Laura Beinbrech

Yeah, I've been having the same exact issue, and despite chatting with two different customer support people, both Wednesday & Yesterday, I still can't get in, no matter what method I used to enter the exact activation code number they send me in my email. The CS person I talked with yesterday said that they'd get back in touch with me via email, but so far no word from them yet... If they haven't got this fixed by Monday, I will be back on the customer support chat again, and I'll keep bugging them until they get this sorted out, because this is seriously getting ridiculous! I have to jump through less hoops & generally have less issues getting into government sites I need to access at work than a simple site to vote on user submissions for toys!

If my budget will allow for it, I plan on getting the 60198 freight train. I rather like the locomotive included in the set (although I'll probably end up modding it), and it has a lot of useful parts & minifigs. Also, I've been meaning to get around to making at least one PF/PU train for quite some time now, but have always had something come up that caused me to put it off indefinitely, and if I just buy a set that already comes with the components, I'll no longer have an excuse to keep procrastinating on that issue.

Thanks again for the kind words. Oh nice! Yeah, I'll admit that I have a bit of a soft spot for small, narrow-gauge locomotives, whether they be steam or diesel, and narrow-gauge railroads in general. Part of this has to do with the fact that one of the oldest (mostly) intact narrow-gauge railroad in the US is not far from where I grew up (even though they haven't been running trains for the past 6 years due to the current owner trying to sell it & the non-profit looking to buy it having some trouble coming up with the funds), and I've been an on again, off-again member of the Friends of the East Broad Top Railroad (unfortunately mostly off, especially the past 5 years) as well as the neighboring Rockhill Trolley Mueseum, which runs standard-gauge streetcars on an old branch line of the East Broad Top (said branch line being dual-gauge for part of the way, due to it being part of the Wye that EBT trains used to turn around, and the rest being re-laid with standard-gauge track over the abandoned portion of the branch line). In addition to the two Plymouth "Critters" that East Broad Top has, the Rockhill Trolley Museum also has an 8-ton standard-gauge Critter they use for pulling work wagons & the bucket truck for doing maintenance on the overhead trolley wires (you don't want to have power on the wires when you're working on them, after all, thus the need for the two diesel locomotives the museum has). Anyways, which heritage railway do you do volunteer work for, Bricked? I'm curious because one of my "Bucket List" items is, in addition to traveling to Great Britain & Ireland, is to also ride at least one British narrow-gauge heritage railway, such as the Leighton-Buzzard or one of the other ones I've checked out on Wikipedia (I've never rode on any 2-foot gauge trains before: I've rode 3-foot gauge & Cape gauge trains, but not 2-footers).

@Digger of Bricks YES! Quite so! (and awesome pics, BTW!) However, like I said before, Sweet Mayhem's power armor/spacesuit looks like it came straight from a 90's cyberpunk Anime series, like this one:

I know I'm definitely going to be getting Sweet Mayhem's Systar Starship set: Not only is this, to my knowledge, one of the first sets outside a designated "girl" line to include a minidoll (more on said minidoll in a bit), but the overall shape of the spaceship has a classic Buck Rodgers/Flash Gordon vibe to it, and I grew up with those kind of space tales. As for Sweet Mayhem herself: Her armor/helmet REALLY reminds me of the hardsuits from this old cyberpunk anime series I used to watch back in the late 1990's/early 2000's called Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040, although that crest on the top of the helmet also is reminiscent of Cliff Secord's helmet from The Rocketeer (which would have been roughly contemporary with the Bublegum Crisis anime series), so there's a lot of cool references in the overall design of the set (still kinda laughing over the "sticker sheet" banner trailing behind the ship, though: I have a small bin that's absolutely full of unused sticker sheets from both Friends & regular System sets )

This is a really lovely locomotive you built there! And the valve & piston rod action in that video is smooth as silk (and the tune accompanying the video was rather lovely as well)! I must say, though, that I think this is the first time I've seen someone running a LEGO train on standard model train tracks, although I have thought about using G-Scale track as a stand-in for Russian 5' or Pennsylvania Trolley 5'2" broad gauge tracks.... I'm guessing the wheel spacing for the G-Scale track has to be 1-2 studs wider than standard LEGO train track, right? All in all, I gotta say, "Das ist einfach toll!" (It's just awesome!)

