zephyr1934

I know what you mean, but there have been some great looking lego displays at the western shows too Used to be nominal pay (didn't cover expenses) but even that seems to have dried up, still free admission to the show floor. It is good fun to show 'em what can be done in brick and to see what they are up to though. Sound good, there should be some nice lego trains there, but I'll post plenty of photos after the fact so little will be missed by those who can't make it.

Excellent! PM sent

Hi all, as some might know, the NMRA National Train Show will be on display July 6-10 in Indianapolis, IN this year. There has been vague talk between my club and one of the NTS show organizers. They mentioned "one other club" would be attending. We are planning on going but have not yet gotten a confirmation back from them. If there are other clubs interested in displaying post back or drop me a PM (please include a tentative size for the space you'd want and if you have any specific questions for NMRA) and when I eventually get through to NMRA I'll try to get info for you as well. At this point there are no commitments either direction, just a request for information, but that could change on short notice. Probably little or no pay for the show, but it is a neat show to do.

The cars are amazing- great color scheme and attention to details. That station behind the train is fantastic too. I am quite impressed with how you were able to make an excellent reproduction of the prototype signal box. Great work all around. Heh heh, the sign of a master builder, snapping bricks together too quickly to snap a picture of the final creation.

You continue to build landscapes that bring your lego work into the realm of conventional model railroading (well, the people are still a little squat but what can you do about that, grin). Excellent work.

She's looking great. Very nice form with the boiler and good job hiding all the PF. I also like your intro with the box.

If you don't care that it does not look like real train track this custom track might be handy:

Following the source of the image it looks like it came from a steam powered self-propelled passenger car (what might be a doodlebug in the US). They've even built a new power bogie.

Two XL motors should be enough. I've pulled 50+ car trains (over 200 axles) with 2XL motors + single IR receiver + single LiPo battery. Much beyond this point and the cars will start pulling off of the track in the curves. If your engine is really heavy and has a lot of drag and you will be pulling a lot of cars MAYBE up it to 3 or 4 XL's. Still if you REALLY want 16 motors and money is no object then SBrick is the way to go.

Oh WOW! That is looking really nice.

Here are a few of my quirky models, a macro-brick: A classic upgraded and a duplo spreader (man, building detail in duplo is a killer... it's like four wide only bigger and with a smaller parts selection to boot)

Cale (and Nate and Glenn) you continue to push the envelope of what is possible in Lego bricks, I was fortunate enough to see this wonderful build in person at BW. While it looks incredible in the photos, it is still 100x better in person, even the interiors of the offices are completely detailed. It really has the look and feel of an actual roundhouse (with well thought out piles of randomly tossed stuff). Rivals many traditional model railroad layouts.

If I had to guess, I would say that the motor sides is lego tossing a present out to the train heads. The black cow catcher first appeared on a ninjago set (or was it space police?) The classic train windshield keeps popping up in sets, etc.. I think they are deliberately including parts that can support train MOCs in other sets. They know that while there are not a ton of train builders, some of the ones that are out there spend lots of money.

Excellent work! Nice idea weaving the story line in too. While I am sure the colors are prototypical, if it ever does get Lego's attention please push for a rare color (need touches like that to help sales to those who will part it out).

To be blunt, no! (grin) Seriously though, the pneumatic locomotive is looking good and those renders are great. My only suggestion would be to move the fence behind the trains as they are getting in the way of the view of the trains (grin some more).

So on the one hand that is a fantastic build, on the other hand, how do you expect to show it off if you present it on such a detailed layout? Or to put it another way, the rocky slopes and detailed trackside are a strong contender to the locomotive. You did a top notch job capturing these low slung narrow gauge workhorses. Nice work hiding the PF too. You hit all of the details on the locomotive, and the passenger car is equally well done. I like the snotted bricks for a wood sided effect.

Oh wow! She is a real treat to watch (and hear) running. A fantastic build and then all of the additional electronics hidden inside to boot. The overview video was great, glad you kept the derailment in, it is so true to lego trains, especially how quickly you were able to recover from it. As cool as the sound card is, there are lots of neat curves on the engine itself, e.g., the cab and how it nicely tucks over the tender. Great work!

What (another) marvelous build! I could sit here for hours trying to figure out all of the tricks and techniques you've built in (hang on though, I've got to go answer the leaf springs in my tender first... grin). You are quite welcome for the rods, it is always neat to see someone take it up to 11 like this. So what did you do to color the red on the inside of the rods, is that paint, marker, ???

I have a couple of locomotives with PF LiPo, IR receiver, and two XL's on a single output channel and have never had problems (and that is pulling trains long enough that they want to pull off the track in the curves). You might want to give it a try with a single IR receiver first to see if it works. In any event the progress is looking good.

Welcome aboard! Indeed, there was a heyday 2000-2010, but if anything the AFOL train builders keep getting more and more sophisticated (just keep an eye on this forum to see what I mean... or take a look at the flickr pages). As long as PF train equipment is being made you'll have a thriving community. As for starting points, the best thing you can do is reverse engineer some of the MOCs that catch your fancy. Yeah, easy to say, but you'll find some good building tips in the back issues of Railbricks, and complete instructions too. Lgauge.com also has instructions. There are several other sources, but I don't think there are any with the same quantity. Happy building!

