zephyr1934

Great idea and would definitely save a lot of headaches.

Any sane person would never do a public show (grin). Seriously though, there is a lot of things to consider. For your first time out I would suggest to keep your aspirations low, e.g., just the loops of track and rolling stock. I've seen very simple layouts (trains, track, table) and insanely complex layouts (all the modules have custom boxes and they fit together just so). For a nice looking town scene the detailing can take more than half of the setup time. If you have time, you can do a practice dry run in your house. Make a detailed list of everything you need (it really sucks to show up at a show and discover you don't have enough curved track... I say knowingly), then bring a supply of spare parts to make on-site repairs, etc.. After you've done it once you'll have a list of tweaks to do next time.

Another great build!

Looking good! One small suggestion- try to work an exhaust on the top of the hood, which shouldn't be hard to do.

Hi Crankshaft, I am definitely interested in learning more about the vinyl stickers. I tried to PM you, but EB will not take it (I think you have to have 10 posts before you can PM). You can email me at EB@trainedbricks.com

Have done so. Looks like a great solution, though indeed, you would probably have to be careful of 9v switches or crossovers as the power pick ups could short the track on diverging directions. Since you are able to bridge nonpowered sections with this build, the solution is already included- just use plastic switches. Very nice

The original was great... I still don't know how you managed to find so many improvements to make to it. Well done and thanks for sharing.

What a brilliant little compact build (and it is great to see those ancient gears put to good use). It is amazing that you were able to make it so short and hide so much of the motorization.

Oh wow! Very nicely done.

The LDraw files for the 2mm valve gear bars are now posted here, and the 3 mm bars will be coming soon. And again, much thanks to Duq for these files

I was thinking IR receiver here for a second and was baffled by, "it sends back current speed" (it's late). I know the IR supports "go speed X" and I have fiddled with the Hi-Technic IR sensor for NXT for that reason, but in order to be within spec for the NXT, the power is too low to the NXT sensor to be useful to me (even though it is actually a broadcaster, they call it a sensor because it plugs into a sensor port). At any rate, to me the attractiveness of "go speed X" is so that you could run multiple units on a train and have their speeds synchronized with a single controller. Something it is tricky to do with they IR system. Using your approach it would likely be a simple extension in code, "make units A B and C go speed X." Then when A reports back it has it X but B is still changing, the software can send separate commands to each of the units until all of them have reached X. Yeah I know, it is hard enough to get one moving, worry about multiples later. This is neat stuff, keep it up!

Wow wow wow!!! That is very cool and definitely keep us posted as you progress. Are you simply emulating the "step up/down one speed" of the train controller, or does your controller actually say, "go to speed N"? The latter would be much more helpful. Oh, and the virtual lego controllers on the smart phone are cool too.

