Paperballpark

^ Yes, the Leeds store is by cup, with the prices as above. The small cup has a 50p re-use discount.

Personally I love the new cargo train, and I'm in the UK!

In terms of batteries, I got 3 hours running out of a set of AAA batteries powering my Constitution (with 8 coal wagons) at a show. Regarding polarity, I may be just being stupid here, but surely you don't need a polarity switch to run a second motor? Surely you can just flick the direction switch on the second battery box?

He could quite clearly have fit more in there.

Here are my photos of the event. Apologies for the ones that are a bit blurred, and I do know I've missed some displays out (sorry Jim!): Oh for goodness sake I can't just post it as a link! It keeps changing it to a media player as above. Here's the link in a code box: http://www.flickr.com/photos/97154687@N02/sets/72157641474545063/

Unfortunately the organisers (Brickshire) can't control the prices being charged by vendors at the show. If any other vendors (or exhibitors) want to go along next year, contact Brickshire, who I'm sure would be happy to try to accommodate you. If you're unsure whether it'd be worth it, the show got between 6500 and 7000 visitors through the doors over the two days.

I mainly meant the image you based it off. You did a really good job of copying the original.

Sorry, I may be being completely thick here, but I still don't understand why you had to modify them, given that the remaining part of the panels is behind the black 'door frame' and therefore isn't visible anyway?

You've made a really good job of this! It's very different, although I wouldn't have said it was especially streamlined with all those bits sticking out of it!

Looking good! I'm curious as to where you used the 'modified Lego 1x2 Panels with Lego white headlights bricks', as I can't see them on the train, and I'm without seeing them in the model I can't see why you needed to modify them.

Except those came out in 2010, so we've had 4 years of inflation to deal with in the meantime.

I agree with garethjellis, there's no way it would go around corners, with the centre wheel on the shunter causing it to de-rail. It's a nice little engine, but with that problem and no way to put PF into it (as it stands), it can't be anything other than a static display piece.

I have Big Ben medium drivers spaced 13 apart, which works fine, although they're obviously smaller than the large drivers.

Yeah, I don't have any of those spare at the moment (I already bought 6 of the 12 black 1x2 slope that were on BL in the UK for this train!), but I've now shuffled the top of the boiler around to move the stack nearer to the front. It's also moved the middle bits closer to the front too, but I can live with that until I get the pieces to move them back. In addition to this, I've also made a few slight changes to the front bumper (added a chain and changed the round red 1x1 bricks to cones), and I've also worked out a way to do the pipe leading from the pistons to the smokebox, although I need more of the black 1x2 slope to do it, which aren't widely available yet.

Very nice! I really like it, but as efullner says, how does it work if there's nowhere to store the coal? I'd seriously consider copying it, but I only work with PF, and the battery box and IR receiver wouldn't fit in it.

I've done a few steam engines recently, my 4-6-2 engine and my twin 0-6-0 pannier tank engines (which now look even better with proper connecting rods, thanks to zephyr1934!) being my most recent. All my previous trains were done in 6-wide, but I've found that a bit too restrictive recently - it's very hard to get a proper 'round' look for the boiler in that scale, so I thought I'd try 7-wide this time and see what it looked like. I also wanted to do a different class of engine, and 2-8-0 seemed sufficiently different to anything I've done :) I based the design on the British LMS (London, Midland and Scottish Railway) Stanier Class 8F, built between 1935 and 1946. On the outbreak of the Second World War, the design was chosen to become the country's standard freight design, reprising the role the GCR Class 8K had in the First World War. The War Department had 208 8Fs built and requisitioned 51 more.[ref] This is the engine I based it on, but I chose to do it in black rather than dark red. It's not perfect - the chimney is a bit too far back, and the hoses I've used on the sides curve upwards a bit, but overall I'm pretty pleased with it. The tender is built to take Power Functions too, although it doesn't currently have them in there. More (and larger) photos are on my flickr.

Yes they will, but if you plan on pulling anything at all with it you'll need some elastic bands or something similar to provide grip.

Europe and the UK use the same track gauge, but the structure gauge is higher in Europe and on High Speed lines in the UK. This is why there are double-decker coaches on European railways but not on UK railways. To answer the question, I've tried to keep to 6-wide, but it's starting to become too restrictive in regards to detail. Looking at this thread I'll probably look to do most of my future trains in 7-wide.

From what has been posted on www.bricksetforum.com (which has been up continually, although the styling isn't always great), there were issues a few days ago which they were having problems sorting out, so it was decided to move the site to a new server. That necessitated a change of IP address, which can take up to 48 hours (or even sometimes a bit longer) to propagate throughout the internet. Basically, for up to 48 hours after the site has changed server, it can still be unreachable for some people. Apparently though, there's the possibility that there's also a DDoS attack underway, which won't help things at all. Oh and I think Huw said in one of the posts about the issues that he'd be delaying rollout of the new site until the issues had all been resolved.

@ScotNick I was going to say it's just you, but I've looked again and you're right! I thought they were just the 6x8 ramp piece for a moment, but they're curved!

Where did you hear that from?

Last year I was at a LUG display event, with a load of old bricks that one of the members had brought for the kiddies to build with. Taking one of the Old Light Grey plates (2x8 I think) off another plate, the Old Light Grey plate snapped clean in half, without me putting all that much pressure on it. I was quite surprised, but on closer inspection it did seem slightly 'brittle'.

the yellow 1x2 tile on the front of my blue roadster developed a hairline crack less than 6 months after putting it together

Right, after another BL order, I've modified the areas between the wheels so that they're less 'boxy'. I must admit, they do look much better now:

Actually I think there may be more traction, because the connection rods will make the non-driven wheels move too, which is what the battery box is sat directly above. Hmm...