DaCheese

A quick Google search after you mentioned Dora and Gustav the other day with no explanation as to what they were revealed that these things ran on two parallel tracks. That's not going to be practical with Lego trains unless you use flexible track for a curve of larger radius than the standard curve. Like Captain Zuloo, I wouldn't worry about getting those bogies around corners. The wheelbase of each is short enough, and you'd be surprised how little articulation the coach you get with the Emerald Night needs to get around curves.

A US-Spec Emerald Night, no doubt with an obscenely high tractive effort. Nice work! I've been tweaking mine to make it a bit more British in places and just alter the bits I'm not keen on. So far I've got the tender pretty much sorted. The changes to the loco won't be so drastic as it looks pretty good to start with.

It's compatible with the sectional track, but I'm not sure what the actual length suplied is.

Halo Wars is fantastic, to the point of me wondering whether Ensemble have out-epiced Bungie at their own game universe. I've not quite done the campaign yet, but the cut-scenes are as you say mind blowing. Who do I play as in skirmish? I prefer the UNSC, Anders is good with Hawks and half price upgrades, but the Covenant are better at the start of a game. I usually go for the Prophet and get a few honour guard Elites and get stuck in destroying the opposing base. Cheating I know but rushing is pretty much impossible to withstand if you're the UNSC. If things go wrong, I can always spend some time building a pair of scarabs...(laughs in an evil manner to self).

In the catalogue it says "Hard to find", so I think that's online, Lego brand retail and some other places.

No, I don't think you've done anything wrong. I've not looked closely enough at mine to see if they're all turning alright when the engine is moving, but you're right, they don't keep spinning for long if you spin them. I'm glad you asked because not having witnessed the age of steam I've had to go on what books say. The general concensus is that railway companies struggled with this too. In theory you want the dining facilities in the middle so that no passengers have to walk too far. However, what if you don't need dining facilities for the whole journey? It's a nightmare to shunt the coaches around to get the dining car(s) out if they're in the middle, so you'd put them at the back. If I were to produce a no cash-limit rake of coaches for 10194 to pull, I'd have a brake coach at each end, a kitchen car coupled to the dining car supplied in the set right in the middle and the rest first and third class, not necessarily grouped in order of class. Second class was ditched over here in 1875 by the Midland Railway and other companies were forced to follow suit.

Darker green, hence BR years. Anyway, I think the wheels are relatively small because that's all you can really use for a six-coupled engine with such a tight standard radius of curve. Even if the centre "axle" didn't have flangeless wheels, there'd be no room for the flanges the way 10194 goes together. That'll be where I see Japanese influence then; over there standard gauge is 3 foot 6 inches, so you can imagine a narrow gauge express locomotive having small driving wheels and a huge boiler. The narrow gauge speed record was at one time held by a Japanese C62 4-6-4 which did 129 km/h. That's about 80 mph, and given the performance of the 9Fs and the Norfolk and Western J Class 4-8-4s across the pond it doesn't seem unreasonable for a loco with small driving wheels to have a fair turn of speed. I'd say having wheels touching the track is always an improvement on having them raised off the track! I'd be interested to hear how a loco fitted with the turned wheels runs, even if I'm unlikely to folow suit (your locos are fantastic, but I'll be happy to put together locos that look alright even if they aren't to scale). Bigger wheels really could do with wider radius curves, and flexible track isn't the solution. Happily, the current wheels look about right for a Hunslet austerity/J94, if I can work out how to fit the PF parts in...

Next up I hope will be a generic coach kit for extending the Emerald Night's load. The instructions would tell you how to build a standard non-compartment coach, but there'd be enough parts included to make anything from a sleeping car to a kitchen car. The latter would be a perfect match for the dining car in the original set... After that, who knows? Probably diesel and electric trains with no particular prototypes, cheaper and easier to build, aimed at a younger market than 10194. Meanwhile, I have a saddle tank MOC in mind...

Hi all, I go by the name of DaCheese. I'm just on the verge of leaving my dark age, just bought and assembled the Emerald Night and getting stuck into the discussions about it in Trains and Town already. I've been building four-wide cars occasionally for as long as I can remember too, so if I get time I'll have to give the Classic Town contest a go with a Lego collection some of you would probably call small (several quite big boxes of largely 90s kits). Other hobbies include real trains, "proper" model trains, cars, slot and RC cars, video games (anything from the Halo games on the 360 to TrackMania on PC), you get the picture!

