Narissis

If you move the road bridge down to align with the harbourfront road in a T-junction, that'd give you additional space for an incline. I think you could then make it fit if it starts right after the curve, especially if you have your trains oriented so they're always going downhill on the steep incline (then you could use a shallower one in the back where you might have the luxury of more space for a gentle uphill return grade).

FX Bricks runs on Valve Time™.

AFAIK, DCC support is still firmly in the 'maybe' camp. The intent is to launch a 'dumb' motor (similar in function to the official 9V motor except with an intercept between pickup and motor for an outside controller to be added) followed later by a 'smart' motor with the PFx Brick hardware built in. Maybe it will be possible to replace the PFx firmware with DCC? But an easier solution might be to just get the 'dumb' motor and add your own DCC decoder to the 'intercept'.

I very rarely ever turn my 9V speed regulators up all the way anyway. Better consistency and reliability at lower speeds, more torque for longer trains, and better durability all sound like fair tradeoffs to me.

New blog post; looks like some switches did in fact come in stock but they sold out almost instantly. Some more news on other products. A while back I had been wondering if Michael might double his power pickup bogie to two axles, like how Bevins Bricks did, to ensure continuous power through switches and it looks from the photos as if that will at least be an option. FX Bricks will have a presence at BSBT, for those fortunate enough to make that event you'll have the chance to chat Michael up in person about what's going on behind the scenes.

Is that double crossover a 3D-printed one converted to 9V? Or did you butcher some of the FX switches? :P

I think the switch tiebar debacle is a good illustration of why the product iteration process is so incredibly long. Michael needs to go back and forth with the manufacturer to work out all these little kinks, and with even the rigid rails without moving parts being composed of multiple pieces that all need to be assembled within certain tolerances, there are lots of opportunities for such kinks to arise.

Michael is an optimistic guy and definitely geeks out about his own products, so he tends to be a little too aggressive on his release date estimates. :P He also isn't big on blog posts or social media so he tends to let those fall by the wayside for months at a time. However, developing the FX Bricks products is his day job now and I think we can rest assured he's working on it, even if his timelines fail to account for inevitable delays. The switches, for instance, were two years behind schedule. But they did make it to market. I have reasonable confidence that the rest of the products will, too.

IIRC he wrote at one point about having tried the plain metal wheels and finding that the traction was good enough that the rubber treads aren't really necessary (plus they foul the track as they deteriorate). As for cleaning kits... well, he has an article about track cleaning over on BrickNerd, lol. I've always thought it'd be fun to build a track cleaning car with motorized cleaning heads, but I'm not sure how to make it navigate switches while still cleaning that contact corner of the rail. I suppose it'd be easier to design one based on all-metal wheels contacting on the tread surface, though!.

In development, but there is still a lot of fine-tuning to be done. All-metal wheels are all but assured; they'll be the same as the ones in the pickup bogie and that's almost ready to go. As of November the sticking point with those was finding a suitable surface treatment for the metal to get a nice black colour without negatively impacting conductivity. The reason the first-party 9V motors had to be spring-loaded was because the contact surface was the flange, and the load-bearing surface was a rubber O-ring, for traction. On the FX products, the wheel will conduct through its tread so the spring action won't be necessary (though you'll probably need to be a bit more diligent about track cleaning to maintain good performance). The solution for conducting power from the wheel into the unit is virtually the same as TLG's, in fact: small leaf spring contacts touching the back of the wheel. As for what actually remains to be engineered on the motor, Michael could correct me on this if he has occasion to pop in here, but my understanding is that it has more to do with finalizing the internals.

The intent is to package one with each motor, so I imagine they wanted to keep production in-house instead of sourcing third-party ones. This way FX Bricks can maintain control of that production (and more importantly to Michael, I imagine, the quality assurance for those parts).

The PF and PU adapter mention is interesting to me; last I spoke to Michael he suggested they might not bother with those because there are already other adapters on the market. Maybe he found their quality wasn't up to his standards.

That's not all that unusual; FX Bricks is a slow-moving machine given that it's run mostly by one person with a lot on his plate and who, by his own admission, is not at all diligent about posting blog updates. :P What I can say following Bricks in the Six in November is that the wheels are slowly grinding away behind the scenes; more track radii are in the pipeline but do expect them to take a while to trickle out. I believe the next big production push is for a restock of the switches so apart from the other things laid out in the roadmap from the last blog post, those will be some of the next things to expect back in stock.

