The_Cook

The battery box might fit better in the front of the first truck/carriage rather than trying to squeeze it into the cab/engine.

Same part then. No reason why it should be retired given that they're still producing it for a set. They will have spare stock for Customer Support purposes, maybe they're holding onto that stock for Customer Support rather than adding it to PAB. As is often discussed each time there is a new product release, the cryptic messages that emanate from TLGs ordering systems may or may not reflect the reality of what is actually going on on the inside

As metioned in earlier posts it is likely to be batching issues rather than supplier issues. They'll order a batch from the supplier, most of which ends up in production sets, any spares are for customer support (i.e. replacing broken parts) and PAB. It would be interesting to know if the Train motor in the Polar set has a different part numbers from earlier motors? Component changes internally might mean a new Part Number is allocated, even if the external appearance and behaviour hasn't changed.

Yes, MOCPages has gone meaning the links have all gone with it. [url=https://flic.kr/p/2obt8Wh][img]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52627001120_1021f40fbc_z.jpg[/img][/url][url=https://flic.kr/p/2obt8Wh]IMG_9468[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/189196158@N06/]Brian Tucker[/url], on Flickr I've had to shift to Flickr for Photo distribution; follow the link through to the stream if you want more images. I've not found a useful free file distribution site, best I can do is through my Personal OneDrive: https://1drv.ms/u/c/702cebef99614fb5/EbVPYZnv6ywggHBdDAAAAAAB3k_mqij8ZWeyrBU57Ik5hQ?e=JzXXZK That should allow you read-only access to a zip file of all my 80's style Castle builds, which should be enough to download the zip. Let me know if it doesn't work.

The only other factor that I can think of that may affect production is component availability. Again, unlike standard bricks where TLG is fully in control, the electronics are source from 3rd party suppliers. If the suppliers end production of a component being used then that necessitates a redesign or abandonment of the product. Industrial components tend to be in production for longer time periods but even they eventually go out of production. I still suspect that the intermittent availability is that the manufacturing of the PUP components is done in more sporadic batches compared with the standard bricks that TLG can replenish more easily and frequently.

Bricklink is a marketplace driven by supply and demand; there is no direct linkage to manufacturing costs. It’s perceived desirability by the suppliers and consumers, PAB prices are a more direct linkage to manufacturing costs as Lego is the primary producer and is likely to price them in line with manufacturing costs.

The PuP shortages could just be rather mundane manufacturing challenges. unlike standard bricks that are fully manufactured in house by TLG and can be produced as needed; I suspect the circuit boards are outsourced. Obtaining the components to go on the circuit boards can be time consuming and there may be delays, producing a batch of boards takes time. Suffice to say if stocks get low it could take some time to replenish; the PaB stock probably gets replenished each time they do another batch of the currently active boxed train sets. They don’t produce set continuously they produce a batch, stock up the warehouse and then the production machinery is reprogrammed to pack a batch of the next set.

Everything looks a little out because it's an 8wide coach on a 6wide train. One has to grow, or one has to shrink. Lovely carriage design though. I used to watch 35028 Clan Line pulling the Pullman coaches through Clapham Junction first thing in the morning after it had left Victoria.

Is there a reason that you're using black friction pins as the pivots for the beams that the shocks are attached to? If you're using black friction pins for pivots then that's going to make it a lot harder to drive the mechanisms. Of course there may be valid reasons that I don't immediately see why the friction is important, feel free to educate me if that's the case ;-)

Short answer: yes Long answer: they don’t have a moulding machine for each element. A moulding machine will make a batch of elements that go into storage; then either the feedstock is changed so that the machine creates the same element in another colour, or the dies are changed to allow the machine to make a different element, TLG only have a finite amount of warehouse space so there’s only ever so many element/colour combinations that can be produced before the warehousing system is full. When the designers want a new element/colour combination that’s not being manufactured then they will stop producing something else. Parts then get pulled from the warehousing system and sent to the packing machines which count by weighing, then drop the parts into bags.

The AFOL community refers to Medium Stone Grey as Bluish Grey because compared to the grey from the 1980s it’s bluer. Bluish Grey often gets concatenated to Bley. Dark Bluish Grey is Dark Stone Grey, shortened to Dark Bley. Modern RC track is Dark Stone Grey.

I've had this built for about 6 months then I saw this thread pop up and I thought; I should probably post but I was on vacation at the time. Then I got back and got distracted, and it was only whilst trying to tidy up after my son that that I realised I hadn't posted. If only 65734 Slope, Curved 4 x 1 x 2 2/3 with Stud came in trans brown then everything would be prefect. Sadly I think the likelihood of this ever happening given the seeming demise of trans brown.

I haven't expanded 10027 but I have doubled it and assembled them back to back. After sourcing 4 pairs of black doors at great expense, I realised that they weren't going to work. The modern 6wide locomotives all have clips and handles hanging off the sides which means that they weren't fitting through the 8 wide arch easily, i.e. my son trying to run them through the engine shed at full speed! Therefore I redesigned the doors to be 10wide giving ample wiggle room for an 6 plus a bit wide locomotive. The roof structure was also tweaked to avoid having to source the expensive 1x14 red bricks and the sliding doors aren't the unique black doors which were again prohibitively expensive to source. I source 4 16x32 baseplates but then promptly lost 2 when it came to building the 2nd half so reverted to 8 16x16 plates, having built it I finally located the 2 lost baseplates! The plates are more in keeping with the rest of the layout than the baseplates as the layout is mostly comprised of modern sets from the PF era along with a couple of PU sets that I've converted to PF. Interior is sparse because my son keeps stealing it to use elsewhere and then entropy takes over and everything is reduced to individual bricks.

