zephyr1934

The Daylight has arrived at Brickworld 2022! [full album on flickr]

I too would say you are a great builder. Are you the best in the major league? Who knows, but you are in the major league so that makes you very good.

Oh yes, the as-new almost always looks way better than the in-service. As was the norm with locomotives, the as-new has all the pretty styling that looks amazing, and then over time, the crews that work on them slowly get their way and the purely decorative bits come off. The only point of my mentioning that is because your model is as-new but the example in the photograph of the actual locomotive in your first post is from later years after the decorative grills were removed. So someone who is not familiar with the turbines might go, "that one has grills but that one has squares." I'm all for the grills, I think it looks far more interesting. But yes, I didn't even think about that, the fuel tenders were added later, weren't they after the grills came off. I vote grills + tender

Another amazing build. All of the fuctionality built in is amazing, the detailing is over the top, the windshield is amazing. Not sure what is my favorite bit, but I do like how you did the leaf springs on the truks. Though one comment, your prototype photo shows the engine in later years, after removing the grill work on the sides, while your model is early years with the grills. Here's a photo closer to the as-built look.

Thinking about it more, you have quite the engineering challenge with this build. I have only attempted one or two large buildings (all smaller than this) and I had problems with the opposite walls trying to pull apart, so any sort of beams will probably need to also be structural to keep the walls together, no? Meanwhile, for this build it looked like the inner beams were only held on by a few studs, to which I assumed they were non structural. I'm sure it is all doable, but I bet it needs a little extra thought to find the right solution before building past it. I wonder if simply a sandwich of studs up 2xN plates would be a good solution. Picking the era is important. Probably 1920's-1950's would be similar enough that it would be hard to tell the difference between years from the architecture alone (the number and dress of the people would be the main give away of the specific year, e.g., a lot of service men would suggest WWII. All of the non-public areas of the station would be occupied with railroad related freight rooms, offices, supporting services, etc. There might even be an integrated tower for managing all of the approaches to the station, and/or a power house for generating steam to heat the building. Then late 50's to early 70's would be a run down shadow of the earlier years (you probably don't want to do that) The modern era, the waiting room might look similar, but where there once were dozens of ticket windows now there is probably a painted wall that might pay homage to the ticketing but the old ticket office is now probably retail or restaurant. Other public areas are probably converted to a food court. While all of the formerly non-public space is probably either retail or offices. Doing the modern era is potentially a lot easier, you just need to find someone to take pictures of the current. But doing the historic era would be a lot more interesting. When push comes to shove, I think it is like building a lego train interior, you can't get all of the detail in there at minifig scale, but you can get a really good caricature. In that sense you don't have to be perfect, you just need to get the key elements in roughly the right places. I bet a detailed minifig scale ticket window might be 4 studs wide and you could cheat it to 3 studs if you had to. But there were probably way more ticket windows in the real station than you can fit in the model. So if you put 8 ticket windows where there once were 30, it would still work. Similar ideas with the support spaces. Maybe there were 40-50 offices in the building, but get 5-8 at minifig scale and it works. There would have been baggage and mail handling areas. One or more large departure boards, a station master's office... Anyway, I hope I'm not being a bother, the station looks fantastic and the interior is already excellently detailed.

Nice clean lines throughout, you make it look easy

You got this far this quickly and it is still a 2 year project? Regardless, it looks amazing (even if the walls are not high enough). Just one observation, in the above photo the cross beams seem to be sagging. I THINK you could strengthen them by changing up the snot. Do studs up in the middle (as you already have) but using brackets on either side, e.g., 1x2 x2x2 up/down. Then on the sides use 2x16 plates with a layer of tiles on top. What era are you aiming to recreate? I don't know much about this particular station, but I do know that most surviving large stations are now typically mostly shopping malls or similar (there is a former 20+ track station in Cincinnati that is now a museum complex but still has a single platform for Amtrak service, another in Indianapolis that I think still serves Amtrak on a single platform but is mostly a hotel). Whereas, back in the day, the station would have had large sections devoted to waiting rooms, baggage handling, mail handling, railroad administration, etc. etc.. If you are going for present day, according to wikipedia, "The station is owned by the city of Portland and operated by Prosper Portland, the city's urban renewal agency. The city earns $200,000 a year from nearly 30 tenants. Amtrak, the main tenant, has a continuing lease in 2021." Here's the website of Prosper Portland. If you are looking for historic station, you might want to contact the fellow behind streamliner memories at trainlover@streamlinermemories.info He is very big on historic Pacific Northwest railroading

Interesting to know, I always assumed it simply guided the couplers apart and nothing more. That is probably the most space efficient solution, and since it is only a couple of couplers involved, probably not that expensive

That's some insane SNOT you've got going on there

My idea of an uncoupler is simply a bar that slides out and pushes the magnets apart (not all the way apart, just in a "V". Here's a bad picture using a technic beam for the pusher, or a slightly different version with a pointed plunger in this video. (or see switch-yard-1a.avi in brickshelf) With your precise color code positioning you should be able to line things up to stop right where you need to for the plunger. If you come up from below, you can rotate a swing arm instead of laterally inserting a plunger

So I just have to ask, why didn't I think of that? (kudos to you) Meanwhile, on a different track...

I can't tell the detailed difference between the 3, #1 has plates for windows, #2 looks like it might have 1x1+1x2 bricks for the "three long" windows and #3 looks like it might be using relatively rare 1x3 trans clear bricks. If that is correct, I think I would favor #2- with a single division line between the two bricks it kind of looks like a split window, while the posts in the 1x3 are harder to relate to (and probably a lot more expensive too)

I think I was inspired by a recent trip to Entertrainment Junction about 90 min from me. They have a lot of trains that do that, sit for many seconds, then move 20 ft, sit a while, move back. Or the fancy ones will alternate on a switch. But when you think about it, the constant motion will quickly disappear into the background, while the intermittent motion will grab your attention due to the change.

