zephyr1934

Not to mention the fact that the lego windows are all wrong on the Maersk set. It is one of the best looking official train sets (operationally it literally drags, but...). Given the lack of an entry level AFOL train set these days, I made a MOD in Conral that uses 60052 for a lot of the parts, with more info and instructions here.

That is so cool to see the homemaker figures in a contemporary scene. That is an excellent build all around, finally a lego train set worth of the classic figures.

I would not rule out #3 if you can find good stock to work with. At the moment I am reluctant to attempt wheels, I don't think I could get the axle hole with sufficient precision to reliably fit an axle with sufficient clutch to also hold it. As already mentioned in this thread, several folks have already started in that direction, including one that I had not yet seen mentioned by legoman666. And another by technoandrew on Flickr. That said, if you are ever in the market for rods, I might have what you need... Mmmm... Boxpox!

Wow, getting better and better from an already great start!

Excellent! Now that you mention it, I do see the 3mm hole there opposite of the switch throw in your earlier post. And excellent about the geometry too!

If you are not going to attempt to take this around lego curves then that does away with any operational concerns. I bet it feels nice to be free of that burden. Indeed, you have the proportions very well done, though if you are not going to run this engine, perhaps you can come up with something that looks more like a knuckle coupler than the lego train magent? The tiled roof looks really good, but the studded roof does have a retro lego feel to it. The stickers for doors certainly has lego precedence, most of the recent city sets have had stickers for doors for electrics, water, oil, and pneumatics. I had often wondered how well stickers for doors would look on a scale like you've done and they look good (though probably would not want a high contrast in color for the outlines). Just a warning up front, the stickers have a fixed cost per area, so covering a lot of area will be more expensive. If you do go that route, you might want to replace the sides with 1x6x5 panels wherever possible to minimize the seems between the bricks under the stickers. Doing the SP lettering shouldn't be bad (I've already done it for one of my steamers) and I'm curious to see how the doors look.

Ah my friend, you have entered a world where about the only rules are the laws of physics, and some of the best builders appear to even ignore those laws. Do you melt the lego tubing? That's all up to where you want to draw the line. Some strive for pure lego solutions (that can be an interesting challenge at times) others go for whatever works, and many fall somewhere in between. One of the builders uses 3mm insulated wire instead of 3mm lego tubes. A lot cheaper and it holds its form. Meanwhile, your build is looking great and is easily recognizable (imagine what these would have looked like in the black widdow paint scheme). I presume that you know that the 1x2 grilled cheese slopes on the nose are available in red, to make the nose look better. Though you might want to consider replacing these with nx2 curved slopes, while the form factor is slightly wrong, the lack of vertical lines I think is worth considering the tradeoff. Secondly, you should consider operational issues. The coupler is rigidly fixed to the body of the locomotive, which is prototypical, but will likely cause problems on lego curves. The steps might also cause problems. Just stuff to check and make sure it is not problematic. The width and length are certainly pushing the upper limit of not being a bother on lego curves. Nice work

First off, I think I said this before, but just in case, I am only giving my 2c to add one additional fraction of goodness on an already fantastic idea, so please do not take my persistence as displeasure. I don't think most folks are even thinking about remote controlled switches yet. It is a major pain in the !@#$% to remotely control lego switches but with these it could become super easy. Whether slider or turntable, the current designs do not go far enough to ease automation. If you stick with the turn table, could you add a row of studs or technic holes on either side of the turntable (uptrack and downtrack, but to save width, probably not further away from the track). Nice, so that preserves the 16 studs center to center for adjacent tracks, but offsets the tracks by a few studs that will be easily filled with a new spacer piece, right?

In terms of remote control I still think the slider with a gear rack top is the way to go. You could either motorize it on the spot with a motor and a single gear, or you could use a couple of axles to move the motor further from the track. Meanwhile, if you don't motorize it the gear rack makes for easy hand switching since the rack is inherently textured. With the rotational mechanism you need bevel gears and more structure around the switch stand to motorize it. Or when hand switching the rotational motion needed for these switches requires at least one more part on top that will also add vertical elevation to the mechanism. Mind you I've learned to live with the constraints of normal lego switches so any improvement would be welcome, and I suppose for the 3D printed versions making different switch stands would just be the design time. In any event, one more thing to think of with these, can you configure the switches such that a pair of switches can easily be built in to single cross-overs? A key geometry that is sorely missing from the 9v world.

For normal lego trains they can only go up very gentle slopes (as per Duq's note), old 12v and 4.5v trains from pre 1990 could go up steeper slopes because the rails had texture for the wheels to grab. Of course you could incorporate ideas from real railroads and build a rack railway for steeper slopes, e.g., this example. Or nearly vertical and build a funicular, e.g., this example. The constitution is a great set and had the movie been successful I bet the set would be a lot more expensive now. I've posted instructions for modifying the locomotive here. It would be very tricky to actually add power to the locomotive itself without extensive modification if not a complete rebuild. The most straight forward solution would be to motorize the tender, but you'll need to make it a bit larger to fit all of the PF components in it, perhaps copy the Emereald Night tender (the instructions can be downloaded from lego, post back if you can't find them). Other folks have motorized the boxcar/jail-car that came with the set. That said, if you don't have any of the PF components, you are likely better off starting with one of the "complete" city train sets, they have all of the PF components already included (in particular the train controller, 8879). If you need them anyway, then the train sets are not a bad parts pack. A lot of the prolific train builders have many extra copies of the 8879 controller because that is the one part in a train set that you don't need a ton of. Buy the Constitution while it is still relatively cheap, but also get one of the city trains.

