Diamondback

Again, dunno about in Europe, but American practice was to use prism glass for restroom windows, stuff that would let light in but not let you see in or out.

Problem is, shorten too much and you're basically right back at an F--I'd suggest an OAL around 42 studs over coupler faces (60% of 71' OAL), assuming the Super Chief is enough shorter to have a visible difference.

Simple... real diesels have cables running between them under each corner when running in a multi-unit lashup. Just use that as cover, or for old-school early "Covered Wagons" with diaphragms around their end doors you could run 'em throguh those if you run closely coupled. (Which takes having a straight between every two curve tracks, but...)

Or, if you're running multi-unit cab units, there's always what Electro-Motive did on the original Model F that evolved into the FT: put the battery box inside the B-unit (which you'd leave unpowered, and run jumper cables across to the cab--the Model F was designed for the two units of each 2700-horsepower half to only be separated when disassembled in the shop.)

I don't know if it's the case on TGV, but on North American prototypes many if not most passenger railcars were somewhat asymmetrical in their window arrangements, usually around the lavs and the hallways passing around them on coaches, the kitchen and hallway area of a diner, or between the room side and walkway side of all-room sleepers.

Ooh, there's an idea... a series of just historical figures in LEGO could be cool. Lincoln, Alexander the Great, the possibilities are endless. Oh, and Holmes needs his Dr. Watson... and Professor Moriarty. (Hmmm... wouldn't a LEGO line based on the Sherlock Holmes canon be kinda cool?)

Really, for 6-wide you want about 50 or 51-stud car-length (60% "down-scale" from a floor area of 10' over wall exteriors x 85' over coupler pulling faces). Nice design on the E, though you might also consider moving one horn forward and turning it around--most E-series diesels built with "blat" type horns like that usually had one pointed each forward and back, typicallly the one on the left being reversed. Beautiful work, both of you... and reminds me I need to get back to work on my own New York Central version sometime. (Classic two-tone-gray Lightning Stripes, not that ugly Sixties cigarband from when that utter piece of excrement Perlman was destroying the company.)

Heck with that, I wish whoever designed this set would design 1938 NYC 20th Century and PRR Broadway Limiteds at this level.... :) or maybe the '48s, or a reissued and revised Super Chief with an actual "boattail" observation car rather than the "just round the corners" of the last. That said, I'm thinking that a pair of these may be the only bright spots in 2013 LEGO for me...

Actually, once you strip off the utterly ludicrous stuff behind it and the "scary" details, and add an appropriate tender, viewing it through the eyes of a serious railroad historian 9467's locomotive is a nicely detailed and pretty darn "close to right" representation of an 1860s to turn-of-the-20th-Century 4-4-0 "American Standard" or "Eight-Wheeler" type. With a little work, could probably be stretched into a pretty decent 4-6-0 Ten-Wheeler (did anybody ELSE notice those new and unused un-flanged "blind drivers" in the pack of train wheels?) or 4-4-2 Atlantic. (Both take a longer boiler, and the Atlantic would need a deeper firebox over the 2-wheel trailing truck.) And, I'm actually thinking of using it as a "template" for enlargement to 10-wide (my preferred scale to design in, it's 1 stud = 1' and roughly the right scale to have a minifig-compatible 'scale' model), with an eye toward if I can ever find enough data on it recreating the 1893 Empire State Express that made New York Central & Hudson River Railroad engineer Charlie Hogan the Chuck Yeager of his day, the first man to break 100 miles per hour. The locomotive itself, NYC&HR 999, still exists today and is on display at Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago, but has considerably changed from its configuration that day--the original 86" drive wheels were replaced with 79's when downgraded into commuter service, and the connecting rods that once ran from piston to main-rod have been disconnected if not outright removed and scrapped. The real barrier to modeling is the train behind, and the utter lack of information about passenger cars of all types, not just coaches but parlors, diners et cetera, from that time--right up to the end of private passenger rail it was rare that any two railroads ever ordered cars to an exactly identical design, closest to it being the Pullman 4140 10-roomette/6-double bedroom sleeper and its stainless-steel Edward G. Budd-built counterparts, and I would expect that back in the 1800s it was even WORSE without assembly-line techniques, possibly even to no two individual CARS in the same TRAIN being built identically. Whoa, Holy Data Vomit, Batman! LOL

