zephyr1934

That is a fantastic build with some great details.

The quality control is definitely not what it used to be, e.g., click on the image to see 2 split bricks on a MOC that was only a few months old. And then look at the modern color consistency, we now have a rainbow of yellow. I don't think the decline is due to manufacturing in Denmark, Lego went global with their manufacturing a few decades ago. Rather it is cost savings measures to increase output.

Very nice, reminds me of my first HO locomotive from when I was 2. I too like the use of the doors to hide the PF components. Though if you build it in red, you could get the red battery box cover for the standard battery box.

You mean this one (grin). Hiding in plain sight. There are several folks who have hidden the M motors inside boilers and I suspect the L motor would be perfect for this. The XL's are bulky, but at 5 wide, they are small enough to build around. Here's an example of a very powerful tender (mostly using ideas from Cale and Tony)

I haven't found any problems with corrosion on my 9v tracks. I have some second hand track that must have had something spilled on it, since there are black patches on the rail. In normal use you probably do not need to clean 9v track. I will often pull heavy trains, so I do occasionally clean the rails with a pencil eraser (make sure to clean the inside top corner, since that is where the electrical pickups touch). And what may this idea be? You know this world needs larger radius curves.

Wow, very nice form to that engine. I like the fact that you were able to get a true cylindrical shape to the boiler, especially considering how much you have stashed in it. It is also neat to see all of the details that you managed to get in to the tender that I missed on my GN loco. Of course the valve gear is just way over the top. As for lettering, you might want to look in to O gauge decals. Probably the cheapest option and should look good too, though they will be a little vulnerable to scratching.

Thank you everyone for the continued kind words. The valve gear runs great, haven't had a problem yet. The floating set of drivers are a little more testy. It runs good forward, but often derails when going backwards through curves. The simpler predecessor does a lot better going backwards. To make room for the inside of the eccentric connection, I had to move my stabilizer point 4 or 5 studs further back and I think that is the source of my new found problems. With so many degrees of freedom, I haven't had time to solve it yet. Thank you, though most of the credit for the looks probably goes to the Baldwin. After building the Hiawatha locomotive several years back, I realized that so much of the beauty comes from the prototype. I'll try, but in the mean time, here's a quick snippet of the Milwaukee northern with the same running gear.

Nice little video and there are several familiar faces from this forum in the background.

A nice improvement over the stock set. Personally I am fond of using the old technic connectors like you did, the studs look like grease fittings.

On a related note, one thing I've been wondering about the 8878 is how does it perform over time. Has anyone seen the capacity degrade? If so, any indication that it is correlated with time or with use?

That was short work on the tender, and good job stashing the IR receiver.

That's great that it was something so simple (seems like that's the case for me, 9 times out of 10 when you hit a wall only in retrospect do you see the simple solution). You've just got to learn, if at first you don't succeed, bang harder on the keyboard (grin). As others have posted, if you have the earlier traction tires on the RC motors, you will probably want to replace them. They do not have a tight grip on the wheel.

That does a good job of capturing the essence of Chima and the old war wagons all at the same time. The gears up the side could easily slip into a steam punk design. Maybe the gorilla's will come riding in on a train (I don't follow Chima, but in checking out the parts I've noticed that the floating island that often appears in the background has a gorilla face on it that looks like the gorilla suit guy).

Thank you everyone for your kind words. This locomotive was many months in the making. I started designing it last fall and then right before I was ready to start building I had to put it on hold for 1-2 months. Oh that was agony. Thank you, I think it looks good but it is 9v. With PF you can go slower and fully appreciate the valve gear in action. Getting all the mechanical parts working is quite a challenge, not something I would attempt on my first (or second) locomotive... unless of course you are a knuckle head like me (grin) I hit that idea with my third or fourth steam locomotive design. I wanted the locomotive to be powered, but I also wanted it to handle uneven track. I wrote up more on the design process in Railbricks #5 (of course that was in the context of my earlier northerns and before I had the custom rods). Yes, I would agree, the XL wheels would be more appropriate for the prototype (I think the S2's had the largest driving wheels of all northerns). However, my design wouldn't work with the larger wheels. Since the boiler pivots on the pilot and trailing trucks, the drive wheels have to be able to swing out on the curves, and thus, slip under the boiler. Here are two shots of the J (same basic mechanical design) on a curve. Note how on the inside rails the drivers are under the boiler and on the outside rail they are beyond the running boards. On straight track the drivers are centered below the boiler. You've gotta love tight radius curves (grin). You can also see more shots in the railbricks article noted above. Ah, good catch. Here's a shot of it...

Heh heh heh, the doors are so simple and so brilliant. Very nice.

Yes, you want to slip into diagnostic mode to try to isolate where the problem is. As Dan-147 suggested, pull the wheels and see if the motor spins okay. Then see if you can find something else to power the motors (e.g, a PF battery box and a converter cable) to make sure the motors work. Then see if you can find something else to power from your train base (e.g., a light) to make sure the RC base works. If you find a malfunctioning part, lego might replace it for you if you call customer service.

