ER0L

I guess the most effective way would be the following: widen the passage by fixing the gate at the other side, maybe even behind the shack, thus you get a width of 8 studs for a car to pass through - which you need in any case since something (and be it the handles on the doors) will stick out (unless you don't want to go 5-wide) narrow the car by using smaller wheels (as Ron has already suggested), the car will get a much more decent look by doing so and fit better to the other "modular vehicles" (you may use the same wheels as on the fire truck) to set the car down further you could use the windscreen https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=58181#T=C with plates underneath, like in set https://brickset.com/sets/6867-1/Loki-s-Cosmic-Cube-Escape which looks quite nice in my opinion finally (but that's just an option) you could lenghten the car (which now rather looks like a 2-seater) by using another 4 x 6 x 2/3 wedge at the roof (or even keep the whole roof flat by using tiles) - of course you need a chauffeur then who polishes the black armored beauty all day long ... However, the janitor will be delighted to have someone to talk to, I guess.

Thanks a lot for your kind words! Car builders seem to have a hard time on EB nowadays, I'm not the only one complaining ... When I started moccing minifig scale cars 6 years ago there was much more going on in the Town forum regarding vehicles. But well, times are a-changing, people seem to be less interested in cars in RL, too, and we have to accept that. Glad you like the 917K and the F1 racer, too. Yeah, the 917K is a real monster and rather a flying saucer than a car, it's hard to do it justice. But thank to the SC canopy part we can try at least. Concerning the F1 I can't take credit for the shape of the body. The designer did a great job here, I only changed a few details.. Regarding Formula 1: Yes, I have similar memories, plus I'm rather a fan of the classic racers, too. Ferrari 312T or Lotus 79 - those were some great looking F1 cars. And yes, I've seen the curbs myself on my visit to Monaco last year. Many thanks again! As for cars, you can be sure that I'll keep them going as long as I'm able to put a tire on a rim ...

Okay, you didn't seem to like the Porsche 917K too much, but what about a Formula 1 racer? Ferrari Formula 1 (75879 MOD) Truth to be told, this doesn’t have the right scale for my purposes - wheelbase is the same like on the original model. But well, for me it’s a first step into Formula 1 Lego race car building, I just wanted to see how it works. My further attempts hopefully will be smaller - which won’t be that easy, I guess; seems that things come together quite well in this larger scale. 75879 definitely is a great set, I only changed a few things (see the comparison under https://www.flickr.com/photos/er0l/35231036003/in/photostream/): - narrow and set down the nose (which alas is no longer changeable now) - set forward the pilot for one stud - close the cockpit at the sides - mount smaller front wheels (very important in my opinion on F 1 racers) - last, but not least: build a steering which in my opinion is the most important aspect on an F1 car since they look ten times better in curves plus - unlike other vehicles - there’s plenty of room for the front wheels to pivot (the downside of this is that the front wheels don’t spin any more on my version) The car now has a more classic appeal in my opinion, it doesn't resemble an actual Ferrari racer but for now that’s okay. It’s just a Formula 1 Ferrari. 100% Lego. Thanks for looking!

