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
    Wow, I can't unsee that (not that I mind). Never would have occurred to me but now I can't get it out of my head
  2. zephyr1934
    Well that's a train I suppose. Interesting in the video all of the detail shots the model is holding the cars with motion (locomotive and polar bear). No doubt the light cars and the traction bands struggling with the two different radii of the tracks reduces the effectiveness of the motion functions. That 3D printed steam engine is an odd choice to include. ======= Edit: Doh! When I said "model" I meant the woman in the video pushing the train, not the "lego set built into a model of a train". She is holding down the cars so that the wheels make good contact with the rails and the motion elements work
  3. zephyr1934
    Can't say for sure. The previous post in this thread is consistent with the rings I have... Which maps to 17.4 od, 15.9 id, and 1.6 mm thickness. Also as mentioned in that comment, those o-rings will add about 2 mm extra height that is enough to notice and lift the running surface of any non-oring equipped axles a little above the track. It has not caused me any trouble and in fact it makes 3 axle trucks a little easier if you only put the orings on the 1st and 3rd axles. I suspect slightly smaller orings should work, but as long as you can return them, why not sample a few to see what fits? Alternatively, they probably sell a "sampler pack" with several sizes.
  4. zephyr1934
    It looks good
  5. zephyr1934
    I think most of the US suppliers of ball bearing wheel sets use bricktracks wheels and axles, which are available in Europe here: https://habricks.com/product-category/wheels/ and ball bearing sets sourced from outside of the US (probably China)
  6. zephyr1934
    Maybe. But if the price is similar I'd suggest going to ball bearings. In my comments about fixing my heavy Superliners, I went from 2878 (modified even further with notches to ensure the flanges didn't rub on the frame) to ball bearing wheels and it made a huge difference. It is still a little bizarre to set a train car with ball bearing wheels down on what you thought was flat track, look away and then look back to see that the car has quietly rolled away to find the low spot in the track. The ball bearing wheels also change how you run a heavy train, you can't just hit the stop button to cut power and expect the train to stop, the momentum of the cars will keep pushing the locomotive, so you have to slow a little more gradually. Somewhere in the EB train tech archives from 5-10 years ago there are some good quantitative comparisons between 2878 and ball bearings, then more recently, between 2878 and 38339.
  7. zephyr1934
    Looks amazing!
  8. zephyr1934
    Duh! Oh yeah, Talgo... but you could still power both "locomotives" Oh no, 38339 are pretty bad in terms of resistance and friction. Technic axles using 55423c01 are worse, but that isn't saying much. Part 2878 is a lot better, but ball bearing wheels are far better than any of the official lego train wheels. I had a lot of problems with the superliner train that is in my avatar after I first built it- long and heavy. I had to either use an s-brick or v2 IR receiver to move it and I had to approach standard R40 curves at high power to get through them (while being careful to only run on square layouts so that the train was always in either one or two curves to keep it from going too fast between curves). When I switched to ball bearing wheels it works fine with a normal PF IR receiver. At any rate, I THINK a PF or PU L motor is a lot more powerful than the corresponding train motor. So that is another possible path to try. But keep watching for wheel slip, if the wheels are slipping it doesn't matter how powerful the motor is.
  9. zephyr1934
    I'd suggest setting the power car aside and just make an ugly "power unit" to simply see if it is possible to move the rest of the train the way you want it to move. If you can't get that to work to your satisfaction there's no point in killing yourself trying to get the detailed model to work. If you do experience slipping, adding weight above the drive wheels will help them get traction (but doing so might decrease the life of your motors, so only pursue that route if you are willing to take the risks) In terms of other thoughts, if the train is a huge drag, ball bearing wheels will make a big improvement. Finally, if nothing else works, one nice thing about PU is that you can throw multiple hubs at the problem. So instead of just one power car you could have distributed power units throughout the train.
