legoman666

Looking good. Do I need to make a few?

Sorry, I must have been looking at the one photo in particular. Very nice 3 axle bogies considering you're using the pf train motor. Have you considered using regular pf motors with gears so you can get the axles closer together? At your scale of 6 wide they should be about 1/2 to 1 stud between each, you have 3, which is why your fuel tank is tiny. Very nice job on the nose!

Where are the middle axles? ;)

Mike let us borrow these for a weekend at Brickfair.

Very faithful build. Well done.

My Horizon Express has to use 1x2 tiles to hold the couplers together, pain in the butt to get those on there. Besides, American trains don't use that style coupler, so brick built is the only way to go!

It's up to 30'. I had to switch to push/pull since my neodymium magnets weren't strong enough for the portions of the loop that are slightly uphill. I've a couple WIP rolling stock pieces I've been working on which will make it even longer. Of course, I could always stick my passenger cars on the end of my freight train, but that wouldn't be authentic ;)

You will if you space the wheels a stud apart.

Thanks! It's just a cheap china bluetooth boombox a LUG member got off of eBay for $11. Probably couldn't find it again if I tried. I stripped it down as much as I could so it'd fit in a 7 wide shipping container. It's actually really simple. Steel wheels pick up 24V from the track, then there's a bridge rectifier that feeds into a DC-DC converter set to 5VDC. I soldered the 5V directly to the PCB inside the bluetooth module to where the USB input would normally go in. The bluetooth boombox had the battery built in, so I didn't have to figure out how to charge a Li-ion battery. The hardest part is getting power from the track.

My latest effort: I discovered the other day that if I stick a loco at either end of the train, I can run at slow speeds very smoothly and also eliminate magnets pulling apart. Very glad to have figured this out, since I was hitting the limit of my neodymiums. Steel wheels for track power. Sound unit has a battery built in that charges from 5V. I put in a DC-DC converter so it'll recharge itself from any track voltage (up to 35?). I run 24V at home and at our shows.

I'd be down for 1 or 2 full circles of the R120 with metal. Would love to run it at home. My lug might be in for a circle or two as well.

I can solder a couple up for you if you want. Cost for components is about $20/ea + extra for PF connectors. Normally I cut a PF extension cable in half. PF extensions are $3. + a couple dollars for shipping and materials. Call it $28 for 1, or $50 for 2. Shoot me an email @ legoman666@gmail.com if you're interested.

Has any one come up with a method of determining which studs line up underneath when using the wide radius turns? I'd like to connect mine in a few places.

I've only noticed it on the 88. The 104 is fine, as is the 72. Thinking about gluing the pieces down, or hitting them with a heat gun to bend them back flat.

Using the PF train motor negates any of the difficulties related to figuring out gearing at the trade off of flexibility. If you're set on using the other motors, the large PF motor essentially made the medium one redundant. It's about the same size, but has much more power. It's 3 x 4 wide, so it's easy to hide in the body of a 7 wide locomotive that has a 5 wide rear. The XL motor is 5 wide, so can only really be hidden in a 7 wide or 8 wide area. For a steam engine, I'd recommend the large motor. Each of my diesels has 2, and my big boy has 4.

They sent me a piece when they fulfilled my backing order. Looks great, but in order to use it I'd have to redo my entire layout.

Thanks! You have very sharp eyes too. It is indeed track powered. I had the wheels 3D printed in stainless steel. I only had 4 made, still need to order the other 4, but they're $20 each so I've been holding off. The power pickup is similar to the rest of my locomotives; track power is run through a bridge rectifier and then fed to a DC-DC converter, which powers a bluetooth motor controller. Motor controller powers 4 large PF motors. There are also 6 14500 lithium batteries to provide power seamlessly when track power is lost. (I normally use NiMh cells, but they were not equal to the task of 4 large PF motors). The batteries also feed the DC-DC converter, so the motor controller is always supplied with a constant voltage regardless of power source. No other photos yet. It's not my original design, so I didn't feel like it was right for me to do so. It also needs a little work; more greebling, fix the plow, and redo the gearing on the second set of drive wheels to reduce derailments. As for metal taping the track, I only did 2 pieces. It was too much work, doesn't look good, and curls up at the edges. I does work reasonably well though... I've been thinking about trying conductive paint, but I have a feeling that it will not be durable enough. A little jar of it is almost $30, so its not even worth it to me to try.

I use a mix of Eneloops and Tenergy. As far as I can tell, they are exactly the same except for price. I have a charger that tells me the capacity and they're all within 50mAh. Tenergy are about half the price. I have about 80-100 and I've not had a bad one yet. Highly recommend.

You have a sharp eye! I've had my eye set on a crossover for about a year but they were always too expensive. Finally found one on eBay for $65, so I snatched it up. And of course you're right about the diesel being the wrong model, but I had to make do with what I had available ;) I followed the instructions on Flickr for the big boy, but ended up modifying parts of it quite a bit to improve reliability and accuracy.

IMGP2198 IMGP2196 IMGP2197 Only difference is that in my version, the EMD is being pushed by the Big Boy ;)

If I'm understanding the problem right, you need some half plate offsets. Mount some of the cheese to 1x1 brick with 1 stud, and mount others to head light bricks. But it looks like you're already doing that, so what exactly is your question? I've similar cheese work on my 7 wide diesels. See here: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=107900

27ft (8.2m). The locomotive's can handle more length, but I just don't have any more rolling stock. It's all pretty heavy too.

This particular locomotive had run somewhere between 30 and 40 hours. I'm dismantling it to rebuild it a little bigger. My more recent builds don't have this issue, their transmissions are different.

The powder is plastic dust from the gears because I didn't support the axles from both ends. They had enough wiggle room to make this mess.

Logically you should just start with 1. What do you have to lose? If it is too fine, go to 2, then back to 1.