A part number of 5565 feels like it was designed a long time ago, but perhaps never put into production. A quick scan on BrickLink shows that none of the other bricks with holes aligned on the studs have adjacent numbers. It's an obvious next step if they did design it as part of a family to 6541 and 32000.

There’s also not many people on the forums designing for play rather than display. I personally try to build with my children in mind and robustness and ease of access is key. It’s a different mentality to design for play compared to the detail that most AFOLs desire.

If you do manage to find a host I’d be very tempted to replicate the super liner cars having ridden Amtrak from Washington to New York to Chicago to Denver some years ago.

I rather like the little green shunter, so much so that I decided to reproduce it. All credit to faph, it's a really nice little design and the internal photo's gave me enough to recreate the mechanics. So I started ordering pieces and building up the locomotive in abs which was fine until I got to... Plate, Modified 1 x 1 with Clip Vertical (Undetermined Type) First introduced in 1980 this piece is ubiquitous and available in every colour, except green... ...actually there's one seller with 600 in green, which feels like a model shop/LegoLand surplus sales as they can occasionally get parts in special colours, but the price whilst not extortionate is not what I'm willing to pay for something that is pennies in every other colour. So a redesign is needed, what is available in green that will accept a bar connection. Brick, Modified 1 x 1 with Headlight couple the headlight brick with a Bar 5L with Handle (Friction Ram) and we've got the vertical grab handle back! Now it's buildable! I've taken some license with the chasis, it was impossible to see the internal construction from the photo's. In the end I decided to go with layers of plates and to use as much as I could in order to increase the weight of the locomotive as well as the stiffness of the chasis. It's not the fastest but it pulls well. I took it to some scales and it weighs 343g, compared with 60098 Heavy Haul Train at 519g. But 60098 has 4 axles, giving a per-axle weight of 130g, whereas the shunter with just 2 axles has a per-axle weight of 170g, which should provide more tractive effort. Hauling one of my variants of 10194 Emerald Night's carriages, for comparisson.

Much as I like the original consist, I always had this feeling that what this long distance train was missing was sleeping arrangements. There was a degree of experimentation to make this work. The underlying brief was the ability to lie minifigs down, whilst still maintaining the impression of a corridor through the coach. The only way that this was going to work was if the beds were offset by half a stud in order to allow space for the arm between the bed and the wall of the coach. How to get a half stud offset? The way that the model works is 3 bays of 6studs with 2 interior walls reaches the 20 stud length. Within LDD I tried numerous ways to support the upper bunk on a half stud offset but everything was taking up too much space and that impacted on ability to lay a minifig on the bottom bunk. In the end simpler proved better. The lower bunk is constructed on the half stud offset, with Plate, Modified 1 x 2 with Door Rail filling the gaps either side. A Panel 1 x 2 x 2 with Side Supports is used to support one end of the upper bunk with the other end resting on another Plate, Modified 1 x 2 with Door Rail embedded into the wall as support. Another Panel 1 x 2 x 2 with Side Supports completed the bunk assembly, only once assembling in real ABS did I realise that it was moving around, however seeing it in the physical brick also allowed me to see that a Tile 1 x 4 across the top could lock whole assembly in place if the removable roof had a raised interior. A raised interios had already been done on the bar and kitchen cars so there was precedence and an existing pattern to copy. Nearside Whilst buidling in ABS I also substituted one of the offside panels for a window panel. This provided some light at the head end of the bunks and broke up the monotinous tan wall on the offside of the carriage. Offside Interior The consist now totals 10 carriages and my double motored locomotive can still pull the whole consist without the magnetic couplings parting if it starts slowly.

Not Fantasy, but there's a huge model of a Victorian factory at the Manchester New Hampshire SEE Science Center https://see-sciencecenter.org/the-lego-millyard-project/

Remember that it's not TLG but the television production company Endemol Shine North. My suspicion would be that nobody on the production team has the time, knowledge and/or money to put together a lego RC chassis so the most expedient option is to take an off-the-shelf RC package, rip of whatever top-shell it had and super-glue some lego bricks to it. There would also be robustness benefits if indeed they are smashing them together. TV for the masses likes explosions and crashes more than intricate NPU. Occams razor: the simplest answer is usually right.

Don’t rails come in bundles of 4? So, not just another rail but the whole bundle!

Rather than use a shifter to lock the outer ring most real-life planetary gearboxes that I've encountered (https://www.rm1872.org.uk/GB32_Gearbox.html) use a brake band pulling tight against the outer ring to lock it, this overcomes the problem of having to slide the shifter into a moving gear. How that could be replicated in ABS, not quite sure, possibly by using one of the gears with larger teeth, eg. splat gear, and engaging a pin to stop the rotation.

I certainly recall someone posting an image of a bag-o-goats, but it was such a long time ago I can't remember who. Whilst that doesn't help your search immediately it does imply that your search isn't in vain, others have recollection of something similar and that there was a record of it somewhere.

I seem to recall, possibly from the Daniel Konstanski book, that these sort of accessory packs are created from the same injection mold in a single shot and then drop straight into the bagging machinery. Therefore production costs will be related to mold complexity and volume of plastic utilised. That doesn't make it more likely to get the IP locked parts you desire but it does mean that if they were available they'd be priced similarly to the aforementioned accessory packs.

For a 6 year old big train beats accuracy hands down