There is no such thing as the typical club or the typical home layout. There are some huge home layouts and some tiny club layouts (too bad John Neil isn't around this message board to poke at). R+1 would probably go far for aesthetics for some, but it will only be a small improvement for operations- including long trains, long cars, and long steam engines. Even at R+3 my 52 stud long cars are only marginally happy. Forget about making everyone happy with a single radius, it will not happen. That is the difficult part of this market. Right now you are leaning towards R+2, but R+2 is the least popular response in the survey. If you simply go with the average, you might come out with something that nobody loves and that would be horrible. Personally, I'd probably pass on the R+1, it is not sufficiently different from R to get my attention. There are plenty of others who would probably pass on the R+3 because it is too large to work with their layout. Trying to split the difference, you run the risk that no one finds it attractive enough to buy. Now as for the current votes in the poll, I suspect the folks who read this forum lean disproportionately towards super-wide, e.g., there are several who are only mildly interested at R+4 and would much prefer R+6 or R+9. While those would be super cool, I doubt there are enough of them (us?) out there to justify going beyond R+4. The fact that your survey has the modes at R+1 and R+3 should be telling. I bet the lego train fans who do not read this forum would also exhibit similar modes, but they would be about equal in height (as opposed to the current votes here where R+3 is ahead). Focus on just one or the other mode at first, then if that works, come back and try to make the other group happy too. I personally voted for R+4 in metal, but I would suggest starting with R+1 in plastic. If it sells well, then do R+3 in metal. And when you do, you could justify the higher price for the wider radius to the non-9v folks with the fact that it is also a larger radius with more plastic. This way you also avoid the dual hassle of figuring out the nuances of the curve geometry at the same time you are figuring out how to wrap metal around a curved rail and keep it flush. As for R+3 versus larger even larger, I suspect R+3 is probably a good balance between the folks who want huge curves and those that are space constrained. You should also point out that one does not have to make curves out of these curves, they would also lend themselves to more realistic meandering paths if you just laid them out in serpentine (L,R,L,R) or mixed with straights (L,S,S,R,L,S,S). So the person with a constrained space could find use for the larger radius curves as simply a replacement for straight track on the mainline. Again, you can't please everyone. Myself, I'm fine with tossing in two extra straight segments to make parallel quarter turns line up. Others would probably be most ticked if they did not have to do so (though I suspect they are also mostly going to be the ones who prefer R+1 because as you said, it the difference is inversely proportional to the radius). Maybe after collecting the first round of data, pick two specific options (e.g., "R+1 plastic at $__" vs. "R+3 metal at $__") and for each poll "yes/no, would you buy this option at this price if it were the only alternative?" I am highly suspect that you could make that work without having separate rails for metal and plastic... then if you do that, you will run into strength problems that will undermine operations. The tolerances for the lego train wheels are too tight. The difference between w/ and w/o the metal overlay is too close to the limit.

Both look great, keep up the good work!

Hey! I just built the aerotrain last year (grin). Seriously though, nice build it looks great and you've just knocked the prototype on to my "think about building it myself" list. To get a few more windows on the cars, you might want to borrow the technique from my link on your bus train. On a side note, I don't know if the following is true, but I had heard stories that the aerotrain originally had a tv camera mounted in the nose and they would show the images in the cafe/lounge area. But after a few too many near misses at crossings, the railroad decided to turn it off.

The varying depths is subtle but I think it works very well. I also like the way you made the mountain fade into the ceiling of the room. Great work

Nice Hrw-Amen

Same here. As a 9V user, I would be very interested in the 9V curves and assuming they pass initial reviews, I would both be interested for myself and I would lobby my club to invest in at least two full loops of 9v if they were 104 and/or 88. At this price, however, I would want to make sure that they had good conductivity performance (i.e., comparable to the lego curves), did not have any oxidation or rust issues (again, comparable to lego), and were at least as good as the lego curves in terms of the lip at the rail joint. (see Railbricks 7, p36) I would be interested in the plastic curves, but not nearly as much as the metal given the fact that I've already started towards my home built solution. However, if these curves work out well, I would think they would generally be a more attractive option to most over my glue based approach. As for my club, our mainlines are 9v, so for now I do not think they would be interested in plastic.

Oh yes, long before the flex track, there were folks who were alternating straight and curves for a similar effect. At least as I've heard, the flex track was originally intended to make wide radius curves in that manner. I suspect lego ultimately added in the guardrails (not found in the prototypes they shared with AFOLs) to protect against the kid who alternates left-right-left-right with a sequence of flex track. Between the look of the guardrails and the extra bumpiness of the implementation, many AFOLs have not embraced the flex track (though some AFOLs like them). The flex-straight-flex-straight idea arose at the same time as the "slightly misaligned" pure-straight-track-built wide radius curves. So far the latter has proven to be more popular among AFOL clubs, but I've seen examples of the former too. These two straight track methods are probably the best pure lego solution. The one clear problem with them is the fact that they will not work with 9v trains (although the two commercial wide radius curve efforts sought to address the 9v factor, mine will not). There is definitely no single best solution. My specific motivation to deviate from a pure lego solution was two fold. First, I wanted to avoid the high cost of lego straight track (though using enlighten rails might still be cheaper than my solution) and the pure straight track wide radius curves still have a lot of drag at the end of each straight track segment. For example, my superliner train set shown in the top of the first post stalled out on the PennLUG curves at Brickworld after only one or two loops, but I can run it until the battery dies on conventional lego curves. I doubt it would be a problem for XL motors, but I'm only using two pf train motors on this train with a single v1 IR receiver (I still haven't tried the v2 IR receivers yet). I also had an original hope to improve on the aesthetics of the track design, though I don't think I've achieved that yet.

