Locomotive Annie

Now I've seen everything

Thanks, that is a very interesting webpage and basically answers all my question including some I didn't know I was going to ask yet.

It just gets better and better. What an amazing locomotive build, - I watched the videos and was seriously impressed at how well it could run on L track curves.

Thanks very much Frank

I've got motor blocks being sent to me from far distant lands at the moment, but I don't actually have any to hand at the moment. Could a forum member please tell me what the wheelbase of the 9v/PF motor is? That's the measurement in studs not millimeters. Thanks

Thanks Zephyr. I had another read of the 'Northern Exposure' article and this time around I did get more out of it as the first time I read it I hadn't attempted to build any locos yet. I find your locos inspiring to study and I hope one day I will be able to fearlessly build a large tender loco. Perhaps an 'Ab' class Pacific like my grandad used to drive I guess with building a single Fairlie as my first loco MOC I have some of the advantages the diesel guys have in that an 'R' class single Fairlie rides on two bogies and is fully articulated without any pony trucks or other complications.

Thanks Zephyr and Dr Spock One thing about building steam locos in Lego though is that it's really hard to get the chimney/funnel/smokestack looking like it should. Loco chimneys are quite characteristic pieces of kit and in many cases it's possible to identify the builder of a full sized loco just by the shape of the chimney alone. R class locos that worked in rural areas were usually fitted with a spark arresting chimney and that is what I've done with my loco. I guess this is an illegal method, but I cut a piece of black 3mm Technics plastic tubing and forced a round section wooden toothpick inside it. This expanded the tube enough that it held the cone piece and the round brick together reasonably firmly. It's still not a good representation, but I can live with it for the moment.

That method with the two 8 toothed planetary gears gave me a real 'Wow!' moment that hasn't quite left me yet. And it's still not the actual method you used Zephyr?!

Just so you know what I talking about this is what a New Zealand Government Railways 'R' class single Fairlie looks like. Sorry about the quality of the photo, it's a little difficult to find nice clear 'this is an R class' type photos, but if I find something better I'll replace this photo. There was a version of the R class with longer side tanks as well and there was also another class of single Fairlie called the 'S' class. These had the long tanks, a larger cab and were a heavier loco than the R class. I may build one later, but I chose the R class first because being the more lightweight class it was found on lighter laid branchlines, some local council tramways and even working on the occasional timber tramway. And this is my WIP R class Fairlie. Some of the parts in the picture are placeholders and will be replaced with the correct items when my Bricklink orders arrive. I have used a degree of foreshortening, but I may yet make the boiler a little longer as these locos always looked low and long as compared with later NZR loco classes. It didn't take too long to build something that looked like an R class, the fun began when I found that it kept wanting to break in half. Part of the problem is that I'm short of 8 wide baseplates and once my Bricklink order arrives I should be able to replace the dreadful lashup of joined baseplates that are holding the loco together at the moment. I ended up being so absorbed with rebuilding the loco body so it was strong enough to handle and bump about that I stayed up far too late and ended up being bleary eyed this morning. Worth it though After a bit of fiddling I was able to get my loco to go around a standard Lego curve. Yay for BBB blind drivers because that trailing driving wheel pair really does need to be flangeless. As I mentioned in another thread this loco is inspired by the MOT locos which is why I've stuck with using the same boiler building method. A nod in the direction of the source of my inspiration and all that. Motorising is definitely on my 'to-do' list, but at the moment I'm not so sure how I will achieve that. I thought it best to try and build something that looks like an R class first and then figure out how to motorise it latter

Thanks for the comments and advice everyone EIH, - I do agree that the MOT steam locos do look a wee bit odd, but then I come from a part of the world where smaller sized articulated steam engines were familiar things both in the historic railway sense as well as in industrial settings. I'm going to post a thread for my WIP 'R' class single Fairlie loco and this particular MOC of mine was directly inspired by the MOT locos. I have other ideas up my sleeve for other MOT inspired articulated locos that worked the branch lines and timber tramways her in New Zealand. I plan on collecting the MOT loco sets over time and these will of course be left in original condition, but as to MOCs inspired by them there are plenty of prototypes to keep me amused. Duq, - I've got train motor blocks in both R/C and PF forms coming via Bricklink as well as all manner of Technics bits so I can have a go at building up my own motorised loco underframes. For a start I will most probably just use the standard train motor blocks to keep things simple, but I do want to master the art of building my own mechs using Technics bits. When I was still building locos in metal I managed to get an electric motor and a bunch of gears to co-operate and work together, so I feel reasonably confident. And yes Alisdair, you will see me over at the Technics forum from time to time with questions to ask while I'm getting everything figured out. JopieK, - thankyou for your kind offer regarding the stickers, - I will be in touch once I've figured out the sticker designs I want

Again thankyou very much everyone, - you've gone and made me blush now

What a wonderful little locomotive! The sound and smoke effects are absolutely the icing on the cake. I found the little diorama in the forest fascinating as I was planning on having a forest area on my new layout that I'm building, Your loco definitely liked stretching its legs on the big layout and it seems that the onlookers at the exhibition were delighted by all the smoke and sound effects too.

