Locomotive Annie

Some great ideas gentlemen Yes I think that using decking timber would be the way to go as it's intended for being outside and getting wet as well as being nice and strong. I will go ahead and conduct some experiments with plastic track being out in the weather, but will plan for replacement with handlaid track with alloy rail. With having been a longtime railway modeller handlaying track doesn't scare me at all and alloy rail is reasonably cheap to buy. I don't really want to use off the shelf garden railway track and start regauging my brick built trains as I want to stick with just one gauge in my life these days, and besides I don't think regauging to 45mm would be all that easy and on 6 wide locos and rolling stock it would look really strange. Having worked in 16mm scale on 45mm track with building my own locos and rolling stock the thought of building in that scale with Lego is seriously daunting. Apart from the weight of the completed models the quantity of bricks needed for each model would be serious bankruptcy territory Your tip about the garden storage boxes is a great idea michaelozzie and I'll check those out next time I go on an expedition to the 'big smoke'. It would also be possible for me to run track into the garage from the garden and have storage tracks in there as well. Going into the garden with L gauge is going to be a long term for me to potter with and work on in between things while I'm getting back on my feet again. My present project is an indoor layout which should give me the best of both worlds as on a cold and wet Winter's day the last place I would want to be is out in the garden trying to play trains.

That's really clever LLL. I particularly like what you did with the passenger coach and I can see myself doing something similar to that.

Ooooooo cool bananas! Those valve gear parts look like they're going to be very useful indeed. Having access to a range of such great steam loco specific parts is going to be sooooooo good

Thanks for those suggestions Daedalus, I will definitely take note of them and tuck them away for later as I want to build other locos from the same time period with similar smokestacks. Thanks for your comments about my Fairlie. They have been my favourite NZR loco for a long time now so I wanted to have a go at building at least one and making a reasonable job of it. One member of the 'R' class has survived as a loco on static display, but there is a vigorous campaign being waged by a preservation group who want to restore it to full working order.

I think your idea of having track in long ballasted sections that can be uplifted and taken back indoors is a good one. What I would like best is having the track permanently in place, but if that's not possible then a long removable section built in plywood with track permanently attached would be a good compromise. Now I find myself wondering what would be the ideal size for each section. For someone like myself with wobbly balance who walks with a stick the sections can't be too large and unwieldy or the business of setting up for a running session becomes no fun at all.

Oh that is lovely. It's really inspiring to see a railway MOC of such a good standard.

I've never seen that done before Ashi, but as you say the end result would be definitely permanent. Making the casting mold is a lot of work, but once it's done casting the trackbase sections looks to be a relatively straight forward process. A working Lego Technics track maintenance vehicle, - that is seriously amazing.

Trackwork certainly is a concern and I think I'll setup an experiment fairly soon with some track left outside in the location where I intend to build my railway to see how it stands up to the weather. In the middle of Winter we do get -7 degree C frosts at times and during Summer the temperature can reach 30 degrees C so it will be interesting to see how the plastic track copes with that. We do also get a considerable amount of heavy rain which is one reason why I want to build a shelf type layout so I can avoid washouts.

This is something I've been wondering about ever since I discovered brick built trains; - would building an outdoor layout in the garden be an ok thing to do, or am I being nuts? I was going to do it with my 16mm railway models, but 16mm scale can get expensive really quickly if you're not careful and then there is the sheer size of the models which means that a lot of space is needed. I've seen this older topic and it left me feeling somewhat unsatisfied really..... http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=9750 After being ill for quite a while my garden is a mess. I stare at it and feel very much uninspired to spend all the necessary hours of effort to get it back to how it used to be. But if I was to build a garden railway it would give me some extra incentive to keep everything tidy as well as giving me a reason to potter about in the garden in odd spare moments. I know people have said that leaving plastic out in the sun isn't a good idea, but I've had a Fisher Price castle and an Imaginext Wizards Tower out in the garden for some years now and they seem to be surviving alright. True enough they are in a shady corner of the garden and not in the direct sunlight, but the site I'm thinking of for the railway is also out of the sun for most of the day. Ground level lines look all very lovely, but they are bad for your back and they take a lot of upkeep, - so I'm not going to do that. I would like to attach a shelf along the garden fence at suitable height and build the railway on that. Buildings built in Lego can be brought inside when the railway isn't in use, or else be covered with purpose built plywood 'box' covers to protect them from the worst of the weather as well as the neighbourhood cats. Locos and rolling stock would also be brought inside when not in use. So any thoughts or comments at all?

