zephyr1934

My first thought about the SBricks is that while it is very cool and looks to be reasonably priced, since I am mostly still 9v I probably cannot justify the extra cost over an IR receiver. My second thought, however, is can I use bluetooth from an NXT to control the SBrick? If so, that opens up a whole lot of potential applications, e.g., manually starting a train but having an NXT automatically stop it when arrives at a station. Or running two trains on one track with one free running and the other being controlled by the NXT (and wayside sensors) to keep a safe distance. Is the SBrick NXT controllable? If you've already answered that question, just a link would be sufficient.

Yeah, that is the (usually fun) challenge of building in lego, change one thing and that will mess up five other things. Always a delicate balance. I do see one simple thing that might help the operation of the cars though. You still have the drive bands on the wheels. You will probably have less drag from the wheels if you remove the rubber bands. Otherwise, on curves as the wheels try to rotate at different rates they will have more friction and will slow you down in the curves.

If you replaced the double convex inverted slopes in this picture: with this bracket facing outward: below the 2x3 plate with hole, you might be able to keep the 1x1x1 panels behind the edge of the coach. In any event, please do not get me wrong, you cars are beautiful with tons of details. Just tossing out a few minor suggestions that might not be feasible.

Wow, another great car with all sorts of great detailing. Two minor suggestions, perhaps move the bottom grab iron (1x2 plate with handle) down a plate, they look too tight to my eye. Also, the actual cars would probably have had only two ladder rungs where you have the 1x2 plate with ladder, do you have room to snot in four 1x1x1 panels in their place?

That is a great little build. I think ME models is producing a narrow gauge connector, so that should get you easy narrow gauge straights. Plenty of other ways to do it too though (e.g., the half stud offset mentioned earlier).

Great to hear that you are enjoying your new set. Yes, the stepped function should be coming from the controller. As long as you do not overload the motor you should be able to use a different power supply to get a continuous range of speeds, but you will be bypassing the failsafe functions of the official 9v controller.

Hey LA, good to see you round these parts again. Keep on the up and up.

I just finished up a mighty fine weekend at the 2014 NMRA National Train Show this past weekend. NeoLUG was the host club with separate layouts from Michlug and my group, COLTC. My photos can be found here. I tried to get a sampling of the three different layouts in the photos, but you will find a predominance of COLTC shots in general and trains in particular. I brought 12 boxes of trains and laid out some classic MOCs from almost ten years ago along side my newest MOCs. The layout was nice, while far from a prototypical railroad, it was nice to have separate yards for passenger trains, freight cars, a locomotive facility (in the shape of a faux roundhouse- missing the building and turntable, but allowing us to display several more MOCs in detail) and caboose tracks (to the left of the locomotive facility in the last thumbnail) Just about everything in the yards that could run did run. I found the two long passenger trains (both PF and each with a pair of train motors off of a single V1 IR receiver) did not like being in more than one curve at a time, the long cars just created too much drag and the receiver would trip out. So I had to shorten the trains so that they would stretch from edge of one curve to the edge of the next curve and then they ran just fine. I switched over to my PF pacific with two XL motors in the tender, and that was a different story. During the last hour of the show I was pulling a 35 car freight train with no problems. I could have gone longer, but I was too tired to mess with the rare earth magnets. So this long train ran with the just the normal lego magnets. Besides getting double takes from the conventional modelers when they saw some of the trains and several questions about where one can buy these sets, it was nice to get so many different trains running over the weekend. The full gallery is here .

In case you need it, here are the instructions as well.

Sorry, I didn't mean the complete track, I meant using just one of the rails in place of bending the 1x2's to make curves, e.g., from the old Lego ideas book, 241 (even in 1971 TLG was contemplating SNOT) Meanwhile, @Redimus that thing is insane, also very interesting that it was successful in its day.

Wow, that is one impressive build with a ton of great technical solutions. Thanks for sharing all of the tricks and solutions along the way.

You could try sending them a PM, in case they are still watching their associated email account they should get a notice

That looks great (and the much improved tender helps a lot too). Though I do see a major problem... you need another 3-8 more of these cars (grin).

Very well done, and you hit two birds with one stone (monorail and garden railroading). So would the train work with the old 4.5v/12v rail? (using just one rail for the monorail track)

aw, look that cute little critter, well done and I doubt you could get much smaller.

the cars look great and a big improvement over the stock EN coach, if you have pictures of your cars with an EN, please post.

that's a great bridge those are great bridges

Welcome aboard Yogi! There are several Australians lurking around these parts, so you should run into familiar company soon enough. Of course you are already in one of the best places to find lego train inspiration.

Looks like a good touch of old school design, though I would agree with speetz, I think 1x2x2 panels might look better for the top floor windows.

My guess is that a single V1 should work fine for two motors under a 6 car HE (I have not motorized my 3 car HE yet, but I bet many others on this forum could verify whether it would work or not). For my part, I run this 10 unit train with two motors and a V1 receiver. It is the upper limit of what the V1 is willing to do, but the cars are longer and heavier than HE. If you already have a V1 receiver, I'd suggest starting with that (you can always swap out later). Or if you think you'll eventually have use for a V1 in a different engine in the future, it still might be worth starting there since you can repurpose the receiver if it doesn't work in this case. For the PF components typically bricklink is a little higher than what you can buy the parts from lego at (though deals can sometimes be found on bricklink). Once the V1 stock is exhausted V2 will probably simply replace V1 (I have heard of folks receiving V2 when they ordered the loose IR receiver from S@H, but no guarantees). Although that is another tactic you could take. Lego says that you can power the HE using parts from S@H or from the 5003540 kit. So if you go the proscribed route and it does not work to your satisfaction, if you call and ask for help, customer service might send you a V2 receiver for free.

Like many, I too had attempted the same thing in the past and found the 3mm two color LEDs fit perfectly in the lego stud holes. All of this sounds like great ideas and I look forward to seeing more in future posts. If you are making this for the masses definitely keep the user interface simple, while allowing the user to select the duration of the red time (so that it works on both larger and smaller layouts).

A very nice build, looks great and has a lot of fantastic detailing.

Definitely the best train to model is one from your home country. Here is the bricklink list of parts that were available in dark red (prices are goofy, some are really expensive some are really cheap)

With only one or two extra parts you can also disable one branch of the double crossover and run two trains in the same direction through it without conflict (see RailBricks 9 for details). I like version 3 of your layout, you are packing a lot in a small space. Though don't worry too much about it, I am sure you will quickly find that you want more and more and more track.

Great finds Exa and indeed, it sounds like you have a nice railroad coming along. Remember to customize and adjust anything you see out of place as you go along (grin).