zephyr1934

Nice curves!

Oh wow, maybe your biggest disaster yet. Back in the 1970's there was a sequence of "Airport" movies... so I guess this would be "Station 15". So how did you get the HE to jump up on top of the pile like that?

Okay, more testing and more insight, 1) My PC hates the chrome browser (!@#$%) 2a) One of the big features of the SBrick that I forgot to mention in my first post is that YOU specify the speed you want the motors to run at. None of this spinning the PF controller dial and hope the IR receiver can see you (or worse if you are attempting to control two IR receivers in sync and only one sees you). At the moment the SBrick GUI tools to not allow for easy "go exactly this speed", but I think that will come in the future. 2b) Another feature of the SBrick is that it could be of particular value for the larger locomotive builds that currently have two IR receivers (and even a cost savings if it allows you to eliminate a LiPo battery). Since there are four outputs and possibly 3x the current capacity, you might be able to replace two battery boxes and two IR receivers with a single battery box and a single SBrick. Then you get the bonus that all of your motor outputs are set to exactly the same speed by default. Just be warned that I have not tried this and I do not know if it will drain the single battery faster. However, as noted above, with my pair of PF train motors I was able to break the magnetic coupling between cars even with a rare earth magnet between them. 3a) Indeed, I was able to get more than one control element to control a given output. As marook mentioned, the control elements need the same name. So I now have a slider that gives full forward and reverse speed selection with a "stop" button next to it. Set the speed on the slider, put your phone to sleep, the train keeps running. Wake the phone, hit the stop button and it stops. But the slider does not update to the new speed, it is ignorant that it's last output command has been superseded by another control element. 3b) you can also use buttons to set specific speeds, but right now the buttons are toggle buttons. Hit it once and it will set the exact speed, hit it again and it stops the output. Unfortunately if you have multiple buttons on the same output, as soon as you hit any of them a second time it will stop the train. So the SBrick folks just need to figure out how to set one control element to be aware of any other control elements on the same output name. Conceptually simple, but who knows how easy to implement. In any event I've posted this wish on the SBrick forums. Well, the "end this session" button did not always cut power, just most of the time. Turning off bluetooth seemed to do it all the time (and my tablet would not see the SBrick when my phone had control, I had to end the session before the SBrick would talk to another device). However, as noted above, I was able to insert a stop button that replicates the functionality of the red button on the PF train controller. Cheaper would be great, and who knows, they might read this thread for feedback. For me, for now, I am assuming the price point will not be changing soon. So I have two trains where I NEED the functionality of the SBrick and it is worth the cost to me. The rest of my PF trains will stay IR for now. To be clear, when you release a control (either the slider or a button) the SBrick lets you do either "set and forget" or "reset to zero". That is a user selectable choice at the GUI design stage. I think my SBrick controller is superior to the PF train controller since the slider is "exact speed" rather than "increment/decrement" speed. Also, you can have more than two SBricks on a GUI controller, so you could easily have 4+ trains under the control of a single tablet GUI. The GUI design looks like it is still a work in progress (hence "Beta"). It is clear that they intend to let users share GUI designs in the market place. Presumably they will tax the sales and let the creator get a cut of the sales, but those options are not yet available. It also looks like they will allow free GUIs too, with no charge. The layout is simple enough for a basic train controller that I could probably be talked into making a illustrated tutorial for the GUI design at some point (set this to __, that to __ and the other thing to __).

Oh, a couple of more observations about the GUI design and App. When I decided to make the no-reverse throttle it initially caused some problems because I defined "throttle" differently in the two GUIs. It seemed as if in the background some of the definition from one GUI lingered when I ran the second GUI on the same SBrick (in this case min power). So I renamed one "Throttle 2" and the problem went away. I doubt this would be a problem when controlling different SBricks with differrent GUIs. I suspect the App downloads the configuration to the SBrick. So now to switch between GUIs on my device I need to redefine which control goes to the inputs ("Throttle" or "Throttle 2"), so the App+SBrick retains the SBrick configuration as you switch between GUIs. You are welcome and oh yes, the form factor was readily apparent in the prototype SBricks last year. Yes, I was testing the power delivery rather than precision. The SBrick seems to be more responsive than the IR receiver. I don't know if that is because the message transmit time is shorter or just wishful thinking on my part. Wandering into pure speculation, I personally think that the continuous slider offers a much greater choice of speeds (looks like it is at least 20 steps between stop and full power, maybe more). I THINK you can touch the slider and it will instantly jump to that speed. However, getting the exact speed you want (most importantly "stop") seems difficult with the slider. Hopefully there is some way of having multiple control items in the GUI control a given output so that you can replicate the function of the orange button on a train controller. Or even better, specify multiple buttons that you can assign different speed settings to and each will give you its exact speed setting when pressed. But as I've said, so far I have not seen or figured out how to do that... perhaps using the same function name for different control objects... I'll try that and let you know what I find.

