zephyr1934

Speaking of the Galloping Goose, while looking for another photo I stumbled on this one I took at BW 2009, I don't know who built it, possibly Tony Sava.

Very nice build with lots of ingenious little tricks. In the US we'd call that a transfer table. The quantity of 12v parts you have is also impressive, my favorite touch is the indicator lights on the table itself, but I also like the fact that you included a pair of regular lamp posts too. Looks like it could have come from 7777.

Woops, that wasn't meant to be a nudge to you Locomotive Annie, rather, just passing the same advice on to edsmith0075. Still, interesting to hear your update.

As I suggested in post #26 above to LA, why not put a few sacrificial pieces of track out and see if it endures as well as you hope it will. You could also experiment with various forms of protection from UV.

Welcome aboard Christian and Michael!

There are some neat features here I didn't notice the first time around, e.g., the custom power pickups on the Emerald Night in the video. The ballast is good too.

For that matter, if the locomotive was listed on ebay, I'm sure the builder would be more than happy to sell it to you. If you like modern US locomotives, here's one of the better sets of instructions I know about. Meanwhile, as I thought, that was one of Scott Wardlaw's creations, here are more photos of it.

Although I've never tried it, everything I've heard is that ABS hates prolonged sunlight. Here's one possible alternative to Lego track (and a lot cheaper too). Scroll down for discussion about alternatives for outdoor use PS, speaking of which, someone just bumped the garden railway thread.

Wow, that is a very delicate build, a very impressive way to say hello. An excellent build! That tender looks like it quite tricky (and a little clippy). It is very hard to get all the detail you want into such a small package like that. A great build.

There's no future behind you! So what's the problem only gong one way (grin). Still, I think dark red for the seats could look good, especially if you either explicitly incorporate it into a red/dark red color scheme or if you sprinkle a little more dark red in the build. Shouldn't she be wearing safety goggles though? (grin some more)

The EN was designed to run on flat surfaces. Lego didn't anticipate things like carpet in the design, but that was nothing new, it is just the most pronounced with the EN. The cause is simple enough, if the three sets of wheels are in a rigid plane and it goes over a dip, of course the end wheels will lift the middle wheels right off the track. Too bad the middle wheels are the power. One thing that you can do is to add joints to allow the front and rear trucks to also bend up/down, thus allowing the middle drive wheels to better follow the track. I did that on mine but I don't think I have any pictures showing it in action. If you do this, you may also need to carve out a plate worth of space (so that the leading and trailing trucks have somewhere to go when the middle driving wheels drop down in a dip. It can be VERY challenging to work out a structure that is reliable enough, strong enough, and attractive enough to do the job under a steam engine. If you are thinking of heading that way, you definitely want to build prototypes of the frame/running gear to make sure everything functions before you jump headlong into building or rebuilding the rest of the model. So your intuition is good, bypass the problem with the EN drive train and put the motor on a two truck car. The Railbricks tip above is probably the easiest resource to follow, but you don't need to do the complicated gearing proposed in that article. You could simply mount one motor on each truck using a technic axle both for the center pin and for propulsion. The PF train motor is an even simpler solution though. You can run two off of a single IR output, as I did with my very heavy superliners in Railbricks #10. In particular, see the bottom right photo on p42, where I bring the power wire out on the coupler side of one of the motors (thus eliminating the need for a polarity switch when running two motors under one PF engine). The front truck on this locomotive is also a PF motor, but the wire comes out away from the coupler on that motor, and enters the body in a more conventional fashion. At any rate, if you move the motor out of the EN, you might want to also pull all of the gearing out too (it adds a lot of drag and will not serve any purpose without the motor.

Heh heh heh, a real boiler jacket for the transition. Another fantastic build. With the display stand, this looks very much like the MPC model from the 1980's.

Brian, the train is nice (well, okay it is fantastic), but the display base is completely over the top insane.

