legoman666

I'll be at brickworld Chicago and Brickfair VA this year :)

The end of one of my coaches: Its kind of busy, but I really wanted to center that window in a 3 wide space.

Down the rabbit hole....

Their scale is more correct, the only problem is when joining 2 track pieces. It creates a sleeper thats twice the size of the rest.

Greetings. This is my latest model. No PF, it's just a dummy unit that I'll pair with my AC44CW CN unit (which has 2 large PF motors). Still missing a couple pieces and I'm not entirely happy with the truck details but is otherwise complete. The prototype. Apparently this unit used to have some weird blue/red paint scheme. I thought about recreating it like that, but honestly it would've been ugly. Getting the handrails just so was a challenge. Some of my white light sabers are actually glow in the dark. I wish there was a 4x4 round tile to get rid of those studs up top. A 4x4 black radar dish might work, but for the life me I can't seem to find any in my bins... The cab took about a month to make. The rest of the locomotive I completed in 3 days. The hood is 4W, the cab is 7. That was tricky to get it centered. Can't do a 5W nose without a flat spot in the middle. The cabinets are missing their doors. I thought I had some red ones but I'm having a hard time tracking them down. Old and new. Should look good pulling together.

The 1x4s were on the pick a brick wall. I think I used 3 cups so it was only ~$50. The 1x2s I had to order from PAB online. I bought 3000 $0.10/ea. But the cost of those was nothing compared to the cost of the ballasting that's still ongoing.

This what you mean? http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=102241

Love it. Just needs some decals. I see some influence from my own model ;)

It's the towers from either end of the bridge staked together. Eventually I will replace it with something less conspicuous. R104 on the outside. In the far left you can see every radius parallel, r104, r88, r72, r56 and r40.

Thanks. I bought 3 and knew exactly where to put the first 2, couldn't decide on the third. Then I realized that the value of the Lego in my basement far exceeds not only the equity I have in my house, but basically everything in it as well. Plus most robberies are committed by people the victim knows, and anyone who knows me knows that I have a large collection.

View from the security camera. Got my trains and bridge back. Latest lugbulk order was for pieces for brick built roads, so it'll be another year before those are ready.

The landscaping is fantastic. Looks like it took forever to set up

They're all over amazon too.

I finished the second locomotive a while ago, it even ran at a 6 week show without completely falling apart, although it come back missing a bunch of trim, a dead motor and a couple beat up decals. Still haven't put forth the effort to finish the last 2 coaches. Maybe some time this year..... I do finally have all the windows I need.

NiMh are not able to be trickle charged. LiPos can be trickle charged, however, 14500 LiPos (about the size of a AA) are 3.7V each which would yield about 23V, and they are about 1.5mm longer than a real AA. They do not fit in Lego's battery pack, believe me, I tried. What I ended up doing in my Big Boy is putting using 6 LiPos 14500s in a 3S2P setup in some non-lego battery boxes that only required slight modification to hold the 14500s. I run my track at 24V and each locomotive has a DC-DC converter. When there is track power higher than the battery pack, the track power is used, when track power is lower than the battery pack, the batteries are used. It works really well. With 3.3F, you will need a current inrush limiter, unless you want to kill your power supply or melt your wires.

My locomotives I make use the Lego AA pack as a UPS. Works well. I also use NWSL train wheels that I modify with a dremel. With a UPS, the battery voltage and the track voltage either need to be the same, or you need a DC regulator to supply a steady voltage to the motor controller. Otherwise, every time you switched from plastic track to 9v track and vice versa, the speed would change. A couple of my locos also have a .4F capacitor to smooth out the voltage from the rails. They are rather large in size, and if their capacity was any larger, I would probably need to use a current inrush limiter. Even with .4F, by my calculations it only powers my loco for about 1/8th of a second. So if you wanted enough juice to roll through an entire unpowered R104 90 degree turn, you'd need several farads of capacity, which would take up an enormous amount of space. I only put caps in 2 of my locos due to how little they help and how much space they consume.

Prepare for the extraordinary: A drill press would probably work better.

I gave it a shot in my garage with a dremel and a little jig I whipped up real quick. Pretty easy to do. Any minor imperfections are invisible once the rail is in place. These are both the inner and outer radii of a ME Models R56 curve, which is the tightest curve that this would have to work on. The nickle silver rail has no problems taking to the bend.

Lookin good! Any chance of seeing the LDD file? :) Also, do you have a video of it chugging along?

I am also working on an sd40-2. 7w in CN livery.

My good bridge is at a show. As are all of the trains, so you might find the train tracks lacking in the train department. 2 complete loops with decent switching space. As planned IRL Crappy photo My good bridge is at a show. As are all of the trains.

Peels up at the edges. Otherwise works well.

Got a video of the pneumatics in action? Lookin good, making me want to make a pneumatic locomotive of my own.

Why not use the curved 2x slopes?

This looks easy enough to do at home with a jig and a router/dremel. I'll give it a shot.