A very young relative of mine has been collecting Power Miners kits, so a few months ago after seeing one and wondering what new range this was I decided to visit the Lego website. I noticed the Emerald Night icon on the Trains section of the shop and couldn't resist having a look. Here I am now with the full Emerald Night collection with PF parts and extra City range track, not to mention a fear that I'm going to have a very empty bank account if I completely leave my dark age. After putting the thing together, here are my thoughts, laid out similarly to Cavannus's post: On the outside... The box is pretty big, certainly larger than I would've expected if I hadn't seen Lego's introductory video. The best is on the front, with the complete one coach train at a low platform with smoke drifting lazily from 10194's chimney. On the back some of the set's features are shown and the part numbers of the PF components needed to motorise the beast are listed. Enough to get anyone who's never built a lego train before (i.e. myself) excited! The build... Describing a Lego kit as hard to build is difficult to justify when the instructions are this well thought out. They aren't perfect; my gripes are that: - Step thirteen appears to show a cream-coloured gear hovering in a gap until you notice the shaft it fits onto is being pushed through a hole in a Technic beam. - Fitting PF parts takes a bit of comparing the two booklets suplied if you want to save time and do it during the main build instead of when you've finished. - You're ocassionally instructed to apply the many stickers when the parts they go on are part of the model. If you want them neat, do them seperately, and use a craft knife instead of fingers to keep the adhesive side as tidy as possible. ...But they do a pretty good job. Having said that, most of the parts are small and the engine itself will take you a good few hours. The tender and coach go together a bit more quickly, as you'd expect. The design... Lovely. This is a model of a pretty big (for the UK at least) passenger locomotive, so calling it beautiful is stretching it a bit, but it's certainly very nice. The colours are well chosen, the attention to detail is spot on for a model built from plastic bricks and not sheets of brass and most of the PF parts are nowhere near as intrusive looking as I expected. There are a few areas I'm not keen on; I agree with Cavannus that the coach could do with some doors on the corridor connections. The ridges on the coach sides aren't to my taste either and the nameplate looks more realistic moved to the central splasher on the running plate instead of on the firebox side as per the instructions (I'll post a picture of this modification at some point). I can live with the battery box showing in the tender but I'm considering a conversion of the tender to something like the one on this Ivatt 2-6-0 to hide it. Build the darn thing though and you'll eventually find yourself thinking that £150 or so for such a large and impressive model isn't too bad. Operation with Power Functions... I didn't think I'd get to try this for quite a while as my DC transformer is on order still, but I pressed the green button on the battery box, saw the green LED come on and grinned! Put the loco together properly and it's a nice runner, not completely smooth but better than I expected. I was worried that the new remote wouldn't allow slow running with notchy changes in dial position. This isn't a problem. Move the dial one notch and you get a nice crawl. It's quieter than I expected in motion and only showed wheelslip going from normal to flexible track. I only have the coach from this set so can't comment on pulling power but I'd expect to be able to move enough for a reasonable rake without resorting to Mark's idea of extra motors. It'll be a case of extending the train slowly I think and seeing how the loco reacts to the addition of each extra coach. Six would be plenty for the room available in the modern house anyway! The LED lighting is a nice touch with the ability to alter brightness on the other channel. It's a shame that this'll need changing if you're going to run a PF layout at a show, as turning the power on, putting the headlights on and then moving the train away is very cool. Flexible track... Oh yes, that. On the whole I agree with Cavannus. It certainly lives up to its name, but it's noisy, not very nice to look at and makes the train unstable at high speed (was the EN you saw running at that show on flexi Mark?) I'm happy with it on the whole because there's plenty in a box and it can be used in some unusual ways, but won't be buying any more.

I got a box with the Emerald Night Collection and was impressed by the length supplied, but it's a bit noisy and the engine rocks about on it at speed. I'll use what I've got, but won't be buying more.

It's more a case of when you want Emerald night to be from. I'm looking at mine and it's best described as a UK engine with some European influence; something about the front end looks a bit Japanese but I'm not yet sure what it is. As mentioned by Captain Zuloo and furious it looks like an LNER A3 (of which the Flying Scotsman is the sole survivor) in post-1960 British Railways condition, right down to the colour (if Wikipedia is to be believed the smoke deflectors, those bits sticking up at the sides on the front, were fitted from 1960 onwards). The lack of framing around the rear carrying axle under the cab reminds me of pacifics built before 1923, such as The Great Bear, built in 1908, and the Bavarian S 3/6 class from about the same time. Having said that, that's most likely a limitation of the parts the designer(s) had available, although the standard train wheelset could have been squeezed in with a bit of alteration and would have been more accurate. Anyway, sorry for the essay. I'd say post-1960.