It might not be as daunting as you first think, though you will probably have to build a small test track to make sure your track cleaner design can handle whatever geometries you plan to throw at it. If you are using just straight and curved track (at least in the hard to reach places) you do not have to worry about clearing the switch frogs and guard rails with your eraser. If you are just using bare track (no plates or anything on top of the ties) there should be enough room to mount the erasers so that they can handle the vertical changes without hitting the ties (especially if the transition into and out of the grades occur gradually, over a few track segments). So a few more features you might want to borrow from my designs- keep the length of the car as short as possible (w/o sacrificing functionality- a few extra studs shouldn't break the bank). Probably just use two axles, no boggies (so you do not have to worry about accommodating the swing of the boggies). You will also want to mount the eraser as close as possible to one of the axles, to minimize the vertical change as the grade changes. Thinking about it, perhaps a 7 long technic beam running parallel with the track, with an axle on either end for the wheels and longer axle in the middle with a spring around it to hold the eraser (it does not have to be a lego spring, but the technic shock absorber springs MIGHT have the right sized hole). The spring would push against a rectangular eraser with a hole drilled through it at an angle to slip it on the axle at your desired angle, and then block the end of the axle at the extreme point with a bushing. This could be a fairly compact design (if this paragraph doesn't make sense, I can try to ldraw it for you later in the week). You would still have to figure out some way to keep the eraser oriented upright, e.g., perhaps using a second axle above the first. Here's a quick and dirty ascii diagram of how I think you'd want the eraser/rail contact. The "V" shaped bit on the left is the eraser and the rectangle on the right is the rail. The eraser is pushing against the top inside corner of the rail, where the 9v motor wheels make electrical contact. /+++/ \++/__ .\/| | You do not have to use a spring, my designs used a rubber band. Here are all of the lego parts with springs and there are countless lego rubber bands if you want to keep it pure. You will probably want some weight on the car too, to keep the spring from popping it off the track (as you can see, I used coins). You might even be able to devise a purely gravity based approach, e.g., do away with one wheel all together, instead having the weight of one end of the car rest on a pair of eraser pads (but still have pins or a thin panel or ??? to take over the guide function that the flanges would normally do). Of course at this point, it still might not be worth the hassle of taking the time to build/rebuild the design until you finally have something that is sufficiently robust. It might be easier to use a stepladder and clean the track by hand, or figure out some way of mounting an eraser on a pole and doing it from the ground (perhaps incorporating a train wheel based guide to help you keep the eraser where you want it, or using the "pair of eraser pads" idea from the gravity based approach, only now mounted on a pole that you push along).

An excellent build that has really stood the test of time.

Even before reading the first response I was thinking roughly the same thing. That train needs a track cleaner car too, probably in front of the vacuum. Early on I experimented building track cleaner cars These designs come from before I discovered strong technic building techniques and I would not recommend attempting to duplicate either design, e.g., the small wheels can be problematic. But the basic idea in the yellow one is probably worth considering- hold the eraser at an angle to the track to catch the corner with a spring to keep the pressure on. In this case I only did one rail at a time so you'd have to flip it around to do the other rail, which gave more flexibility in the building (remember no technic in this design) something that could probably be fixed with a little thought. If you are not against modifying bricks you could probably come up with a really slick solution that has the perfect angle. I do have a few known downsides to my design, at least some of the erasers I've tried have a softening agent in them that can melt lego over time. I have not had any problems with the eraser droppings, but the erasers themselves have melted a brick or two while in storage for months or years. And who knows, maybe the droppings are also caustic. I have not built a solution that is strong enough to apply sufficient pressure at the rail AND thin enough to go through switch points/guard rails. I suspect you could make it work with a rectangular eraser at the proper angle though. For my layouts, it is just simpler to do the erasing by hand, so I haven't pursued these track cleaner cars any further. If you do, just be careful to also do a controlled experiment with your eraser stock to make sure it does not melt ABS. Now looking at your vacuum, pretty slick. I'd suggest finding some thin but rigid plastic, combined with the right kind of tape to build a nozzle on the bottom of the car to get the point of suction a little closer to the track, put it where you want it (e.g., including beyond the rails, e.g., a 10 wide band) and to potentially concentrate it even more. If you find the vacuum doesn't have enough suction you could also use the nozzle to focus on one side at a time (e.g., a 5 wide band that only covers one side of the track). Good clean fun!

