zephyr1934

Holy cows! That looks amazing. Did you have them chrome all of the pieces individually and then build it like a normal MOC? Looking past the chrome (if that's possible) it's a great build all around. I bet it was nice to be free of "does this part exist in my color?" Of course you might have to sell your other kidney to do the full consist in chrome.

While they are very rare, there are these cute little crossing gates for pedestrians too,

No reason to be embarrassed, as long as you notice the gates while you approach them everything is working as intended. I once read a study that made a big deal out of the fact that drivers could not remember the most recent traffic sign they passed. That was a horrible study, drivers can pass dozens of signs in a minute or two and typical working memory is 7 things.

Looking really good, that is a crazy amount of SNOT you have in the cab. Will the middle truck slide laterally for curves?

The US is also dominated by gates that only block the approach direction (half road). I think the most common countermeasure for "drive around" are raised medians on the last 20-40 ft of approach (but most crossings don't even have this). For higher speed crossings they do use four quadrant gates, but the "far side" gates come down a few seconds after the near side so that any vehicles in the crossing can clear. Of course there are also still a few crossing without gates and on really low volume roads, without flashing lights. I'm not sure if the following is true, but I've heard that the majority of crossing accidents in the US is actually autos running into trains, which kind of makes sense since the side of a train is so much longer than the side of a car.

Exactly, a heavy rail train that would fit well in a subway or elevated line but the set only contains a surface track and station. Rock raiders, miners and the like never came with a massive cavern even though they were set underground.

The Hobby train set was an experiment doomed by so many things: mostly common colors, all rare parts in the set appeared simultaneously in the online PaB so no need to buy the set for the parts you wanted, TOO many designs so the parts palette could not be focused on making more than one build great (what's there is great for the parts availability, but the designers had a very constrained set of parts to work with), and of course the inclusion of loose magnets that cut the production run short. The double switch track was similarly doomed, it was available for at least 2 years at a time when the RC trains (pre-PF) required a 6x34 baseplate (or thereabouts) for the integrated battery box with protrusions on the outside all of which limited what could be built, the RC motor traction bands slipped on the wheels so you could only pull 2 cars, 9v trains were still in production for most of the time window the switches were on sale so the target audience of AFOLs were mostly not interested in plastic track at the time, and the stupid cost savings of tying both tracks to the same switch lever.

That was the day Lego went from selling open world building sets like Erector to dedicated model kits like Airfix. But the 3 in 1 sets are an homage to the days of old. Makes total sense from a business standpoint, but aspiring to those inspirational models were the first steps of many of us to building our own creations

Lego has needed to do that for years... sigh. A 3-in-1 could overcome so many of the hurdles faced by normal train sets, e.g., the regional nature of different designs, the need for more than one type of car in a realistic train, etc. Exactly that, any set with good train parts would be welcome even if it isn't a realistic train

I believe BTD's wheels are the same design as Shupp's wheels at shapeways, except they are cheaper at BTD, BTD does much better quality control (as you noted), and unlike shapeways, he gets a percentage of the sales. He did zero markup for shapeways

Definitely, my point was simply that in the description it could mention that the locomotive model saw widespread use around Europe and possibly other parts of the world.

A small point of clarification, Big Ben's wheels are injection molded.

Mind you, I suspect two L motors (or whatever motor that is at the halfway point) in direct drive would perform better than an M and an XL connected with a differential, but it is a fun concept to contemplate... and maybe having the high power at low speed is an advantage over two matched motors Ah yes, I was thinking manually. With the right code you could hit all of the stops progressively

To get the highest speed possible you would want both motors running, so I would think start the high torque motor first, and then at some point bring in the high speed motor. Use the high torque (lower max speed) to fine tune the speed if necessary, otherwise, rely primarily on the high speed motor for the speed level. The max rotation of the axle coming out of the differential is then the average of the max rotation speed of the two motors taken individually (where the motor includes whatever gearing ahead of the differential input)

That's cool!