Thanks for the kind words, guys. @Man with a hat The inter-modal car also doubles as a flatbed when it's not hauling shipping containers. ;) I'll be posting more about it (and other Narrow-gauge rolling stock) soon... I'm in the process of finalizing some LDD files & seeing about ordering parts in the near future in order to finish them up, but I want to make a thread for all of my narrow-gauge cars & coaches soon. @LEGO Train 12 Volts The locomotive is not a KÖF, but rather a Plymouth Locomotive Works "Critter", but since they, and the British Motor Rail locomotives are all fairly similar (and designed for pretty much the same tasks), it's easy to confuse them. Here's a handy video of a RL narrow-gauge Plymouth shunting a standard-gauge Shay geared locomotive (which appears to not be fired up in the video) over dual-gauge track to give an idea of just how small these things are & how big of stuff they can pull/push around despite their diminutive size (also gives you an idea of how noisy they are for their size as well):

Really nice Traction Engine build you have here: I normally tend to only build military & train stuff, but I have a soft spot for traction engines. The fact that at least two major manufacturers of traction engines back in the late 19th & early 20th century were located in a nearby town: Peerless Traction Engines were made by Geiser Manufacturing and Frick traction engines were made by Frick Manufacturing, both of which were located in Waynesboro, PA... Frick still exists, but mostly makes industrial boilers & HVAC equipment these days. Needless to say, thanks to this, you can find a lot of old Frick & Peerless traction engines, along with Case, Oilpull & others at local antique engine shows & other events & festivals in the area. I'm definitely going to be adding my support to this project on LEGO Ideas, as soon as I can remember how to log into my LEGO Ideas account, that is.....

This is a really lovely little beach house you made from the Old Fishing Store set. I love all the details you added, like using the printed sign piece as a fireplace mat or the Ship's Wheel ceiling lamp. Also, I happen to have an idea to make a similar outdoor grill/enclosed fire pit whenever I get around to converting my deck into a patio. It's also nice to see that you're still around... Good to see a familiar face coming back from my prolonged absence. :)

Hey, thanks! And RL Plymouth switchers are tiny! There's a good reason that they're commonly called "Critters" or "Dinkies" by railroad workers & railfans. This particular one is inspired by the two 3-foot gauge Plymouth switchers that the East Broad Top RR & Coal Co. has for yard duty. If you do a Google image search for "East Broad Top Railroad Plymouth", you can see just how small they are: The 3rd pic that comes up shows the 16-ton M-6 Plymouth with a work crew hanging off it (there's really only enough space in the cab for the driver), and the 7th image result shows the 14-ton Plymouth, M-4 next to their M-7 55-ton GE center-cab diesel switcher, which looks huge in comparison (and those GE center-cab locomotives aren't that big)....

