zephyr1934

That's a seriously crazy build! Amazing

So you built the locomotive as today, running on a tourist railroad? I'm pretty sure I've been over those tracks, grin. Seriously though, nice build, you captured a lot of details on the locomotive. I think the Lego bluish-gray is pretty close to the power blue so that works too. Great job

That's a top notch build, great work!

Well that's a modest project (grin), but I bet it will look fantastic when its complete (well, no model railroad is ever "complete" but you know what I mean). I do hope you are able to put in a temporary loop of unfinished track so that you can run trains while building the rest of the layout.

Wow! Great job recreating a classic train, including all of its variants. The El Capitan Hi-Level cars have always been a rarity because the drop baseplates only came in two sets (well, three since the Metroliner club car was rereleased) and "back in the day" easily went for $50 on Bricklink. The Maersk changed that availability considerably but that was in blay. As the others have said, it is amazing that you got this train to move, at least you aren't limited to R40 curves. Looks great

That's some amazing work, great job!

Looking good, some creative updating going on there. And welcome to the challenges of long trains (grin) you might be beyond what will reliably move with a single locomotive. A heavy locomotive using two L motors could probably pull that without complaining, or maybe a pair of heavyish engines each with two train motors. At some point soon, you will also start having the magnets pull apart due to the weight. All of which can be solved (e.g., putting 1x2 plates across the couplers) just know that you are wandering into that type of territory. As for the platforms... yeah... rare to see any lego station platform proportional to the real thing. Gives you an appreciation of how big real trains really are.

Most of them are 3D printed, but some of the common configurations are injection molded. Without checking, I would guess S8 S32 and R56 are injection molded. Their 3D printing is very good though. If you look you can easily tell its not lego but if you are not looking it does not jump out at you. I am quite happy with some of their unusual switch geometries, really helps make a layout work. But their switches are a bit weird the way they piece together they can benefit by being glued (it's not lego so its not illegal, grin) and I suspect the spring mechanism in the throw is not as good as lego's. Oh, and bumping a 3 week dormant thread is hardly old around here. If it's in the first 20-30 topics probably don't even hesitate to reply to it (with the exceptrion that if its something someone dug up from 3 years ago only to ask, "do you have the instructions?")

Your work is amazing! I trust some of it will (has?) shown up here:

Looking good

you can fit 1/4 turn of R40 track on a 48x48 baseplate. The ties/sleepers are 8 wide while the spacing including the rails are 6 wide. Measuring along one edge of the baseplate from the inside corner, you have 35 studs before reaching the inside of the tie (inner-most stud of the track falls at stud 36), there will be 4 studs beyond the outside of the tie (outter-most stud of the track falls at stud 44), and the centerline of the curve falls between the 39th and 40th studs, hence R40 or radius of 40 at the centerline. Each stud is 8mm, so the inside rail (at stud 37) has 296mm radius and outside rail (at stud 33) has 264mm radius. Clone curves typically come in steps that have a 16 stud offset center to center because that is the spacing dictated by the lego switches. When centering two straight tracks on a 32x32 baseplate, there will 4 studs open, 8 studs of track, 8 studs open, 8 studs of track, 4 studs open. So add or subtract 16 studs (128 mm) to go to the next common track curve radius (looks like Trixbrix also offers R32, so you can also shrink by half of that for the first step). They also have narrow gauge track which will probably offer you a few other radii that are slightly different than the normal track.

While it isn't much help, this challenge is surprisingly difficult at the limits of lego resolution at the scale of 6-8 wide lego trains

The ties on the track are 8 wide, if your trams were truly 6 wide and the one on R32 is very short you might be able to pull it off. A safer bet though would be to get 4x 1/4 length straight tracks or just use flex track segments if you have them to extend all four of the sides of the outer loop by 4 studs, so that it effectively functions as an R42 (the curves are still R40, just offset by 2 studs). With two loops you might want to connect them together either with a baseplate below or a plate above to maintain the spacing. If you run trains for a while on unsecured loops they will slowlly drift and you'll eventually get a collision (though if you have kids that could be a bonus). Why not start with one at R40 and if you like it, then buy the specialized track for the inner loop

Yeah, brickbuilt circles are a challenge. I think the new version looks better and there is some precedence for railroads welding or otherwise attaching fluting or other textured decoration on the side of locomotive (the nose of Milwaukee Road C-liners, MKT/T&P E7's with fluting)

If you go that way, you'll probably want the Bluetooth starter pack Just be careful, the tighter the radius the closer you need to put your wheels on one truck. I think R40 curves are okay up to a spacing of 10 studs between axles. Smaller radii curves will need closer axle spacing. All of which can easily be accounted for, but it helps to know that going in.

