereo

I wish I had a better colour of 15100 for photograph reasons, but it turns out the 42107 Ducati Panigale is the only set I had handy that uses them, in black. The white one is from the 42167 Garbage Truck (current year) Neither of them will accept a bar, but 65487 is described as "square holes" and 15100 is not. It's definitely a smaller hole, despite which the 15100 is a significantly harder connection to make. Different plastic I suppose. Other than this I couldn't see any differences in part design, I did confirm the part #s are printed on the side of the pin in extremely tiny letters.

I'm a bit late to building this one so I'm not going for a full review. Just want to say that I really enjoyed all the building techniques to get slight angles onto most of the body panels. I think it's what I appreciate most from the most talented designers, it's not just filling in the grid so it looks like the car. Only the 3rd 2024 set I've built, but it's my favorite. Also it's the first set I've had with 4569 slope 1x6x1 and as soon as I had it in my hands I realized it's finally a second piece in a 40-year-old slope family, ie. 4515 slope 10° 6x8. Something about the feel of the slope texture in my hands immediately told me. Now I'm curious to see if there are any sets using them together to produce slopes wider than 8 studs but not an even multiple of the large piece. I did poke around with the new pistons for a bit before assembling things, but I haven't thought of any npu for them yet. Slightly smaller than bar size, so they don't clip onto much (they do combine with minifig hands, but I'm not sure to what purpose). Having a stud on top, it'd be easy enough to put 1.5 or 2 stud diameter round plates on the end to make slightly larger engines.

Some parts like the 3L friction pins have always had square holes. I guess probably it's to make them sturdier. I don't know if the parts in question started out with bar holes though, older 2780 2L friction pins have a round hole that's too small for bars. So maybe they're just moving from almost-fits to definite non-fits.

It's presumably a more complicated mold since they have overhangs in multiple directions, the Technic bricks have the same problem due to holes top bottom and sides, while liftarms can be done as 2 piece molds. And I think that's a period when they were cost cutting on the parts inventory?

If you extend the converging links to the point where they connect, that's the instant pivot point. With this type of geometry it does move front to back as you steer, it's not always above/below the axle.

I wouldn't give that kind of blueprint too much credence, front overhang is a very common area for them to be wrong, cause they're often traced from reference photos that aren't precisely side-on. Half-stud difference is well within what I've seen them be wrong (worst ones I've worked with are probably >2 studs at this scale) Best comparison method is to match the Lego set to a photo in controlled conditions (focal length, framing, etc.) Probably the front wheels being large led to them fitting various bodylines to that scale instead of the overall scale. Bringing in 80mm tires would be nice if there are wheels that look decent.

I wonder if it'd be possible to keep the current length and shrink it down into better proportions with minimal changes, or is the engine/suspension too large to fit?

It could just as well be a white elastic, round the blue piece then through both axle holes. Not really needing to be wire.

https://rebrickable.com/parts/63869/technic-axle-and-pin-connector-perpendicular-triple/ it's these with towball-pins in them.

I imagine it's more of the flywheel motorcycles, same as 60333 Bathtub Stunt Bike, where it's mostly a custom fairing piece. Could be moved to 4 wheel flywheel chassis though.

I appreciate the reply! They're numbered Algoma Central (AC104 etc.) but owned by CN from what I understand. Yeah, the brake discs are an interesting oddity. The dark gray underside is more compromise to get the stripes to work. I would say the approximate 'right' amounts are 4 plates of LBG on the cars, 1 plate LBG on the locomotive, but between the baseplate and profile bricks, the cars get 5, so the locomotive makes up the same stack as 2 LBG, 2 DBG, and 1 empty space instead of the bottom half of a train base, so the rear truck needs a black pin on tile to be inobtrusive. It would be LBG, DBG, black, except I unexpectedly ran out of 1x8 or longer black plates. If I do lower the cars, the upper layer of DBG will hopefully be easy to remove. The door window has hollow studs on top that are used to revert the 1/2 stud offset, I'll see if I have any more dark red jumpers to try lowering it. Though I'm a little worried about touching those windows, they were in sets in the brittle red/brown era and one of them's already shattered when being shipped to me.

I dunno if I even agree with the basic point that they've stopped using it, there's lots of system on recent Technic sets. For example I've highlighted the tiles/slopes used on the Jesko released this summer. Maybe a quarter of the bodywork. Though I suppose I agree that it's pretty much all attached with 1/2 pins, so it's not really structural.