I know it's been a while since I posted any completed train MOCs, especially narrow-gauge ones, however I recently had two strokes of good fortune that allowed me to finally get some long-abandoned projects finished. The first bit of good fortune was getting into one of the drafts at BrickFair a month ago, and said draft involving two of the LEGO Friends 41130 Amusement Park Roller Coasters. And to make a long story short, I managed to get ALL the small train wheels & axles from both sets, which meant that I could finally at least start work on my narrow-gauge stuff again. The second bit of good fortune was when I was at my LUG's monthly meeting yesterday, and one of the guys who runs a second-hand LEGO store brought 2 bins of unsorted bulk LEGO to the meeting to sell. I managed to get a few more sets of small train wheels, axle plates & the 2x2 plates with small towball that I use as the couplers for my narrow-gauge trains. But the piece de resistance from that lot was a matched set of small LEGO City car doors, which were the main (and critical) missing pieces for this particular build. So, after sorting all my recent narrow-gauge train parts, I got to work & finally built the small narrow-gauge diesel locomotive that I had originally based on the mining locomotive that came with the LEGO City set, 4204 "The Mine", however, after further modifying the locomotive so that I could put a second coupler on the front (after all, what good is a switcher/shunter that can only couple to cars from the back, right?), and the more modifications I made to it, the less it looked anything like the mining locomotive & the more it looked like some of the 8-ton Plymouth Gas/Diesel locomotives that were commonly used for yard work on Narrow-Gauge railroads in the US during the 1940's & 1950's, so that's what it ended up as. ;) So without further ado, I present the Balin & Sons Mining Co. Railroad 8-Ton Plymouth Bio-Fuel Switcher: Plymouth Hauling Ore Carts by Ben/Laura Bonebrake, on Flickr In the years following the Final War, as demand rapidly grew for various ores, particularly Iron, Titanium, Tungsten & Mithril (the main components of Unobtainium alloy used in laser-resistant armor plating & for making certain high-end weapons), the dwarven deep-mining outfit known as Balin & Sons rapidly expanded in the territory of what would become the Federal Republic Of America. However, due to the fact that much of the transportation infrastructure was in shambles after the Final War, and they needed some way to get their goods to market, Balin & Sons Mining Co. began to build narrow-gauge railways from their mining operations to the standard-gauge main-line freight railroads (mostly Norfolk-Southern or CSX) for hauling ore & other mineral products. Soon after, various small-time locomotive works began to pop up in the Federal Republic to meet the demand for small, narrow-gauge steam & bio-fuel locomotives, one such being the reincarnation of the old Plymouth Locomotive Works in Plymouth, Ohio. Plymouth 8-Ton Right-Side by Ben/Laura Bonebrake, on Flickr While small, the Plymouth 8-ton switchers were perfect for working staging yards at the mine heads to sort ore carts into trains for different destinations along a particular narrow-gauge route. They could even haul decent sized trains on their own, albeit rather slowly. 8-Ton Plymouth Front View by Ben/Laura Bonebrake, on Flickr 8-Ton Plymouth Rear View by Ben/Laura Bonebrake, on Flickr And a bonus pic of the Plymouth hauling part of another narrow-gauge project I hope to be posting about later on this week or next week: 8-Ton Plymouth w/Intermodal Car by Ben/Laura Bonebrake, on Flickr Anyways, I hope you enjoyed looking at my little narrow-gauge diesel (well, biodiesel at any rate) locomotive as much as I enjoyed making it. :)

I'm glad this topic got bumped up: That's a really good job modelling one of the big ol' powerhouse freight haulers used by BNSF (and other Class I railroads). I like your rather elegant solution for how to convert the RC train motors into 3-wheeled bogies, but still have it able to negotiate the smallest radius curves LEGO track has. But still, at 50 studs long, that thing is an absolute beast! My biggest locomotive, the GG-2a (basically a hypothetical modernized GG-1 in Norfolk-Southern colors) is only 38 studs long....

These are some nifty looking science fiction figs, mccoyed. The one in the front of the row furthest to the right looks like he could be an Ork Freebooter from Warhammer 40K (especially if he managed to snag a Commissar's cap at some point), and I'm wondering what for parts you used for the head of the fig in the back of the second row from the right?

My brother & I didn't really get into LEGO toys until 1988 when we bought a few small sets with our allowance (The Blacktron Alienator & Forestman's Hideout), and spent the next several years expanding our collection, until we both kinda lost interest in LEGO stuff in general around 1994 or 1995 & gave away most of our stuff. I got back into LEGO around 1997, and aside from a nine-year more or less enforced dark age due to not having space for storing LEGO on board US navy ships I was stationed on and/or financial constraints, I've been into them ever since. One thing to note, though is that one of the people we gave some of our sets to was a good friend of mine, who lost interest about the same time I was getting back into LEGO, so he just gave all that stuff back, so I still have a fair number of sets from the 1988-1989 era, including the Sea Serpent, Castaway's Raft, Sabre Island and 2x of the Harbor Sentry. I do wish I'd have never given away the Forestman's River Fortress (the big forestman set in the far left of the middle shelf of your display case), the Futuron Cosmic Laser Launcher & ESPECIALLY the Caribbean Clipper and my complete 7722 4.5v Cargo Train set (I'm actually working on a project to create an "updated" version of the alternate yellow & red diesel locomotive build from that set).