Oh yes, I was not suggesting you were replicating the entire locomotive, no room for that at this scale (well, never say never, certainly VERY difficult) but you did capture the defining feature. Jumping back to an earlier comment, this design does bring in an interesting option, what about having different gearing on the two inputs to the differential, a low-speed high torque motor+gearing on one side (perhaps even just using an XL motor without gearing) and a high-speed low torque motor+gearing on the other. I think what you mean is that with two motors you get the same net power output (ignoring the loss due to the differential gears) but twice the number of resolvable power steps along the way if you step motor A from 0 to 7 then motor B from 0 to 7 (16 steps), that is more than the 8 steps if both motors go from 0 to 7 together. If you take into account the power curves are probably not linear, then you might be able to get 8x8 different speeds (well 64-24 = 40 assuming 6&4 is the same as 4&6) but it would be hard to do so in a constantly increasing manner.

The Super Chief came out like that- the limited edition locomotive, then 6 months later the cars came out and at some point the non-limited edition of the locomotive. (but probably anyone who had anything to do with the Super Chief is long gone) I'm sure they view the third party suppliers as the answer to the first two items (and they still win because of all the bricks that then get used to build the trains and scenery). As for they city trains, I suspect Lego views them as loss leaders- they make a profit, but not nearly the profit of an all plastic set. So making them 16% wider is of little benefit (not to mention the fact that the city trains already look stumpy at 6 wide) since it would increase cost and do little to increase sales. They already have the six wide baseplates and windscreens, etc. for the trains, they kids do not complain about the width, those probably will not change.

Looking good! With all of the yellow and red (plus classic windows and doors), that has the feel of something that might have appeared in the trains idea book 7777

Indeed, if Hod Carrier's objective were to make the locomotive run as efficiently as possible you are spot on. What I believe Hod is going for here is to go beyond just capturing the outside appearance of the locomotive and actually replicate the mechanicals on the inside. It is something rarely done because there is so little space to do it (and really, with the limitations of lego Hod is still only capturing the "spirit" of the design since the build only has two motors instead of four). A while back someone else build a steam engine with Stephenson valve gear, something you could never see from the outside but they built it that way because if nothing else it was a fun challenge (not to mention pretty impressive to those of us who understand how difficult it is)

That's brilliant! The FM switcher looks really sharp and the GT3 looks fascinating (and at top speed looks like it could hop off the tight curves). The operation is also impressive, that's a crazy amount of work you put in. I would presume that is one of the factors that kept the Fell Locomotive from going any further, I would imagine standard maintenance on side by side diesel engines is a lot harder than when you can access a single engine on both sides.

Yes indeed, this bump is more than appropriate and the train is looking even better than ever. My only thought when I saw the post was, "where did the original go?" Since that was worthy in its own right... on my first read of the bump having missed the fact that you simply hid it, At any rate, looking good

Highly unlikely that there is. When I built with it in cad I just used normal bricks as place holders. The power block is 4x4x2, but it needs a gap on the side with the pair of metal contacts at the bottom. If you were looking down on the cube from the top as if it were a compass: the switch is north, charging port is east, and the power contacts that need the gap are south. The motor blocks are 2x4x2, The technic hole is offset by one plate. You can see a lot of the dimensions in the first post of this thread. Here's another shot giving you some idea of the dimensions.

Wow, that is a difficult corner. I don't see any slopes, curved slopes, wedges or windscreens that come close (well, the train roofs might work if it were 6 wide, but it's not 6 wide)

Phew! As for the Maersk and HE, yes, that's going to be a tough choice to pick between the two

Ugh! What an unpleasant surprise, sorry to hear. Exactly that, the most common "glue" used on lego actually chemically welds the parts together. Hopefully they did not glue the bogies or wheels. If they did, that might be worth exploring ways to make the train roll. If the glue is a problem, you could resell this particular set to get your money back and buy another one after that.