zephyr1934

Looking good and that is a clever yet simple solution for the pilot truck. I bet it will quite fast with the large train wheels on the pf train motor.

It has been a while since I last talked with the ME guys but I too would echo Tony's sentiments. We are quite fortunate to have ME take on this design on behalf of the community. I suspect they have day jobs, so all the more amazing that they have come this far. Based on their posts (mostly in this thread) my understanding that NONE of the metal rails have shipped and that they are still finalizing the design. Definitely send them an email if you have questions or concerns, I found them to be quite responsive. They may also be swamped at this point, so if you don't hear anything within a week, resend. As far as I can tell they are nice folk, with good intentions, just a little overloaded. Meanwhile, I'm hoping they do another run of the R104 soon, those look like they have been sold out for a while.

Looking great, your trains are a real standout and the full loop of home built rails looks fantastic.

Put a couple of panels on the helicopter flat car, disassemble the helicopter, and viola, you have a train hauling helicopter scrap.

Excellent work, thank you for sharing!

I have added another five container lines to the collection along with a few other heralds More shots will be available on brickshelf once moderated The currently available stickers can be found at: http://TrainedBricks.com Oh, and I am offering free shipping to Brickworld 2015 for almost any order that is complete in time for me to bring. If interested send me a private message.

That is an excellent build, clever use of the slopes and windscreens to get the slope on the nose. Are those 2x2x3 clear slopes for the side winidows something that came out of the lego model shop? The cars look great, simple application of the standard train windows but when you get everything else right like this they REALLY look real. Great work (as usual)

Hey Alban, if you have not done so already, would it be possible to integrate Michael Gale's fine work into the official library?

Yes, call customer service and tell them your situation. With something this expensive they might ask you to send it in, but they are usually very good about finding a solution.

Wow, that is very impressive, I can only imagine your head must be turning inside out to get all of the dimensions to line up.

Oh, lego has the capacity, but I think they prefer to do a slow and steady production. Cheaper to have one packing line run for a week than to have seven packing lines run for a day since you reduce the loss time to change them over. That is why they will roll out a line at different times around the world. In this case first a spike of sales in Europe when it is new, then a spike in the US when it is "new" (at least in the past there would be a different theme/set that had the reverse timetable- US first Europe second). Lego does multiple runs of a set without updating the packaging. I think at some point they updated the guardrails on the switches (probably to accommodate the EN) but the packaging never changed... in fact I wouldn't be surprised if they still have long discontinued sets on the packaging. Redesigning the packing costs more money than simply reprinting it. I think they aim to have a few months of stock of a given set in the warehouse, but not much more than that so that they can match production to demand without having much excess at the end of life. I know with the EN there were a few revisions to the instructions over its life (and even one revision to the box art to catch an omission) That confirms my suspicion that it will be released for the holidays here. Typically the retailers only carry the trains in the physical stores around the holidays and as I said, I wouldn't be surprised if this is a Toys R Us exclusive (+ lego store of course) That would be true lego form, large companies do not always make sense

You would think, but no, it is for real and the AFOL's were none too happy. That was about the same time that Lego stopped using "duplo" instead renaming it "Lego Explore". They were not making good decisions in those days.

Nope, typically the boxes were identical, lego just assumed the "small" change in color was completely unremarkable and they claim to have often made numerous small changes to the colors over the years prior, just not as drastic. So now we have "blay" and "redish brown". Yep, and as noted above, sometimes they would mix old and new of a given gray in the same set.

Yes, if you google, "lego power functions protocol" you will get hits like this. Oh, and there are at least 3 versions of IR receivers, 1.0, 1.1 and 2.... oh, wait, look at the file title, looks to be for 1.2 so presumably the code should apply to 1.2 and perhaps the other versions. If your IR receiver was purchased since 2010 and is not marked v2 then this code is probably for you. One of the big things about this code is that it lets you set a specific speed instead of simply "increase/decrease". I think there was some discussion that not all of the functions work on v1.0. I THINK the newer versions of v1 the green led on the receiver turns on momentarily when powered up.

I wouldn't be surprised if lego is holding back on this set in N America until later in the year both to equalize production/demand and so that TRU can have an exclusive train (as they did with the last red freight train).

