zephyr1934

Seeing it in real bricks is amazing! How strange that everything from the 1980's is cool again (excuse me while I pull up my fuchsia leg[o] warmers)

Before reading the thread I was going to say nice work and well played, but... that elevates it further. Without knowing that it was built to be kid tough it is a great solution, making it 3 yr old resistant (can never be 3 yr old proof) is just icing on the cake.

You could submit a question to them to make sure. I would think if you make most of your presentation about a single color combination and then end with something like, "this model can be painted/built in many different liveries," clearly presenting multi-variant as an extension.

That thing is insane (the prototype that is) great job capturing it in 12v style

Oh no, the tractor looks great too, it is an insane prototype and you captured it wonderfully. If you play spot the difference with the original there might be a few points of departure but if they are, they are not apparent to the casual observation, you definitely captured the essence.

Wow, just watched it from the youtube link, Cars borrowed very liberally from Suzy. I liked the Peet's Ice truck that passed in one scene. Like on the end of the Conjunction Junction train (which is now a different Disney property)

Excellent to hear! And stupid autocorrect, I'm telling you English is like a second language to me.

If it wasn't for you meddling kids I would have gotten away with it too! After putting everything away I looked at the video and realized I got the orange and yellow boxcars reversed (!@#$%). It is actually yellow, orange, dark red, dark green in the video. But I did my best Ed Wood impersonation and figured no one would notice (grin) Meanwhile, your assessment is much appreciated.

What a beauty! Is there any room to put a pin hole in the middle for a fake wheel on a 3 axle truck? Perhaps with just a little vertical offset so that the motor with fake wheels can handle R40 curves (I'm not meaning to sound ungrateful as you resurrect what was thought to be an extinct species, rather, with all of the other improvements you are making just suggesting additional QOL changes in case they might be easy to include). In any event, I THINK the lego motor sides require a small indent somewhere between the wheels. Amazing work (on the track, obviously haven't seen the motor post yet). Please include links to these or copy the content over to the FXTrack pages. I'm sure many of us will go looking for this valuable information in a year or two and not remember where to find it.

Thank you all again for your support. Katy is complete and almost all of my photos are done. This post is my reveal of secrets left untold and will probably be my last post before submitting. I've partially disassembled Katy's roof to show you how it all goes together (she doesn't look happy about the procedure). I used 1x3 curved slopes as the underframe for the tiled roof. The outer-most tile is held on by a hinge brick. The base of the brick is 1/2 plate above the bottom of the curved slopes. These hinges are held in place from the cupola with 2x2x2/3 plates with two studs on one side and have a 1x4x1 panel underneath to partially fill the gap below. I found it best to put the outer-most tile on first because it needs to be 0.5-1.0 mm off of flush with the hinge brick, so holding the tile flat against the pair of curved slopes while putting it on the hinge brick. The next three tiles are held in place by gravity and perhaps a little friction. There are two 1 wide gaps between the curved slopes, I alternate using one or the other for the guideway, the tiles are shown upside down in the same order left-to-right as they would be when on the roof. For the first such tile I used a 1x1 bracket to avoid conflicts with the wall below, then I used a pair of 1x1 plates on the other two tiles, in both cases with a very small twist to increase the friction on the bounding slopes. As a result, the inner two tiles have proven surprisingly robust to rough handling. Meanwhile, here's a quick video of Katy trying to be, "a happy caboose at the end of a train."

Looking good! One thought, while you might use a single color scheme for most of your submission, why not include a render with all three variants next to each other (classic red, dark red and dark green)?

Nice take on Katy In the day (during day time back in the days when the engines were steamers) the train would have had "flags" which would have been metal paddles rather than lanterns or lights. They are still missing none the less. As for the conductor... I'm still troubled by the thought that Katy eats people (grin).

That caboose is SOOOOO cute, and the tractor is insanely detailed for such a small package

This point is key, someone with legacy 9v train motors is also likely to have legacy 9v train controllers. I believe the FX track is 100% backwards compatible with the 9v equipment. So for the legacy users, they probably will not buy in to the new controller right away, and only will do so when either their old equipment wears out or the new equipment offers better functionality (and thus, will need the new motors anyway). If the new train motors are backward compatible with 9v controllers then the legacy 9v motors will once more become replaceable. (I believe Michael had said that the form factor will be compatible with the shape of the 9v train motors) @michaelgale will the new DC train motors be backward compatible with the legacy 9v train controllers?

