Jump to content

zephyr1934

LEGO Ambassadors
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    4,464

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Everything posted by zephyr1934

  1. zephyr1934
    How about the wood sided boxcar first presented in Railbricks #5 REC and revealed in Railbricks #6? (note the tip on twisting the 1x1x5 bricks ever so slightly, the effect is evident in built photos from #5 but not the CAD renderings in #6)
  2. zephyr1934
    Wow, a massive and a massively excellent build. Thumbing through your photstream it looks like you are in need of a large roundhouse (grin). Great build, thanks for sharing.
  3. zephyr1934
    Looks to be a great build, it is important to have nice cars behind your locomotive.
  4. zephyr1934
    Could you fake it with flex track?
  5. zephyr1934
    Here's one way to make the joint from curve to straight,
  6. zephyr1934
    You did a great job capturing the essence of the SF cable cars (right down to the characters riding them, though obviously it is outside of the tourist season, grin). The street scene also looks like it will be very interesting when complete.
  7. zephyr1934
    Another great work
  8. zephyr1934
    Great build!
  9. zephyr1934
    I'd say go hybrid. Start with the 9v maybe expand it a bit (some of the sets can still be found at somewhat reasonable prices, like NIB at 2x MSRP, and they were priced lower than modern sets of similar size). In fact it looks like there are several copies of 4563 available used for about $120. You won't get much straight track though and that will ultimately be your limiting factor. Then branch out to PF as you build further. Each system has its own strengths.
  10. zephyr1934
    See REC in RailBricks 12 for a PF switch control for 9v and PF track that does NOT require you to modify the switches. More info can be found in this thread.
  11. zephyr1934
    My kids have a couple of Awdry's son's books (clearly before HiT), they seem to be more about ponies and kitty cats than trains. Nothing wrong with that, but they do lack the subtle tones from the original series of someone who watched and studied steam trains endlessly.
  12. zephyr1934
    Oh, apologies if these were taken the wrong way, none of my points were meant to be criticism. I thought your project was fantastic. Rather, after studying your videos these thoughts hit me and I thought they would be useful footnotes for someone who has not attempted such things before. As for the third point, I think lego is doing more outsourcing these days. The RC/PF motor wheels have had at least three different bands on them. Even the old 9v wall warts have at least two different cords. So I could see lego switching vendors at some point and potentially reworking the PF motor internal design in the process. I have no knowledge of anything like that, but the pessimist in me naturally assumes that right after we find a solution lego will move the cheese.
  13. zephyr1934
    Hey, I was going to say, if you haven't read the original Thomas stories, it is well worth it. I grew up before the TV series with several of the original books (3"x5", great for little hands). There's a 15 yr old book out there that has them all collected (used copies seem to be reasonably priced), though it loses the small book feel, the stories are all excellent. You see the arc, from the first stories that were about common steam engines, told to his son and eventually recorded in a book, then to the nostalgic railfan sad to see steam railroads disappear. Along the way you have great wording, making the sounds of a working steam locomotive. Many of the stories are clearly based on real events. And of course it is not all PC (fat controller, the engines paying it out, etc.).
  14. zephyr1934
    Yeah, so you can bring a 9v motor back to life with one hand tied behind your back, let's see you do it blind folded. Seriously though, very impressive work and it is fantastic that you took the time to share all of the details. Thank you for taking the time to make these videos and for sharing them. After watching the videos I have a few comments, 1) I suspect that it is likely that the pf cable exiting the shell would interfere with a 9v cable on the metal contacts (unless the 9v cable only connected to the outer two contacts, overhanging the end of the motor by one stud). If so, then it is likely that one would have to choose between 9v or PF power output from the top of the motor (i.e., include the PF as you did and don't use 9v, or don't include the PF output and use the 9v contacts). 2) if one does use the PF output to power a second, unmodified PF motor, directional LEDs or similar, then care should be taken to ensure the proper polarity on the output (or risk the need for using a PF pole reverser). 3) just a caution to those watching at home. At some future date Lego might change the subcomponents of the PF train motor, in which case, the viewer may need to modify your process accordingly.
  15. zephyr1934
    Nice little job. When I built my light sensors I added a tube on the sensor end to reduce the impact of ambient light and another tube on the light source to reduce the unnecessarily illuminated area (details can be found here). Now as for adjusting to changing lighting conditions, you could incorporate an auto calibration step in your program, e.g., sample the light sensor at the same time that you swap directions (since you assume the train must be far from the station at this instant). Then do an exponential filter with small influence of the current sample: new_set_point = p * old_set_point + (1-p) * (current_measurement - threshold). Make sure p is above 0.9 so that the occasional spurious measurement won't throw things off.
  16. zephyr1934
    Great to see the updates
  17. zephyr1934
    looking good
  18. zephyr1934
    As promised, the SW1200 now exists in dark blue too and has debuted at Brickworld. I'll post more on this new MOC in its own thread soon. And once the folder is moderated you can find several more shots of it here, and probably the subsequent days as well. The photo shows several more MOCs in need of posting... those will come too.
  19. zephyr1934
    Very nice
  20. zephyr1934
    Thanks for sharing your secrets, very neat stuff. So what I thought were signals turned out to be the sensors. A plain layout of this size would be enough work to set up/tear down, adding in all of the wiring for controls I'm sure the time grows exponentially. Very nicely done. Oh, and I really like the opening shot in the new video, with the camera looking forward from one of the rear cars.
  21. zephyr1934
    Well, red with undetermined glass is ~$27 (6567c00), with trans clear glass is ~$20 (6567c01), and with with trans black glass is ~3 (6567c02). So if you are not trying to completely recreate the superchief set, you can get the red windscreen at a reasonable price. You could also resort to stickers,
  22. zephyr1934
    Choo Choo Bob is a kids show, but they assume the kids are thinking too and it works on an adult level as well. I'd recommend it if you have kids who are moderately into trains and definitely worth watching the free episode that's on line if you are board. While it is not new, Emperor of the North Pole is a fairly accurate train movie. Then there is , a promo for timkin roller bearings. Then while sitting on youtube, search for "Night Mail"Yeah, I'm going backwards in time not forwards
  23. zephyr1934
    There are several good references in the "Get Real" article in RailBricks #1. You could also try steamlocomotive.com train_art paintshop and engineshop
  24. zephyr1934
    Hum... sounds like you need a gal more like this. I could have sworn I saw signals in that layout, but yes, now that AA has gotten our interest, it would be neat to see some shots of the various details.
  25. zephyr1934
    That's a great looking train, you really nailed the look.
×
×
  • Create New...