That's a rather interesting looking commuter train, and you definitely captured the look of it in LEGO. It's a very unique looking train that I've never seen before, so thanks for sharing it with us. :)

I'm a month older, so I really feel ancient now. Also, customizing minifigs (by recombining pre-existing body parts & accessories, both LEGO & 3rd party rather than painting & modifying parts, that is) is pretty much my main bread & butter in LEGO. I mean, yes I do like making vehicles and the occasional building, but you won't ever see me do any that are in mini or micro scale because I tend to see my structures & vehicles as homes for my extremely large & diverse collection of minifigs, and if it can't fit figures in it (unless it's a robot or something like that), I generally don't build it or try to scale it up until I can fit minifigs in it. I can honestly say that I probably would never have gotten as interested in LEGO or stayed as interested in it for as long as I have been without the humble minifig, so three cheers for LEGO minifigs!

I'm just giving this post a quick bump to let everyone know that, after being run through the wringer by life for the past couple of years, I'm back, and since I'm in the market for flags again, I did some searching for alternative sellers of Becc Model Flags to replace the defunct one I used to buy from. I found two that explicitly stated that they ship internationally, and I updated the first post with links to both sites (so hopefully if one goes out of commission for some reason, there's a backup this time), and I apologize for not looking into updating this topic sooner.

I know that this is an old topic, but I do have relevant information for this subject: You see, I got the 7722 train set in 1988 when I was a kid, and was enamored with the lovely teaser pic they had on the back of the instruction book of all the 12v sets that I couldn't find in any of the catalogs, so I wrote a letter to LEGO customer service asking where I could get some of those really cool trains in that picture and I actually got a response. Now I'm not going to to be able to quote the reply I got exactly, since it was 30 years ago & I don't have the original letter anymore, but it basically boiled down to her (I think it was a her) telling me that they only sold the 12v trains in Europe because coming up with whole new series of power supplies that would work with 115v 60Hz North American power rather than the standard 230v 50Hz European power that the current products were designed for just wasn't deemed to be cost-effective. So there you have it, the reason was mostly due to engineering costs with designing new, 115v-compatible components, at least according to the LEGO rep I wrote to.

That's a really nice 8-wide EMD F-7 you built there, Sava. Definitely a huge improvement over the original LEGO model, and instantly recognizable for what it is. Also thanks for posting the video of the LEGO layouts at the NMRA show: I would have liked to go along with Cale & the rest of the PennLUG crew, but after having BronyCon & BrickFair right after each other, there was no way I was going to be in any shape, physically or financially, to drive all the way out to Kansas City for the NMRA show the following week, lol.

