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zephyr1934

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Everything posted by zephyr1934

  1. zephyr1934
    Now that's a real knuckle coupler... Then there's the forthcoming BMR couplers
  2. zephyr1934
    What is wrong with someone wanting to keep their own design to themselves? You never ask the magician how they did their trick. Mind you, there are plenty of lego train magicians around here who are happy to share their tricks (I would like to think myself included, e.g., this but replace the custom rods with technic beams). Whether a model was built freehand in brick or carefully laid out digitally, it is perfectly fine if someone does not want to share all of their details. Even for people who would be inclined to share there are still many reasons not to, e.g., the digital build is just a first draft that is revised when building in real bricks, or maybe there are rare parts in the build that the designer really does want to keep private so that they do not disappear from the market. At any rate, if you look around you can find a lot of really nice steam locomotive instructions for free or cheap online (including throughout the train tech forum) Holger's book is amazing, full of tips for even advanced builders, has instructions for two different steam engines, and best of all for the US/UK, has been translated to English Another good place to start is the RailBricks archive
  3. zephyr1934
    Amazing work, and well deserving the Brick Train Award it earned.
  4. zephyr1934
    The EN is a fantastic set. Most AFOL's only buy a couple of sets a year and do not dabble much in MOCs.
  5. zephyr1934
    Amazing work! She looks fantastic. Just wondering, will it handle standard lego switches? (e.g., at shows I use R88+ curves for the mainline but R40 switches to save space and $$ for the yards)
  6. zephyr1934
    Thanks for the kind words. I am not too familiar with the world of O-gauge and in particular the specific variants of rail. The photos at the start of this thread were taken at a local model train club and I've run the train in my son's "tube rail" I believe it is called (the old school O-gauge track). I suspect that more realistic two rail O-gauge has shorter height in the rails. I'm not sure how to get around that, things I would start with are replacing the traction bands on powered wheels with similarly sized o-rings for plumbing (google "o-rings lego trains Eurobricks," should yield more info) to gain a few mm. Then, I believe Big Ben's Bricks small wheels have a smaller flange than lego wheels, but the technic axles have a HUGE friction drag. So before going to roller bearings it took an L motor to move 3 cars. The setup I have works, but not "great" because the running surface on the lego wheels is a lot narrower than the standard o-gauge wheels, so it generates binding friction on curves. In short, you might be better sticking with o-gauge trucks, or perhaps o-gauge wheels attached to lego trucks for the cars.
  7. zephyr1934
    Amazing work, and who knew that playing with lego would require that much soldering? (grin)
  8. zephyr1934
    Aren't the magnetic couplers sufficient? I killed a new 9v train motor that way in 2 days at a show. I bet they have a capacitor or similar in them to smooth out the pulses. Trouble is, they don't do track power. But, burn out the 9v motor, retrofit with the motor some of the innards of a PF or PU motor and good to go, or turn a dead 9v into a PF power pickup using the 9v to PF plug on a connecting wire.
  9. zephyr1934
    Simply amazing!
  10. zephyr1934
    Looking top notch, as usual. Lots of clever parts usage everywhere (will there be frog legs for dinner?). I assume the rear of the oil bunker will be using 2x2 triangle tiles rather than the corner tiles shown here, no? On the heavyweight cars, for the RPO there has got to be a way to make the doors only one brick deep. I suppose the easiest way would be to do what you do only with the 1x1 brackets (especially since you do not have to worry about color availability), but presumably like the triangle tiles those are not in LDD. It would also be nice if on the top of the door windows you had a plate set back 1/2 stud to frame out the window and match the door below. The roof of the heavyweights seems too tall to my eye, by maybe two plates
  11. zephyr1934
    LUG's are not just for help, it is a great social group (of course it all depends on the specific personalities, i.e., results may vary) with all sorts of useful resources (including discounted or even free lego at times) and typically the opportunity to show your handy work publicly (I have now shown my "work" in all of the major museums in my town, grin, of course it was but a small part of a much larger layout)
  12. zephyr1934
    Welcome Dan, 60198 is probably as good a place as any to start into lego trains (the Disney train is also a good start), if you don't have one or the other by Black Friday keep watching lego shop at home, I think both went for a significant discount for one of the BF days last year. You might also want to look into your local LUG, it's hard to beat having fellow lego fans nearby.