Exactly, if you attempt do a direct solution and run both train motor wires through the center 2x2 holes in the baseplate, one motor will be oriented backwards to the other. If you build your own base plate it is a lot easier to orient both motors in the same direction. You might be able to leave a hole at the back of the HE engine to slip the wire out, but it may catch when the motor bogie turns on curves. One nice thing about the PF train motor design is that below the wire exit there is enough room to put a plate (for couplers or detailing). On the HE I think just using pole reverser switch is the easiest. If you search the train tech forum for Horizon Express there are a few threads on modifying the model, including installing two motors. Another thought to making it work better with a single motor- just put a lot of weight above the single motor (a couple of rolls of pennies for example). That might be enough to get the traction you need. Yes, that is an excellent call, for any unpowered wheels, getting rid of the technic axles will help reduce the drag.

Looking good!

I just unboxed by first SBrick this weekend and this note provides a review of my experience thus far. First let me start with the background. I was fascinated by the development and release of the SBrick last year. It looked REALLY great, but I thought to myself, "while I'd love bluetooth controller, it looks great, but I don't think I could justify $60+ to replace IR if I only need one output." Of course there are a lot of people on this forum building their own homebrew bluetooth receivers, while they look incredible, these self-build receivers are way beyond the reach of my time resources right now. Yet, from long before the SBrick came out, I have been struggling with power issues in my two long passenger trains. The first train is my Superliner train with 7x 52 stud long cars, a dummy F40 and a powered F40 with a pair of PF train motors. The second train is my North Cost Limited with 8x 42 stud long cars, and an A-B-A set of locomotives (one powered with 2 PF train motors, the other two dummies). Examples of both trains taking standard lego curves can be found in this thread about a now aborted project to build wide radius curves. I made a 90° R88 right before ME announced their Kickstarter (man, that would have saved me a lot of time if I had known it was coming, but I'm still a happy man for the ME curves). Both trains predate the ME curves and I now have R88 and R105 curves (which both trains love and can take at full speed), both my permanent layout and my club's layout are both 9v, so I also want to be able to operate with the legacy R44 curves. I have had no power problems with the IR receiver powering a pair of XL motors and pulling VERY HEAVY trains (50+ cars in some cases), however, the combination of the train motors and these too heavy passenger trains taking multiple curves is just too much for the IR receiver. The original IR receiver can handle one 90° R44 curve without complaints for either train. Sometimes my club layout is large enough that I can use the full consist, but other times I have to set cars out if the straightaways are not long enough. As soon as the train is long enough to be in two curves the drag overpowers the IR receiver and it trips out for a few seconds... only to come back abruptly at full power and pull the magnets apart (in spite of the additional rare earth magnets). [Of course at this point in the review it is premature of me to say that it was the IR receiver that was tripping out, it could have also been the battery or the motors... but based on what I've found with the SBrick, it was the IR receiver. Anyways, back to the original timeline...] So for an upcoming show one of the other club members was talking about bringing 8 pf trains and letting the kids run them with IR controls. That is way cool and I think will be a huge hit with the crowd and the venue... but not so good for my running pf myself. For this show I don't want to do 9v (we are doing this one "just trains" and it will be our first show "on the floor"). So what's a man to do? Then I got to wondering about alternatives for IR in general, and higher power in particular. That was when I discovered that the SBrick can deliver up to 3A while the standard IR provides about 1A and I think the v2 provides up to 1.5A. I needed no further convincing and got one to give a try. I unboxed it two days ago. The first think that is clear, you need an account on the sbrick servers to configure your receiver. The SBrick folks have videos on line showing how to configure the software, but you first have to sign up for an account. This part was one of the things I did not like. Rather than simply offering a receiver, they are offering a social networking site that you have to pass through before you can get to your receiver. Not a huge deal, I just found the social networking a minor annoyance. It only took 5 min to turn off 20+ "share this" options, an equal number of "notify me when" options, and switch my profile to private. I'm sure many will find it a nice bonus, but for me I don't plan on spending much time on the SBrick site. I just want a plain vanilla train controller. This point could also be an issue in 5-10 years if they stop supporting the SBrick, but if it works it is worth the small risk for me. Once you have your account and the SBrick app you can go to the profile market... but none of the controls looked like the met my needs and what little documentation there was did not clarify things for me. So sooner than I had expected, I was off to design my own graphical user interface (GUI) on the Beta version of the designer site. First drawback is that it appears the site only works with Chrome or Safari browsers (not a problem if you already use one of those, but another minor nuisance if you don't... and here too, once I get my GUI working, I don't plan to spend much time on this site either). I was not able to find much documentation on the GUI design, so here's what I discovered: (1) I think you need an "exit" button to quit your control, at least the default GUI has one, it is a special object class and since it seems like a generally desirable feature I did not feel like exploring whether you can do away with it. (2) As I recall, there were three other types of objects- a 2D slider control, a 3D joystick control, and a push-botton. (3) While it was not apparent to this newbe, you do not define which specific output each control is set to (the SBrick has 4 outputs). Instead, you come up with a name for the particular output. I wound up using a single 2D slider and named it "throttle". (4) There are a lot of control settings you specify (or accept the defaults): min power, max power, default start position and power, "snap back to default start position when control released (like the non-train PF controller)" or "hold the last setting when released (like the PF train controller)". It takes some trial and error to get all of these settings to your liking. Each time you want to make a change you need to tweak the GUI layout in your browser, then