zephyr1934

Great find at Meijer, now keep an eye out for a sale For a couple of years around Y2K Target carried the 9v trains- my own train and the white with blue high speed train. Last year I saw the lone ranger train at a Kroger, but they had the whole line of lone ranger so I didn't think much of it at the time, though now that you mention it, that was notable.

I doubt many could spot the imperfections unless you pointed them out. The trucks look great too, a very clever little build.

Simply brilliant!

It all depends on how heavy your cars are, e.g., you could probably pull 8+ flatcars with one train motor. On the other hand, two full horizon express sets (net of 6 cars/locomotive units) is probably too much for a single motor. Weight on the drivers also helps, but don't go too heavy. My rule of thumb is to try to use as many panels as possible on the cars and as many plates as possible on the locomotives. In most cases you can also put two motors on a single IR channel, but don't put anything demanding on the other channel.

There are also a newer version of the wheel assembly here that should be cheaper than the 9v ones in the last post. Many sellers will part out the new wheels since Lego does it that way, so you may have to search for the parts to find the best deal.

Welcome Moijk. Sounds like you also need something old. If you search through the old posts there have been occasional discussions of replacement bands for the old 4.5v/12v train motor wheels. The standard lego track needs 3x 32 stud baseplates (2.5 ft or ??? cm) to do 180° turn. Now as for that incomplete set from your youth, you just need a little time on bricklink to replace the missing pieces. Here's the inventory.

Why not take that helicopter nose from the arctic series and make a streamlined cab forward modern day steam locomotive... then again, maybe you need a rotary snow plow on the point...

Taking the discussion of burned out motors to its own topic...

Branching off of this tread with a new topic... Ah, okay, heavy use at a show is a different thing, but I think Lego would still support that. They already have lugbulk offering generic parts at steep discounts for clubs that put on public shows and I believe there is a program where clubs can request to order parts for a specific project. Lego realizes how much business these public shows generate. If several clubs that operate trains approached the Lego community team as a group (and ideally with someone who is already in regular contact with the community team as the point of contact since lego does not like to hear special requests from 500 different inquiries), I wouldn't be surprised if Lego could be talked in to deep discount motors and other consumable parts for trains and things that move. Like Lugbulk, I would presume any parts would have to be "intended" for public displays. If Lego were concerned about abuse for nonpublic displays, perhaps they would simply offer a motor exchange or ??? It should be very rare that a lego motor burns out in regular use. If there is much interest in this idea, why don't we start discussing it here...

Side rods should be fairly easy. I believe the toy story wheels are 7 studs apart. If you want to stay pure lego, you just need a pair of 7 long technic half beams and 4 3/4 technic pins. Or if you don't want the extra holes in the rods, I sell custom rods that would provide the same functionality. In either case, double check the length, I may have gotten it wrong. Now as for connecting rods to the cylinders, that would probably require some rebuilding. I think the cylinders currently pivot with the front truck so you would have to mount them some other way and make sure there was sufficient clearance for the truck to turn.

Without knowing the prototype I like the look of the larger boiler design; but to my eye, I think the narrower boiler is a better match to the prototype.

That's a clever trick for holding the windows in.

What a wonderful build, you did a great job capturing the look and feel of early steam in lego- not an easy thing to do.

You have packed a lot of details in to all of these models. It is easy to tell that you are both a steam fan and a great lego builder.

Another nice build and indeed, the tender does have some sneaky little details in there too.

Oh wow! Very nice build on the RPO. You made great use of the large size and I can't wait to see more.

While I am a big 9v fan, I bought my track and motors when they were in production. Still, there are aspects of PF that are hard to beat. PF outperforms 9v in these areas: slow speeds, and/or heavy trains. I would estimate that the pf train motor can pull 1.5x or 2x of what a 9v motor can pull (in part because dirty track and power loss at the track joints leads to less constant power supply to the motor). If you then turn to XL motors... you will pull your train off the curves before the XL motors run out of pulling power. On the flip side, it is a major pain in the !@#$% to hide all of that PF gear if you are building anything less than 6 wide hoods or want to put any detailing at all in.

Wow, you've packed a lot of detail in there- working valve gear, sanders, the whole works.

Thanks for the info CG and Ugh! Sorry to hear about the misfortunes with the motors. You might want to try calling lego customer service, they might still replace them.

I have a locomotive with a pair of PF train motors that keep tripping the "V1" receiver's overload resistor. I was hoping the V2 receivers would solve that problem, is that not the case? Or does the V2 receiver introduce a new problem?

I like the look and how it is progressing. To my eye the tire looks too large for the boiler though, here are a few alternatives you might consider... is promising because it has the ring around the top, but they are stupid expensive and it is a little too small. is about the right size (flipped upside down) but not the right shape. is about the right size if you flipped it over and even better if you could find something to give you the ring. this MIGHT do for the ring on the sauce pan... but probably not has a good shape and size (I think it would fit a half pin in the hole), but the fez is probably better shape for similar size. or with a something in the middle to hide the cracks, but I have no idea how you could attach them or but again I don't know how you could attach them.

Could you use one axle per truck for power pickup and the other two for traction? Presumably internally tying the input power lines from the two trucks together so that you do not hit any dead spots in the track.

These do a great job capturing the essence of the original artwork also neat to see your use of old 4.5v train parts. I can't speak for monai, but I do it out of nostalgia. There is some good history from the early days of internet MOC sharing on brickshelf, back when it was the only place you could find MOC pictures (meanwhile, can you believe they used to only have 3 television stations?). Not for everyone though, that's for sure.

That is looking really good so far. I've used the cheese slope trick on several boilers and I think it works well in black. I don't know, you just have to turn your head inside out and then 7 wide starts making sense (grin). Coming back to reality though, I would agree that the curved slopes would look better over the driver wheels. Another solution would be a pair of headlight bricks. The first in place of the pair of pink plates on one side of the opening, with the "top" of the brick pointing to the side of the boiler. Then the second headlight brick with it's "side" stud inserted into the "bottom" of the first headlight brick with the "top" stud pointing forward, where the red 1x1 plate is.

Oh wow, fantastic design. It is amazing the extra detail you can fit in 8 wide, and you did a great job finding so much of that detail. The front and the trucks are my favorite details.