zephyr1934

You've chosen a great subject to model and sometimes smaller is better for a layout, looking forward to seeing your layout develop

Really? That's strange. It's not a problem that I have had with my build, as you can see from the photo of the van that all the wheels are touching the track. If you've used a similar geometry your loco should also be fine. I THIHK the train wheels line up in real life. Your model might have the small trail wheel one plate lower than it should be. It could also be an imperfection in one of the digital model files. You might want to test it on digital track to see where things line up on the wheels.

There have been a few threads in TrainTech about box variations. I know there were regional variants (and still are to this day) based mostly on language and to a lesser degree on safety regulations or simply who the distributor was (e.g., Samsonite). I believe some of the evergreen 9v stuff like tracks went through a couple of variants of box art, and throughout the years Lego has made different shaped boxes for the same set (not just trains). That said, I do not know anything in particular about 7824 but maybe one of the 12 volters on this forum might.

Some of the war modelers go as far if not further (e.g., brick arms) and then there are the minifig customizers who seemingly can reproduce anyone in minifig form. But yes, train heads can be on the long tail. There are still purists though, as has been said many times before, it's your hobby do with it what you like. It all depends on how many cars, how heavy the locomotive, etc.. As I noted earlier in this thread, I run everything through the R40 switches in yards, including my longest/heaviest trains.

Nice work and it is great that you are involving your son like this.

Clever, especially since you can still do crossovers on the sides where you have the 8 stud spacing. You can achieve the same effect by using only S16 on the outside and a single S4 on each side of the inside curve. This technique also works with R40 curves on both tracks but it does not look as nice.

Cool!

I recently bought a pair of BBB's M drivers with traction bands for my steam elephant. The engine is light and powered by the small circuit cubes motor/battery, but it is surprising how much it can pull/push with these wheels. It is great to have plug and play traction bands in new sizes. The M-wheels with traction bands are $6 ea while the non-traction bands are $3.

I like R40's for yards because they save so much space on the lead tracks. I only have a few pieces of equipment that will not take a full R40 curve. Everything I have still does fine on R40 switches, which is not the case for some builders.

I keep seeing the Corgi classics steam engine models when I look at your builds. Just amazing work. You could us one of these,

As others have said, Trixbrix probably has a solution for that. This post mentions the gratuitous use of short track segments to do funky station geometry that returns to the standard 8 stud offset.

Nonsense! (chuckles quietly) But in all seriousness, that looks amazing. The vehicle mudguards are brilliant. The consideration of all of the permutations very thorough, and the comparison shots impressive. So really you just shrunk the HP set in two dimensions to get it proportionally correct, right? Indeed, spot on

That looks really good

That is most excellent all the way around! The locomotive looks great

It's great to see all of these trains together, your uncompromising attention to detail is top notch.

Excellent! With so many builders on the forum you're bound to get novel ideas when you post a work. It is always amazing what other people spot on a MOC that you just spent a few weeks/months working on. I think the EN had all cheese slopes for it's splashers so that would be prototypical (grin).

Why not moc-up a small section of the car side, maybe 8 studs long, to see how it looks in real bricks? It's helped me a lot to fine tune builds that I'm not sure will work with real bricks.

Looking good, the ingots are a great idea and it is neat to see the evolution. I can totally see the cheese slopes being too jarring too. What about a 1x2 curved sloped on the front (supported from behind with a 1x4 plate) and a 1x2 cheese slope on the back of each arch?

That's really good. The half arches over the wheels are too distracting for my eye, what would it look like with a pair of cheese bricks bracketing the arch instead of the 1x2 curved slope on one side? Beyond that, I can't imagine any pure lego solution that would improve on the design.

To be proportionate with the 6 and 8 wide road vehicles, the width of the rails and perhaps the Lego minifig, 10 or 12 wide might be an even better target, but 8 wide is enough of a jump Mention it in passing right after you tell her you bought her a horse. Exactly this and the rest of that post. Sketch something out (a quick mocup or digital build) and see if you like it.

That's some insane packing you've done with all of the electronics

Doh! and yep, BTD not BT, I must be sleeping while typing

Another amazing build, great work!

Nice work and great take on the classic Alco windows

Some amazing engineering (and I like the heart on the privy door)