Looking good. Just one thought... right now the round tiles are set in the side, instead of having a 4x4 indent of one plate, what would it look like if you moved them out one plate so that the white was flat?

Pick one:

Oh wow, the logging railway looks amazing. Though the use of the crankshaft part for the rods is a little iffy, they do not have much clutch (easily fixed with cragle, but...) and it extends the build to 10 wide. Brick Cross also looks great. I hope both sell well and send a good message to TLC that a well designed train is in demand

A 9v motor is easy to build on (well, that's semi-relative, there are only 16 studs available, similar to the current PUp motor only no cable to get in the way. R40 metal track should be fairly cheap, and if you get a 9v set cheap you might have everything you need. Straight metal track is more expensive, but it sounds like you don't need much or any of it. Phil B is also right that circuit cubes offer a potentially cheaper option, why someone recently posted a circuit cubes tram here:

That's an interesting prototype and a good recreation. The railings along the running boards look strange, but that is coming from the US where they didn't invent the railing for running boards until the 1960's, after the steam era had passed

There's something quaint about seeing the train enter the 1BP long segment with overhead wire and then quickly leave it again (no, you can't make me say anything about your cats)

Ugh!!! Ha ha, I had actually typed and then deleted, "did you hold out for a cab ride" in my original post, a well deserved bonus!

I'd suggest using a dead 12v, or one of the 12v power pickups, or a custom pickup to draw the power and then use the modern PUp motors since they are the easiest and cheapest motors you can get (in case you burn a few out). In terms of friction, 12v era wheel sets > 9v era wheel sets > roller bearing wheel sets. You will be able to pull a lot more with roller bearings at the same effort than you will with any of the other alternatives How long, how heavy, how many curves, and what radius. R120 are a lot friendlier than R40, but if you are using standard 12v you are stuck with R40. 15+ years ago I was running 40+ car trains in the 9v system. Usually 3 motors was sufficient to move any train on relatively flat surfaces (with 9v wheel sets) before other factors started limiting the length. The first thing to go is the magnetic couplers, fix that with rare earth magnets (or technic links), the next thing to go are the cars stringlining the curves, I never did fully fix that problem but putting the heaviest cars first definitely helped. I had all of the motors at the front though, these efforts were on tables at shows and I did not want the rear of the train pushing a stalled front of the train off the tables. If you are running on the floor or some other safety zone to the edge of tables or simply don't care, distributed power will essentially let you make the train as long as you want but coordinating control potentially becomes a big problem Curves will be your enemy, not only stringlining but also varying the effort to pull your train. I had one layout with very long straights and then two closely spaced 90° curves. The power needed to get the heavy train moving slowly through the two curves was enough for it to speed up so much on the straight that it would shoot off the track at the next curve. So making a roughly square layout that is like 2.1 times longer than your train (i.e., just after the rear of the train leaves one curve the front starts into the next) will balance the drag from the curves and make your life easier. Starting a really heavy train, especially on 9v track where you will have dead spots- not just due to dirt also to rail joints and switch frogs, is an art unto itself. Being able to use the "hand of god" just behind the engines helped a lot getting up to speed. Delivering enough power to the rails is also an issue. At a minimum you will want multiple power connections to the track. I've never used 12v track but with 9v there are a few ohms resistance in the track joint. No big deal with city trains, but draw a lot of current across N rail joints and 9v-N*iR starts to be significant. In other words, as the power demand increases so too does the voltage drop at each rail joint. It does not sound like you plan to use 9v controllers, but since I've gassed on so long about 9v why stop now? 9v controllers can only really deliver power for up to two 9v motors (I THINK that was Lego's spec, and in my experience they would drop out when I ran three motors for more than a little while). So for the long trains I would connect two or three 9v controllers around the loop, with NO isolation. Probably not good for the controllers but at the time Lego would include one controller with each set so we had plenty of surplus. I don't think I'd do that now. If you are using 12v track, the teeth on the rails will help you a lot, though I do not know how compatible they are with the narrower treads on the modern motor wheels, so you might need to experiment there to make sure you have enough contact. Make sure there is enough weight on each motor so the wheels do not slip (too much) Good luck and post pictures/video if you do so in brick

So who's the random guy at 1:05 holding your locomotive? (yeah, probably a locomotive driver, but without context that's pretty random) Very high production standards in the video and it looks like they rolled out a couple of special trains just to film it. That's pretty amazing that they went to such lengths for the video. Totally a deserving subject, but still pretty rare that a railway would do that.

Great little build and what a wonderful feature to have in town- a historic tram to the beach. As for the MOC, I'd be a little worried about the crash test dummy riding up front (grin).