Phoxtane

Watching this go around a corner is silly. I think it'll be sillier to see it going about on an otherwise Lego-standard layout too. Good luck!

Are there uses for it outside of track-building? Perhaps being used in a SHIP combined with some braces to get a nice angle? Maybe even in a circular pattern to get a wide-radius circle?

Just thought I'd share this here: I figure this'll be the area that people go to buy tickets. I know it needs a ticket window to do so, so I'm thinking that the window behind the test figure there will be the place for it. Any thoughts?

I recall seeing somewhere that due to the joint in the middle, flex track is also much more flexible vertically than standard Lego track, and can be used to great effect at the bottom and top of a hill to curve it more naturally.

The idea I have is that I can have a small slope or rocky outcropping as opposed to an entire mountainside, both of which consume a lot of pieces (that I don't have and will order from bricklink) - the smaller elevation change means less pieces!

Thanks for the information! I don't think I'll end up doing a tunnel, but rather a cut instead - where the hill is in the way but not big enough to warrant a tunnel, but just an excavation. Totally agree. This way I have more open space and I don't have to build a giant mountain either.

This is what the final tunnel will end up looking like: It can be extended to practically any length I'd like, and all I have to do is build corresponding tunnel supports on each side of the tracks to support the 12-wide arches. Thing is, I don't think I like it... it feels so boring to me, and I'm not sure why. That, and those arches are expensive on Bricklink. I don't know how else I'll add some verticality into my layout though.

Given the responses here, this is what I've come up with: Thanks to the magic of physicsless modeling, I can just show off the portal; obviously I'll have to do the inside as well, but as long as I stick to these dimensions it ought to be okay - assuming there's no issues that anyone can spot offhand?

I haven't found too many details about this, so I figured I'd ask. If I was to build a train tunnel that'd take something along the size of the Santa Fe Super Chief, how big would the tunnel have to be in order to fit it? Obviously it'll have to be at least the width of the track wide, but I'm looking for how much I'd need in terms of space on either side and most importantly, height. The people I know aren't being very helpful either: <Phoxtane> I need to figure out what size is a 'standard' train tunnel <Phoxtane> for lego trains that is <Mosai> it is roughly 1 train tall <Phoxtane> how wide <Mosai> roughly 1 train wide <Phoxtane> mmm <Phoxtane> how long? <Mosai> however long a train is along its z axis <Phoxtane> I thought Z was height <Mosai> z is depth I also know that the Super Chief is quite a bit larger than the typical cargo train, but I figured if the tunnel was big enough to admit that, it'd be big enough for practically anything that runs on standard Lego track.

Really? Because when I try to pry apart plates with two of them, they leave little grooves in the plastic on the edge where the studs were...

These are also visible in the WIP thread.

It's done! It's been extremely cold and snowy outside recently, so I figured it would look pretty nice standing in the snow. I'm a recent convert to a Gundam fanatic - I've only seen Gundam 00 and Gundam Unicorn as of yet. I have plans to watch Gundam SEED and Gundam Wing soon though. I was going to build one of the Gundam mobile suits from Gundam 00, but since that's a much newer show they're extremely greebly and have tiny bits sticking off in every direction. RX-78-2 is much more iconic, and consists of quite a bit more flat surfaces, so I figured I had a better chance of building it with the limited parts collection and time I had. In fact, I decided I wanted to build a Gundam for a LUG display this year... three weeks before the show was scheduled. I figure that I put anywhere from 25-30 hours into this MOC, and I'm quite in love with the results. In fact, it looked quite good standing in the middle of our display: (I did hear more than one comment to the effect of 'That Transformer looks cool!' ) Though I did hear one 'stoic' applied, so I guess that evens it out! Of course we need to look at it up close... I had to apply two chest reduction surgeries to make everything look right I was originally going to go for the fancy rocket-backpack that my reference images had, but I eschewed that as I needed something sideways to hold the top onto the bottom apart from the few studs-up connections in the torso. A good thing too, because it hasn't fallen apart since! (This was an issue in the WIP model...) Possibly the one thing within the Gundam series that's more iconic than the titular mobile suits themselves: the Beam Saber! Let's not forget the accessories either: The Beam Magnum! The Medium Shield! The Beam Saber! Nothing too fancy here, this was the last item to be put together - it was the night before and I had to get up rather early... but it does its job! An accessories-only shot appears to be all the rage with Lego mech stuff nowadays, so here's one! And let's finish off with some more images: Some final thoughts... I did design it with full mobility in the joints, but it's just too heavy to really be posed in anything resembling an action shot. This is due to the weakness of the ankle joints, which are just standard Lego ball joint bricks; they're too weak to stand up to the weight and as a result the whole model is extremely prone to tipping over. To help counter this, I added some bricks surrounding the joint, but the result is that I can't really pose it in a proper action pose. In addition, the knee joints have limited travel due to the pieces I used to attach the short cone-like round pieces that you can see in the images. The arms are also fully poseable, but due to the fact that the armor pauldrons are attached to the body with a single Technic friction pin, there ends up not being enough force inherent in the joint to hold up the arm. The arm itself is attached to the pauldron with a ball joint and is therefore independently poseable from the pauldron. The next time I build a mobile suit or mecha on this scale, I'll have to look into increasing the poseability dramatically. I was starting to run out of tiles at the end and had to do some clever things to stretch my supply enough to cover the arms. Going studded was *not* an option! Overall, I feel that this project was well worth the time and effort I put into it. It's going to stay together for a long while, I think! The WIP thread can be viewed here: http://www.eurobrick...howtopic=101957

This one's been in pieces for a little while now, but it never hurts to put up pictures as they become available, right? Extremely poseable, not very fragile, and incorporates teal. I think I like it!

