zephyr1934

Yes, if you glue the ties to the rails the ME tracks are excellent. As for sizing, keep in mind that a 32x32 baseplate is about 10"x10"

The cars look like a great homage to the original set. The clear macaroni bricks are a tough one to beat, you could snot cheese bricks in there to save a lot, but it will not look quite as nice. You could also put a 1x2x2 trans clear panel in at about 45° angle. While your brick built doors are not consistent with the original sets, they are more prototypical. Only thing you might want to change is swapping the "handle" to the side away from the vestibule (typically the doors on streamliner cars opened inward to the bulkhead wall). I would also suggest trying to get a more rounded look to the roofs with 1x3x1 curved slopes or perhaps 2x4x2/3 curved slopes, those parts were introduced after the Santa Fe sets were released. On the engines, the windshields and porthole windows will break the bank. You could use a plain trans clear windscreen or experiment with brick built solutions. Here's one design you might want to consider for the nose. I think ministickers.nl had transparent porthole window stickers. I sell opaque ones and when I finally get my color matching down I'll offer transparent, but if you look around you can find several brick built solutions too.

NMRA NTS completed its run this past weekend with five clubs represented across four layouts. In no particular order, there was the small but excessively detailed Pewaukee Road Lego Train Line layout, Next there was the over the top one man show of the Central Indiana LTC, a mighty fine layout of the true modeling sense with numerous buildings and other sights to behold. Then the strictly OKILUG layout that consisted of three excellent buildings and about 100 parallel tracks (my kind of layout) Finally, the "OhioLUG" layout that was really a collaboration among OhioLUG, Northern Illinois LTC, and OKILUG members with a heavy emphasis on trains (we were the only layout with almost no baseplates). One of the highlights of the show is the fact that two of the layouts won NMRA awards in the competition across ALL of the model railroad layouts, congratulations Pewaukee and Central Indiana! There were all sorts of great trains and other goings on. One of my favorites was Gerrit's working interlockings The OhioLUG (et al.) layout was strictly PF, using ME 88 and 104 curves for the mainline, which made the long train cars happy and gave for some graceful sweeping trains Many more pictures can be found in my full gallery

Looking great with all sorts of key recognizable features, e.g., the feedwater heater ahead of the stack and the compressors on the front of the smoke box. Only suggestion I have is to fiddle with the cab sides a bit more, perhaps swap the window with the bricks so that the window is on the rear side of the cab.

These are looking good. Personally I would go with a cheese slope roof like this (but perhaps use the 1x2 cheese). In the past I used the 1x4x4/3 curved bricks here and here, but those are rare these days. You could use the 1x1x4/3 version or the 1x4x4/3 version. The latter have the advantage that if you added 1x2 door rail plates on the clearstory for "vents" (as is prototypical) you could do away with all tiles used to support the removable roof (see my two examples noted earlier to see what I mean). In any of these cases you would have the same roof height. For the buffers, if you are not against modifying lego, the actual bumpers on the buffers can be quickly removed with a small saw. I also have an example of making quick and dirty 3 axle trucks here. You are probably going to be hard pressed to do better for the diaphragms. Yes, the combine would look better with a single baggage door and you might want to add windows to the remaining baggage door. These days there is a pretty good selection of tiles in dark green but yes, the lack of jumper plates is frustrating. You could do a jumper plate in the middle and then figure out a 2x5 plate combination to support the doors, but that will be obvious when the roof is off. You can find instructions for my Lone Ranger mod here (I think it turns it into a mighty fine locomotive... and you can even use standard lego technic beams to keep it pure lego) Keep up the great building

Looking good, and at this rate you'll soon have the entire Altoona shops.

If you had a black battery box (in particular one that does not have integrated wheels and sort of looks like a boxcar, e.g., this) then there is a chance you never had a train set. The yellow 4.5 v motor only came in universal builder sets. For some reason the last version of the stand alone 4.5 motor set came with train wheels in the US even though trains had not officially been available here for almost two decades by that point. If you did have a lego train in the US and it wasn't imported special for you by a relative or friend, then it was most likely 7720, which did see limited distribution in the US in the early 80's. This is just sketching out a likely history of your parts, of course if you never had 7720 but have a loop of gray track or remember playing with lego trains as a kid then you probably had something else, thumbing through the 4.5 v trains might turn it up. In any event, the magnets from that era are expensive and the magnet holders are even more expensive (see inventory of 7720 and links from there). If period perfection is not critical, you might be able to update it cheaper with contemporary train magnets. In any event, you should be able to find any bit of lego you want at bricklink... but old/rare often have a high price.

I had not noticed where you put the power output, a clever spot, but I THINK putting a PF connector on top would interfere with putting plates or a bogie plate above. Meanwhile, RailCo's design is how I would have done it and had contemplating suggesting to you, i.e., put only one pickup wheel per axle. But with your design, by picking up both wheels if you used a pair of the pickups for a truck you might just be able to maintain contact with both rails.

Excellent work, and you know that 0.5 plate in height is still driving me nuts (grin, actually I would have never noticed had you not said something). Great stuff!

These look great! I personally have no problem with the lego style (if not actual lego?) wheel holder, though as per many earlier posts several folks would want to go without wheel holder. If it weren't too hard perhaps make it so that both mounting options are feasible. If not, I'm sure whoever is in the other camp will come around to the built form. It would be a nice option to run PF on 9v track w/o and IR receiver (or similar) and battery. Oh, one more thought, if it saves a lot of money, I suspect a pair of trucks each with a pickup on one side would also be a workable solution.

