zephyr1934

That thing is crazy (the prototype that is), great start on the MOC too

A very nice build

Oh, I didn't mean anything negative or even that the idea was "new," just that the IP holder is pushing the most modern variant of the OE and what I THINK is new is the logo that the new launch has with it. I would hazard a guess that most people who voted for the idea BECAUSE it was the OE did so thinking of the classic train and it's herald like this: Rather than the new logo like this: If Lego had taken the Emerald Night approach (any similarities to any Flying Scottsman living or dead is purely coincidental) then they would have had the liberty to go in other directions (or at least a slightly larger budget to add a bit more to the train). I suspect the emphasis on the cars would have stayed (it's like a modular building only on wheels, good strategic choice to pull in non-train fans) and the engine would not have gotten larger than a 4-6-2 (R40 track limitations) but the logo would have been better.

Excellent work!

Purely personal taste, but I don't like the look of the brown stripes on dark green. What about yellow stripes for something bold or maybe normal green stripes for something a little subtle?

Doh! (that's Simpson's not Lego, grin) I forgot about that one. Yes, the Disney train was fully motorized, so ALMOST all AFOL trains had the motorization sold separately. And "EN" is short for the Emerald Night, "HE" for Horizon Express.

Looking good. BTW, you should look into linking photos in your posts. EB is not a photo hosting platform, what little memory you have here is for your signature and similar stuff. You'll need to post your photos on Flickr, brickshelf, or similar and then link to them from your post.

You know, now that Murdoch17 mentions it, the tracks for the engine shed are off-center. The spacing is correct (16 studs center to center) but it is 2 studs on one side 6 studs on the other. Not the end of the world, just something to be aware of. As for the trestle, I had not noticed that before but the rails are just 1xN tiles held in place by 1x1-tile-with-clip. Looks good, not too hard to integrate with track, but probably beyond the ability of a pure novice to do so. I would hazard to say that that set is more about the trestle than it is about the train (though both the trestle and train are nice looking)

The technic axles on the trucks cause A LOT of drag. If you are going PF, easiest solution is to just put two motors under the engine. Otherwise, it adds a plate but you can use the normal train wheels. Or, you can rework the trucks more and use the 3rd party ball bearing wheel sets for really low friction.

None of the AFOL trains have ever had the motorization included in the set, it was always separate: Super Chief, BNSF, EN, Maersk, HE, Croc. If I recall correctly, the recommended "add ons" for the EN included the LiPo battery, full retail for the controller, and of course the $25 wall wart. But yes, Lego cut some corners to make other corners sharper on this set. The ironic thing is that they decided to go with the IP holder. So instead of getting the classic train of history that everyone voted for, they produced the modern land cruise that is just starting up and no one even knew about. I bet everyone would have been quite happy if instead this set came out as the "Otherwise Express." Yeah, I know most of this has been said 1000 times, but the subtle bit about the fact that most of the target audience probably does not care about the licensing is the new bit. They could have done an ambiguous brick built logo on the side of the cars and folks would have been happier than the modern logo. They could even point to the misspelled cities and say "see, this isn't the Orient Express". But I don't care, as far as lego trains go, after you get it motorized it is better than most sets.

Nice work, the colors kind of look like Sava's Texas State Ry museum loco

Very nice! At the rate you are going, you'll quickly out grow the 5'x9', good thing it sounds like you have the whole room to spread out to

Great build!

Good point, then it could use an arm reaching out of the door

Of course. The stack of 1x bricks is the 1 min preview before you build anything requiring any skill. But since you have it digitally, you could do that even quicker. Why not a render it both ways? (yeah, the obvious suggestion, presumably you already have)

That's a great MOC with rich detail all around, lots of stuff for the eye to explore. I assume the large doors open, do you have pictures of that? Two very minor suggestions- I'd add 1x1 tiles to simulate ties/sleepers all the way to the end of the track, under the bumper. Also, I don't think the crew would put up with a pallet blocking the portapot door for very long.

Why not start with a 4 long or 8 long stack of 1x bricks to simulate a section of the wall. Put it on enough of a base (bricks too?) to vertically align it with the locomotive. Then you can get a good feel for what the colors of the cars really look like behind the locomotive.

I was thinking of suggesting this part for the roof at the end of the car But it is a constant radius curve so it would not transition smoothly to anything (easily done) on the rest of the car In any event, looks great

Wandering back on topic (grin), those look slick. Are you just using 1x2 technic bricks to hold the axles?

Nice work, I don't think you can get any smaller than that while keeping it all Lego

Great to see the continuing progress!

Circuit cubes are awesome for small Lego trains. I have several of them. Just be sure to get the "Bluetooth" version (the base circuit cubes does not do wireless and the bluetooth version adds smaller motors)

Saw your shadow did you? Does this mean two more months of winter? Hang in there

Indeed, it is always important when building a mechanical structure like this to build a physical prototype to make sure everything fits together, i.e., don't trust any Lego CAD to guarantee that a mechanical construction will or will not work. Meanwhile, the design by @Train of Thought Creations was physically tested and worked before being published, but it is impossible to identify all potential bugs. You see that in software patches and you even saw it in the official Lego instructions for the EN (they added a few "fixes" to the instructions after the early production runs, e.g., putting a 1x1 technic brick to keep the crown gears in place). Lego literally pays their designers to do this type of testing and to do so with an unlimited supply of parts. We as the AFOL community out number the Lego staff but the potential for a couple of small bugs to arise is to be expected while doing something Lego said they couldn't do. And Train of Thought came out with a simple bug fix as soon as the problem was identified. Kudos!

mdbz is using PF motors, so presumably the connectors are stacked and the problem's solved. I used that configuration on my Daylight and it works great. Unfortunately the PU L motors are one stud longer, so you'd have to make the boiler a lot larger for PU. Though it would be fair to simply raise the boiler.