zephyr1934

Yet another fantastic build with all sorts of juicy little details, e.g., the steps below the cab doors. The whole engineering to get it through the curves (and it looks to be quite smooth at that). A great MOC

That's hilarious to see that poor flatcar that once was an HE ping ponging back and forth like that. You did a great job replicating the functionality of the 4.5 v reverser switch.

While very simple, it is also very clever, that is a great effect.

I would echo that, to my eye the individual windows are a key characteristic of the 1920's era passenger equipment, and as Aaron suggested, using brown 1x1 bricks between the clear panels would probably be an okay tradeoff (though I think the frame windows would look better... maybe an upgrade to do in the next round of lugbulk?). Your rendering with the window frame really nails the commuter cars of that era. If you go with the brick spacers, you could then stack two 1x2 trans clear bricks to mimic the middle split of the windows (most but not all passenger cars of this era had double sash opening windows, though some had a single sash). A couple of thoughts, color matching is a !@#$% with clear stickers since they will come out differently when printed and probably will not be sufficiently opaque for your needs. You might be able to do it with white stickers though. To get the hole you can use a crafting hole punch. If you go this route, I'd suggest printing off a "test strip" sort of like the paint chips, with 1/4" squares of various hues to find the one that matches best to the lego brown. You can also use clear packing tape to add the "shine" to the stickers. Though if you are not against modifying bricks, I think what might be the best way to get the hole is to drill it into a 1x2x2 panel and then sand down the edges. If you can move your coupler one stud further away from the motor, then you can fit a 2x3 plate with hole to hold the coupler, then use tiles above the motor and some combination of plates below the coupler to attach it to the motor. Of course the cheating way would be to just cut the buffers off of the buffer beam.

Why don't you just cut the wheels flat so that... no no no, just kidding. That is a big nasty problem to work around. If you are not against modifying parts, you might be able to hollow out the inside or backside of some of the curved slopes. Here's the BBB ldraw files

Great retro/modern mashup.

But why limit yourself to things that roll? (grin)

Oh wow, very nice indeed. The locomotives look great to begin with but to then see them pulling a long train up the grade is fantastic.

Oh wow, she looks great all together. Fantastic build. I had no idea what you were going for with the rods. I can do all sorts of strange configurations with the rods, e.g., If you want custom configurations just contact me via PM here or bricklink messages. Since the tender pushes the locomotive there are no worries about drawbar strength (otherwise, some technic pin construction might be better). However, to keep it black, you might be able to use a pair of these: In any event, keep up the great work!

Oh wow! The station is looking fantastic. It really captures the feeling of the terminals from the golden age of rail travel, both inside and out. The Amfleet cars are looking good too.

Um... excuse me while I pick my mouth up off the floor. Simply fantastic, you did a great job capturing the look and feel of the blunt end observation cars. Though, you are a terrible tease mentioning that there is a complete interior without ever showing us (grin, but I am sure all will be revealed in time). Great work and the lighting is top notch.

When I first read your post, I had no idea there were real trains that looked like that, but the second link in my last post actually turned up the Swiss train. It is bizarre enough that there is no way a real train could look like that... but yet it does. I think I have actually stumbled on one of the Multi-Purpose Machines, your other recent build of an odd piece of equipment and there too, you did a good job of capturing the prototype.

The tank cars are a nice build, thanks for sharing your secret tricks.

Oh wow, looking good, you really captured the look and feel of this train inside and out. The cutaway renderings are also fantastic.

I presume you were trying to stretch the truth with this fire train, but surprisingly, you are not that far off from reality... Some of the western railroads in the US also had fire fighting trains... oh... wait... many still do... and I think the Swiss actually built your train. More here...

That loco has a nice classic look to it, great little build.

That's what it looks like today, on the back lot of the train museum. After sufficient funds have been raised to rebuild her, the crew will have the engine looking better than new. (grin) Seriously though, looks good in bricks and will only get better as the parts come in.