  13. zephyr1934
    Do you have any plans to also produce instructions for matching cabooses? Obviously NOT included i the regular price of the loco, and probably not even a set, but if they were available in the BTD store to buy I bet a lot of the loco buyers would eventually purchase instructions and stickers for a matching caboose. Or maybe that could be a stretch goal, if enough copies of the set are sold in a given variant then you (or someone else at BTD) will produce instructions for a matching caboose that will be available separately from BTD.
  14. zephyr1934
    If cleaning is a challenge, then prevention is the other thing to think about. I don't think the ikea boxes are air tight. So maybe try a more expensive storage box that is air tight or a large ziploc bag. Just try one box/bag first to test if it works. Use an equal number of track segments in the new container and one of your current boxes. Compare the degradation of the rails in the new container against those in the simple storage containers. Desiccant in the sealed container is another possibility.
  15. zephyr1934
    That is an amazing build and poised to be among the best steam engines money can buy. It will look amazing pulling 20+ hoppers.
  16. zephyr1934
    If you search for "lego trains roller bearings" you will probably find a lot of hits. There is one roller bearing that is just the right size to both fit a lego train axle and make a tight fit into a technic hole. Lots of people have built these up on their own. BrickTracks will sell you wheels and axles individually (probably the cheapest source), but you have to source your own bearings BTD and BMR will sell you fully assembled sets They really are amazing for heavy trains
  17. zephyr1934
    My train club keeps our 9v track in a trailer, so it gets both temperature and humidity extremes. The 9v track always needs cleaning when set up for a show. We went a couple of years without using the 9v track and then pulled it out for a show last year. My trains only moved 1 or 2 track sections before stopping. I used a pencil eraser like this one: 1) do a single pass with an eraser to clean the top inside corner of both rails (as per above, that's the only spot where the pickup wheels actually contact the rail) 2) put power to about 1/2 3) place a 9v motor (no model) on the track near the power connector and wherever the motor stops, pick it up and clean both rails more 4) place the motor upstream of the spot I just cleaned and repeat until it is able to make a loop (it will still have some "jerky" spots) 5) put a real train on the same track (more weight to give it momentum) and let it run, that seems to clean up the jerky spots. One word of warning, in the past I used a softer eraser (white and really squishy), while it worked just as good, I then left the eraser sitting against a baseplate for many months. Chemicals leached into the baseplate and deformed some of the studs. I doubt it would be a problem with the "droppings" from the eraser but definitely was an issue from the actual eraser.
  18. zephyr1934
    While I never noticed any lack of details before your most recent additions, now that you mention it that detailing really helps the overall look. I know, its like you need a printed checklist of all the little things that could be out of place if you look at the model funny. Still though, glad it happened otherwise I would never have noticed your clever solution for a dummy coupler that I'll probably borrow.
  19. zephyr1934
    Thanks, and yes, that makes sense. I was thrown off by the two sample images on BBB's webpage that show tight spacing between XXL drivers. There are obscured half stud offsets in there.
  20. zephyr1934
    Looks amazing and quite the speed demon
  21. zephyr1934
    Looking good Two motors would help with the power, some weight over the motor (e.g., a roll of 0.01 coins) would help with traction, roller bearings on the car axles would help with the friction, and wide radius curves would help with the resistance. If you already have a similar locomotive (in terms of power, but not necessarily external design) then you might want experiment with that to make sure you get the pull you need before you start investing in a new locomotive that might have insufficient pull.
  22. zephyr1934
    Is the minimum spacing between BBB XXL drivers 5 studs, the same as the XL drivers?
  23. zephyr1934
    Amazing work! (as usual) I too would like to see video, it would also be neat to see a photo of the engine in an R88 curve to see how you made it flex.
  24. zephyr1934
    Nice!
  25. zephyr1934
    That is insanely cool! I always knew something like that was possible and it was on my todo list for quite some time (you know, between becoming an Olympic athlete and chasing my dream of becoming a professional signer). Thanks for sharing.
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