Anyone actually been able to get to where you can input codes in the Monster Fighters online game? My main laptop the "game" stuff won't load (I just get a title screen, it's running a GeForce 6800 Go which... well, they don't MAKE any new drivers for GFX cards on laptops approaching ten years old on matter how kick-butt they were when built) and while my netbook does run it, it's so slow as to be virtually unusable and a 10" 1024x600 screen is suck-tastic for this kind of thing, not to mention the puny Intel Integrated Graphics. If so, could you PM me re what the codes unlock, if it's just new levels or downloadable goodies? My mother's really gotten into this theme in a big way, and when I told her it's a one-shot deal earlier today she looked like a kid who's just been told their kitten or puppy is dead.

Never posted or screencapped, but I did something similar when 10170 came out in MLCad... a typical TTX articulated well-car like this is usually five units. Nice work, glad to see another voice for "semi-prototypical" LEGO Trains! (I prefer full to-scale dimensions, ~10'/10-stud-wide railcars, but a single full-length standard American passenger railcar at 85 studs over couplers is big and heavy enough you could beat someone to death with it... still hasn't killed my MLCad renders of the great postwar Streamliners, just slowed them down with lack of parts and a sufficient power-source--a 17-car 20th Century Limited with two E8's and an E7B pulling it is six power-trucks for a train over thirty feet long with each car being into the thousands of pieces, but other than the lavatories they're room-for-room accurate.)

So, key spots for this project... ->C.S. Fly's Lodging House, Fly's Photo Gallery and the Harwood House: Ground Zero. The gunfight really happened here, in Harwood's and Fly's yards, not in the nearby OK Corral itself. ->Occidental Saloon: site of the confrontation between Doc Holliday and Johnny Ringo. ->Campbell & Hatch's Billiard Parlor: Where Morgan Earp was murdered. ->Golden Eagle Brewery: Virgil's office was upstairs, and he was shot just outside on Fifth Street. ->Bird Cage Theatre: Site of most of the outlaw crowd and seedier side of town's preferred entertainment. Not yet open at the time of the Gunfight, and Curly Bill Brocius shot City Marshal Fred White behind the building next to the Bird Cage construction site. ->Oriental Saloon: Frank Leslie killed fifth gunman Billy Claiborne here. ->Schieffelin Hall Opera House: where the "civilized" folks went for entertainment. ->Courthouse ->City Hall ->Wells, Fargo office The other problem is, a lot of the still-extant buildings (most burned in the fire of 1882) have been so altered that current photos and measurements are only useful for general size and basic layout.

Well, an old friend's latest book reignited my Tombstone geekout, so I'm starting to consider at least a digital rendering of the town in MLCAD, or at least the key sites. This one's gonna be a lot harder than passenger trains... at least most post-1900 American passenger cars were built to one of a handful of "standard bodies" with the major differences being windows, interiors and fittings. Anyway, I'm pretty much starting this thread for research purposes, and as kind of a "notepad" where I can store thoughts and anyone else interested can either get what they can out of my own musings or add to them. First off, property sizes and 'modules'... Property in Tombstone generally came in two sizes: the "Standard Lot" was 30'x120', and the "Key Lot" (of which there were two to four per block) was 30'x150'. There were some oddities, like properties along the northeast-southwest portion of Charleston Road, and the small plots along Toughnut Street between First and Second. Properties were plotted using at least three different designators per block on the map fragment that I have: ->Roman numerals mark the original townsite, I-VI ---I: bounded by Charleston Rd to the north, Survey to the south, Sumner to the west and First to the east ---II: across Charleston from I, northern edge is the southern property-lines of Grid Letter I. ---III: Across First from I, eastern edge is Second. ->Letters identify the Bowman addition--Virgil Earp's home was on Lot 1 of Block M (SW corner of First and Fremont), and the house of Wyatt Earp and Mattie Blaylock straddled the boundary of Lots 4 and 5. ->Arabic numbers mark another addition--not having the full city map prepared by Kelleher (and Arizona Historical Society REALLY doesn't like to share), I don't have the full story here. Most of the real big events in Tombstone were in the band from Fremont Street in the north to Toughnut in the south, and back then it was advised that ladies and children not venture south of Allen Street, so most of what would need to be covered is along Allen.

