zephyr1934

Aw, aren't you a cute little shunter. Great work packing all of the PF into such a tight space. And making it look nice to boot. A couple of small suggestions, given the fact that 5/7ths of the roof is 1x2 cheese slopes, the 2/7ths with curved slopes doesn't seem substantial enough to stand on its own (or at least the bit in the middle) and if only there were some way to cover up that pf connector in the roof. I would suggest replacing the pair of curved slopes on the battery box with cheese slopes and tiles. Then for the PF connector, you might be able to cover it with a 1x2x3 panel with studs to the front or rear of the loco, but that would require moving or changing the turntable base fan.

If you put a pair of XL's in there and make sure the engine is heavy enough not to spin the wheels then the magnets will give long before you run out of pulling power. Make the couplings stronger and you will pull the cars off the tracks before you run out of pulling power. I've not played with any L motors yet but I suspect they would have a lot of umph too.

Excuse me while I pick my jaw off of the floor. This locomotive is incredible, the detailing is over the top and it looks better than many conventional G gauge locomotives. The backhead of the boiler alone is unbelievable, but all of the piping and suspension and ... not a flaw anywhere. Excellent work!

This is definitely a good idea for clubs that are invested in green baseplates (which are currently unavailable) to expand more green space without investing in more discontinued green BP. It also offers the opportunity to add some interesting small elevation changes and these small slopes could be built to completely cover baseplates in other colors/discolorations/decorations for added sturdiness.

The SBrick is great, but it is expensive and in this case you are probably not being limited by the IR receiver. My guess is that you do not have sufficient weight on the motor and so the wheels are slipping. You could do a quick test: pull off the decorative sides from the motor, watch the motor wheels as the train climbs the hill and listening for sounds of spinning. Then try adding a bit of weight, as per my last post. Agreed, with sufficient weight on a pair of train motors I've found the magnets are the weakest link, then the IR receiver not being able to deliver sufficient power... ...and all of this using the normal clear bands on the train wheels, no third party o-rinigs. On a side note, for the first year or so after lego started the battery powered train motors (RC first, followed by the current PF) you really did need the third party o-rings, the first two generations of o-rings from lego were too loose and the the bands would slip like crazy as the wheel turned inside them. Lego changed the bands at least twice. The current version that has been shipped with the wheels for the past several years seem to have the problem solved.

Apologies for wandering off topic, I've found that the lego flex tubing hole varies in size, presumably either due to the use of different 3rd party suppliers or simply reducing the volume of material. I found this out by snipping the ball off of the end of a whip antenna and stuffing the rest inside a flex tube, fits great in some, will not fit in others. The outer radius seems consistent thus far, just the inside radius varies, similar to the inside dimensions on 2x bricks. In any event, you might want to take a piece of flex tubing to your hardware store when buying the wire. Alternatively, you could just buy black 3mm wire and skip the flex tubing as others have done (in this case just bring a clip with you to the hardware store to test the fit).

Lots of great detail in your MOC, you packed a lot especially in to the ends. Excellent work and looking forward to seeing more.

Oh wow, they look great. FEC has one of the best liveries of the active class I's and you've captured it wonderfully in your great build.

Nice review, and it provides various details not found in my recent review. While poking around the SBrick support forums, I THINK they said that the communications format is documented somewhere, so presumably one could build their own GUI if need be.

Excellent work and a big improvement over an already great build.

Another thing you might want to try is to increase the weight above the motor. Perhaps try putting a roll of coins in the locomotive. At six cars you might be approaching the limit of a single PF train motor though, especially with a grade and if you are using the flex track. Worst case, you could add a second motor under the locomotive, but you will also need a PF pole reverser switch on the line to one of the motors because the two motors will be facing opposite directions. So try adding weight first and see if that helps.

Impressive use of an unusable part. The MOC itself is very nice too and easily recognizable.

A beautiful piece of work filled with mighty fine goodness... the interior packing of the PF is just another impressive feature.

So much detail packed in to every square inch. Great show!