download them to your device, then tweak the settings on your phone/tablet (more on that in a moment). It is nice that you can scale and position the various control elements where you like on the GUI layout. I think you can include multiple SBricks in the layout too, so a single controller could easily have room for 4+ trains on a tablet and 2+ on a phone. (5) It looks like the GUI is infinitely customizable, they offer 6-12 options for button styles, slider styles, background styles, etc. or you can upload your own artwork. (6) Unfortunately it looks like each GUI design is aspect ratio dependent, presumably to preserve custom artwork. So the GUI I designed for my phone was not available on my tablet and I had to redo it for the tablet at its aspect ratio. Here too, not a big deal given the simplicity of my controller. It's a bit like programming your microwave for the first time. It would be nice if they also had a "universal layout" option that could be used on many different platforms, by shrinking it to the most constrained dimension... maybe in the future. In the mean time, it would have been REALLY nice if they had an option to copy an existing GUI so that you could adjust it (if that option is there I couldn't find it). None of this is a deal breaker for me, just be prepared for a small learning curve as you get up to speed with their system. It took me an hour or two to get to a point that I was satisfied with. With your GUI designed or redesigned in your browser, you then go to an option on the SBrick app to go to the profile market to download a profile. Once downloaded the profiles are stored locally, so you could design a single throttle control in the GUI and then in the SBrick app make variants for several different locomotives, each with their own SBrick. Or as noted above, you probably could also make a single controller that controls multiple SBricks. One minor annoyance to me was that every time you went to the profile market it first insisted on loading all of the standard GUI options (none that I wanted) before it allowed you to get to your own GUI designs. Once the profile you want has been downloaded to your device, you then go to "my creations" to actually associate a GUI with an SBrick. I think you have to have the given SBrick(s) on initially so that your device can sync with the SBrick. Then you go to the configure page for the creation and this is where you tell it to associate the "throttle" in the GUI design controls with one or more specific output(s). I decided to use the Superliners as my test case since this train has more drag (heavier and longer cars). Since I have two motors I decided to put each on a different output from the SBrick. They were previously on a single output from the IR receiver. Not sure if this makes a difference on the SBrick, but it was easy enough to set the throttle to control two or more outputs. There are also virtual pole reverser switches similar to the little switch on the IR controller. Then you are ready to run your model... well... as they recommend, try it first to make sure you have the pole reversers set to the direction that you want. In my initial design I wanted a "kill switch" like the IR train controller in addition to the throttle. I could not see a way to associate two control elements to a single SBrick output, so away went the kill switch. Usually hitting the exit button will kill all motors, but not always (here too, more on emergency stop in a moment). I started with letting the throttle range from full reverse to full forward, but I found that getting it to stop at no power was very difficult. There was no "snapping" to zero. Since the Superliner and North Cost Limited are effectively one way trains, I made a second controller that is limited between zero and full power (no reverse beyond "hand of god"). So I can easily flick it to zero without worry. There might be away to fix this, but I haven't found it yet (remember, I'm a newbe at the SBrick). So I first had the model running with all of the PF innards exposed and it ran great. No problems pulling the entire train through two 90° curves and a small S-jog all at once. It ran for at least an hour with now power drops. So that's how I knew it was the IR receiver that was limiting me before, the IR receiver would not survive when the train was in the two 90° curves (R44). So at this point I stuffed all the PF wires inside the model and put the roof back on. Of course now it started misbehaving. !@#$% did I drain my battery so quickly with the heavy load? The IR would run for a few hours. Nope, that wasn't it. After some trouble shooting I realized that I had inadvertently knocked one of the connectors off when reinstalling the unit after testing. So only one motor was getting powered. As a result, the locomotive would stall once the train was in two curves. Apparenlt without intending to do so I discovered that the SBrick has a much nicer overload response than the IR receiver. The train sat there and the engine did not jet off at full speed, it did not move at all until I rezeroed the controller. In fact the single powered motor was strong enough to pull the train in a single curve with wheels spinning while pushing against the dead motor. Once fixed, I didn't even have problems starting in the most twisted part of my layout. That was when I decided to see how far I could push it. At the moment I have two single crossovers in my layout (I've been playing with the PF trains). So the train effectively went across two switches, through a 90° curve, then through two more switches back to the original track. It was as the locomotive was returning to the main track when it overpowered the rare earth magnets. So more than enough pull and something else failed before the SBrick was pushed to its limits. Now here's where I learned another important feature of the SBrick. Once I set the train running, I could go to blank screen on my device and the train would still run. Nice, you don't have to run down the batteries on your device to keep the trains running. My trains are in the basement and I went to get something upstairs. At one point in this trip there were two concrete walls between me and the train. When I returned the train was stopped. Did that stinking battery finally run out? Nope, it started right back up when I hit the SBrick controller. Okay, what happens when I turn off bluetooth on my device? Train stops. Cool. Lose contact with the controller and the SBrick stops. Turn bluetooth back on and the SBrick responds immediately to the next command. So there is a potential emergency stop if the exit button does not do it for you. So needless to say, I will be buying a second SBrick here in the near future for the North Coast Limited (hum... maybe I can build some of those other cars that I was forced to leave out for the IR receiver). For now I'm going to stop at two SBricks. It is nice to be able to completely hide the receiver, but probably not worth the extra $45 for me given the number of PF trains that I have. The extra power, however, is definitely worth it if you need it.

