zephyr1934

@garethjellis thanks for the kind words @Pizzareno No, not using this method. But there are other ways to attach metal rails to lego. The big trouble I've heard about metal rails at this scale is the fact that you will need a rail bender to make curves. So it is doable (and I think there is even an railbricks article by someone who has done it) but it is non-trivial.

Please be kind to LLL, he is trying to track someone down and I know several folks are intermittent readers. So in that context, seeing a post like this come back up strikes me as fine (though I'll leave that judgement to the moderators). In any event, it is a lot better than the "great job" bumps to 2 yr old threads (I hate those) that never get a public warning. In any event, back in Nov I saw this topic and sent it on to Railbricks without telling LLL. It should have been resolved then, but seeing this post now, I will follow up off-line and make sure the connection is made.

[ full gallery] As everyone knows, lego curves are very tight, so one has to build short rolling stock to make it around the curves without problems. Unfortunately, even at 6 wide many passenger train cars built to scale should be 50+ studs long, e.g., my Superliner cars were built with accurate length to width proportions and they are 52 studs long. They look HORRIBLE in the curves, with a single car spanning a quarter turn- notice that the ends swing out almost six studs (a full car width) past the adjacent car in the pictures below. These long cars on the short curves also have so much drag that it is hard to find a good speed that the engine can pull through one curve that will not send the train speeding away on the straight track to derail at the next curve. <<regular lego curves Over the past few years several folks have promised wide radius curves and I've grown weary of waiting for someone to actually produce a viable curve. So I set out to build my own. I contemplated 3D printing, but it would be way too expensive. After several initial attempts, I settled on using third party ABS rail stock glued to lego tiles (yes, "glue" is a four letter word, but so is "lego," grin... in any event, this exercise is definitely not for the purist). The tricky issues are the fact that the lego gauge does not split well into LDU, and worse, making nice smooth curves. <<new custom curves My solution was to make a rail gauge to ensure that the rails have the correct spacing. I am still revising the design, but once I've finalized it, I plan to offer the rail gauges for sale. For my prototype there were several things I had to decide upon. I personally like the look of one stud ties, but they do not provide a good opportunity for a rail joint on a curve. So I decided to use two stud ties for now, mimicking the look of the old 4.5v rails. I also had to choose the curve radius. I wanted to go wide. Until I prove this works, I want to do only two track segments per quarter turn. So with these constraints and my rail stock the widest I could go was twice the radius of regular lego curves, and so that is what I chose for my prototypes. After I finish one loop of track, I'll experiment with other radii. In fact one could even do variable radius curves, but it would be more work to figure out the transitions, so that is something to play with in the future. The rails are darker than lego dark gray, that shouldn't be a problem if the entire loop is the same color. The straight track went fairly easy, with a single segment coming in at 76 studs (4 studs short of 5 regular lego track segments). The curves took a lot more time to get right, but I think I've got the process figured out now (I'll need to make another quarter turn before I know for sure). This shot shows one segment of the new curve next to four segments of lego curve. My 52 stud long cars work so much better on these wide radius curves. Aesthetically, I think the 52 stud long cars would look better on even larger radii curves (perhaps my next project). Meanwhile, I think the curves look about right for my 42 stud long cars, as shown below. before after More to come, but for now, you can find a few more examples of my progress thus far here (including a transition piece to adapt to conventional PF track- primarily for switches- which I have no intention of making... at least not any time soon). Oh, and if you scroll back up to the top image in this post, you'll see the middle tie on the curve sticks out one stud. That's because I grabbed a 2x2 plate instead of a 1x2 to connect the rails. Also, my carpet has a little give, so I had to put a plate underneath the joints too to keep the weight of the train from popping the rail joints. I hope that will not be the case when I set it up on a hard floor, and I'll keep you posted when I test it. Worst case is that I'll need to add a layer of plates below, in which case I'll disguise it like ballast and then I can go to single stud ties. [ full gallery]

Okay, I've come up with a valve gear design for the EN. You can find the details here (yeah, the photo quality isn't what it should be). I wanted to keep this simple enough that it will not cause heart attacks. Much more complicated designs are possible, e.g., using Cale's idea here I've also added more LDraw part files here

The new hybrid looks great, to my eye the roof over the door and the curved corner next to the door both seem to be distinctive features of the prototype. If that means bumping the door down a few plates I think it is worth it. But the one pair of eyes that matters the most are yours, so if the door is a key feature to you, you should stick with it. In either case, covering the three technic holes looks a lot better.