MB, quite welcome--I'm a competitive shooter and budding collector, so Firearms History has become an interest out of necessity, and I tend to believe information not shared has no point in its acquisition. :) (That, and I've been helped by a lot of experts who usually get serious coin per hour and have only asked in return that I help others as they helped me.) AnotherBrick, good point--the split between Spaghetti Western Fantasy and Old West Reality can be difficult to navigate, and even in the latter separating reality from the myths and legends is complicated and difficult. (I'm currently reading a book of primary-source material about the Earp-Cowboy feud in Tombstone, getting ready to argue with a police-historian and noted firearms-trainer friend's take on Doc Holliday even though I agree with his thesis that Wyatt Earp could readily be called "the first modern police officer".) Oh, from another thread but related: Tombstone would only be a licensed property if you specifically used the film's distinct logos and likenesses--all of the major characters are historical figures and thus they and the town name are "public record" open for all. Problem is, if I'm reading the scale on my map of the gunfight area right, the streets are like 60' between sidewalks and each block is like a quarter mile from street centerline to street centerline... which means roads 60 or more studs across, and each block would be like 1320 studs over centerlines, with some buildings only like 20 studs at most by 30 to 50. It DOES mean needing new tooling for side-by-side coachguns, though... since differentiation between specific models of revolver is unlikely and the existing rifles could probably pass for a passable Winchester, just need the venerable shotgun to complete the Western weapons trifecta. (Bonus, it'd also be helpful for 1920's gangster/Prohibition/"Untouchables" MOC'ing or sets, too!) EDIT, minor self-correction: there were some specialists, almost every town woulda had a gunsmith or two, the General Store was a far more important part of town. Back then, though, actually all the way up to 1968 you could buy guns by mail order even, and still can under certain conditions... (Those conditions are you have to have what's called a Curio & Relics Federal Firearms License, and the firearm so purchased has to be on an approved Curios & Relics list.)

If it's not too late to suggest a minor refinement: there were few to no specialized gun-shops in the Old West, or in a lot of the USA outside of cities until around the '20s, and even into the 1930s you could buy even a Thompson Submachine Gun over the counter at the local Ace Hardware if you could afford the huge price-tag. (Which was $200, plus an additional $200 NFA tax after 1934, at a time when rail-fare in a Pullman lower-berth aboard the 20th Century Limited from New York to Chicago was $51.30 one-way, equivalent to $680 now, and at the time that Chicago typewriter's out-the-door price was 2/3 of a Model T Ford.) Every Old West town needed a General Store anyway, so just a little sign tweak and it's still perfect. As a general rule, most Old Westerners bought their guns the same place as everything else, the local general store. This is, overall, a GREAT project though--someday I'd like to try to tackle an accurate minifig-scale Tombstone myself. (Which I think would also be a REALLY cool theme, there was plenty of action going around in 1880s Arizona Territory. Perhaps Tombstone one year, Deadwood another, Dodge City a third?)

Nice redesign, Mortesv--looks like I need to order some 3x8 and 2x3 angles. Any chance of more pix from below? As for size... well, I'm of the Go Big Or Go Home school, and a ship like Executor I'd be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt, being built as big as practical to suggest unstoppable power just from its presence alone.