@Bricktrix Yes, metal rails would be fantastic, but that would be more involved than this project. I really like the idea of custom sleepers to interface between lego bricks and metal track. I'll chat with you off line about thoughts and ideas. @Hrw-Amen Indeed, lego trains need wide radius curves, hopefully we'll have a good process worked out here soon. @JGW3000 Most pure lego train layouts would use straight and curve segments (roughly 16 studs long) for most of the track. The flex tracks are very handy filler, but horrible in quantity compared to the regular track. Normal lego curves limit most trains cars to 28 studs long (or perhaps push it out to 32 studs). There are tricks to go longer, but I would not recommend it for your first build (if you keep reading the train tech forum, you should see lots of ideas come up in the various MOCs). So the wide radius curves are for the folks who have hit the limit with the regular curves. Most folks don't need to worry about these limits imposed by regular lego curves, but there are some pieces of equipment that just need to be built long.

Yes the Kragle, sometimes drastic measures are necessary (grin, but as I said, not for the purists). The problem with lego track is that as far as I can tell, except for train wheels, there is NOTHING else in the lego universe that matches the lego rail spacing. I actually envisioned being able to go further than traditional ballast techniques, e.g., glue the rails to gray 1x1 or 1x2 tiles, and put those on brown or black plates to emulate tie plates on top of ties. While potentially looking great, such a build would be more expensive and might not be as sturdy. I say "potentially" because I've never sketched it out. The combined height of the rails and tie plates might be too tall. Yes, look through the Plastruct catalog, there are other options too if you want to build switches. Now that you mention it, I can see where the "T" beams have more of a retro lego feel to them. Back in the sketching phase I had contemplated the "T" but I did not like the wide base (simply a matter of personal taste). I had originally set out to try to find a glueless method and in that context the I beam is superior. It is 3.2 mm wide and 6.4 mm tall, while a lego plate is 3.2 mm tall. So in theory you can slip the I beam between the studs (though I have since found that the width varies, so it is more like 3.2 +/-0.15 mm, so the clutch varies along the beam). I wanted to use a 2x8 plate and just wedge the rails between the studs, but the resulting rail spacing is about 1.2 mm too tight for the train wheels. So I also bought some of the C-channel (C-8). My thought was that I could glue that to the plates and wedge the I beam on the other side and get the correct rail spacing. What would be ideal for this context would be to remove one of the flanges from the I beam (I tried to do so with horrible results). That was when I settled into the glued method at the start of this thread. In this glued context, I THINK the I beams are easier to work with because the rail gauges guide both the top and the bottom of the rail. Though I suspect the T beams could also be made to work. The fact that I beams are wider than rail head on lego brand track is less noticeable than the color change between the two track styles. Another thing that I like about the I beams is that they kind of look like actual rails from the side. For my uses I am not too concerned about the appearance of the interface with regular lego track. I will have my two loops of lego track in my lego room and I will use the custom track for temporary layouts in... say... the living room (but don't tell my wife...). While I have some long-range ideas for switches, I do not plan on doing anything in that direction in the near future. So being able to convert to lego track is very helpful to incorporate switches. As for the bonding area, the I beams have sufficient surface. I tried pulling a tile off of a rail and wound up peeling off the lower part of the rail with it rather than breaking the bond, the plastiweld is strong stuff. But unlike crazy glue, it will not stick to you (though you want to prevent getting it on yourself as it is still a nasty chemical). BTW, great drawings. I believe the plastruct ABS is molded rather than extruded (while the styrene is extruded). I had contemplated approaching Plastruct and asking them what it would take to do an I beam with only three flanges. Still might in the future, but I would imagine they would want dozens if not hundreds of folks to express an interest before they make a new mold. Or maybe they simply speak in $$$. Both are possibilities, so keep the critical mass growing... From what I've heard, the problems with the earlier designs was not the lack of 9v functionality, rather, that the original approach to get 9v functionality lead to other problems that ultimately made the design unworkable. Even my approach would not work as a commercial product. The only way it works is with the user exerting the sweat equity to build the rails. As I said earlier, if any of you are so anxious that you want to help with the trial and error part of the design, I could polish up my rail gauges and start sharing those too. Just like lego, there is no single correct answer. With 80+ stud long cars, you'll probably want 4x standard lego radii curves (2x of what I have right now). I'd prefer to get the rail gauges working for one radius working before I start making other radii, but if there is a lot of noise for a wider radius from someone who wants to do the development I could probably be talked into making the gauge.