Yeah, gravity does kind of suck when you pick things up (in this case for dusting) and a new orientation sends your roof smashing to the ground in a hundred pieces (but after all, there is no such thing as gravity, the earth sucks). There are some work arounds that do not require precise LDU matching though. One of my favorites is to simply wedge parts together in such a way that they can't get out (e.g., the exhaust stack on step 30 of the powered unit in my gp40 instructions)... though I guess that is still LDU matching. Then there is clip snot or using technic beams to get that "off spacing". If you want to blow your mind, just dig through the building techniques here.

Greetings, I am wandering into the realm of custom stickers for lego creations, including white on clear. I have printed several of the old style train logo in white on clear, sized to fit comfortably on 1x2 bricks. I have not had time to list them yet. However, you can see an example of one that I used to fill an empty spot on the Conrail stickers. The train logo at this size is available in hand, say four for $1.25 plus s/h. At some point I plan on doing larger sizes too. I could do other colors too. If you are interested in discussing details drop me a private message.

That is looking great. One thought on the roof, if this will only be for display you might be able to let gravity do the attaching for you.

Lego has released official images and it is now on brickset. So it will likely be available at S@H very soon.

WOW! That is stellar, the printed bricks are fantastic and take it all to a new level. It might not be too late, if you used Cale's design for the crosshead, as done here around a 9v motor, you might be able to get connecting rods to work on this design.

Yes, if you like the Maersk I'd suggest just building a repaint, e.g., my Conrail design mentioned above is intended to be a much cheaper alternative to buying a Maersk. Of course you are not limited to Conrail, if you search the forums you will find a lot of repaints of the Maersk and even the BNSF set. As I was designing the Conrail locomotives I was looking through bricklink prices and I found that if you need all of the PF components and train components you will be hard pressed to get them individually for less than what you find in the sets. If you prefer dark gray over blue, wait for the new train to come out. Then again, if you are more of a European train fan, you would likely be happy with 3677 (and it is still reasonably cheap for a discontinued train set)

There are many other solutions for PF, depending on your needs. If you have a 4 wide hood (or similar feature) you could bump it out to 4.8 using snotted tiles outside of the battery box- similar to the Maersk locomotive but you could use 1x6, 1x8 or 2x4 tiles. This approach has a bonus of looking like access doors on a diesel. I've built several 6 wide switchers with 5 wide hoods (9v) and I think the narrower running boards look fine, but it is in the eye of the beholder. If you have a 4 wide feature or narrower with panels or snot that is long enough and you cannot make it wider, you can do a custom AAA battery box. Same as above, but shorter and on a light train you can take a normal 9v battery an make a custom PF connector to it. Failing all of that, you can make a separate power car, works great for detailed locomotives. Many of my steam engines already have this feature, albeit in the tender, e.g., my 9v Hiawatha and PF Pacific. I've also done it for a few diesels, e.g., with the power in the B unit on my North Coast Limited, but in this case I could not fit all of the PF components and the snotted nose in the same unit. These are examples of choosing an obvious power car and for most 9v steam engines you would have to go this route (if you had a 4 axle pilot or trailing truck you could slip a 9v motor in there). Of course you do not need to put the motors in a tender or B unit, you could put them in a boxcar or passenger car. In fact I did just that with the same propulsion design for the PF Pacific. I've found that a pair of 9v motors tops out around 10 cars for the trains I build whereas a pair of XL motors will first break the magnet couplings and then if you prevent that pull the cars off the curves before they max out. Now I can run long trains at shows on my club's 9v track without fear of burning out 9v motors.

4 wide trains are fantastic, a real challenge to get something that looks good and you've tackled that challenge head on. Great work. It does need a few more units though.

Exactly, I think all of the recent sets since the TTX car have cut corners to make budget. The city freight trains typically have next to nothing for the freight cars, sometimes it works like the container cars in the yellow train and sometimes it doesn't, like the "cattle car". All of the city sets are simplified and are designed to have a certain number of play features. It does not make them bad, just the nature of the designs. I think the heavy haul set might prove to be the best parts pack of the current lot of trains. The gray baseplates are more universal than the blue ones.

Wouldn't it be better if they sent you an EN for you to do the experiments yourself? (grin) Yes, exactly. It looks a lot better, it does work well enough, but it is a little tight and not as robust.