zephyr1934

There are several issues of MODding this to to 6/7 wide, but all of which can be surmounted. The nose and windshield would need to be redesigned. Fortunately, there's a new part that helps, e.g., the 2x2 corner round curved slope Also, on a narrower version the truck frames will stick out beyond the body of the locomotive. Easily fixed by changing to conventional train motors and normal train wheels though.

This locomotive plus the OE cars should make for a nice train that runs. Sure, never would have seen the two paired, but the colors work well together. BTW, seeing the build, any unpowered units you would want to leave out the gearing on the trucks to reduce the drag. Or better, swap the techinc axles for ball bearing axles.

Talk about persistence, and it paid off, looks fantastic. That's exactly why the threads are here. As long as you aren't asking the builder for instructions.

In a new thread

I agree that it is poor business, that you have every right to be pissed, and if you've run out of patience that it is reasonable to seek your money back. And for that matter, potentially you choose to never buy anything again from them. But I don't think it is bad enough yet to say that nobody should ever buy anything from them ever again. Having seen various small businesses, there are so many challenges that customers never see. Maybe there was a third party delay transferring the inventory or doing a new production run that started out as "just another day" and stayed "one more day" for months? Maybe he's being strung along by a new landlord? Maybe there were life events that upended a one person business? These small business do not have the limitless resources of Amazon. Again, I'm not defending the fact that OKBW is being a bad communicator or that the items are listed as "available now" even though apparently he is not fulfilling orders. I'm just one to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that everyone is TRYING to do as best as they can. In the end, if you do not eventually either get your product or get your money back, then that would be time declare them evil

While I have no idea what is going on and I would agree that being so unresponsive to customers is inappropriate, I would also encourage patience. You got me wondering if Big Ben's web page went to a legitimate store (a few months back it looked like a random site hog had it, in which case any purchase would be a black hole sucking in your money). It looks like OKBW posted on Facebook shortly after your post here that they are working on stocking 33k parts. That could explain why they are moving slow. And who knows, there might have been a child added to the family or ??? that sucked up a ton of time away from Lego. Yes, they should not have populated their store when they were so far from actual fulfillment, and yes, they should have responded to your inquiries. But be kind to those who bring parts that we would not otherwise have. It isn't easy running a small business. You certainly have a right to be pissed and it seems fair to me that if you are done waiting, to ask PP to refund your money. But for me at least, it would be premature to say that they are universally evil.

"I think we're gonna need a bigger basement..." that is crazy impressive

Interesting. There were several US steam locomotives where they extended the jacketing over the smokebox for a smooth appearance too (e.g., the Milwaukee Road 261), but I think on those engines the actual smokebox was no wider than the actual boiler.

Very well done! Great update that brings a lot of improvements

Oh, that's nice! On many American steam engines the boiler had an insulating jacket (typically asbestos) that was then covered with sheet metal while the firebox was not insulated, resulting in a slight decrease in diameter from the black sheet metal over the boiler area to the uncovered smokebox that was often simply painted with a mixture of graphite and oil to give it a gray look. If your prototype similarly has a non-insulated smokebox you might be able to step down to a narrower smokebox to hide some of the gaps

It's good to have BBB wheels back

As someone who rarely ventures outside of Train Tech I'm glad that something was posted here. But maybe a "FYI, see this thread" with a single tantalizing photo. Especially since that would keep the discussion in a single location. Ah, after searching I see it was a single post n a large thread These new gear racks are probably worth their own thread

I agree about the ugly gaps and the final version looks great!

Good to see you back out of hibernation and back at work making the future now out of lego trains.

That's cool... and now you've got me thinking about it <several minutes of quiet contemplation later> a couple of alternate approaches come to mind, but hard to explain with words alone. If I remember, next time I'm near my CAD I'll put them together. ... I went and played. So "5 studs wide" = "12.5 plates tall" on its side. One needs to get a core of 8.5 plates, where a pair of cheese bricks to bring it to 12.5. I came up with the idea to use a 3x3x1.67 core with brackets on all four sides (use "up" brackets for one pair of opposing sides and "down" brackets for the other pair of sides). The 3x3 + two brackets = 7.5 plates from the core + 2*0.5 plates from the brackets = 8.5 plates. However, this design results in a larger void in the corners due to the height of the bracket and height of the lip on the cheese brick (each 1/2 plate tall). In contrast, your build provides a smoother curve. By using the neck brackets, your design fills this void in, only leaving the 1/2 plate of the cheese brick lip.