Very nice work, great attention to detail and great interior shots. Personally I like the doors the best.

full gallery I am pleased to present my rendition of the preserved GN S2 class 4-8-4 northern, #2584. This locomotive has been on my to do list for quite some time. I was waiting for the cheese slopes to come out in sand green and then it was only a matter of time. I first saw this engine many years ago while taking Amtrak through Havre, Montana where she is on static display. How bold to paint a steam engine such a bright green. Sure, she was an oil burner, but still, imagine the work to keep that boiler looking clean. The US railroads loved to do this sort of thing and fought to keep their equipment clean (remember, these trains were the equivalent of today's business class on transcontinental flights, heck, the NYC's 20th Century limited is where the phrase "roll out the red carpet" originated, but I digress). Delivered in 1930, the engine arrived in the Glacier Park paint scheme and the fleet of S1 and S2's were used to pull the finest passenger trains on the Great Northern. By early 1950's they were reassigned to freight and repainted black. The 2584 was retired Dec 1957 and stored. GN decided to preserve this locomotive and after restoring it, put it on display in 1964 (more details can be found here). When I saw it, it still had "no trepassing, BN Ry" signs on the fence. So presumably it has been under railroad ownership throughout. When I started building the custom valve gear parts, I knew it was time to build this engine. It took a few months, but here's my model. I must say, building in rare color like sand green is extra fun. Let's take a tour from the front to the back. On the nose I had to have the air compressors, and here was the first collision with the limited parts availability in sand green. I almost gave an arm and a leg to solve it but in the end I managed to keep the arm. Getting all of the snot for the smoke box working was an exercise in multi-dimensional optimization. On the side the stairs up to the running boards turned out well (I'm not sure if I came up with that solution on my own or if I first saw it on another model). Also note the hand rails, a refined design from my earlier northern's. Within the boiler, the framework is largely unchanged from my J, and later used on two other northern's. The design is solid for operating at shows with uneven tracks- the drivers are pulled from the pilot truck and the boiler itself rides on just two trucks. This has the added feature of keeping the swing within reason on curves. Allowing me to put the tender foot plate at the cab foot plate (with the aid of a few wedge plates). I must say, when building a locomotive for tight curves, you come to understand why the rear corners of the cab roofs and top corners of the tenders were cut off. The frame is also strong enough that you can put two or three of the northerns on the point of a heavy train and pull through the front couplers. While viewing the second image above, note the sloped front to the cab borrowed from my NP northern, the mud ring on the bottom of the firebox borrowed from my Milw northern, the cab roof details borrowed from my SP pacific. I think the vent hatches look particularly good in dark red. You will also see one of the design elements that I'm quite pleased with, the sand green ladder above the running board. I'm getting ahead of myself on this tour. Jumping back to the drivers for a moment, I used my custom rods and valve gear bars for the drivers, including modeling the Walschaerts valve gear. Meanwhile, up top, I managed to sneak in a 1/2 plate offset for the green boiler jacket (visible in the very first photo in this post, where the gray smokebox transitions to the green boiler). Now moving to the rear, this oil burner had a Vanderbilt tender. I knew that wouldn't be much of a problem since I had already built one packed with PF equipment for my SP pacific. I had to build the complete engine first, so that I could figure out the clearance for the tender. This time it wound up being almost entirely snotted. Since I did not have to worry about putting anything in the tender, I could get the proportions better than the SP tender. I even included a rounded bottom (though no good photos yet exist). I've got to say that Vanderbilt tenders are hard to photograph and I'm not completely satisfied with the quality of the photos of the tender, but this one should give you an idea, If you look closely, you will also see my Indiana Jones moment. I was faced with figuring out how to get the ladder on the front of the tender. On curves, the couplers swing out to 6 wide. So there wasn't enough room to get any design I liked in there. Seeing the man waving a pair of machetes at me, I dropped my whip and picked up my six shooter. Voila, as I slip another rung down the lego purity slope, the custom ladder was born. They looked so good, I decided to hang another pair off the back of the tender (I'll post more about the ladders soon). Now returning to the prototype for a moment. The Havre locomotive looks striking in its green paint, but while I was digging up reference material for this model, I quickly learned that it was the wrong color. From everything I've read, the Glacier Park paint scheme was commonly used on passenger locomotives, but it was never an official scheme. For the curious, click the small image below for the best color example of the scheme that I'm aware of. Also note the herald on the engineer's side, the goat is facing to the right. The closest lego color to the original green would probably be dark green. Still, I like sand green as the prototype is currently and I didn't want this to look like a Emerald Night MOD. Still, it has gotten me wondering why the prototype is the wrong color. GN preserved this engine and then BN, so it is not like some misguided town repainted it in the faded color after years of neglect. full gallery

Thanks L.Annie. My current signals are working semaphores... I need to get photos of those posted one of these days. Meanwhile, I forgot to mention that the LEDs will light one color with positive voltage and the other color with negative voltage applied to the terminals.

What about using a two color LED and a resistor? It is pretty simple. I did that with these a while back. If you get 3mm LEDs they fit nicely in the hole in the 2x2 dishes.

fantastic detailing

Now that's cramming everything in. If you worked with the PF colors, you could make the battery box the hood and narrow the hood to 4 wide.

Mk III is fantastic. I still think that there has got to be a way to eliminate the need for two plates underneath the track. I'll let you know if I get any ideas (for 9v perhaps the antenna for a radio, 3962, through the hole that is used to run wires under the track).

The EN tender is way too short, I'd suggest lengthening the tender and put the IR receiver there (though you'd have to run an extension cord through the boiler if you wanted headlights).

Great work with the challenging cab windows.