Thank you very much Ashi, - that's going to really help me out when it comes to laying out my mainline.

Yes good old Bricklink I'll have to save up my pocket money though as October was a heavy brick buying month so getting PF battery boxes will have to wait Yes we get everywhere

The design of the catenary masts your group is using is very nice indeed. Could you give us a part breakdown of these masts as I'm sure that I'm not the only one running electric locos who wants to have catenary masts on their own layouts.

I have quite a bit of Enlighten rolling stock now as well as a growing collection of Enlighten minifigs. I've found that the quality of the Enlighten minifigs to be good, they fit together well, don't fall apart like those by Liago do, and the printing on the torsos and faces while sometimes plain is very well done. Generally I've found the clutch on Enlighten bricks to be good and in some cases actually to be superior to Lego, Some aspects of the design of the passenger carriages, eg. 628, are weak with the side that is hinged to access the interior, but it is possible to build the coach so it doesn't open which makes it much stronger. The Enlighten goods wagons are frank cribs of the Lego MOT wagons, but on the other hand Lego doesn't make them anymore, so I guess all Enlighten is doing is filling a gap in the marketplace that is starved for readily available brick built goods wagons that can be purchased individually outside of a complete set. I'm no great fan of diesels, but I'm awfully tempted to buy that green Enlighten diesel because it's such a nice design and looks good in a very English prototype sort of way. The other Enlighten diesels no; - we did have similar kinds of diesels here in New Zealand, but they were all over dark red with speed whiskers in gold so there's not enough in the way of suitable bricks in these sets to even make a start in on building representative models. At the moment I'm assembling the Banbao trainsets I've just purchased (and yes I will be posting a review of the freight set soon) and I'm really enjoying myself. I'd purchased quite a lot of Banbao before, - their military sets back when I was still brick wargaming, - and it's very plain that Banbao have been working hard to improve their product. The bricks in the trainsets have a new logo mark on the end of the studs that I haven't seen before and the new Banbao bricks have a different feel about them as compared to the older ones I have. The clutch is very much improved and the bricks hold together very well. Banbao have also developed a new minifig design which they call 'Tobees' and these assemble in a way that is completely new. The Tobees can also pivot at the waist which is entirely new. Banbao are still making minifigures that match in well with traditional minifigures, but they share the same assembly method and design as the Tobees as well as being able to pivot at the waist. The chap in the hat and the green shirt on the extreme left is a new Banbao minifig with pivoting waist and the rest are all the new Tobees; - all except for Olivia on the end of course! So whatever the scrap Lego had with Banbao was, the result is that Banbao now seem to be working to establish their own unique designs and improve quality which can only be a good thing. The strange thing is though the Banbao Freight trainset has Tobees and the Hi-speed train set has minifigs so I'll be very interested to see if these minifigs are the new design or the old design (haven't opened the box yet, - great willpower on my part, yes?). The Tobees aren't quite my cup of tea and since I have more than enough traditional minifigs to staff my railway I'll just be packing them away in my storage crates for my grandchildren to play with........ When I actually get some grandchildren that is!

Seriously impressive modelmaking and some great Lego engineering with that coupling setup. I like how you built the trackwork on the display diorama and your overhead catenary is nicely built too.

Hello Gumpoleon and welcome to the forum. Your Berkshire loco is magnificent and makes for a great way to have broken out of your Dark Age.

It depends a lot on what you're wanting to do with building a layout as well. I'm building a very rural line so it's not as if I'm wanting to build huge trainyards and and a bustling city.

Further progress. I lengthened the boiler by two studs and by using a 12v motorblock and 12v wheel assembles to make a new rear bogie I've now got the loco looking low and long like a 'R' class Fairlie should be. The ashpan and the safety valve are in placeholder colours and will be replaced once my Bricklink order arrives.

Some industrial and narrow gauge locos had both tanks and a tender. The usual reason was to increase fuel capacity, but it's not unknown for water to be carried on the tender as well.