Wow! Though with the cross-ties offset by half a stud from normal lego track, that will make your transition rails more complicated if someone wants to mix with lego track pinned to baseplates. You'll probably need 15.5 and 16.5 match pairs of transition rails. And while I REALLY like the look of the brown ties, it would be nice (in the future) to also have dark gray ties as an option to match legacy 9v track.

Those are some fantastic designs. The Uaai has the biggest impact due to its size and out and out uncommon-ness. Keep up the great builds.

It looks great, with a keen eye on detail around all of those unfriendly curves for lego.

Well, in principle a pair of American 4-4-0 locomotives is "classic" train to even non-railfans, enough so that it might even work internationally (well... at least as good as the Super Chief did). The golden spike is a great topic for lego since you could get away with just two locomotives (but having no cars does degrade the play value even for adults). The big trouble is, the Lone Ranger train was a huge failure, so of course no one will buy a western train from the 1870's... never mind the fact that the movie tanked.

Looking great! The locomotive was really nice to begin with but the decals really make the engine pop.

Now that is a thing of beauty. I am definitely interested in these. You could also benefit by designing a specific adapter piece to transition between standard 9v lego track and this new rail standard. I'd suggest making it 16 long to facilitate conventional lego geometries. Is the geometry such that you can do a single crossover within a lateral of 16 studs? While it is certainly not a deal breaker for me, it would be nice to have the option for lego style ties too (I'm not going to replace my existing 9v track stock). Maybe keep that as a possible future addition if the demand proves viable. I would still suggest doing a kickstarter campaign to cover your up front costs. That way you'll know for sure that the demand is more than just those of us responding to this thread and that they will sell at your target price without risking your upfront investment. Oh, and do not underestimate the fulfillment demands (look at the ME delays... which is NOT a slam against ME, rather, I am just pointing out the non-trivial task to pack and ship)

Look at that beauty! Excellent work, even better in the brick than in the digital. Here's a little hack that I did to help my bigger engines through tiny switches (the black round plate+tile stacks between the rails, not the remote control switch lever)... and it is completely reversible too... it might help in your situation too. Go up one level from the image and you'll see it helped me on curves as well.

Out back of the station, how about a couple of benches (and on the platform), newspaper stand (the kind with a vendor inside?), a picket fence made out of 1x4 tiles, some plants, a mailbox, a phone booth, just all sorts of little details.

