Beej

Thanks for the great review Holodoc. The train itself looks great, and the crane and truck just add to it to make it a brilliant set overall. The AAA battery pack is a bit disappointing, but understandable when you consider the price point of this set and all the safety regulations that toy companies have to adhere to these days. It would be great if you could let us know how the new PF train motor performs. I'd love to know how good the speed regulation is, and how much of a load it can pull. These were the two most disappointing aspects of the RC trains - they would run away and fly off corners when run under light load, yet struggle with only 4 or 5 cars behind them!

Are you really? If you think you can just put these up on Bricklink for $5 each and they'll go like hotcakes then you're in for a surprise. Your run-of-the-mill minifigs only sell for ~$2ea on Bricklink, and even then it's only at a rate of one or two of each figure per month. If you put them up for $5, you're going to have a lot minifigs hanging around for a very long time!

I'd urge anyone considering doing this not to touch it with a million foot barge pole. Some Googling has revealed they are not only looking for couples with a side order of Lego and reptiles, but also home brewing and drag queens. They will not portray you or your Lego collection in a positive light.

I tried this recently, and yes indeed the EN does balance on the 6 driving wheels. It looks a bit unwieldy going around the track like that, but it does go around! Yes that's the next step. I'm going over some ideas at the moment, no guarantees I can come up with something that will work, but hopefully it can be done. No that's not good enough, I won't accept defeat!

It's amazing that you've made this topic LT12V, because I did a similar mod just a few weeks ago... I actually haven't used a resistor at all for the EN, I just try not to run it at full throttle for long periods. Don't skip the resistor if you value the longevity of the XL motor! In the cases where I do use a resistor, I prefer to use a 5W type so that temperatures are kept as low as possible. You don't want to risk a burn when picking up your trains after a bit of a run!

I just wanted to say thanks for all your work Alban, and everyone who has contributed to Bluebrick. I'm designing a new layout at the moment, and Bluebrick has been essential for setting out everything within the space limitations. Great work so far, I hope you can keep it up!

The 5mm LEDs fit perfectly inside technic bricks. 3mm LEDs fit in other areas. Don't skip the resistor because you'll blow the LED in no time. There is a good resistor calculator here. Typical values to plug in are 12V (or 9V ) for the supply voltage, 2.4V for the voltage drop across the LED and 20mA for the current. Then just use whatever it suggests.

In Australia the bigger and more expensive sets are only brought in in limited quantities and are sold exclusively by one retailer. Recently this has been done with the Emerald Night, Eiffel Tower, MMV, Fire Brigade, etc. It's probably the same in some other countries too. Basically, there's no guarantee you'll see GG in the shops.

Hmm... I have a few LDD MOCs that use some of those pieces that are going. What's going to happen when I try to work on them with the updated palette?

We're a rare breed these days, but it's good to see there are still some 12V fans around. I don't have anything setup at the moment, but I'm working on it, slowly.

I've heard that Myer has them as an exclusive, and they might be out as early as May.

Actually the complete 138 set is much more... This is an awesome little train, congratulations to anyone that has it in their collection. I'd be interested to see how far you got with working out the circuit Mark, a whistle activated train would definitely be something different these days. If you raised the frequency of the tuned circuit maybe you could use a dog whistle instead of an audible one.

Looks like 6378 to me! Your town looks great so far BL, I love the old 12V trains and as you can see I have a soft spot for the 7745.

Thanks for the news, it's good to hear that the train lines will actually be carried in retail stores here, though I'm not particularly impressed with those prices. When you consider that the sets they're replacing were $150 and $200 from S@H, that's a fair hike for the new sets. How about we don't go jumping to conclusions just yet?

I quite like the 7898 loco. Maybe because it has an uncanny resemblance to Victorian Railways' E1100 and E1101 locomotives. While your two diesels do look nice, they seem to be just a mod and recolour of Lego's 10133 BNSF locomotive?

Myer Melbourne City still have Emerald Nights in stock. None at any other Myer I called tonight, though I didn't call many!

I haven't seen anything about a Myer toy/Lego sale at all. Not sure how people are picking up the Emerald Night so cheap.

I'm considering giving this service a go with a couple of sets where the AUD price is really out of proportion with the US price, say the 10197 Fire Brigade or Winter Toy Shop. I might go for three of the same sets and hopefully Lego US will use a better sized box. Would anyone in Australia (preferably Melbourne, to save on further Auspost costs) be interested in chipping in for one of these sets and splitting the costs exactly three ways? Most costs are fixed, the only unknown would be the size of the box Lego ship the items in, which will impact the postage that Shipito charge. As an example, 7897+10197+10199 shipped direct from TLC is AU$585. The same sets shipped via the US would be AU$353 + Shipito costs. Even if they had to charge $150 you're still significantly in front of the direct price...

While it is a very beautiful setting, has no one else noticed that the train could be ineligible due to being over 8 studs wide?

The Emerald has a problem with it's magnets? Mine seems fine.

I checked out the DJ sale today, honestly it's nothing special. 30% off only selected sets. Bionicles? Meh.

That's an interesting idea and I problem I never realised existed before (Australia uses 240V so there are no problems using European equipment). A lot of equipment these days can auto-switch between common supply voltages - I'll check if the 12V transformers can do this as it negates the rest of this post, but due to their age I doubt this is the case. The way I see it there are two ways you could solve this - use a step-up transformer to convert the 110V to 220V to supply to the Lego transformer. Or if you know what you're doing (ie. are a handy type of person and have a good knowledge of electricity and it's dangers) you could open the transformer up and replace internal transformer with one suitable for plugging into a US outlet. Unless you get confirmation that it will work, don't go trying to use a travel adaptor to plug a 12V transformer straight into 110V mains - you might release all the smoke they packed in! Edit: you can negate all of this messing around if you're happy to go with non-Lego parts. Just buy a 12V 1 amp wall wart and you're off and running...

The track ends don't need to be connected for the train to work. If you want a track like this -------- there is no problem. It is the motor that creates the loop in the circuit, not the rails. So if you wanted to run one or two trains back and forwards along the one piece of track that's fine. If you have signals you can place one at red at each end to stop the trains from running off the end of the tracks. That way you don't have to watch it constantly. Or if you don't have signals you can just leave off a few of the inner electric tracks before the ends so the train stops in time. You can even put a set of points at one end or both ends so you can run one train in one direction, then another train back the other way.

The 7740 was also my first train set, and I have to agree that you become completely hooked once you've put that beauty together.

I just wanted to say thanks for the heads-up, I finally managed to get a Family Home at a decent price!