Aw gee whizz, thanks everyone...... I've really enjoyed spending time here on the forum and even during the short time I've been here I've received some really good suggestions and advice on ways to do things with Lego bricks to end up with a better model. I love my 317 loco tag, - it's perfect

I just found a Lego man swimming in my cup of tea........?! Luckily he was a fireman and had the special training to cope with such a situation I've been spending the day sorting and re-organising all my bricks from what was previously setup for building models for brick wargaming to now having everything nicely to hand for railway building. I really enjoyed your video Brickster. Your wild West town looked great and was very much a complete layout to my eyes. Do any photographsstill exist of it at all? - because I'd love to see them Thanks too for the tip about decals as I do have a decent colour printer and it will be fun to have a mess about to see what I can come up with. I loved the Gravestone photo, great photography and composition. That would be one railway that wouldn't have to worry about vandals damaging company property. Seeing your American 4-4-0 reminded me that we did have similar locos here in New Zealand in the early years, so I think I'll add one to the build list for my own railway layout. I've read several times on the forum where members mention their 'Dark Age' and what prompted them to return to Lego again. Well for me this is my first time around with Lego, so I guess I had a reeeeally long 'Dark Age' lasting several decades before I was awakened to the delights of plastic bricks. Too much time looking after my children when they were small, holding down a job, tertiary study as well as holding down a job! - teenager taming! - and etc all served to keep me away from discovering Lego. Though I did manage to build the odd high quality railway model in brass and steel from time to time. Oh and in case anybody is wondering my kids never got the Lego bug, though I'm sure they knew about it from visiting their friends after school. So there you are, that's why I find the older Lego trains so interesting, - I've never seen them before and discovering them for the first time is wonderful! Edit: Oooooooo I've just discovered I've got a title thingy under my avatar. It's great, - I love it. Thanks Brickster.

Ooooooo that looks to be a tricky one. I take it that glue isn't an option for an answer.......

I know I'm being a wide eyed newbie with Lego trains, but the more I look at and read about the 'My Own Train' series the more keen I'm becoming on this whole series of Lego sets. Firstly let me say that I think it's regrettable that Lego doesn't make sets like this anymore because the idea is a really sound one. Afterall model train manufacturers have been doing it successfully for years which goes to show that selling locos, track and rolling stock individually as well as in sets is a winner of a sales technique. Anyway the result of all this looking and reading is that I've made up my mind to collect the locomotive sets from the 'My Own Train' series as well as basing the MOCs I build on the locos and rolling stock that make up the series. To start my collection off I purchased one of these on Bricklink. It's a KT307 loco, - the grey version. One small hitch I have though is that all my track is the plastic R/C kind and the MOT series is 9 volt. I'm thinking that a suitable box van set up to be a battery carrier should solve the problem as there isn't exactly a lot of room for batteries in the locos themselves. I did some further Bricklinking last night to top up my small supply of Technic gear bits and axles as well as buying some motor blocks and some of the new PF electrical bits. Now I just have to be very patient and wait for all this bounty to arrive so I can properly motorise my locos so they are no longer just push along toys. By the way, what do you do if you don't want all your locos to be No: 317? I was thinking of scanning the stickers into a graphics program and making myself some alternative numbers.

That's looking very tidy indeed. The yellow stripe is a good feature and lifts the plain grey appearance very nicely.

A not very good morning was suddenly brightened by the postman bringing me my first order of BBB loco driving wheels. I went for the the largest size discount pack of wheels for my first order because I wanted to get an overview of the whole range and I chose Dark Grey as the colour for my wheels as I thought this would suit work-a-day steam locos better than black. I'm absolutely so impressed with the quality of these wheels and will definitely be a repeat customer. As I've mentioned before I have an interest in 16mm scale trains as well and I'm even thinking of using BBB loco wheels when I build my next 16mm loco. Since all my large scale locos are R/C battery locos and are built around motor blocks that have plastic wheels and I've had no problems with them at all I don't see why I can't use Lego Technics and BBB wheels to build my own motor blocks instead of buying battery trainsets from chain stores to break down for parts. Sorry for wandering off into OT territory, but I just had to say just how useful these wonderful wheels are going to be to me

The grill is delightful and makes the car look very pleased with itself indeed.