Well... "class 1" as in just a little bigger than the branchline railroad. It was envisioned to have one train on the BL and two trains with meets on the CL1. While the kids were not up for all of the rules (and my definition of a schedule was very loose to begin with) the kids loved the need to go somewhere specific and throw the switches to get in. So maybe we were running in train order territory. As for why it did not fully fly, It wasn't so much a matter of attention span, more that I think you have to be really in to the nuances of railroading to get in to operations. Even most modelers just use closed loops for their layouts and nothing wrong with that.

Looking good! Why not take a stab at the end car on your own? Perhaps use the 6005 arch for the end, You'd have to figure out how to do the windows, but a hinge brick might help you do it with panels. As for the decals let me PM you.

There is a European LUG (LTC?) that posts to EB every now and then about their shows. They do an open "C" layout (actually a very large open "C") with no loop and I THINK they do blocks, serve sidings and send passenger trains through. If I stumble on one of their posts I'll post back, it is a neat layout. Oh, wait... here's mention of it. Meanwhile, I've done done semi-prototypical operation. The layout discussed in this thread was a long branch line with no loop, a passing track in the middle, 3 "industries" along the line and a few more at the end that needed servicing, a small yard for sorting cars and a wye at the end of the line to turn the engines. Since I was playing with my kids, it was simply, "quick, these cars need to go to that industry" type dispatching. This spring I got more ambitious and made a layout with a "class 1" that crossed over and had to interchange with a branchline (both open loops), this time with two industries on the branchline and maybe five on the mainline. There was an interchange yard at the transfer and a classification yard at one end of the mainline, with a couple of passing tracks. It was designed to be run by 3 kids. Never worked as intended, the kids had no patience for interchange, etc etc, but we still served the industries (and cardboard boxes were decorated to function as each industry, some with internal tracks). This time a little more sophisticated, boxcars had to go to industry A to load, back to the yard to go out on a switch run to industry B to unload, but then industry B produced parts that had to go out on a different type of car and a different destination. Not quite prototypical, but more than running in circles. I have photos somewhere and will hopefully post them some day. You need a lot of track and a lot of space to do such things though. You also quickly gain an appreciation as to just how long the receiving and sorting tracks have to be in a yard.

Yeah, but it is really hard to get in for anyone over 1" tall (yuck yuck yuck). Seriously though, great looking car and great idea. Perhaps you've just answered your own question, why not put the sign on the left side?

Great looking car!

Is there a possibility of having the option for a second case? There are many folks who like to build 4 wide hoods on train locomotives. The PF batteries and receivers and SBricks make this style of build impossible. If the BuWizz were 3.2 mm thinner (net of one plate) and had 1.6 mm studs on either (long) side, we could make a 4.4 wide hood by covering the BW with tiles and hide all of the electronics cleanly and neatly. I guess this might necessitate eliminating two of the output terminals, but for most train applications that probably would not be an issue as long as the remaining terminals could deliver at least as much power as per spec (and even better if they could deliver more, or at least maintain voltage at higher loads). If only one case were possible I would say stick with the one you've got (4 outputs are probably beneficial to many more users and the technic holes are certainly helpful for many models). But keep the train focused model in your notes as a possible future offering if all goes well. Thanks much, looks like a great product! (and the UI looks like it could be a ton easier than SBrick)

So were you able to get a family shot of it next to Nate's NYC Hudson?

Heh heh heh, well you two are both amazing builders, I don't think either of you takes a back seat to the other. I can't imagine what sort of gauntlet will be thrown down next year but I do know that you two have set a formidable bar (and for a great cause too).

My stickers are designed to stick to flat lego with the advantage that you can peel and reapply. Unfortunately that means they will not stick well to surfaces like that on the face of the grilled cheese brick. For this part I'd recommend selecting a stencil font to replicate the style, print white letters on black background at various sizes until you get it where you like it. Then print to normal white address labels. Put on a layer of clear packing tape to give it the right sheen. Cut to size, and then use a black marker around the edge to get rid of the white line. As for the horn, perhaps a 1x2 wheel holder: To my eye the diameter is right for the horn but the color of the wheel holder is wrong. I am not sure if the bottom has stud receivers though.

Wait... does that mean...? No... Excellent work all around!

Excellent work and congratulations on the well earned trophy!

Perhaps The only shot of the cars you have right now is from the side with the entire train. It would be neat to see a shot of just one car so that you can see the details. That sucks about the wheel mixup, but at least you have a start on your next steamer (grin). The horn seems too prominent, if it were a characteristic feature it would be worth the exaggeration but in this case I think it could be toned down perhaps using a smaller part (flex cable? Or maybe find a short segment of 3mm brass bar and insert it in a headlight brick?). The trans clear marker lights are a good addition, as are the number boards next to the stack (while those now almost always read "X4449" in service they were used show the train number).

Looking fantastic! The cars are a great addition to complement Tony's design (congrats on your first MOC and perhaps post a few detail shots of those when you have time). It is neat to see the building process as it evolved. Of course you know that you now have to buy your wife a pony (grin)

The signal also came in blue, so could be...

A thing of beauty!