A great job capturing the intersection of train and space (kind of like the blacktron train on steroids, grin). Though the nose of the locomotive is a little too rounded to be pure classic space. If you are going for a pure classic space look I'd suggest a brick built design with slopes rather than curved bricks, e.g., like 9738.

Another excellent build! Great work with all of the details.

Wow, what a fantastic build, you did a great job capturing this locomotive (and what fine company it shared in the Model Expo)

@Daedalus304 The material cost should be less than that of lego straight track assuming $2.50 per lego straight track segment. I'm using Plastruct, PLS90025 I Beam ABS 1/4" for the rails. It is roughly $5-$8 for 4 rails (or two track sections), where each one is just shy of 5 lego track segments long. At least those are the prices in the US, might be more expensive internationally. Then there are the ties. I'm using 1x8 tiles and for one segment the ties cost about the same as the rails. If everyone starts doing this I would think the tile price would go up, but there are plenty of other alternatives for the ties if that happens. Beyond that, there is the cost for the rail gauges (no estimate yet, as I'm still refining the design), glue, and glue applicator. Assuming you are building at least one loop, it should still be cheaper than all lego track. Assembly is more involved than regular lego, you need to build a jig, etc. etc. [edit- you will also have to cut off the excess rail at the ends of the curves, but fortunately when building straight rails the rail stock is an integer number of studs long]. One neat benefit is that with larger the curves, you will need fewer straight rails. This approach also has the potential to realize some of the "flex track" like benefits, allowing you to add wiggles, gentle curves, etc. as you glue the rails down. Though once you've glued the rails, the geometry is permanent. My current plans are to work out the kinks of this process before I go into the details of how to do it yourself. If there are early adopters who are just itching to play with it and take on some of the trial and error (e.g., coming up with the best rail joint solution), let me know. As for a backyard railway, why not put down the right-of-way using 2x4's (boards not lego) or similar. Then lay the lego only when you run the trains, and pull the track up at the end of the day? Since these rails are ABS, they will have similar issues with sun exposure that lego would (though from earlier threads here in EB it sounds like it might take months or maybe even years before the sun damage is significant). @Pizzareno Yes, there is not much tolerance for the interface between lego train wheels and the track. It has to be precise and consistent throughout. Sure, if you just need gauge bars, I should be able to adapt my some of my designs to other rail stock. Although I have not tried metal rail myself, it does sound like you would need a rail bender for the curves at this size. Find a good hobby store that specializes in larger scales and they should be able to tell you more. Oh, there is still a place for 9v and wide radius 9v track would be wonderful. However, this approach probably is not the path to 9v. As for cost, see above. For the rails, google "PLS90025" and you should find it pretty quickly. Most hobby shops that sell the ABS parts should also carry ABS glue (I think at least one brand calls it plasti-weld or something similar). You will also want an pinpoint applicator. It is the same stuff that lego uses to glue the large models together for parks, etc.. The glue bond is actually stronger than the plastic. As for durability, so far so good, but I have yet to do extreme stress tests (hence my earlier warning about trial and error). The two keys to the curves are the rail gauges and a good jig built out of a lot of lego. Both designs are still in flux, which is why I haven't posted photos yet.