Oh, you don't want to load the photos to eurobricks, you have a VERY SMALL amount of space allocated to you on this site. Rather, load them to flickr, brickshelf (if you are totally old school), or whatever photo sharing site you prefer and then insert them as links in your post. In general you do not want the images in your post to be too large (lots of folks skim recent posts and only a few are really interested in a given topic) but then your links can go to a much higher resolution (that's where flickr is nice). You probably do not need to worry about enlarging your photos, you can never add more resolution than the original shot. And don't worry about making the photos pretty, while it is always neat to see a train on a fully detailed background, it is equally neat to see a build in progress on someone's work area.

What a fantastic idea and a great start (well, you do need many more cars to complete this). So far it is looking good. A great mix of classic design and more realistic scaling. One minor quibble about the A-units is that the yellow line that forms the inside of the "bonnet" seems to have an extra bend in it at the top, just below the dark gray grils. Shouldn't be hard to fix though. Of course you know that this train is way to heavy for 9v motors (at least with just a pair) and you'll need ME curves to make it look right (stinkin tight lego curves). It will be interesting to see what you do for the round end observation car at the end of the train. The macaroni bricks were way too tight on the original 10025 cars.

Excellent work, great job capturing the look and feel of both the locomotive and the cars

This diorama is simply stunning. There is so much detail going on outside of the train (great trees and tunnel) and that locomotive is out of this world. The smoke is some of the best I've seen, really looks alive. The cab vent on the loco is also very clever. The running gear outside of the frame is classic narrow gauges and captured so well. Excellent work!

Glad to be of help, I've always been fond of the GP-30. I'm looking forward to see what you come up with. Meanwhile, I finally remembered where I saw that other version of the GP-30. Someone had a pair of BN units at NMRA NTS in Detroit in 2007

... excuse me while I pick my jaw up off of the floor. Excellent wayside structures like this really help make the trains pop (while the highly detailed locomotives do a good job of popping on their own you have gone up to 11). You have made the western counterpart to Cale's eastern coaling tower.

A very fine build (often the small builds are the hardest). While I have no complaints about the black door (the color change helps define the door after all), if you wanted a green window why not snot it like the cab window just in front of the door? From the shot of the prototype it looks like the cab window should be a little larger than the door window anyway.

Aw the GP30 is a great looker with a unique face that can't be found anywhere else. I took a stab at it... <gasp> 10 years ago... they've been sitting in a box with dead motors... I really need to pull them out, slap on some new motors and update the stickers. I could have sworn that I've seen other takes on the GP30... but this is the only link I could find handy, maybe the others were at lego shows. A quick google search turned up the picture at the top of this page. And another build here.

You did an excellent job with this build! (but that is the norm with your locomotives) About the only problem I could see is that it looks way too clean next to the prototype (grin). It is really neat to see the pistons at work, I like how you did the crosshead. Definitely a crazy (and impressive) work of engineering underneath the pretty exterior. Okay, here's a challenge for you- a family photo of all 13 together. Even if you don't have a real roundhouse you can fake one with track, e.g.,

There are a lot of great details in this build (the bow and arrows are brilliant), very tasteful use of the 1x2 door rails, and all of the detailing in the running gear is fantastic.

Excellent!

Oh wow! Excellent progress. I let my day job distract me and look what I miss. Here are a few cents worth of comments. 1) I think lego put the switch throw on the turnout side so that they fit in to a smaller box. 2) Why have a single design if you are going to 3D print them? You could have left and right throws available for a given switch geometry. 3) Wide and long equipment have various conflicts, all depending on where the points of rotation are. Some steam engines swing wide to the outside because the rotation points are closer to the center while some diesel engines and passenger cars sweep through the inside of the curve. I could see the occasional steam cylinder hitting the straight-side mounted throw in the most recent image. 4) Why keep the lego design throw? That design is a major pain in the !@#$% to add remote control to and as per above, causes clearance issues for wider/longer trains. Why not do something with a technic pin hole? Or maybe use a "slider lever", basically a rack gear (3743) that you slide by hand in and out with your finger, keeping it low profile and one could easily mount a technic construction to remotely move the rack in and out.

That looks really good, especially with the limited part availability in your chosen color. While there are clear evidence of many great ideas integrated into this build, you've definitely added to the collective building ideas and have brought it further. Just one simple question, why did you choose to build the cab windows out of strictly plates instead of using bricks when possible, e.g., the side windows look like they would work well with a 1x2 brick.

They are VERY reluctant to provide tables, so far all they have said is "MAYBE a few". Trouble is that they have to pay the venue price for the tables, which is about $75 per.

Brilliant and eloquent in its simplicity