It was just like Christmas morning this morning because the local courier guy delivered my Banbao Trainsets The sets are the 8228 Freight Set and the 8221 Hi-Speed Passenger Train Set. These are the only two trainsets Banbao makes, but they do have a basic track set and a points/switches set as well which I didn't purchase this time around. They also make an individual City Railway Station Set too, though I have no plans to buy it. The importer and distributor for Banbao in New Zealand is a business woman who decided to become the local distributor after her kids were given some Banbao sample sets and as they really enjoyed playing with them she thought it worthwhile to investigate the brand further. Because I'd purchased quite a few Banbao sets from her in the past she also gave me a free 8223 passenger coach set to go with the Hi-Speed trainset which I thought was really nice of her. The trainsets have a complete set of motorising components in the set box along with radio control gear so they can be remotely operated. My original idea with buying these sets was to mine them for components, but now that I've been able to source Lego motor blocks and PF parts through Bricklink for waaaay cheaper than they cost here in NZ I'm starting to strongly consider assembling the locos according to the instructions and making use of them. One thing in their favour is that the locos in the sets are Electric and not Diesel (never been keen on diesels). A major electrification project was undertaken here in the Central North Island not so long ago and the locos used on the Main Trunk Line are all overhead electric traction these days. Soooooo I thought if I made my 1920s NZGR steam loco and rolling stock models as well as the vintage old style station and yard be the property of a preservation society I could then still lay track and overhead wire supports for a modern day mainline. We have a vigorous preservation scene here in NZ so all this is quite plausible. Well apart from the Hi-speed train as we don't have anything like that at the moment, but I'll just say the layouts set in 2015 and we do now I've decided to review the Freight set first and after that I'll review the Hi-speed passenger set provided I haven't bored everyone to tears the first time around.

Oooooo clever. Having not really done much with Technic pieces before I couldn't even begin to think how that was done.

Having been a railway modeller for years makes me have a different approach to brick railways than most Lego enthusiasts. I like Lego, but if I see a perfectly good solution to a construction problem over the fence in Cloneland I'm not worried in the slightest about going over there and making use of it. Track gets discussed a lot I've noticed and some forum members have problems with finding enough straight track. Everyone seems to universally hate the flexitrack because apart from anything else it's just plain awful looking. The sharp eyed among you would have noticed that the photo in my WIP single Fairlie thread shows my loco standing on some very un-Lego like track. This track is L gauge and it came from two utterly dreadful Chinese battery trainsets that I picked up very cheaply at a clearance sale. The trainsets I mined for motors, bogies, wheels and useful electrical bits and binned the rest. The thing that had drawn me to these trainsets was the surprising fact that all the rolling stock had plastic bogies that were almost exact scale copies of a certain type of real world narrow gauge bogie used on lightly laid industrial railways. The track I of course kept despite its odd gauge as I thought it might be useful despite the fact I was still working in 16mm scale on 45mm track at the time. Later on once I'd discovered brick trains I was surprised to find that this oddly gauged track was in fact L gauge. As far as track goes it's Ok and is much the same as any of the plastic track from New Bright, Echo or Scientific Toys that I'd been using for my 16mm scale trains. The thing that is good about it is that the curves are a much larger radius than Lego track and the rails are the same height as Lego track as well. The fly in the ointment is the fact that the two types of track won't connect together, but I'm very sure that I can make an adapter piece so they can be joined. After doing some further research I'm reasonably certain that my mystery track is in fact a knock-off of the track in Sluban's brick trainsets. Don't go rushing off and buying any just yet as I've got a Sluban track set on order for research purposes and once it arrives I'll give a detailed report here on just how useful it might be to track starved brick train enthusiasts. It would be good if it does work though as the track set boxes cost 8.99 Euro and what you see in the picture is what you get. So remember chaps don't go doing anything rash just yet. Wait until I've gone in and made sure it's safe..... (With thanks to Artvixn for the use of this image)

Great coaling station LT12v. It has a wonderful industrial character about it that reminds me of the coal industry here in New Zealand on the West Coast of the South Island. For a moment there I was almost tempted into abandoning my layout plans based on the branchlines and timber tramways that were here in the district where I live during the 1920s.

Wow that is going to be a beautiful MOW train when it's all done. I can't think of any criticism or helpful comment to make at all except to say that if it was my MOW train I'd add another ballast truck.

Cale, your Pennsylvania Pacifics are beautiful. And there was even video of them double-heading on your Flickr pages

An unusual and nicely detailed model. You've caught the character of one of these locos perfectly.