In the broadest sense, this is modified from the set 60051 Passenger Train. I wanted something more locally relevant, and the Agawa Canyon Tour Train has a fairly stylish livery. So this is 6 by 30 stud cars all around. Due to the train baseplates, bogie plates etc. available, I've chosen to build one locomotive and two passenger cars. Typically the real train runs with 3 locomotives and around 15-20 passenger cars. It runs a point to point route in Northern Ontario, including the namesake Agawa Canyon, and the remote destination is not much more than a washroom and some historical items from the railroad, so it runs locomotives at both ends and returns without turning around. Most of the train is formerly Colorado Ski Train equipment, including the EMD F40PH locomotives and the passenger cars that match its paint scheme. The front and rear of F40PH have a combination of angles that are a challenge to imitate in Lego, especially at 6 wide, so I've mostly stuck to what needed to happen to get the correct configuration of running lights. The front has some tiles placed at funny angles, and the rear is built partly upside-down. The windshield is snugly inserted without being connected to any studs, to get it at an angle. The real train's red is brighter and pinker, but not to the point of being Magenta, and that colour has less parts available, so I've built it in Dark Red. The roof of the real locomotives is technically satin black, but in most photos it reflects the sky so strongly that I felt like Sand Blue was a reasonable substitute. As you might have guessed from the IR dome, it's running Power Functions, and the rear half of the roof lifts off for access; the rearward ventilation fan can also be clicked to turn on the power brick, though there's no way to see whether it's on. An interesting feature of the passenger cars is that they're designed to make stops at locations with no platform, so stairs lead right down to track level from each door. Each car is named after a location in the area, which is what the red plate in the middle of the side represents. One aspect I'm not really happy with is how tall the locomotive looks in direct side view. The whole train's essentially a half-brick higher than it "should" be for how tall it is, because all the wheels are the same size and it's a little too large for the passenger cars in this scale. I do have plans to take a crack at that; I'll post an update once I've tried them out and can comment on any problems and results. I designed it in Studio, and found a couple issues when building it in bricks, so I should be able to post some low-effort instructions once I've synchronized. It seems to be 95% fine with R40 track (sometimes it decouples through switches, I think because the trucks have the magnets mounted so far away), but I've photographed it on an R104 corner. Here's a photo of the real train to give you an idea. Descent to Montreal River by Billy Wilson, on Flickr

Depending which clues you weight more, https://rebrickable.com/sets/6736-1/beach-lookout/?inventory=1#comments Beach Lookout or https://rebrickable.com/sets/6563-1/gator-landing/?inventory=1#comments Gator Landing seems like options. I think Gator Landing is the only set with the black suit + red 1x1x5 bricks.

Could be 202 at the Porsche/Ferrari GT3 scale, or 207 with similar motorization to 42176... If it matches Dom's Charger then I'd expect it to be more like the 1200 piece $120 range.

I found a local printer for them, I'm still calling them "#3" and "#4" but actually it turned out the truck wheels are slightly different in dimension from the ones meant to go on axles, so more specifically it's 1 and 2 plates lower diameter than the regular kind, rather than in the standard aftermarket wheel dimensions. In short summary, both sizes work fine in the trucks, though the smaller ones leave less than one plate clearance below the train. I'll post about it in a topic once I have the train built, as it's mostly an aside to that.

42204 (810 pcs. | $59.99) 42205 (732 pcs. | $59.99) 10 dollar increase on the formerly $50 cars? I suppose it was inevitable, they've been the same for a while.

You'll need both remotes of course (older sets use infrared, new ones use Bluetooth) but they can be on the same tracks, in the same room etc. with no problem. Any sets that use magnetic couplers can exchange cars between them, they're compatible. If you want to run double-headed/multiple unit trains then the new system is more suitable; they can have custom firmware loaded to communicate between each other and target the same speeds.

I don't think twice about paying for instructions if it's something I want to build. I suppose it helps that I'm rarely building more than one MOC in a month. Maybe if it was based on a $20 set I'd be less likely but people don't seem to charge for the small mocs anyway.

I don't know for sure if they're 2L or 3L pins, I think 3L makes more sense symmetrically. These are the parts my copy of Stud.io doesn't know about in Bright Flame Orange though. The 3L axle with stop is probably most interesting, it's never been recoloured? The black rubber parts handle most of the actual flex, I suppose the pins would give a bit but this structure's already a tiny bit off exact (the 7L beams are slightly too long) so it might take up the looseness.

I was gonna say something about how they managed to cut the part count on a 12 piece set, but I'm not actually sure why it has the 1x2 plate with bar up, so fair enough. Is it a hat stand?

I think the bottom half of the train base is what it can eliminate, yeah. Just eyeballing where the wheels are, it'd probably be ok to have it under a lower train base on larger curves but not R40. I suppose I can 3d print 8 each of #4 and #3 and see where that gets me. That's a longer term project though, as I've found out Shapeways is out of business, so I'll need to find a new source for accurate prints. Luckily the only really key dimension is the 2mm hole for the metal axle and I can drill them to size if needed, anything else being correct just makes it roll more smoothly.

Part updates are separate from version, you'll get the parts automatically when they're available. It checks when you start the program.

Nothing modern, but this tire is narrower at about the same diameter. https://rebrickable.com/parts/32078/tyre-70-x-28-futuristic/

They work for me, but only after a few refreshes.