Sorry, I missed this. Hopefully we get to see your version soon! Probably you've found a solution yet, if not: The distance between the mudguards is five studs, the rear window consists of a trans-black 1x2 brick and a trans-black 1x2 panel. Okay, maybe you like this one, too: Porsche 917K (75678 MOD) Ever since it hit the market I wanted to mod the Porsche 917K from Speed Champions set 75876 since it’s such an icon. The model is very well done in my opinion plus has an intriguing set of stickers. However, there were other things in the pipeline plus I had no actual idea how to accomplish it. But since the larger projects are more or less paused at the moment I tried my luck during the last few days. Main problem at the beginning was the width. While mudguards at the front and no mudguards at the rear don’t look bad on the original model, this combination doesn’t work very well with City mudguards at the front since they stand out a lot. I know there are such versions, and they do look nice as "City Champions", but I was thinking about something closer to the original car. The solution was (other than on the Ford GT40) to build the whole car in plain 7w and to use curved slopes above the front wheels instead of mudguards to get a thin structure here - and there was the shape, as curvy as it ought to be and with the right proportions. Might be a suitable form factor for other endurance/prototype race cars, too (the Ferrari Le Mans - see above - is 7w+ and a bit larger in scale). I must say I’m very grateful towards TLG regarding the SC series. Of course they are targeted to children, but with that canopy part and those nice sticker sheets we’re able to build good looking race cars for our layouts. Together with the 1x2 and 2x2 curved slopes there are a lot of possibilites nowadays which didn't exist some years ago when I entered the Lego car building business. And in this case it’s really nice that there are mainly stickers and not printed parts since we may put the stickers where they are needed (for example: on a 7w model a 2x4 slope with the Porsche logo printed on it would be quite difficult to apply). I really hope there’ll be more classic racers like the 917K reproduced as an SC model in the future (a Formula 1 Lotus of the Seventies being my personal dream car, I guess). 100% Lego. All stickers are uncut. Okay, stickers containing fake vents are against the principle of “no constructive elements via stickers”, but well, the other elements are too important here. Alas, stripes on the front wheel wells are missing due to the studded section here on the set model. Another sticker sheet would be required to add them. Seems to be my first Porsche, too. Thanks for looking!

Thank you very much for these hints which are very helpful! Didn't know that there are special "long hood forward lines", that sounds great. Lights in the direction of travel might be a bit complicated with Lego locos but it's okay for me to have all the lights on. Of course working ditch lights would be great but I have no idea how to accomplish that with Lego. At least you'd need a lot of room for a motorized crank drive with two PF switches ... However, on the GP38-2 lights are switched on when the radiators start to move, plus the caboose does have a red light at the rear (still need to show that). Thanks all for viewing and commenting, more to come soon!

No offense but I'm a bit concerned about the growing amount of Nonlego stuff presented in Lego forums lately. This development seems to be based onto the idea that Lego is something deficient, something that has to be improved to fulfill our needs. But that isn't true in my opinion. From my point of view the idea behind building with Lego - instead of the usual modelmaking - is that all builders are restricted to the same amount of shapes and colours - in a competitive sense, if you will. The quality of a Lego MOC is never a result of the material used (anybody can buy the same bricks and put them together somehow) but of the creativity of the builder. Since there's no common sense about which kind of Nonlego stuff is "allowed" or not in a Lego MOC any use of Nonlego parts will lead to the conflict to decide if the MOC looks so great because the builder is so talented - or because he uses Nonlego parts to pimp it up (this already begins with custom stickers). Regarding your tiles (which do look good as such, no question) I'd rather see a model from someone who has found a way to use, say, 2x2 tiles in a diagonal way than a model with your solution. But, as said, that's only my personal opinion.

Hi all, in the meantime the "little sister" (in fact, she's not that little ...) of the GP38-2, the GP15-1, has been finished: You may think she’s just a shrinked version of her bigger sister, but that’s not the case - a lot of details were tried on this one first (like the truck-mounted couplers or the removable cabin roof). The most important reason to choose this model was that I didn’t want to build moving radiators again like on the GP38-2. Plus I was thinking that maybe a shorter loco would be more suitable for shunting purposes, especially regarding the hump. However, I was proven wrong - the GP38-2 is actually working nicely on the hump, too, as you may spot in the video. Main point here is the lighting - I wanted to have full front and back lighting (8 lights overall) on this one so that the loco may move in “long hood forward” mode, too. As I’ve been told, some people think that’s the proper direction of such a diesel anyway. I must admit that I don’t know exactly if the lights on an American loco are on all the time regardless of the loco’s direction - however, switching them would probably be too complicated. Some specs: Scale: 1/43 Length (platform): 46 studs Length over couplers: 39 cm Width (platform): 9 studs Weight (with 4 batteries and 2 aluminum dummies): 972 g Here you can see both of them together: 100% Lego. Thanks for looking, more to come!