A great build of an uncommon prototype. The doors came out quite well.

Looking good. I would suggest a hybrid. I do not like the look of the three pin holes poking out in the first version, but I do like the 3x3 curved plates. What if you took the first row of the top version that currently has the 1x1 cheese bricks and replace the 1x3 curved slopes from the second version. Then move the 1x2 curved slopes one more stud to the end (or replace the 4 with a 2x4 curved slope).

It is neat to see the train with the monorail

Okay, I'll put something together. It will have to wait until next week though, as we have guests sleeping next to the lego room this weekend.

Wow, looks fantastic (right down to the detailing in the underframe). One thought for the ditch lights on the front, perhaps use one of these instead of the 1x2 plate to hold the lenses? Great build either way.

I think the EN design predated the 1x2 cheese slopes, otherwise it probably would have had a bunch of them (they were both released the same year, but the EN came early in the year). Now as for valve gear on the EN, I would think something would be doable. Making a full set of valve gear like this example would require a complete redesign of the mechanicals. The main obstacles being (1) the fact that the EN uses all four studs between the wheels, so there is no where to stash the backside of the eccentric (necessary to get the 45 deg rotation), and (2) the piston is mounted fairly high (in part to clear the pilot truck), leaving little room to then slip the valve gear above the cylinder without looking a little odd. One thing that the EN has going for it is the fact that the drivers are fixed to the boiler, eliminating the need to make the design tolerate that kind of lateral motion. So it should be fairly easy to assemble a two bar valve gear assembly similar to this example up to the rocker bar (leaving out the last two bars on the right, due to #2 above). If that is something of great interest let me know and I could take a stab at the design.

Wow! Very cool. Only suggestion would be to build stopping points in on the switches so that they always come to the right spot.

Oh, I don't know if that is much of a hijack, it is always neat to see the creations folks build with the rods. The more so, the better (and here, let me hijack it back with a gratuitous mention of the LDraw files for endless free virtual building, grin). Now back on (off?) topic, I think the EN could be spruced up quite a bit by replacing the cheese bricks on the top of the smoke deflector with, one of or two of while the fenders over the driver wheels could really use some of these all parts that were introduced since the EN was released.

Nice build.

Yes, the technic axles are a horrible drag, but no, lego has a long history of underpowered trains for AFOLs and doing a poor job of documenting it. The Super Chief started it all. Only the EN really had enough power to pull its train. It is interesting to hear all of the problems (I have an HE, but I have not powered it, so I've not encountered them). Perhaps someone would be willing to piece together a "how to fix the HE" and submit it to Railbricks as an article??? Much as was done for the EN.

Didn't some British passenger trains have a guards van on the end, e.g., this. It also looks like there were a few observation cars, e.g., this.

If you stumble on a deal on 9v grab them, but if you do not have a ton of 9v already (or a ton of money itching to be spent) I'd suggest just living in the pf world. It is a lot cheaper and there are some things that you can do in pf that you cannot do well in 9v (e.g., anything with an XL motor). The one big downside with pf is that you have to hide roughly 12x4x3 worth of battery and receiver somewhere.

Great build and very tricky to get all of those details into a small locomotive like that.

Great idea and well done.

Looking good!

It is difficult enough to build nice looking 6 wide trains. Going smaller will be tough. The propulsion is one of the big limiting factors, the off the shelf PF components are all 4 wide, making them hard to hide. It is certainly doable and there have been some nice solutions, e.g., here, but they tend to be a little more delicate than the regular lego sets and many are unpowered.

Looks like something that should be pulling boats into the locks of the Panama Canal (you definitely nailed the feel)

To my eye the blunt end on the rear car doesn't seem quite right. Railroads almost always either go "ornate" or "utilitarian" with their passenger equipment. If ornate, it should have a platform or vista windows. If utilitarian then it should look just like the car before it and have a diaphragm so that it could easily be coupled to the next car. With the two pairs of doors on the car it suggests a more contemporary utilitarian design.

How about removing the wheels but keeping the wheel holder, like on the tender of this MOC?

Great build following so many of the details of the original.