I like the brick bricks, the overall effect reminds me of a number of older buildings I've seen in the townships round about where I live. My vote is for a library btw.

I have both the Banbao trainsets, - the Hi-speed Train and the Freight set, - on layby at the moment and once they are delivered to my door I'll be more than happy to write a review. Banbao track is the same geometry as Lego and Enlighten and they will combine together, but the rails are just slightest bit taller than Lego and Enlighten's track. It's not enough to be a major problem though and would be very easy to remedy with a couple of strokes of a file. I've purchased Banbao military sets in the past and I've found them to be generally Ok with accurately cast bricks with no flash and the set design is reasonable. The two faults that Banbao sets have is that the brick count is sometimes not correct with the occasional strange substitution and there will always be some bricks with poor clutch. Otherwise I'm happy enough to buy Banbao sets and the different brick sizing has never been a problem because I store my Banbao bricks separately from the others. Though once I got the hang of it and figured out the size ratio difference I didn't find it difficult at all to use Banbao bricks with other makes.In answer to anyone who is concerned that clone bricks aren't safe for children I think I can safely say that Enlighten's bricks are quite safe to handle as this illness I live with makes me sensitive to anything remotely toxic. So far I've been quite happily building things with bricks by Enlighten and a number of other makers including Lego and I haven't had a bad reaction to any of them yet. Not for a moment do I want anyone to think I've got anything against Lego because I haven't. I own a large amount of Lego bricks purchased both second hand from toy box clearances and also from Bricklink. Just lately I even purchased a couple of friends sets new as well as some 32x32 stud baseplates. It's just that I own a considerable amount of sets by clone makers as well and by and large I've found them to be alright. If there are any shortcomings I'm generally not bothered because most times the sets were cheap to buy in the first place. Yes there are sometimes bricks missing, - if that's the case I go to my storage bins and find replacements. Not worth raising any sweat over IMHO. And yes sometimes there are misshapen bricks in a set or ones that don't clutch well. Easily fixed, - I toss them in the bin. And just in case anybody is thinking that my bin must be overflowing with dud bricks it's not. Even with Liago who make the worst clone sets ever seen I would only have to throw away maybe three bricks at the most per set and with Cogo and Enlighten I've yet to throw away any at all.Just recently I assembled an Enlighten 628 passenger car and even with my dodgy powers of concentration and clumbsy fingers I had no problems putting it together. This coach is designed to open out on one side to access the interior, but I assembled it so it wouldn't open so it would be easier for me to handle, I'm not saying this coach is weak in its construction because it's not. The clutch on all the bricks and parts was really good and the bricks were all well formed and free from flash. The wheels roll quite freely too. Why did I choose to buy it? Because Lego didn't have anything like it in their current range and certainly not for $NZ20 each. In appearance it's very like the suburban vestibule end carriages built in the 1930s that I traveled to school in when I was a much younger woman (And no I'm not that old, the NZR Aa class suburban carriages had a very long life and lasted in service into the 1990s). Eventually I'll do a little modding and make these Enlighten 628 carriages look a little more like an NZR Aa class subbie , but I'm happy with them for the moment.At the moment I'm building an 'R' class single Fairlie and some of it is Lego and some of it is Enlighten bricks. The boiler cantilevers out on a single Fairlie and is unsupported at the smokebox end. I was having problems getting the boiler to stay in place until I replaced the Lego bricks forming the lower part of the firebox with Enlighten ones. The Enlighten bricks had a much stronger clutch, so don't give me any more of that Lego purist nonsense. And another thing, Enlighten make a printed 'radar dish' part that nicely represents a smokebox door. It's even just about a perfect match for an 'R' class Fairlie, - so guess what I'll be using on my model.........

One word, - magnificent.

A great little shunting loco with really nice detailing. I'm no fan of diesels, but I can still recognise good modelmaking when I see it.

The PF battery box setup costs $NZ170 here in New Zealand so I won't be buying one. Battery holders for rechargeable AA cells from Dick Smith is what I will be using on my Lego trains, it's what I used with my 16mm scale locos and they worked really well too. Surely the opportunity is there for an AFOL with the right skills to draw up a slimline battery box and make them using 3D printing. Unfortunately I've never been able to master any kind of CAD program or I would be busy doing it right now.

Discovering BBB wheels and Zephyr's side rods has been a wish come true. I'm presently waiting for an order of BBB's wheels and Zephyr's rods to arrive so I can complete my single Fairlie loco. The prototype had outside valve gear, but I won't be attempting to represent it unless I strike a really wet day where I'm so bored I can't find anything else to do. The problem is that the prototype wasn't a large loco and the valve gear is quite delicate looking so hanging Technics bits off the side of the wheels will just look plain daft.