It's rather a combination of the two, I guess - a one way solution, but with the longer decoupler part of your last version. I was thinking about a different way to separate the cars from each other (with Technic liftarms coming from below - at least there's some room beneath the tracks due to the hump), but your concept proved to be so reliable and easy to handle that I didn't waste my time any longer. I'm very grateful for your invention! Thank you! At the beginning I was indeed thinking about that. However with this concept there wasn't any room for an L motor in spite of the loco's size. Plus I'm not sure if one L motor is better than 2 train motors, regarding the purpose of the loco, but maybe that's because my lack of knowledge. I'd like to add 2 photos and a video. The photos show the pivoting of the trucks on the hump: An impression of the working radiators: Many thanks all for viewing and commenting. There are quite a few train related MOCs in the pipeline, so I'll be back!

Hi all, hopefully it's okay to put all the train stuff together in one thread - I don't have that many train MOCs yet, plus all things belong together somehow. A few of you might know me as a car builder mainly, however, from the beginning I was interested in the different elements of Lego layouts - cars don't mean that much to me without a proper surrounding. That's why I've also built some other stuff over the years - which leads to the question of a proper scale. Scale When dealing with several types of vehicles and buildings, scale becomes an important aspect, that's why I've tried to find a proper graduation of widths for vehicles (like others did, too, but a bit larger since I'm developing things with the cars in mind): Some more info about this subject you may find in this EB thread: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/97314-citytown-vehicles-range-of-possible-widths/ The Monorail Regarding trains, I started in 2013 with a PF-driven Monorail train: The EB thread you may find here: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/82147-moc-monorail-train-7w-with-powerfunctions/. There are some developments going on regarding the Monorail, too, but that will be shown later. The GP38-2 The GP38-2 you can see in the photo above was a first step into the "real" Lego Train world in 2015. I'm a huge fan of those great US Lego train layouts plus I wanted to see what trains and especially locos would have to look like to match the other stuff I’m building, especially the cars. I soon found out that even 8w might be too small for one of those gigantic American locomotives I wanted to build, that’s why I opted for 9w (plus railings), which furthermore looks quite good on the Lego rails with their large scale. When looking for a proper livery I soon found out that the St. Louis - San Francisco Railway (“Frisco”) would be a good choice since the rather simple logo could be built completely out of Lego quite easily. There don’t seem to be too many of them in Lego, I’ve seen 2 or 3 of them since, I guess, but maybe that’s rather due to my lack of knowledge in this field. The GP38-2 has gone through some changes recently to make it more fit for its duties (see below) - it originally had body-mounted couplers which didn't work out - and to improve its handling so that it might be more or less finished right now. This is what it looks like today: Some more pics on Flickr. The loco has moving radiators, propelled by an M-motor, connected with the front lighting and operated via the IR receiver so that you have a bit of a startup procedure and the possibility to let it idle properly which is otherwise rather difficult when mimicking diesel-electric locos with Lego. Some specs: Scale: 1/43 Length (platform): 50 studs Length over couplers: 42 cm Width (platform): 9w Weight (with 4 batteries and two aluminum dummies): 1,130 kg The Hump Yard Originally meant to pull a (probably rather short) cargo train within a collaborative layout I recently thought about having a hump yard in order to get some more action on the layout. The GP38-2 had to be modified for that purpose (especially regarding the trucks), plus there had to be a second loco (a GP15-1, still a WIP) to push the cars uphill with 2 locos combined (which also proves to be a big improvement when pulling rather heavy cargo trains through curves). I also built some cars (also WIPs, except the caboose below). On a meeting with fellow builder Steffen Kasteleiner (see https://www.flickr.com/photos/29666619@N04) I was able to use two of his magnificent tanker cars so that there were already 5 cars to be humped, as is documented in this video: The main point here is the decoupler for which I used the great and well-known decoupler design by CamelBoy68: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/80286-decoupler/ However, I added a spring so that you don't have to operate it any time you want to decouple a car. The downside of this is that you have to take off the decoupler part when pulling the train out of the yard. Still thinking about a solution to set down the whole spring unit for that purpose. Another possibility would be to pull out the sorted trains at the opposite side of the yard so that the hump is omitted completely. But that would require even more room. Of course the switches are operated by hand at the moment, I just edited that in the video. I'd love to enlarge the whole thing - however already a baby hump yard like this requires a lot of room. The Caboose Now for the caboose: Some more pics on Flickr. The caboose is also 9 studs wide, of course, the cupola even 11 studs. I would have loved to build the cupola in 10w, however, I wouldn't have been able to build the roof in the style I've wanted. I've already been told on Flickr that there should be done more regarding the trucks, however, I haven't found a proper solution for that purpose yet - in fact you don't see much of the trucks from above at this width, but that might not be a proper excuse for you train guys! One aspect in the title is still missing: containers. You may spot the 9w yellow well car with a 7w container in the video which is still in the making. Containers are an important aspect regarding scale since you can't use the usual 6w containers in such a surrounding. Plus containers are quite important to me because they are some kind of interface between road and track vehicles. There's already a proper container truck, there's a 7w container design with a special stacking lock, and there's a (hand-operated) reach stacker in the making. Hopefully this can all be presented together in the near future. 100% Lego. Thanks for reading all this stuff, more to come!

