zephyr1934

That looks great with the decals (well great without and even better with)

Nice stuff, at the national NMRA show last year they had a few layouts in guitar cases and several in suitcases. Easy to do with Z but I think most were a more tricky N scale. Oh, I'm not giving up my 9v, but I am really taken by this whole open loop operations. The layout will probably come down this weekend, but something else will likely crop up some time this summer. While not impossible to do in 9v (I bet AlmightyArjen has done something similar with his powers of automation, grin), it is sure a heck of a lot easier to do this way. If I get more ME track I might attempt a "mountain" route (just a longer run in the middle with the track doubling back twice, no actual grade change). I have a few poor quality shots of the layout passing through a kids play area. If any of them are half good I'll post them. Even with less track it could be fun to play with. You definitely need several dozen straight track sections and a few switches, but like figuring out how to get detail in a 6 or 8 wide locomotive, it is a fun challenge to figure out how to get the most out of a limited number of track segments.

for as few parts as this model has it packs a lot of detail, well done (both the model and Jar Jar)

So I have a ton of 9v trains and I generally appreciate the different benefits of both 9v and PF, but I recently stumbled onto a fantastic use of PF trains that just blows 9v out of the water (at least for me). I guess the principle is the basic fact that PF does not need track power (call me a rocket scientist). I've got my lego room with a roughly 10 ft x 10 foot pair of 9v loops around the floor and I've got a pair of (usually) well behaved kids. I've been wanting to do a larger, temporary layout for them for some time, but I needed a long day or a whole weekend to do it. That finally came, we were going to build the branch line. "What do you mean no loop, how is the train going to turn around?" "'Why' you'll see" After I built the "split" from my main loop and inserted plastic single crossover switches to connect the two loops in my lego room the rest of the layout grew organically (I knew where I wanted to go and optimized the yard at the end, but everything else was free form). Using push locomotives and some gondola cars, the kids hauled the material out to the "build site" at the railhead. I would stage the track in the supply yard back at the branch from the "mainline." We wound up using almost all of my track (250+ straights) and I had to come back and do some wonky optimization (e.g., using the ME curves in place of straights) but the branch line stretched from one end of the house to the other. The final result (shown below) has a central passing siding and several "industry" spurs that need servicing. The yard at the end of the line in particular has unusual geometries to maximize the straight and curve track usage. There is just enough space for the locomotive to cut off, and back on to the why to turn around, while leaving up to 5 freight cars to be sorted in the yard. I found it great fun to be pulling a train out of the yard onto the branch line, then have to take the siding while an oncoming freight was approaching from the junction with the mainline and the "city" far beyond. The whole logistics of operating two or more trains on one stretch of non-looping track was a great treat. Sure, it could be done in 9v, but it would be a nightmare of wiring to make enough blocks. I'm already scheming up ideas for the next branch line.

Oh, indeed, while I've not played with the SBrick, I presume it overcomes an even greater limitation of the PF IR- the limit of 4 channels. For this build I wanted it to be purely Lego since a new AFOL builder probably would find sourcing regular lego parts a sufficient challenge. Meanwhile, so far I have been impressed with the power of two PF train motors. Rather than stalling out, the locomotive is powerful enough that it breaks the connection at the magnets when pulling a heavy train... though that may be due to weaker magnets. Most of my trains have the old 9v magnets and these locomotives have the newer sealed magnets. The connection seems weaker, but it maybe at the connection between the sealed magnet to 9v magnet. I have not yet done a full diagnostic. Does anyone else have any experience with a difference in magnet strength- old/old vs. new/new vs. old/new???

All ya all are way too kind, but thank you nonetheless. I've been looking at lego trains for decades, but many of the sets in the 90's just struck me as too toy like. It was not until I saw the Super Chief that I realized, "wow, you can make realistic looking trains out of lego." So two hobbies joined and my latent model railroader was expressed in bricks. Sadly, with the lack of a creator train set, there is no gateway right now. Even with the creator sets the selection was so small that over half of the lego world could not build a local train. For most rail fans, I would expect their favorite train to be something that ran nearby or at least close to their home country. So while the HE was a nice set, it did not hit the "American train" that I prefer (that is not a criticism of the set, rather, a comment on the difficulty of serving the world with only one train set... I can only assume the Super Chief had a similar impact in Europe in its day). From what I've gathered, the Hobby train tried to address all of these issues, but lego bureaucracy munged that up. It still would be nice to have a true creator train set, i.e., instructions for three different models: an American locomotive, a European locomotive, and a pair of generic freight cars that could be either side of the Atlantic. While it would not cover all of the world, many (but not all) of the other parts of the world have trains similar to EU or US. My philosophy is that without an AFOL train set from lego, we the AFOL community need to produce our own good starter designs to open the door for others to enter this hobby. As for price, you have to source the parts yourself. You can get a lot of the specialized parts in 60052, but you will still need a lot of blue bricks from elsewhere (e.g., the windows are common in police sets right now, if you have any sort of collection of simple bricks you should have some blue there that you can use, etc.). Oh, and many of those specialized parts are over and above the MSRP of the Maersk- which did not come with PF included. Since blue is a common color it should be far cheaper than the grays and Maersk blue of the Maersk locomotive. Yes, the Conrail locomotives in my first post are in standard lego blue. Between my camera and my photo editing software the colors could have gotten distorted. Unfortunately the colors on my computer screen are incorrect so I've given up trying to color correct photos.