Welcome to the forum Ben, while this collection is incredible, please do not bump a 3 yr old post just to ask a question. Maybe start a new thread discussing your interests and current questions? You can also find a lot of good information in the Train Techopedia forum pinned at the top of train tech. That said, you can build a circle of standard lego curves on a 3x3 grid of baseplates (32x32), i.e., 96 studs in diameter (or 30 inches) and you'd have 4 studs on the outside of the circle at the extreme points. Straight track segments are 16 studs long (8 inches). If you are looking for software, I'd suggest bluebrick.

Heh heh heh, always a fun challenge, trying to come up with a good use for an otherwise useless part... but then again, what can you do with a nose like that? Probably my favorite "useless" part usage that I've come up with are the old Samsonite "junior" bricks and the salt and pepper shakers, but then again, a flatcar is kind of like Ketchup, you can cover anything with it. (mind you I am fond of both loads, but they are otherwise difficult to integrate into a layout) I haven't tested one to failure yet. They seem reasonably strong, I would assume they are not as strong as lego but then again... they might be. Do you have a strenuous application in mind?

Nice build with a good color scheme, though now you'll need a boom car (so much to build so little time)

Another excellent build with fantastic detailing. What really stands out to me is the sheer quantity of details that you managed to pack in.

Thanks BnB, LA, LT12V, LS, S2, and WU for the kind words. Certainly K, these are not for everyone and I have total respect for the purists. In fact I enjoy trying to find pure lego solutions too. You can find my best pure lego ladder solution in the REC reveal in RB6. I made these ladders for myself to fit a tight squeeze and I was not able to find a pure lego solution that I liked. In any event, yes, these are a bit of an indulgence. S2, These are fabricated using rapid prototyping. The nice thing about it is that you can fabricate a single part without much setup cost, the not so nice thing is that there are almost no economies of scale. Having done the design for myself, I can make more without too much effort.

Ah, that could be neat, though keep in mind both ME Models (here and here) and Big Ben's Bricks have said that they are working to produce 9v compatible track too. I believe both have suffered from connectivity problems at the rail joints. I would think BBB's solution might be easier, using off the shelf rail and custom ties. Somewhere in railbricks is an article about home built tracks like that.

Yes, the latter, putting the supports next to the platform such that the end of the stairs enter at the end of the platform and doing so with some form of support under the pillars. I would imagine at many real stations the stairs do come down on the platform like this, but there is a gap for passengers to also board the train between the stairs and the edge of the platform. Without the gap, to my eye it looks strange to have the stairs come down like this on the platform (as originally designed by lego). Though it is all a matter of personal taste, that's the beauty of MOCs/MODs.

As I mentioned in my post about the GN S2 MOC, I have slipped one step further down the Lego purity slope and made my own ladders. (click on the image or here to see the full gallery) You can see examples of the short ladders clipped on at the front of the tender and the long ladders clipped on at the back of the tender. If you look closely at the ladders on the front of the tender, you will see that the surface is matte (they will not be mistaken for shiny bricks), but some of the lego bars have a similar matte surface. The spacing between rungs is similar to the lego bars, but I've made the holes square instead of rectangular. Probably not something a minifig would want to put their foot in. I think the dimensions look a lot better for my rolling stock and it is definitely a heck of a lot easier than trying to do a brick built version. This past week I've retrofitted one of my earliest MOCs with the new ladder- original in back and new in front. Click on the image to see more, including the smaller ladder on the other end of the car. I like the proportions a lot better. After doing this change, I see a lot of other tweaks that I will do to the boxcar, e.g., using grilled cheese bricks for the running boards leading to the ladder, removing the buffers You can see photos of all four sizes that I've fabricated so far here. And for those of you who want to be tempted down the purity slope, you can do so here. Enjoy!

ronenson, in my opinion simply extending the platforms as you have makes the station a lot more functional. Another tweak you might consider is to move most of the staircase off of the platform, it the original set it takes up a lot of the platform space.