Great, a lovely build! Thanks for adding it to the Lego Gas Stations Group on Flickr.

Thanks, glad you like the SC alternates. Regarding instructions: There aren't any, sorry. I'm not very good at using LDD - instructions would take much more time than the build as such. However, the SC alternates are free to copy or to be distributed via LDD (as long as there's no money involved). But well, that doesn't solve your problem, if nobody does so ... However, the build is more or less what you see. If you have questions regarding special sections don't hesitate to PM me.

Thank you! Yes, those are nice memories ...

"Aluminum, stickers, custom parts" might sound a bit scary for a true FOL ... ;-) I'd rather be interested in what you come up with regarding the Lego part. No, it has the voice of Gottfried Kramer (German voice of inter alia Humphrey Bogart, Burt Lancaster, Marlon Brando and F. Murray Abraham). ;-) I must admit that I've never heard the original voice.

Thank you! Sorry, there's not much of an interior, it would be hardly viewable anyway. I more and more try to focus on certain aspects of a car model - not everything can or must be done in any case. Regarding a DeLorean: Of course I'd love to build one (there's still the model from the ideas set collecting dust on my shelf, waiting to be stripped for some years now) but to be honest I don't have a proper idea for it. The mentioned Misterzumbi has already done what can be done in this rather small scale. I'd have to rely on the exact same premises - there's not much sense in more or less reproducing his model or slightly modifying it. But like you said - maybe it's a question of a new part which will allow a new approach some day. Anyhow looking forward to your 7w version!

My ad hoc take on the Ford GT40 from set 75881 (probably one of my SC favourites due to that great frontend): I've taken the usual measures to integrate the model into the "larger city scale" range I'm using (~1/35 for passenger cars): use City wheels lower the build (it's 10 layers instead of 13 - a whole brick), this was a main goal since the GT40 is one of the lowest sports cars ever (40 inches, hence the name) shorten the wheelbase (for one stud) make the build more realistic, if possible (here I tried to get much more curved lines, like on the original car) On the other hand you can't squeeze in a fig any more, but well. With more building time the model could be improved, I guess, but as a quick conversion it's okay for me. Thanks for looking!

Thanks guys, glad you like it!

Hi all, since there's that great minifig of "The Hoff" now there had to be the car, too. Usually I prefer to place the figs inside their cars if possible. However this is difficult regarding sports cars in my preferred 1/35 scale, that's why I rather tried to do the fig justice and opted for a super-low silhouette of K.I.T.T.: As you can see here, the combination of 1/35 sports cars with 1/40 minifigs doesn't look too bad. Here the car is 3 layers lower than a fig with soles: And yes, K.I.T.T. has an enlightened scanner (PF LED, not moving, of course). 100% Lego. More pics on Flickr. Thanks for looking!