Based on my own observations and compiling bits and pieces here and there (no, I do not know anybody on the inside so pure speculation on my part) I would agree with the conclusion that the AFOL trains have not been good sellers, but that is because Lego bungled half of them big time. Hobby train- common colors, all rare parts were simultaneously available on S@H PAB, instructions required a very up to date computer Emerald Night- out of the ballpark in spite of the mechanical flaws, but due to small demand Lego would only sell the one set, so you got a free engine with every over priced car. The rare colors undoubtedly helped sales. Maersk- another out of the ballpark (again in spite of the mechanical flaws- the high friction technic axles) it was much easier to get extra cars since multiple copies worked together (should have had two different locomotive numbers on the sticker sheet though). Very rare color a big helper. One big problem- appeal would be much stronger in North America. Horizon Express- great design but horrible seller- must get two sets to make one train, common colors, and that one big problem again- appeal strongest in a specific region of the world. Overall lego AFOL trains are challenging to do right- lego will only have a single AFOL train set at a time (if that), which makes it hard for a potential customer to dive in, specific trains will have strong regional ties so they will likely have lower sales in other parts of the world. Also, the fact that the sets come with no track and getting track is difficult at best probably hasn't helped (I can only imagine a new train-head asking, "so where do I go to get straight track?" and being frustrated with the current options). The cost for PF also daunting... as someone without a train I could spend $300 on a modular building and know what I'm getting into or I can spend $250 to get a horizon express +$100 for PF +$50-$100 for track. While I would prefer otherwise, I don't know if I could blame Lego for their diminished interest in AFOL trains given the challenges of a successful AFOL train in the context of Lego bureaucracy and an excess demand for more profitable lines. Solution 1- do the hobby train right- box of bricks in a rare color, designs for at least 3 different train cars/locomotives such that they would cover the interest of enough of the world and people could build trains as long as they like by buying as many copies as they want without Lego having to offermore than one AFOL train set (future sets could repeat this formula while allowing for variation in cars that still can be regionally customized)... but if lego ever did this, watch them mess it up by having a freight car from one continent, a locomotive from another, and a passenger car from a third such that none of them would work together. Solution 2- make alternate builds of the city train sets that actually work on an AFOL level. If Lego won't do it, then the AFOL community should, e.g., my Conrail instructions. In any event, I am grateful that Lego is producing the city sets, so that at least the parts remain available and we have parts packs

Oh wow! Another fantastic build! If you keep this up you might just help start a G-guage lego train building movement. It looks great. Are the 2xn plates over the cab windows about the right size? Perhaps a 1x2 plate with rail would allow you to get rid of the studs? (not to say studs are bad, they are one of the few hints as to what this locomotive is actually made of). So how well does that gear train do for transferring power from the motor to the wheels? Do you have a single gear train that transfers power for both motors or one gear train for each motor?

Nice work! Just curious though, why did you put the motors so far away from the switches and decouplers that they control? Why not use extension wires from the SBrick and put the motors closer to what they are actuating instead? Oh, and are you using clutch gears or something similar to keep the motors from pushing too far?

Rise from the dark ages? You must be riding an ICBM. You've got a lot of fantastic builds. The John Bull is instantly recognizable (you need to build that section of iron bridge that it is displayed on in the Smithsonian). My only criticism is that Big Boy is just screaming for ME curves (grin... but that is true of almost any lego steam engine with more than 4 wheels). In all seriousness there are some clever tricks in those builds, e.g., the steps on the side of the boiler of the K4, the dumbbell as part of the dynamo, etc. Keep up the great work and can't wait to see some of these in the brick.

There are a lot of us still interested in keeping RB going in one form or another. Perhaps "mostly dead" would be a better term. As you can imagine, it was a huge amount of work assembling each issue. The forums on the website have largely been obsoleted by Eurobricks and flickr groups. Similarly, there is not enough "new" items beyond great MOCs to keep a blog going, and those usually surface in the discussion groups before any blogger could get to them. The back issues and the instructions pages are two essential resources that I think all involved with RB want to preserve. There are a few bureaucratic and technical issues keeping things in the current static form, top of which is that the web page is so obsolete that it probably needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. That is why the instructions pages haven't been updated in so long. While I had nothing to do with the backside of the instructions pages, I do know that there were numerous "hey RB, why haven't you posted my instruction submissions" from the public. The keys to the inbox were lost, then whoever moderated the instructions moved on, etc. etc. These hurdles can be overcome, but they require a fair amount of work. Several of the other Railbricks folks wander though these forums and hopefully they can toss in their perspectives as well. In the mean time, if there are a few tech savvy readers (as in: have made semi-professional web pages) who might be interested in reviving the instructions pages feel free to drop me a private message and I'll try to route it to the right people. I for one think that the AFOL community needs a good repository of building instructions like on RB (only updated and maintained), both to help AFOLs build their first train MOCs and to help advanced builders to learn new tricks.