Thanks all for the kind words, When it comes to making the decals it really helps to have the fonts from www.railfonts.com. At one point in the design process I was banging my head on how to wrap the decals around the air vent on the fireman's side. Then it hit me, brick build that part and problem solved. So only the "C" is a decal, the main stripes are white plates. As a result, I had to tweak the proportions of the Conrail C so that it would be 1/3-1/3-1/3. The real stripe is more like 2/5-1/5-2/5... but don't tell anyone (grin). Yes, the pole reverser is to allow two motors. That is one problem with this design, the only spot to drop the motor wires down is in the middle of the base plate. So the two motors have to face different directions, and thus, if keeping it pure, you need to reverse the polarity on one of the motors. I stuffed it the hood ahead of the IR receiver (wow, the one PF part that is easy to conceal). On the original Maersk design that space is taken up with snot work. Of course if you are building the base of a locomotive out of plates you can leave a hole at the rear to drop down the wire and have both motors facing the same direction. I'll get you that shot soon...

That is a great collection of sets and should keep you busy for quite some time. You can buy straight track from lego, 8 segments for $20 (plus a bunch of flex bits). You can get double length straight segments from ME Models for a little cheaper. You might still be able to find Enlighten track (looks to be a direct copy of the lego track only in brown... well... the switches look to have substituted a really low quality mechanism).

Wow, that train was a quick build? Very impressive. The station looks great with lots of detailing (those benches are brilliant). Thanks for sharing.

Great work on each part and the entire collection is far better than the sum of its parts. It is neat to see the progression in styles from 1970 to today. I too like your use of rare and vintage windows.

And I just finished my blue Conrail version, but more on that in a new thread.

Looking good, I like the use of the newer profile bricks (brick bricks) for the side details.

I am happy to finally be able to present my version of a Conrail GP40 [full gallery] The obvious resemblance to the Maersk locomotive from set 10219 is deliberate and I would call this build a MOD rather than a MOC. I wanted to approach the Maersk locomotive from a clean slate with the objectives of: (1) replicating a common North American locomotive (yeah, there was that NS unit, but that was only one engine, Conrail alone had a 275 GP40's). (2) With the lack of a "Creator Expert" train on the market right now, provide an affordable "gateway" build for new AFOL train fans looking for something more meaty than the city train sets. (3) Since this is meant to be a gateway MOD, keep the parts costs as low as possible. As of this writing, probably over $100 worth of the parts for this build can be found in set 60052. This includes a pair of blue train base plates (hence the pair of locomotives), the 6x16 tile to cover the PF gear, and of course all of the PF parts (not to mention a supply of track to run on). As my grandfather used to say, when TLG hands you blue train bases, make Conrail. (4) Having built a few heavy freight cars recently and acquiring wide radius curves from ME models, I am now in need of a few PF diesel freight engines. This build keeps the form factor from the Maersk, but a lot of the actual build is different, including a few new tricks (e.g., the exhaust stack). Since N. American locomotives rarely travel alone I had to build a pair (oh, and there is that second blue base plate in 60052 that would otherwise be lonely). One is powered (3051) and one is not (3245). Rather than use the 6x16 tile on the unpowered unit, I built the long hood on 3245 out of regular bricks. As I look at the two together, I like the smooth side better, but it is not easy to hide 4 wide PF in a 4 wide hood. With this MOD I have also addressed some of what I think are shortcomings in the original Maersk design, chief of which was doing away with the high friction technic axles for the loco trucks and adding a second motor under the powered unit for more pulling power. I am even using a purist PF reverser switch inside the hood, so there is a lot of wire stuffed in the space that remains. One of the things that really makes a build pop is the lettering. These locomotives have been complete for a few weeks, but the stickers misprinted and I had to redo the lot. I was finally able to apply them this past weekend (more detail on the sticker process can be found here) The basic design is meant to be customizable. I personally like the look of the unpowered unit and if I did not already have way too many 9v diesels I would probably put a 9v motor under it. I did my best to keep costs down by avoiding rare parts, of course if someone had a ton of 1x8's those could easilly be substituted for the 1x4's... or on the unpowered unit one could use 2x4's. There are still a few expensive parts that could be substituted out, e.g., 1x1 bricks with stud on the side are a little pricy in blue right now. There was the use of the blue train base plates, fairly common at the moment, hence the Conrail design. Then more subtle tweaks, for example the hand rails are completely different, borrowing the clip idea from the BNSF set 10133 to eliminate one set of expensive hoses and then using bars instead of hose for the railing to eliminate the other set of expensive hoses. I plan on releasing the instructions for free as a gateway to the hobby and selling the stickers for those who really like the build. The instructions will come out as soon as I can finish cleaning up the LDraw file (a few weeks) and if there are any early adopters I could start taking requests for the stickers now (send a PM). In my opinion the stickers are good quality (as shown in the pictures) but not perfect if look closely (also as shown in the pictures). [ full gallery]