Hmm... how much does that narrow it down? :P

I hope you came to see my layout on the other side of the railing as well. :)

AFAIK, the PFx Brick does not have that support out of the box. I'm not sure if it could be added via firmware. I do seem to recall Michael talking about the smart motor potentially having a DCC-compatible variant, but take that with a grain of salt. I wouldn't expect anything like that to materialize for another couple of years even if it does happen - after the standard versions of the motor.

BrickTracks for injection-molded PF switches. FX Track for injection-molded 9V switches (presently out of stock but new units are in production so give it a month or two). Note that these are larger-radius switches, but for crossovers that's what you want as the overall size of the crossover is smaller than with first-party switches since you don't need awkward geometry or a parallel intermediary track. For switches identical in geometry to Lego's own, the only injection-molded options may be AliExpress bootlegs. For exotic switch geometries, 3D printed is the only option for now.

R120 curves are live on the North American site and all other SKUs except switches appear to be replenished. R136 not yet added. No sign of either on JB Spielwaren but I imagine it won't be long.

The behaviour you're describing could be the result of dirty internal brushes within the motor bogies. I've never done it myself, but I'm given to understand they're not difficult to clean once disassembled... however, getting the bottom plate unclipped and replaced without damage is a bit of a feat.

Can probably also get away with single-axle when running trains fast, since their momentum will carry them over the deadzone.

The FX Bricks version will be similar, but instead of being hardwired there will be classic 9V style contacts on the inner studs of the wheelset and they'll be selling what are essentially recreations of the original 9V wires. As the comment you quoted points out, this does mean that you'll need an adapter cable to convert the 9V connection into PF or PU for those motors, but those are already available from different suppliers. The question I have, personally, pertains to Bevins' decision to move forward with double-axle bogies because of contact being interrupted from a single axle when the train goes through switches and things. I'm not sure what Michael's answer to this problem is with the FX solution.

I think what Murdoch is saying is that the problem this design is looking to solve doesn't really exist; the connections between regular pieces of straight track have enough room to flex that the track will naturally form this incline regardless. That being said, I do appreciate the effort to create a piece that avoids any stressing of the track connections and provides a curved transition without the slight 'knuckles' that standard track develops when it's angled relative to adjacent pieces.

Here's a handy article by Michael Gale about cleaning and restoring 12V track. Might be helpful!

I'm not sure about the PCB but I can tackle the other question based on my conversations with Michael last summer at Bricks in the Six. The intent is for the motor bogie to come in two versions. The cheaper version, the 'dumb' motor, will have contacts on two sides. One will be a direct pass-through from the track to the contacts, and the other will be a motor input. There will be a jumper (or perhaps a switch in the final version, as suggested by the drawings) on the motor that bridges these out of the box so it'll work like a standard 9V motor (but supporting up to 12V as implied by the power components illustrated in the update), but if the jumper is removed you will be able to put your choice of control solution between the track output and the motor input on the bogie. That could theoretically be FX's own PFx Brick, a Power Functions IR receiver, or some other third-party solution. The fancier version, the 'smart' motor, will integrate the PFx Brick electronics directly into the motor housing so you'll have that control functionality as a turnkey solution. Obviously this version of the motor will be priced higher. Obviously all that is subject to change as product development continues, but this was the understanding I left that event with. There was also some talk of maybe having standardized DCC support in a future motor project, but I think that's a bit beyond the initial scope. Could become an option on the 'smart' motor, or maybe be added as a third motor variant. Could end up on the cutting room floor. Time will tell!

Looking at the two, it looks like the only substantive difference between the two is that the FX Track R72 is the same size as two TrixBrix R72; if you use the FX Tracks instructions and ballast the TrixBrix rails in assemblies of two, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. Alternatively, look at the FX Track instructions and note the repeating pattern; all you'd have to do to ballast the shorter TrixBrix R72 pieces individually would be to replicate each end and then just infill the same pattern in between the ends; it simply wouldn't repeat as many times. Obviously doing it this way would affect the manifest of needed parts, though, so you'd have to suss that out to acquire the pieces.