I have finished the model, and it displayed quite nicely with the rest of our Lego city setup at the show this weekend. I have some pictures from the show, but I am wondering if I should hold off on posting those pictures until I can get my hands on the proper photoshoot pictures... either way, it's hard to tell! I can't post anything more here then because it is no longer a WIP.

Shortly after this picture was taken, the top half separated from the bottom half and fell off the dresser - I wasn't able to find the right hand

It's getting closer, as does the date of my LUG's display... Any comments? I shortened up the top of the slanted bit and extended out the flat bit where the head rests, to reduce the boxiness. Either way, I had no idea mecha had such thin torsos! I'll have to do something fancy to keep it from falling apart.

I've gotten quite a bit more done with this project. It looks as if the torso will be built in the same way I did the head: a sort of outer detail shell held together by brackets in the center. As much as I'd love to have a proper cockpit, there really isn't any time - the display opens this Saturday! I prefer the vent design on the left, made using ladder pieces, but I don't have enough as far as I know to do both sides like that. I'll have to do some more digging. The head will be mounted on some sort of pan-and-tilt swivel mount for proper posing. Right now it's just directly attached to the placeholder scaffold with some round 2x2 bricks. I even managed to work in the tail thrusters - it's likely that only the shorter kids will be able to see those! The side armor skirt and its mini-thrusters are here as well. I wanted to make them bigger, but I feel like this captures the piece quite well as it is. There's even some greebly bits in the knee joint. They're probably not canon, but they look good, so it doesn't really matter. Have I mentioned that I haven't even watched the original Gundam show? I've only ever seen Gundam 00 and Gundam Unicorn.

I'm hoping that by posting these here it'll keep me on track to finish this project properly! I'm hoping to get this done for the weekend of November 8 and 9 as that's when my LUG comes to my town and sets up a display - the only one I can attend and display at, as travel times and display dates for the others have always clashed with school (maybe college will help with this problem). Either way, this is the work I've done so far: ... Or at least, that's how far I got on this iteration before I gave up. See, I didn't originally intend to build the RX-78-2 Gundam - I had just finished watching Gundam 00 and wanted to build a Gundam Exia. I think those legs turned out quite well, but I ran into problems trying to build the large round piece on the front armor and the iconic cone shape of the solar reactor in the scale I had chosen, so I scrapped that project and moved on. I figured that the greater amount of flat panels on the RX-78-2 would be easier to build, so I jumped up in scale and went on to these. Similar problems ensued in that I seem to have an issue building everything above the legs. That, and I couldn't get the angled bits on the legs right either. So I moved up in scale again... At this point I think it becomes minifigure scale, which'll pretty much dwarf half of everything in my LUG's display. Once again I run into the curse of not know where to go from the legs up. Either way, with the trend of the figure doubling in size over a two week period, twice in a row, I think it'll be person-sized by the end of November. Much of the inspiration and ideas for the latest revision have come from this model here: http://rebrickable.c.../gundam-78-2-rx I wanted something that size but a bit more clean-looking, so I've adapted the frame and underlying structure to my purposes. As mentioned before, I'm not really sure how to build the armor 'skirt' and torso area, apart from knowing I want to use 2x2 yellow tiles to represent similar markings on the original. For reference purposes I'm using these images: I've also no idea how I'll do the head, the hands, and pretty much everything else that I don't have completed at this time... so let's look at a funny picture that I took after realizing I didn't want to struggle with Exia much more:

Speaking as a Wyomingite, I can safely say that there's more than a couple... Yes, there's at least one official and one un-official store in Denver. The official store is in the Park Meadows Mall.

The secret's out, all the collectors and speculators can go home now...

I wouldn't bother, it has 'MADOCA SUV' in there and I suspect the others are copies of the various full-RC efforts that people have made on this forum.

I put this together as practice for building environments in general, as my LUG's 5th annual display for the train depot in town is coming up and I wanted to be able to contribute more than rolling stock. Considering it's my first one, I don't think it turned out too bad... but I would have liked more verticality! I ran out of plant parts so I couldn't make it as extensive as I wanted either. I'm pretty sure this goes into Town and not Trains because the focus is on the landscape, but I could be wrong. More pictures can be found here on my DeviantArt page.

How about ASDFPO5361240.WQyutVOIKPJASD, or "I slipped and hit my face on the keyboard in shock over how [adjective] this creation is".

Puffed batteries are an immediate 'get-rid-of-immediately' sign for anybody who does R/C simply because that's a sign that the battery could be prone to bursting out in flames and/or exploding the next time it's used - something to do with the deformation internally shorting the battery and causing a large enough energy flow in a short enough time span that the battery heats up dramatically.

If *I* had to guess, I'd say that the yellow round thing is a thermistor, which is a little device that Lego likes to use in their motors to temporarily turn them off when overheated. Considering that the only other things on the board look to be diodes (one-way streets for electrical current IIRC), I think you're fine in taking out the board as long as you don't treat the motor roughly or plug it in the wrong way. Someone else will have to confirm my guess before I'll stand behind this though!