Hi all, "in the light" of recent events a City scene with several Lego lighting features (PF and 9V): "And the Oscar (there's only one in my Lego town with its rather underdeveloped film industry) goes to ... the starlet", like every year. All the light you see is actually Lego, there's no Nonlego stuff involved. The scene refers to a similar setting some years ago: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/78281-fleetwood-moc-proposal-for-a-different-car-for-10232-palace-cinema/&do=findComment&comment=1491440 Thanks for looking!

Wobbly tables, roaming cats? Sorry, I must have skipped those requirements. Well, wobbly tables are definitely no option here. However, flexibility doesn't mean that the elements are floating freely, e. g. the pavements fit exactly between buildings (which are heavy) and road "plates" (which are heavy, too). Additionally, you may of course connect all the elements studwise, too. Flexibility means that you have more options compared to a plate system with a rather strict pattern (one of the main disadvantages of the otherwise great modular building range), e. g. on conventions where there might be different requirements. Buildings can be swapped easily, even buildings with unusual or odd widths are no problem - the length of road and pavement elements may be changed in no time. That's why unwanted gaps are prevented from the beginning, corners are where you want them to be, not where the pattern says they should be.

I prefer a SNOT-oriented road system over a plate-oriented one since it's much more flexible in my opinion. Plus you get nicely rounded corners; One of the main principles is the strict separation between road, pavement and buildings (not "connected" in real life either) which can be combined freely, even buildings with odd widths are possible: The SNOT measure of road plus pavement equals five plates, thus pavement and the "ground floor" of buildings match perfectly. The "hollow" pavement allows cables for 100% Lego streetlights: Last but not least SNOT roads allow to have a slot to guide moving vehicles: Of course, this is quite a different approach but once you've started with it things come together nicely.

Thanks for the info. Now I understand the idea behind it: You're looking for the smallest element you want to recreate in Lego, and this element determines the scale. I must admit that often compromises have to be met regardings such aspects in smaller scales where even headlights are often too big. But well, in my opinion dealing with compromises is what makes Lego building so interesting. For some reasons my buses (in fact there's only one of them so far) are only 7w(+) - also a compromise, they should be slightly wider to meet the scale of the passenger cars, but plain 8w vehicles are huge in comparison to buildings in a decent size. Anyhow looking forward to further buses from you, regardless of their width!

Thanks for the info, you train builders seem to be much more aware of such things than we Town guys. However, those are more or less my own thoughts about the subject, my vehicles probably being a bit larger than yours (I refer to it as "Larger City Scale"): passenger cars mainly 6w, trucks mainly 7w, ISOs 7x17 studs (7x35 respectively), trains 8-9w (a 9w loco already existing). Looking forward to your next 7w truck!

It's always nice to combine different types of vehicles to see how they look like together. It works out nicely here, too - however, you've chosen sets which are rather large in scale themselves (also regarding the Speed Champions cars which can't be called minifig scale in my opinion). Combining your buses with usual town vehicles or modular buildings or even road plates would be rather difficult, I guess. Since I'm rather curious regarding this aspect: Could you tell something about the exact scale of your 10w buses?

Thank you very much! Yeah, I guess much more can be done about lighting, also on vehicles which aren't too small. Many thanks! I didn't think of it as a toy before, but you're absolutely right - it means a lot of fun to have more "playable" vehicles in your town than just filling your roads with rather static models. When you take a look at larger Lego layouts the action often doesn't take place in the center but rather in the "outlying districts". Sometimes trains are the only moving objects. There's a reason why the Faller Car System was invented for model railroad layouts - it would be great to have at least a few moving vehicles also within your Lego town. Combined with trains and a Monorail and perhaps even an airport with motorized vehicles you'll get a much more lively Town layout than usual. And the more such elements there are the more possibilities for interaction between them you get.

Great to see a new Town vehicle builder on EB - there aren't that many of them around these days. You did a very nice job in my opinion - I especially like the switch between 6w and 7w behind the cab and the different rims between front and rear axle - those are the details which make such rather small models more realistic. Also the frontend is very well done - there's quite a resemblance, no doubt it's a MAN. My only point would be the "missing" windscreen - but I can see why you've done it like this. Since I'm always interested in this subject: Could you tell something about your premises regarding width, and are your trains 8w then?