  10. zephyr1934
    Yes, there is a hierarchy in model railroading, the exact path to the last two steps could be going through any scale. The second to the last step is roughly, "yeah, this is a crazy expensive layout, but you should see the garden railroaders. They actually put a train in their yard." And of course the last step are the garden railroaders saying, "yeah, this is a crazy expensive layout, but you should see the live steamers..." [no disrespect to any gauge, it just is the hierarchic as I've seen it... though no one seems to make the jump to full scale operating RR's] Yeah, he was one of the founding members who launched ILTCO, the first AFOL group recognized by Lego. He was pushing the envelope 25 yrs ago.
  11. zephyr1934
    Those turned out really good.
  12. zephyr1934
    Great article in a great place (you even invoked the ghost of John Neil in the comments- a rock star Lego train builder from back in the days). Personally, I like to summarize it: building something that looks realistic in a resolution of 6-8 studs wide can be a real challenge, often requiring putting the bricks in sideways and upside down to get finer details. But it can be an equal challenge to engineer the structure of an operational model that can handle the tight curves. If you ever write a followup, is worth noting that Lego trains often have a layout at the NMRA National Train Show.
  13. zephyr1934
    You should post some of your excellent designs to rebrickable to make $$ to build some of your designs for yourself
  14. zephyr1934
    To keep the bevel gears in place I'd suggest that fill the available space on the axles with full and half bushings or the 1x1 technic "liftarms" (in quotes because they really are just a hollow tube). Just make sure there's a little slack on the axles so they can still freely turn. By the way, it looks like there is now room to use one of the technic connectors for the central axle coming from above or (I mistyped the image AND part number for the first connector in my previous note, should be 48496)
  15. zephyr1934
    Nice. As for the curves... that's a tough one
  16. zephyr1934
    The above is basically what I hand in mind, I THINK you showed examples of this connection failing. With the bevel gears locked in that will keep them from pulling apart. I think this will be strong enough for the other two pairs of bevel joints. The center one worked against the clutch power of the studs while these end ones work against the studs themselves. Assuming you have 1x2 technic bricks on that center axle and probably 1x4 plates below them I bet this will be strong enough. But if it isn't, then you could turn to this:
  17. zephyr1934
    Nice!
  18. zephyr1934
    You will probably need a structure that locks the two bevel gears together. Easiest would be 87408 or 48946 But you might be able to make something work with non-technic parts like the 3956 bracket
  19. zephyr1934
    The Schienenzeppelin is insane! Lots of other great MOCs in the video as well.
  20. zephyr1934
    That was why they stopped. Then as Lego clawed out of the financial struggles they got serious about figuring out the marginal cost of everything. So now that Lego is thriving there's no way they'll go back to expensive metal track. Anyways, like so many others here, I like having the small power pickup motor so that you do not need to make room in the engine for a battery or receiver. But I also like having a battery on board so that I do not need to worry about cleaning tracks. Or for that matter, the accumulated voltage drop across many track joints. Even if R is small for a track joint, v=iR can become significant if you have a few dozen track joints between the train and the power drop.
  21. zephyr1934
    Yes yes, of course it was a movie set (hence the emoji), but now that you mentioned it, the set really does look like a Tube station. Which I'm sure is pure coincidence even though it was filmed in the London area at Elstree Studios
  22. zephyr1934
    Wasn't that whole scene filmed at a Tube station?
  23. zephyr1934
    And that explains why none are left on the shelves (grin, just kidding)
  24. zephyr1934
    Oh that's nice!
  25. zephyr1934
    Thank you all for the kind words. Yes indeed, Harper's original work had a nice grid for the kernels of corn and that was what really pushed me to do the whole picture in Lego This is turning into a habit for me. I'm working on my third MOC based on Harper's work and have a list of several others that might be a good fit. But some of them are so frustratingly "simple" that I'll never be able to get the gentle curves in Lego, at least not anywhere near this scale. It's all Harper and I agree
×
×
  • Create New...