I don't know if anyone else remembers when @Sebeus I posted LDD images of his Lego Ideas Submarine about 5 years ago, but it inspired me to take a stab at making something similar in real bricks, with a number of modifications to make it look more like an actual WWII German midget sub called the Seehund (the sail design & external torpedo racks on my version are heavily based on what was actually used on the Seehund-class). I completed the LDD mock-up about 2 years ago, but various circumstances, namely trying to scrape enough money to hire a lawyer to get divorced from my ex-wife & my mom passing away last year after a long battle with cancer, always ended up preventing me from being able to buy the parts I needed off BrickLink until earlier this year. So, without further ado, I present: The CSS Piranha SSM-1 Lead boat in the Piranha-class midget submarines used by the Neo-Confederate Navy Piranha Starboard Side by Ben/Laura Bonebrake, on Flickr From Jayne's Ships, 2118 edition: "Due to increased success of Federal Republic & Lone Star naval bombardment of Neo-Confederate coastal cities, the New Confederate States of America government realized that they'd need some cheap, relatively fast & stealthy means of coastal defense, thus the Piranha-class midget subs were born. Equipped with an air-independent drive able to operate submerged for 18 days with fully-charged fuel cells, and packing two MK-54 heavy torpedoes, the small, two-man boats proved their worth when they sunk a Federal Navy frigate sailing close to the Alabama coast in an attempt to bombard Mobile with its 3" coil guns." Piranha Hatch by Ben/Laura Bonebrake, on Flickr Top view of the Piranha, with external torpedo racks visible & hatch open. In the nose of the sub are twin, repeating harpoon launchers that used compressed air to launch explosive-tipped harpoons at any sea monsters attacking the sub. The sub uses harpoons instead of lasers for discouraging overly ambitious sea life to conserve the limited power of its hybrid bio-diesel/hydrogen fuel cell Air-Independent Drive. Torpedoes Away! by Ben/Laura Bonebrake, on Flickr "While these subs were originally designed with coastal defense in mind, a task they're well-suited for, Captain Edward "Blackbeard" Teach of the Heavy Cruiser, CSS Baton Rouge found a way to turn them into effective offensive weapons: He simply removed 2 of the ship's boats from the port-side boat davits & secured one of these subs in their place, extending its operational range to wherever the fusion-powered cruiser could take it. Since then, all Neo-Confederate Mobile-class Heavy Cruisers have had Captain (or rather Commodore, since that idea earned him a promotion) Teach's modification applied, making these already infamous 'pocket battleships' even more of a pain in the allied navies' necks." Piranha Interior Aft by Ben/Laura Bonebrake, on Flickr The 2-man subs are equipped with a combined engineering & torpedo control station in the aft (next to the single bunk for whomever is off-duty to get 6 hours of sleep while the other crew member pilots the sub. Both stations are only manned when the sub has located a target for its heavy torpedoes). Piranha Interior Forward by Ben/Laura Bonebrake, on Flickr The pilot's station in the forward section of the boat also has the controls for the harpoon launchers, so that any sea serpents or kraken thinking the sub would be a tasty snack can be dispatched without having to wake the other crew member. Hope you enjoyed this project, and as a nice little bonus pic, here's the sub on display at BrickFair, VA, my first time attending as a registered participant :D My Stuff by Ben/Laura Bonebrake, on Flickr

This is really nice! For some reason, the style of the house, the gnarled, dead trees & the coach with everyone being vampires really reminds me of the vampire plantation house in the Louisiana swamp in the movie, "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter".

Thanks for the info! Although it looks like the turn radius might be too small for my current Narrow-guage locomotives & rolling stock, I do see some potential uses here....

So, I was wondering if anyone who has the new roller coaster track has tried to see if the smallest LEGO train wheels will run on it (since they have the same hub diameter as the roller coaster car wheels), or if the flanges are too big? Regardless, I'm looking to possibly buy at least 2 of the new City Mining Experts Site sets to experiment with using the new track for making a Trench Railroad similar to what were used for supplying the frontlines in WWI.... The nice thing about the new track is that, thanks to it having both level straight & curved sections, it's possible to make turnouts similar to the ones used on actual roller coasters (they involve rotating a straight section of track out of the way & rotating a curved section connecting the other line into place). Might need to tinker with the thickness of the rotary block so that there's proper clearance for the trains when the curved section is rotated out of the way, but it's workable at least.

I really like this vehicle, especially since it even looks like a fancier, civilian version of the actual Rolls-Royce Armoured Cars used during WWI & WWII. (Which I am familiar with due to playing entirely too much Battlefield 1....)

I'm definitely stoked about this set! I have the 2011 Hogwarts Express set (with re-vamped passenger cars based on the Emerald Night car designs), and I've been meaning to either BrickLink the large driver wheels or get BBB wheels so I could re-do the locomotive properly, but now I can just get this set and kinda merge the two sets :D I might have to order some of those custom driver rods I saw a while back, but we'll see: Military expenditures, particularly a certain submarine project, have priority for my LEGO budget right now....