What an unusual prototype, was this loco used on the flater sections or was this one of the cog locomotives? Regardless, the MOC looks great. I would echo Mark6399 that it would be interesting to see the windows done with trans bricks or possibly even a 1x2x2 panel for the front window.

Sounds like it is regular red rather than dark red... sigh

Yes, I noticed the marbled tiles too, they really make the large open floor pop. If this were 10 years ago, I would say track down Steve Barile. He was a big mover and shaker in lego trains (e.g., he was on the hobby train crew) and lives (lived?) in Portland. Even though he isn't very active these days, if you can track him down he might be willing and able to help.

Okay, so on the technical side that is pretty amazing. On the action side, what about punching it up a little more? First thought is to build in a random time delay. Level 1: have it wait a random amount of time between 1 and 4 min before starting a round trip, maybe also put a 5 sec pause between when the turntable rotates and when engine moves on/off it. Level 2: instead of random time between round trips, random time between one way trips. You know, so that you are up in your attic working late at night and forgot that you have the train on and then it moves and spooks you (grin). If it has a speaker, you could have it toot before moving so that you know to look over (instead of, "hey, what was that motion over there" and then miss half the trip). Level 3: make it do something, e.g., there's a switch on the right side of the track, have the engine grab a car from one side, pull it out and shove it to the other side (obviously without turning on the turntable) then pull out without the car and do a turn on the turntable, etc., again all with random delays between movements. Of course shunting a car like that would need a remote controlled switch and a decoupler unit, but those two actions could be done with a single hub. That should be enough design work to keep you out of trouble for a few days (grin). I will have my lawyers contact you shortly. Seriously though, while I hope that I make a good product with the rods, I don't think I can claim that I own the idea of rods for lego steam engines. I do my best to price them at my break even point, so that if I sell a few more or a little less I have no reason to get upset. Probably the biggest way the rods make me money is by taking enough of my time that I can't spend my time (and thus, money) on building lego. The bits I've figured out are how to produce a nice hole and produce at scale. Or at least that's what I tell myself, like last night when I had to pitch a batch of valve gear with bad holes. While I do recognize that my rods are expensive, they are both time consuming to finish off and expensive to produce. I still try to price the rods so the cost is low enough that for someone who is just building an engine the rods are cheaper to buy than to make them in small quantity. There are some economies of scale, but it is not like injection molding.

I think the last time I rode Amtrak was about 5 years ago, took the regional train from Pittsburgh to Altoona- Amfleet with a snack bar. The hotdog was a life saver on the return trip. To tell the truth though, it was better than the food service (or lack thereof) to be had on many of the regional trains I road in England.

Oh wow! That's crazy, but it also looks great so far. There are probably books written about the station. Your best bet might be to find a buddy in PortLUG or even join PortLUG, here's their webpage. If you are a serious researcher, there are probably historical archives that might have extensive photos, blueprints, etc. Places to look would be the Portland public library, University of Portland library, possibly somewhere in a state run archive like the state historical society, etc.. Here are a couple more leads, Pacific Northwest chapter of the National Railway Historical Society Oregon Historical Society (search their archives) SP&S historical society Oregon Rail Heritage Center (located in the Portland area)

I don't know, it does seem to have generated a lot of discussion. It is too bad for us that TubeMap is disappearing, he made some neat builds. But since he did say that was his last post, it also seems pointless to address anything to him personally. Photo/video hosting, social media, and message boards do very different things. Youtube/flickr provide the potential for a long term archive of imagery, but not much discussion. Social media discussion is usually shallow ("like button"), sometimes can be in depth, but after a few days it is usually gone. Message boards allow back and forth discussion over a longer period, they provide an easily searchable history, and they also provide a forum for people to ask questions about things that they do not know the answer to. Eurobricks is one of the few open, online forums that is not swamped with spam or overrun by extreme views. We can all come here and talk about our common interest- Lego Heh heh, I still remember Lugnet. Now that makes EB look like rocket science.

I'm not sure what to say, "Ugh!", "Doh!", or "It needs another car" (grin)

Snicker snicker, I've barely ridden Amtrak in 20 years but seeing the writers in Trains Magazine lament the loss of dining car service on several trains it seems odd to see this statement. But I too have found memories, in my case from childhood, of going to the Amtrak dining car and having a nice sit down meal while on the train, and I especially liked hiding out in the lounge car playing pickup card games while eating junk food from the counter service.

Although I'm probably done uploading photos on the SJD until I have shots from brickworld, I did upload a few variants that are similar to existing shots I've also got another video. Not the greatest camera work, but a neat view of the SJD running through a fun layout (this shows about half of the layout, the other half is a mirrored reflection). I really enjoy the TrixBrix double slip switches, BrickTracks R104 switches, and the compact TrixBrix R40 yard Yeah, the first many times I saw that windshield piece I asked, "what the heck do you do with this stupid thing?" Well, turns out it is handy for some tough compound curves. It is not a perfect match for the real geometry, but it is so smooth that I think it beats the alternatives. I've used this trick a few times before, e.g., on my North Coast Limited and my PCC car. However, you might be interested to know that there is a variant that is two halves of this same geometry, namely parts 41749-41750

The hard work definitely paid off, and neat to know that you are working with BTD. They do good work. As for your layout, from the spectator perspective accessibility is just a bonus, it is well laid out operationally. It is always neat to watch your videos of trains running around the layout.