Hi Michael, this is a great passage you wrote, and hopefully you will keep it as part of an FAQ when the power station comes to market. Long ago I think I quickly killed a couple of 9v train motors with the RCX brick, which presumably has a much simpler PWM that is not appropriate for the 9v train motors (which in turn, presumably the 9v train motor development in the early 90's predates the wide use of PWM voltage control). While your note implies that you used the stock 9v motors throughout R+D with no ill effects to the motors, you might want to highlight that point and explicitly say it somewhere prominent. As a knob when it comes to motor electronics, I wonder if there would be any benefit to putting a capacitor in parallel to the motor, e.g., using the 9v motor output? Or does most of the benefit come from placing the capacitor serial with the motor? If there is benefit from a parallel connection, how difficult would it be to make a non-corded 9v plug that has a capacitor across the terminals to retrofit old 9v motors?

You just keep knocking great little MOCs! And so quick with them too.

I'm late to the game on this but it looks great with clean curves, really reminds me of an updated 7720. Just one thought, the prototype you showed looks closer to dark red, it would be neat to see your build in dark red too.

That will be $0.25 every time you use it then (grin, obviously I'm joking, the best builds borrow great ideas from everywhere). Note that the tile on the stud side of the technic brick sticks a fraction of a mm past the top of the technic brick because technic holes are slightly higher than they should be if they were in system. So the connection to the next row of plates on the "top" of the technic brick is a little looser than normal but it still holds fine. Meanwhile, thanks for the kind words, I went for a whimsical topic and wound up building it with a few complex techniques. The studio shots have been taken of Katy caboose and all that is left is to shoot some video. Here we seek Katy all smiles, The expression in that photo is not representative of Katy's disposition throughout most of the book. The whole story is all about her dissatisfaction of being stuck at the end of a freight train. Katy is far from happy and there is only one image of her smiling while she's on the tracks. Here's a view of the caboose from the other side showing a more typical expression from the caboose. (Katy is NOT two faced, this is the same end as seen in the previous shot, just rotated 60°) Here's Katy's moment of on-rail happiness in the book Which is immediately followed by her returned fear of mountain grades. This fear is soon proven justified as a rusty old coupling bolt fails and Katy breaks free of the train. Finally, here's a shot showing the paneling on her sides. When highlighting the stacked plates like this the fingernail groves disappear into the other seams, but they stand out when the other seams disappear (as seen in previous posts)

This almost seems like a question and answer (]I've also had that question but never pursued it enough to find an answer). I suspect building in a "max voltage" is probably too specific for the base FX controller. Using an HO or even N controller to limit the voltage at a show might be an easy solution. Alternatively, I would think that it would be possible to build an external voltage limiter between the controller and the track. Though knowing Michael and his FXBricks, I bet somewhere in his plans there's a controller with a programmable speed profile (if not for this controller a future one).

I'm tickled by how the caboose came out, but most of the credit goes to Bill Peet for creating such a complex character out of such subtle details. I feel more like an editor helping the bricks get to where they want to be. With the exaggerated features it was clear what has to be nailed, in this order: the arched roof (a lucky find), the face (stickers are key), and the steps. The fingernail groves to accentuate the paneling was a bonus. So that's really three building techniques, with two already shown earlier in this thread (the steps are macaroni tiles, 1x1 bricks with studs on two sides, and 1x1 technic brick) I'll reveal the arched roof when I take the "studio" shots. Then there's one more trick this caboose knows that I haven't shown yet... ("but wait, there's more," he says) I suppose the "lighter" trucks with the custom side frames also helped capture the look. Those are pretty simple, but I can show details if anyone is interested. There might be some truth to a photograph capturing someone's soul. I think the eyes really do it here. In this case they weren't a photo but they were a direct lift of the appearance. Again I would say Bill Peet gets the credit for the ingenuity. JWBD & BW thank you kindly!

That is a crazy prototype you chose and excellent recreation in bricks. What a great first post too.

Thank you F.Z. The stickers have been made and I'm planning on taking the "official" photos this weekend, but there was a spot of sun shining through the clouds and I couldn't resist taking a few photos. Not quite "two towering spruce" but it was what I had on hand,

It looks amazing! (the hand of g** has pushed me to it) That is an amazing little build. And you are so wrong, "few parts" does not equal simple. Your few part models are very complex. It is easy to hide hacks in large models, but there is nowhere to hide in these almost micro models.

Those coaches (and the entire train) look really nice

Nice progress! And I'm jealous, even with your six month break you are moving faster than me on my steam project.