The top of the prototype has a very distinctive curved roof, you might do a better job capturing the feel if you added these bricks: Though that would take something away from the retro look the model currently has. In any event it looks good and I like how you managed to squeeze minifig in the hallway.

Great find and nice designs.

You can also mount both motors facing the same direction, e.g., wire coming out the side pointed to the rear of the locomotive. However, you need holes for the wires to come up in to the body to get to the receiver and battery, so it doesn't work well if you are using a standard train baseplate.

I think the last three transitions came with plenty of advanced warning and time to buy up parts of the old system, e.g., both 9v motors and RC motors were on clearance at S@H for several months. I wasn't paying attention in 1991 but I have seen several ads touting the backwards compatibility of the "new" 9v system. That said, even without the end of an era, lego is always tweaking the parts. So about 10 years in, the 9v train wheel sets started to exhibit excessive drag because the updated mold for the wheel holder was just a hair to thick and would rub on the flanges (fixable with a hobby knife, but...). Likewise, the bands on the wheels for the RC/pf train motors have gone through 3 or 4 iterations. The oldest ones having very poor traction, while the newest (that I have seen) have very good traction. Meanwhile, we are now on the 3rd variant of the PF IR receiver. So if you have a MOC that depends on specific performance, maybe get a couple of backup copies. Just do not buy more than you think you will use in your lifetime.

You should be able to raise the smoke box up 1/2 plate, at five wide there is enough room to build the transitions inside either using headlight bricks or brackets. If showing a 1/2 plate crack is a problem, you can stuff 1x2 panels in the crack to hide it. I suspect such an approach would weaken the boiler; however, you might have sufficient strength in the frame that it does not matter. To my eye, I like the proportions of the one on the right, but I am not sufficiently familiar with the prototype to say which one looks closer to reality.

Great video and neat to see this fine locomotive in action.

12v is probably the Cadillac of all of the lego train systems. It had remote control switches, block signals, uncouplers (that reportedly don't work very reliably), and active grade crossings all sold by lego. The track and motors are designed for much steeper grades than the subsequent train systems. A good place to start is the lego idea book 7777. If you do some digging, you can find many other great ideas for 12v and 4.5v layouts (e.g., I think there are 3-4 older train idea books that probably have more layout ideas- also available on peeron, and a few ads that at the time seemed impossible to ever get all the parts to build [at least as a kid] but now seem very achievable as an AFOL, and several train specific catalogs from mid 70's to mid 80's). The one oddity of 12v/4.5v if you come to it from 9v/pf is the switch geometry. In the latter the new track winds up 16 studs away, while in the former it only winds up 8 studs away. So it limits the width of trains on passing tracks to 6 wide plus hand rails or other detailing out to 8 wide, but presumably you've already realized that. Same is true with 9v

As far as I know, one could call customer service on their own and ask for motor replacements. After a couple times they would probably ask questions. If you told them why, they might just continue sending replacements, or the might tell you this is the last one they send. I know 1-2 years ago my younger son pulled the spring out of the clam shell digger part and bent it out of shape. I told lego customer service it was our own fault and asked if I could get just buy a replacement spring, they said, no, but they were happy to send me a complete clam shell at no charge even though it was broken out of negligence. Yes, the lego ambassadors MIGHT be a good venue to talk to lego, but from my experience it was mostly the AFOLs talking and LEGO just listening to us with little actual response. There are a few AFOLs who have more direct communication with the community team (not me, but I think I know a few), and with a well crafted proposal, they might be able to get a better response. Given Lugbulk and a few other programs, I think Lego is very much interested in helping clubs put on good public shows, because it helps sales (both because for every $1 they spend on a club, the club probably spends $100 and because when the public sees a good display the visitors then spend an even larger sum of cash on lego). So if there is much interest by clubs to replace motors burned out in the line of shows, I would think there is a good chance lego would agree to help out some (no, not 9v, monorail or anything else discontinued, just what is in current production). I've never thought much to pursue it since we tend to burn out 9v motors rather than pf and lego doesn't support those anymore. It sounds like most are of a similar opinion, "yeah, it would be nice, but it probably is not worth the effort."