Hey there Riley-NZL, there are lots of great things you can do with the trains. There's nothing wrong with simply building the sets, but I would agree with you, the sets do leave you wanting more cars. Also, to keep the part count down, often the cars in sets tend to be flat cars. It is easy enough to build up a boxcar or gondola car though (keep an eye out for panels, 1x6x5 for boxcars and 1x2x3 for gondolas). Still, the train parts can get expensive, so keep an eye out for a sale and buy a second train set to build in to cars. Another fun challenge is simply figuring out what you can build with the parts you have on hand or can easily acquire in a set of generic bricks. Your microscale trains are fantastic. It is also such a great idea, to make a decent microscale train can just as challenging to make a large scale train... with one big difference... your pocket book won't hurt nearly as much.

I THINK the only difference between the heavy haul and horizon express PF is that the heavy haul uses the AAA battery box and horizon express uses the rechargeable battery box. They are functionally equivalent from a lego building stand point. The rechargeable has more consistent power delivery throughout it's discharge and can be built inside a model easier, neither of which are critical if you are just running the HE around your house. Though from lego's standpoint, they would much prefer you spent $50 on a battery and $25 on a charger instead of re-purposing a AAA battery box. In other words, buy some high quality rechargeable AAA batteries for now. As for one verses two motors in a 6 unit HE. If your floor is flat you should might be able to get away with a single motor. Try it first. With a little building finesse you can get two motors under one HE to save on a second battery box and receiver... or you could run a PF extension wire and put a second motor on the lead truck of the second car (in either case you'll likely need the pole reverser switch). Simply powering both locomotives is the easiest build solution, you just need to be careful that you keep both locomotives at the same speed as much as possible (I don't think it is the end of the world if you don't keep them matched, but the train might derail or uncouple, and the batteries will likely run down faster... but all of this is just speculation on my part, i.e., try at your own risk).

Hum... 24 studs might be the best MOC width I've seen... Yuck yuck (but more on that fantastic model in this thread)

Oh wow, that's a great build. Are you sure you've never done a train MOC before? I'm not going to say it is pretty given how well you've reproduced the fairly ugly prototype, but you did a great job matching these unique locomotives. There is a lot of subtle detail, e.g., the see through vents on the rear end. The trapezoidal flags work well for those portions of the handrails. I think the handrails should be broken at the ladders, but I suspect that is simply hard to do in LDD. Two thoughts on the ladders, one, you might be able to come up with a solution where the ladder hinges up as the truck swings out below... perhaps using the old style window pane held in via... well ??? Or two, perhaps redo the trucks such that the four axle unit rotates roughly at the point of the ladder, and then one of the two axle units will swing WAY out... but obviously that would be a design compromise... but then again... if PF powered snaking the wire to the motor could be difficult if it swings out too much.

I've seen some odd ball ideas, I think one of Tony Sava's earlier engines used a split forward truck with all but one of the drivers blind, the rear wheel on the pilot truck and the flanged driver effectively became a truck. Then the front axle on the pilot truck was hinged off of that. I stole that idea for one of my early steam engines, Brian Williams had this great 4-4-0 where the pilot truck was allowed to slide left and right, but I cannot quickly find a shot of the actual mechanism. I've found these cylinders are very space efficient, they use a 1x2x1 up bracketto hold bars in place with very little wasted space behind them. This engine uses a left/right rotation close to the rear axle of the pilot truck, then an up/down rotation from that same axle to the front of the pilot truck via a single technic beam. So it is very narrow in getting around the cylinders. Works good on flat track, but sometimes complains on uneven track. Probably the biggest thing you can do is build up a real prototype of the mechanics to see what works for you. Only after you get the mechanics working should you worry about the rest of the design simply because the final solution might be far off from your initial idea.

Curse you LDD (and LDraw) for showing me that my desires can actually be realized in brick but I can never afford!!!! Argh! The agony...

These all look great and I've always been taken by the 1 stud ties. If I were setting out to ballast track, I'd think seriously about getting a bunch of ME track and for straights just use 1x 8 plates in alternating colors on top of a layer of plates that was 10 wide. Or to be a real perfectionist, for the ties I'd use two 1x1 tiles, two 1x1 plates and one 1x4 tile. Of course the ME silver rails on top of the dark brown ties are very sharp too, a cheaper way of getting nicer looking rails, but not nearly as nice as the 1x ties.

The flat silver was one of the first things I noticed on the cars, great work with that. And then using the grill tiles to replicate the ribbed sides, so much detail. It is too bad that not all of the necessary parts come in dark blue. Can't wait to see the cab video and the entire train together.

Oh wow, that is a fantastic mechanism. Simple, direct and efficient. Great build... though looking at some of your other youtube videos this one looks simple compared to your factory and trolley bus. Please post more about your other creations too.

Wow, impressive, is that strictly using parts from the set? I had in mind a design that used a lot of additional parts in dark gray and captured the rough form of the Maersk, e.g., as my Conrail MOD did with parts in blue.