The detailing on your MOC is incredible. Everywhere you look the features are out of the ballpark. I especially like the creative use of 1x2x2 windows for the front steps and the coffee cup for the headlight. But the syringe as the sight glass is clever too (as is the rest of the cab). Then the more common detailing is also so complete, e.g., the pipes from the sand dome. You are definitely taking advantage of everything 12 wide gives you (looks good on the LGB tracks... or are those O gauge?). Impressive work!

Cool! Please do include a few photos of your progress in the posts, a nice photo will elicit more feedback and it is neat to see the progression evolve in the thread.

Greetings new friend, while indeed there are all sorts of interesting bits in old threads like this, please do not bump an old topic just to add a small comment or ask a quick question. Few of the readers will remember the original discussion and it just becomes confusing for the regular readers.

It's evolutionary then. If folks didn't keep building and improving on great ideas like this, we'd never have such nice looking train MOCs.

Oh wow, that is a great build that captures the look and feel of both the locomotive and the cars. Your attention to detail is top notch and your ability to actually realize those features in brick at this scale is excellent. Bolsters, tank, plow, roof, ribbing, but probably my favorite feature is the windshield. Simple and very effective.

Excellent! I really like it. There was a similar MOC a few years back in this thread.

I would agree with both of these suggestions. While in this case I suspect a straight brick built window would be best, I think this arch: ... for the cab windows would really have the feel of a Santa Fe steam engine... but you are building a specific prototype so never mind that. Scratch that now scratched out bit... looking at the additional shots in your first post, this arch would be a good fit. Perhaps get the height just so that you could squeeze an old style window pane to replicate the actual cab windows. I also think your cab roof is too flat. I personally like the look of 1x3 curved slopes above a normal Nx2 slope, e.g., here for steam cab roofs.

Here's another thought about the cross ties... do away with them altogether. Assuming the marginal cost for the extra plastic is small, mount the rails on the equivalent of a 8xN plate in dark blay. For straights put studs everywhere, so those who like 2 wide ties can add them with tiles or plates, those who like 1 wide can do similar. For curves and switches, strategically place the studs so that no one has to worry about finding 5 million wedge plates. For each tie location perhaps use 2 hollow studs with a gap of one stud in between. So you can put a 2x2 tile with the center tube on each of the studs, or you can put a 1x4 tile with two of the posts in the hollow part of the studs. That would greatly reduce the part count for ballasting.

OH WOW!!! I'm not sure which is more impressive, the scale or the detail. It is a fantastic station and I bet it was one of the focal points of your layout. Excellent work!

Wow, that is a very nice looking MOC, reminiscent of Bricktrix's and BMW's style of building. There are a lot of neat little details in there and your model highlights just how much that non-lego element can add to a mostly lego model, e.g., the reversing gear above the engineer's runningboard. As for the comments that this is not "lego", it is all in the eye of the beholder. Some would argue that anything non-set is non interesting. Others would say the opposite. Even the trains found at legoland parks use: painted elements, non-lego track and motors, glued pieces, etc.. Of course there is nothing wrong with being purist about one's own work, it is a real challenge to build something realistic out of unmodified bricks.

Here's a little more discoveries. First, after adding my second SBrick controlled train, It is easy to add multiple SBricks to a single GUI controller (well, as easy as adding one SBrick), however, 1) You need to define a different variable name for each SBrick control, e.g., "throttle 1", "throttle 2", with 1 and 2 being assigned to different SBricks. 2) The controller will only work if both SBricks are powered up and within range. Either one off and the GUI controller will not start. Power down one of the SBricks and the GUI controller locks up. 3) The simple work around to having a variable number of trains is to make GUI controllers for 1, 2, 3, ... N SBrick controlled trains and then reassign a given controller to a given SBrick as you swap them in and out. You will also have to touch the configuration to rename the outputs each time you swap an SBrick in and out. A little cumbersome but it works. As for the added functionality that I mentioned in my last post, they said that those features will be available in the future, they don't know when, but "hopefully soon."