Doesn't look too bad... I woulda preferred they release the mini co-boxed with Executor as a standalone set, but I'll have to get one for the collection, and see which one scales out as a better companion for the big SSD. As it is, I've been working between S@H and cannibalizing Mini Venators to get parts for four more of the "Executor companion mini"... If you have all three, a comparison between the 4420-series, the Executor escort and this would be really cool. Let's see... UCS Executor=50" 12"=1' 5280'=1.609km "real" Executor=19km 19/1.609=11.809 Each stud = 5/16", so at about 160 studs OAL on Executor the best fit would be an ISD about 13-14 studs long. This ship's a little short, and I think the Executor escort (which I need to check length on) is a better match to ISD size proportions, but this is still a Gotta Have One for my Star Destroyer collection.

The chopper in that T-rex set (not HQ) looks like a pretty good representation--from what I've seen from the front photos, need some of the tail and tailboom to be sure--of a Sikorsky CH-54 Tarhe/Skycrane, now rebranded "Erickson Aircrane". (Trivial note: Erickson's dirty little secret is that they're presenting refurbished Sikorskys as if they were brand-new aircraft...)

I tell you what, if some whinging nitpicker about one or two trivial things costs me the chance at my LEGO SSD, I'm gonna give a postdoctorate-level course on the meaning of "Go Postal". Personally, I think it could work just fine with the flat-ish bottom if LEGO also offered a "made to order" add-on belly kit through LDD.

Anyone else from the US seeing this as a total FUBAR at LEGO and "disappeared" from Shop @ Home? Don't tell me they're gonna tease me by announcing this and leave me hanging like a nerd who's just had the Prom Queen tell him he just MIGHT have a chance to get lucky with her... :(

I think this thing just caused me to have an Accidental Discharge.;) Must... have... YOU UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF THE DARK SIDE! And my gal has been put on notice that if we ever set up a household together, she's gonna have to make sure to leave room for this monster to be prominently displayed. I'm thinking a little light modding and hang from a ceiling beam... 8-lb. model, think 200-lb.-test monofilament fishing line will do?

The officer is probably either Admiral Ozzel or Captain->Admiral Piett, my money's on the latter due to Ozzel's short life on-screen. Doubt it's Tarkin, he Bit The Big One before Executor's keel was ever even laid. Going by the bridge towers, that ISD looks fairly close to scale--I'm not a total Saxtonite, but direct measurements off the studio models and proportional analysis don't lie; it should be somewhere between 1/11 and 1/13 of Executor's OAL. I just hope they'll have all the parts in LDD to order up four more mini ISD's and complete the squadron...

My condolences. I never knew him well, but his friends and family are in my thoughts and prayers.

Be nice to know if LEGO and Disney actually put some effort into recreating the historical QAR, or if it's just a "make something up that looks cool regardless of plausibility and slap the name on it", another case of Dr. Malcolm's snark about "...you've patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunch pail and now you're selling..." [voice=Albert Einstein, C&C: Red Alert intro]"Time vill tell. Sooner or later, time vill tell..."[/voice]

H, all Series 3: 4 aliens, 2 Blacktron cyborgs--all are opened and assembled but near-mint-ish. Pics upon request. W: any Series 1 or 2 Series 3, any except ->two listed above ->Samurai ->Tennis Girl ->Racecar Driver ->Hula Girl ->Rapper ->Baseball Player also looking for an extra Series 3 gorilla. Opened and pre-built figs are fine, don't even need packaging as long as the minifig's in good shape. Prefer to trade within USA/Canada, don't mind sending first, never traded here but have a solid rep in the Axis & Allies Miniatures community--have a +61 on the Good Trade List on A&A Forumini, AAminis.myfastforum.org . (Same username--GTL link: http://aaminis.myfastforum.org/ftopic168-0-asc-0.php )