zephyr1934

Excellent, a lot of stuff going on in a very compact space. I too like all of the vintage sets on the layout (ah, the horse farm) and the 12v feel to the structure. The pair of turning loops is also great, lots of operational potential. One thing you might want to add is some form of transferring a hopper load from a car emptying on the upper loop to a car loading on the lower loop.

That looks really nice, I like the idea of an open ended (non-loop) layout and this one has good form to it. You might want to add runaround tracks to the top two branches though. A freight train could go forward from one yard to the next, but it has no way of dropping the cars and returning with a different train. Likewise, with the single passenger runaround, once to the far end of the line the passenger train has to shove back.

That is brilliant

If you are a purist, to bypass the time out feature you could build a technic train to run on duplo track.

Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! !@#$% (I feel for you)

Oh wow! That car looks great with a lot of subtle detailing tossed in to make it pop. You really got the difficult front well built. I suspect you are very close to the point where most changes at this point would take away almost as much as they fix... well, redoing the trucks might be a win win. Adding stickers might be a nice finishing touch (though I like it undecorated). The one thing you do need is to build another 3 of them for an honest train (grin). Great work.

Welcome aboard. If you are looking to build the identical form factor but in a different color (or even the same color) you are probably better off building a lot of it from scratch and making part substitutions to keep the costs down, e.g., if you do not care about the diagonal stripe necessary for the Maersk pain scheme but irrelevant for NS, you can use bricks for that part of the locomotive. Or maybe the original had a lot of plates to get a horizontal stripe in that you don't care about, etc.. If you are comfortable with LDraw or LDD, I'd suggest getting the instructions for the Maersk (see lego customer service) then build up your own virtual version while keeping an eye on the parts prices on bricklink or what you already have in hand. The train bits and PF are expensive no matter what, but other parts you can often find cheaper alternatives with small redesigns that yield the same shape. In this fashion you can also add in detail that you might like (I personally prefer different cab windows than the stock Maersk has) or delete detail that you do not care about (e.g., the fuel tanks can be simplified). I recently finished building a repaint of the Maersk but I am waiting on the stickers before posting about it. I had to do some part substitution because some of the parts were never made in the colors I needed. So instead of using panels to build up the exhaust stack, I wound up using an upside down 1x2 brick in the color I needed and the 4x4 turntable bases had to be replaced, I used a BNSF style plate with arm.

You just sit around and try to come up with ideas to out do yourself don't you. Great work!

Very nice, and I like he effect that the old style clear 1x2 make with the center post. Looks like double pane windows.

Assuming you will not be tearing apart your 6 wide equipment 7 wide is a good jump for your future equipment. I think it is hard to notice the two scales mixed together. I still build mainly 6 wide but I generally do not do interiors. My larger steam engines have 8 wide cabs, dropping to 7 wide tenders and then 6 wide cars. Several of my steam engine tenders use 5 long half beams to hold the trucks in. I think I typically have five of these in a row to form a base to ride on the bogie plate. Then a pair of them above running perpendicular to hold the assembly togetherso that I can use half pins to connect into system bricks above.

You will never guess how I disguised the motor on this locomotive... ... or this one... Grin...

Looking good. Perhaps you could put one of the newer jumper plates with the groove to give a hint of the "vent" look above the doors?

Many thanks, glad the rods are serving you well. I can do black as a special order for a nominal extra charge. Drop me a PM here or on bricklink if interested. Indeed, many of the North American steam locomotives that I am familiar with have had the center part of the rods painted black (the indented region of the rods I produce). I've seen several European locomotives with the same area pained red. It may have been fashionable on the older locomotives, many of the large surviving steam engines have all silver rods, but some of the older ones have the centers painted black, e.g., the SP Pacifics.

That's great work you've done here, e.g., the prototypical windows on the cab and the doors on the long hood of the GP40. That's a great way to introduce yourself and welcome aboard. Keep it up.

Look out swoofty, someone is coming after your angle! (grin) Seriously though, all sorts of great angles in this build, even before reading down to your mention of it, the "Z" stripe stood out.

Wow, that's very impressive and does so much on so many scales. You did a great job capturing the look. Nice trick turning the 1x2x2 train windows sideways. Hiding all of that PF (and not just the small battery box) is impressive unto itself. Then the attention to the structural strength, so many locomotives with this much detailing are very delicate. Great job tackling that two often opposite objectives.

If you have room, I'd suggest replacing the red part with it's 180 degree cousin, Depending on what the hidden parts are, instead of the bushing shown in a later rendering, you might be able to use a technic plate (2x4?) to hold the lower bevel gear in place... oh, wait, it looks like you are half a stud off for that... stinkin physics.

You are working on a nice roundhouse full of locos. I like your L-Motor gearing, clean, simple, and clever.

That is a great looking MOC and I think you did a fantastic job hitting all of the features.

Well, if you do install a passing siding on the bottom of the image, you could tie the yard lead into that to allow for a smoother pull out.

That is a brilliant solution of using the road plate to do the alignment.

The trains look great screaming into those curves. So were those trains running at a constant setting throughout the loops or was someone constantly adjusting the speed as the train went around the big loop?

Wow! The group layout looks fantastic altogether. NOOOOoooooooooo! That is one of my favorite layouts... ah well, I'm sure the next incarnation will blow my socks off too.

Excellent work, a great looking prototype met with an equally impressive lego build... man those curves are tricky and you did an amazing job capturing them in lego

A great little build. Now if only you could get the horses to move along the lego track (grin... though a few years back someone posted a MOC where they put small train wheels under the horses pulling a stage coach... I think the one from the Lone Ranger)