... speachless... simply speachless. Yet again you have done the impossible... you cannot build that nice of an interior in such a small space, then you slip a full basement in underneath? All sorts of fantastic details, e.g., the lady pouring a saucer of milk. Then you get as close as one can to real bricks with the 1x2 plates. Stupendous!

If you only need the rubber bands, you could call lego customer service. They might send you out a set for free. As for bricklink, it is not too hard to use... if anything it is too easy to use and you will soon find yourself buying all sorts of things.

Yeah, those railings would be impossible to do with some compromise, and without seeing the original I never would have noticed. It is a great MOC.

One of the trickiest things about lego steam engines is uneven track. If the build is rigid, at some point you might get a set of wheels lifted off the track, only to come down off the track. If you are ever going to run it on uneven track you should build in some sort of suspension. This one is my most extreme, It works well being pushed by the tender. It does not like 9v curves going counter clockwise because the drivers tend to climb the little lip where the joints come together (going clockwise the lip is on the inside curve and so the drivers miss it). I test my prototypes by putting a pencil or a couple of 2x plates under a rail joint. If I feel really bold, I do it on a curve segment. You can push it with a diesel if you do not yet have the tender together. Just be sure to do it on the floor (grin). Meanwhile, yes, I know what you mean about the running boards. Many steam engines had the side painted white or silver but the tops black. I agree with you and think a sticker or electrical tape would do wonders.

One quick and dirty way to do so is to zoom way out and take a screen shot or load a higher resolution screen shot into a photo editor to drop the resolution.

Thanks for your continued hard work. I am slowly amassing a collection of dead 9v motors. I haven't opened one yet, but I figure I will start following in your footsteps in a few years. According to Bricklink, the 10153 set was released in 2002. I know that towards the end of the run the 9v sides were replaced with the RC sides that have the notch for the technic axle. It is quite possible that about that time Lego switched the internals over too. At the time I was not paying too much attention to the subtle differences in train motors, but I have a vague recollection of folks on Lugnet discussing how the seal on the bottom of the 9v train motor changed somewhere around 2004-2005. That could have also been when they changed the internal motor. They do have a history of changing parts like this and keeping the same part number (e.g., version 1 and version 1.1 of the PF receiver... though that time they did tell the AFOL community because it also had a slight change in functionality).

Oh wow, that looks really great. Are you eventually going to replace the yellow plates with with tiles to eliminate the studs on the running boards? Excellent work!

That looks spot on seeing the model and the prototype side by side like that (who knew that you were building full scale, grin). The one thing that nags at me are the cheese bricks for the railings, they just feel too heavy compared to the real thing. Could you do something with bars or tubes for the railings on the stairs? Or failing that, perhaps 1x tiles?

That is coming along nicely. As for your truck dilemma, could you build up one of each (or modify one to the other) and just see if in bricks the change is worth it? That way, as long as you did not need to run through curves I do not think you would have to rebuild before making the call.

I think there were several different iterations of the box art. If you have this box, it is old gray inside. If you have this box, it could be either old or new gray. I do not think there is a way to tell from the outside. Even for this latest box design I believe very few of the boxes had new gray, though most of the NIB left were probably from folks buying up the clearance lots at S@H so those have a higher probability of being new gray. If you are selling, there are four types of buyers: "I want a mint box", "I want old gray", "I want new gray", and "I want cheapest possible". I think the first three are all about the same price point and the latter does not care about which gray. If you are thinking for yourself and you do not want one flavor of gray, I bet you could find someone who would be happy to swap one for the other because they have the opposite problem.

Ah, maybe you do not need a more powerful transformer at all, maybe you are running into too much resistance from the rail joints, combined with high current, limiting the amount of power getting to the motor. Try moving the track power connection to the middle of one of these long straight sections (only temporarily, so it is okay to use an extension cord to move the transformer over to that general area. Do the trains perform a lot better now on that stretch? If so, you just need to add more power connections to the track from your existing controller.

Those cars are a really nice addition to the stock train set. The club car is particularly well executed with the generally hard to use windscreens. If you have time, it would be nice to see a photo of the complete train too (instead of relying on the videos)