EuroTrains

I do 10 wide exclusively for at least the past 5 years. Somebody pointed out the 1 stud == 1 foot relationship with the tracks a while ago and I have been a fan of this scale ever since. The minifigs are about 6 feet tall at this scale (albeit wide little fellas). I love the realism of this scale. The only real problem is the track curve radius.

Dude I would love to have all of these pieces. Where are you located?

Sweet locomotive - I really love the scale of it. It is presented well, and the colors work as well.

Thanks for providing these details! I had seen some images like this before, but for some reason they gave me the impression that the pantograph was very wide. Maybe I was confused with other train models? I think I will try my hand at modelling the new ones, because they seem like they might be a bit easier and they look a bit more modern too. Since they are 6 wide, I may as well try to use the LEGO part: since it is about 6 studs wide. I had not seen your trains before - I really like how well you captured the look of the trains and the passenger cars. Packing a lot of detail into 6 wide is quite hard but you did it very well. You can definitely recognize what they are. If I ever go back to Switzerland (I was there in 2009) you will definitely hear from me So many cool trains there...

I did try to do the third headlight but I could not find a way to make it look good. I am happy that you noticed The ripples were also something I agonized over in the early days. It is kind of cool to talk to somebody who knows more about this train than me, because I studied it so hard before I built it! I wish I could see one in person. Do you have some good pics of the pantograph? That was very difficult to model and I am sorry to say that I probably gave up at some point. The interior is full of wires and other PF stuff. BTW I have a few other SBB trains that I will be posting at some point. SBB has the sweetest trains IMO, I build more of their trains than anything else.

I agree that new PF pieces would be good. I would love a motor that is a bit more flat than the M motor and has an axle running all the way through, but it would have limited appeal I suppose. A subtle looking PF switch so that you did not have to expose the battery box power would also be nice. I want to see a crossing as well. Electric switches like the 12V days would be good. I would buy a modern train station if I they made a cool looking one. I loved 8404, I bought 2 of them for parts but the designer of that would probably make a killer station that I would probably like to build.

This is a pretty sweet diorama. You did the building and tram well, but also the road and other stuff. Well done!

I have actually been scouring the webs looking for something to build next. But nothing seems to grab me like other trains have, or it seems too ambitious (like the SBB 514). Looks like more time on Railcolor, Railfan EU, etc is needed....

This train is one of those that I always wanted to build because the picture of it on Wikipedia looks so captivating: As with all my recent trains this is 10 wide with a scale of 300mm to 1 stud. This was my first build experimenting with making flush cheese slopes (which I have since seen a lot of other people do independently too, including the Maersk train): It is PF, with a single XL motor (it could run two XL motors if needed one day). The little hump on the back is the power switch. I managed to get the lights in this one to work, which make it look pretty cool IMO. All pics are on my Smugmug: http://bencon77.smugmug.com/Other/SBB-RE460-1375-Scale/23195873_73hNrR#!i=1869567641&k=VBLp773

I would love to build a Railjet but I don't know where I would put the finished product :) I will have to wait until somebody commissions one of them It is actually a question I have been mulling over (how much of a trainset to build). I built 4 cars of a Sydney M set in 10 wide, and now I don't know whether to keep the whole thing built. Part of me just wants a lead car and a passenger car left built.

These look good, especially the green one. You captured the look of the real green locomotive well. What are the pieces on the front of the cab? It looks like a window piece but I cannot place it.

These letters were done with plates - I use the term "brick built" because it is 100% Lego. You always have two options when making details like this - you can have plates run horizontal or vertical. I chose vertical for this because I think that it came out the best given the resolution available. I have done other mosiac style logos on trains where I change from horizontal to vertical because some letters are better suited. Then you have to be lucky / good about the 5 plates : 2 bricks ratio. The way I design these logos sometimes is to take a picture of it, figure out how big I want it, and then do a non-proportional scale in photoshop to the target size, and then another non-prop scale with nearest neighbour. Let me know if this needs more pictures to make sense and I will start a new post on it. I could probably write a program to do it in 1 hour too but I am lazy :) Dude, you work for Siemens? You lucky dog! You work in transport or somewhere else? Thanks for the kind comments. I have looked quite a bit at the Vectrons but I have not seen a paint job on one that "grabbed" me yet. The Eurorunner is one that I do want to build - I think that it has a great shape to it: I must be getting old because the newest locos don't appeal to me as much as the 5 - 10 year old ones. Oh wow that is quite the compliment.

It turns out that is a great match for that part, if you put a 1x2 tile behind it. The emerald night does something like this on the front, and I did this on my NSB 93 at the end of the cars: Hope this helps...

I had to look up the term micro-striping. It turns out I have done something similar in the past on another train (half plate gap using a bracket brick). I suppose I could try a thing like that at some point here. I would need to do two of these stripes because of the height involved (or make the half plate up with some other snot). There is probably room for it, given that the XL motor is only 5 studs wide and mounted vertically. I have never put anything on Flickr before. I have looked at some train pics there before - is that a different community than you get here on EB or is there decent overlap? EB seemed like the most active forums to me.

Here are some pictures of another one of my creations, a DB 182 Eurosprinter with the DHL paintjob. With image from the excellent Railcolor site for comparison: (I got this from http://www.railcolor.net/index.php?nav=1404958〈=1&id=26222&action=portrait ) More pictures at the smugmug site: http://bencon77.smugmug.com/Other/DB182-ES64U2-1375-scale/23037359_RqMM2q#!i=1853333440&k=dNNDF9M This one is powered with a single MXL motor. Building the front of this locomotive was a real challenge - the curves were hard to capture the character. But in the end I was very happy with it. The logo is a bit wrong sized but I had to do it bigger to do it with bricks. No stickers! I am considering building another Eurosprinter with a different paint job. The OBB 1016 looks pretty sweet, even if it is a plain red paint job.

By popular request, videos of this thing running on straight and curved track: http://bencon77.smugmug.com/gallery/22983987_mdqkGj#1853339922_sThL4GD-A-LB http://bencon77.smugmug.com/gallery/22983987_mdqkGj#1853339974_9tLxHCZ-A-LB You can see the videos on the gallery (link here again): http://bencon77.smugmug.com/Other/NSB-93-1375-scale/22983987_mdqkGj#!i=1853339974&k=9tLxHCZ It does run a tad slow compared to most LEGO trains. Maybe I could stick an M motor in it.....

I would estimate each car is about twice the weight of an average 6 wide car that LEGO makes. The windows are light and it is mostly a brick box with single wide walls and plates on top and bottom. I should make a video of the thing going at full clip. It is slower than I remember my 12 volt trains being, but not by much. Whenever I build my trains I make a rule for myself that they need to be able to run on real track. I suspect that it probably runs the batteries flat pretty quick but you could display it. The real pain with a 10 wide is not really powering it. It is having the room for it to run. Even if you can make it run on tight curves (most of my my 10 wide trains can, but the NSB 93 cannot because of how close the cars are together) the challenge is having room around it. Buildings have to be further away and the points have to be distant from curves because the car swings over and hits them. I need to make a video of this thing running on real tracks, obviously.

Thanks for the kind comments guys. I actually have another few trains at the same scale to show you (I basically scale things at 1 stud == 300mm). Where I can I try to find good schematics that allow me to be precise about the scale. My first couple of 10 wide trains were not super accurate scale wise, and I think that made them look slightly odd. The first time I built 10 wide they did not have the wheels with axle holes. I think that without this part, I could not make this model as nice as it is. Certainly when powering things the lego train motors are very forceful about the distance between wheels I was very skeptical about power functions in trains when I first heard about it. I was till recovering from the 12V to 9V transition but now I am fully converted.

This looks really faithful to the real thing, well done. As somebody else mentioned, you did well on the plow. Those trains up in Norway have very distinctive plows :)

Fantastic work. I love how the rails look overgrown, and you have some great looking rolling stock there too.

Thanks Henrik! Lucky you, you have probably seen this bad boy in person. Growing up in Australia and living in the US now, I don't get to see many cool trains like this. The first few times I did 10 wide the wheels were sunk way inwards and it looked shoddy. I put up with it because I enjoyed being able to add more detail to the rest of the train. With the power functions parts, I have basically gone the whole hog and built the things "Model Team" style. I build the bogeys almost entirely out of technic parts so that I can build realistic parts to cover over the wheels. The real trains tend to have big things like brakes and suspension bits that extend outwards from the wheels so I try to build that look in. I need to go back to some of my older models and do this approach again. Some of them I did not pay the attention I should have to the bogeys.

Thanks! The motor is not geared. It runs basically 1:1 with the wheels through a couple of gears. It runs at a reasonable speed but definitely slower than I remember my 12V trains doing back in the day. The way that I built it I could add another M motor to the second car if I needed more torque. But to be honest I don't have a permanent layout and I get way more enjoyment designing and building the things rather than running them.

Indexed by Moderator I have finally gotten registered after lurking for ages. I decided to show some of my work and see what people think. This is my latest train creation, which I think is the best thing I have built. It is a 10 wide NSB 93, which is basically a 2 car Bombardier Talent. I build trains 10 wide because I did one like that years ago as a lark, and somebody pointed out to be that it actually was to scale with the track (if you look at L gauge as 5 studs wide). The train runs on power functions with a single M motor. About the only thing I am not proud of is the lack of an accordion between the cars. I have some more pictures at: http://bencon77.smug...22844&k=fb4cgg5 Apologies if the photos are lacking - this is my first time putting photos of MOCs on the web. I spent a couple of weeks trying to get a good light box together but I still feel like I could do better. EDIT - I probably should include a picture of the real thing (people know how to use a search engine, but why make life hard): There are tons more around but I don't want to steal other people's photos. I figure stuff on Wikipedia is public domain so there you go.