zephyr1934

Clever!

You could use a few of theses for the cars

Nothing new about that, when they introduced the "buffers with plow" on the BNSF locomotive unless your surface was completely flat the buffer would literally squeal as it went over a ridge. Then when the introduced the Emerald Night, well there they got everything perfect (grin). But again, they are manufacturing for kids, not for a bunch of AFOLs looking for a sophisticated interlocking brick system. That's part of the fun, figuring out how to surmount the challenges of building with a child's toy. (grin) As far as I am concerned the standard lego train wheels are second tier (be them 9v or RC/PF). The roller bearings have revolutionized my heavy trains. The basic idea is to use tiny roller bearings on train axles, there are a lot of different home built ideas (and that is where all this started) but at least two sites offer pre-assembled options, BrickTrainDepot and BMR Currently they use BT axles and lego RC wheels (which are now an endangered species), but as I understand BT is in the process of making new wheels for these, at which point the roller bearings should become a lot easier (the RC wheels have to be glued on, the BT wheels should just slip on). But all of the info on BT wheels are second hand, I might have some of it wrong or I might have accidentally made it up in my sleep (in other words, keep your eyes out for official announcements but until then, don't count on anything)

Thanks @Cwetqo for sharing. If the video is the complete testing setup there is a fundamental control problem the experiment. 1) they should have swapped the motors, battery boxes, and batteries between the two trains several times, e.g., at each battery change, to ensure that there are no effects from the particular motor, controller or battery. And to do so several times in case one set degrades faster than the other. Even better, do it with multiple units (but still keep sharing them) 2) at least in the video the new wheels went clockwise around the loop while the old wheels went counterclockwise. Going counterclockwise around the curve you will encounter more friction due to the connections between the track segments slight jog inward on the outer rail. Whereas going clockwise the slight jog is outward on the outer rail. The design setup also favors the new wheels, there is almost no straight track traversed. So the fact that the new wheels turn independently they should perform better on mostly curves, especially with three weight bricks on each car. For their objective of testing what a child might encounter this seems like a very reasonable setup. But it is not representative of what an AFOL might encounter... at least not the type of AFOL reading this forum. As pointed out in an earlier comment, if there was a lot of straight track in the test setup I bet the old wheels would have come out ahead, but if you just buy an off the shelf train set, you will have mostly curves. So the test seems fair from the prospective of selling train sets for children and I like the prospect that it will mean more trains in the future. Fortunately we have the roller bearing wheels to fill the niche for AFOLs.

You don't need to cut up lego, the bearings also fit in technic holes (well, with a little force). A few places are selling the parts assembled, e.g., here. If you just need the axles, you can get them here. Right now you would have to glue the wheels on the end of the axles (assuming you are using RC/PF era wheels) but word on the street is that someone is working on a press-on variant of the wheel.

Forget MILS, build the train! (grin) Looks great.

Wow, huge and impressive! Great job

Forget about going to 11... this one goes up to 15!

Or for bigger builds quatro under duplo Heh heh heh, I like it. Another option is that you can charge venues for your display, and use that money to reinvest in your display. It is not unreasonable to ask $100-$200 for a small display. And only build landscape if you want to build landscape. If you start building out of obligation rather than out of your own interest, you will burn out. It is also okay to display without MILS, I've done three shows this year with just track on tables (including BW) and was not kicked out of any of them.

Round that up to 6.8 and you've got 6 wide plus 2 snotted plates. I've built several cars at that width before.

Yes, if you are not in a LUG and you are thinking of building a lot, LUGBULK is the way to go. Can't discuss any details about the prices, but they are usually a good deal. If you do shows but not in a LUG, gather the minimum number of friends and make your own LUG. One of the big reasons Lego created LUGBULK was specifically stuff like MILS that that support displays. Also keep in mind that you do not need to use new base plates, look for beat up road plates on BL or wherever. If you are not a purist, you could buy some of the clone brand baseplates (I think I've seen some that are 2.5 ft x 10 in, if so, you could cut them down to 32x32). If you really are not a purist you could even use M*** B*** for the filler, I bet you could get that for the price of shipping from folks around here. I'm not endorsing the use of off brand parts, but man, when I made a few road plates with streetcar tracks I was stunned at the price for a 32x32, that could have made a nice train car. If it is any consolation, where we often use baseplates or MILS for displays, I believe Legoland usually uses dirt and the Discovery Centers use painted plywood.

Actually the thread is not that old, but anyway, probably the cheapest 6x28 train baseplate is blue and can be found here. While the 6x24 looks to be cheapest in dark gray (but black isn't much more expensive) found here.

The risk I see is that my rods and stickers get booted from bricklink in one fell swoop with all other custom items because a large company has little choice but to spread uniform blanket policy. It would kind of suck, a moderate hassle for me and a micro-loss for bricklink- having given the first feedback for several customers I think my rods have introduced several buyers to bricklink. Don't worry though, the rods will continue to be available with or without bricklink.

Thank you, my job here is done. No, seriously though, I am glad that it was taken exactly as I intended and I am glad to see it reposted. It is the essence of my thinking on the matter. Every time I sell a rod, Lego has sold 100's of bricks for the rest of that steam engine. A lot of the official Lego train hobby grew out of AFOL creations (the Super Chief, the inclusion of steam engine wheels, etc.). I have heard that Lego also likes some of the 3rd party parts because they serve niche markets that in turn result in even more Lego brick sales. I also see parallels with the past, like when you could buy third party parts from S@H that had been endorsed by Lego (I'm thinking Hitechnic sensors for the NXT).

I would imagine there could be issues with Lego owned BL listing expired licenses like NBA, Thomas the Tank Engine, etc.

My BL store has a new banner, "For each custom rod I sell it helps Lego sell about 250 bricks and it helps make one AFOL happy" I hope they have a pathway for custom parts to be reviewed and potentially accepted for listing. If not, my rods will find a new home elsewhere on the internet.

That is a really cool prototype and a great MOC thereof

Oh what fun it is to ride in a... lego train! What a great little town of MOCs

Wow, very nice... and complicated too.

While it might be uncommon, there are still a few bridges like that in service over small spans. I can think of at least one, though they added a two plank walkway + railing on one side. Great scene BTW, especially the attention paid to the water.

Those are some tricky angles you've got there, great work. So how did you do the diaphragms, are those grill tiles?

I'm not sure this is helpful, but what I did long ago with the RCX brick was to do an infinite loop. At the start of the loop I checked the instantaneous status of all of the sensors, and clocks and whatnot that I wanted to check. These checks were done serially, one after the other. For each one the only branch I took would be to set a variable and then quickly return to the main loop and move to the next. This way, I sampled all of the sensors before taking any action that would keep me from hearing any of the sensors, and no branching to respond to a given sensor that might cause me to skip another sensor. Then the last half of the loop, I would progress serially through each of the variables, if true I would take the branch to respond and reset the variable or if false just skip this action, then return to the loop to check the next variable. Like checking the sensors, the responses were serial and after each one I returned to the main loop. I was also able to implement timed actions, in this case, the last step in the loop would start the timed action, and the first "action" in the loop after checking the sensors was to see if the timer had run out and I needed to stop the timed action. In my case I was controlling two semaphores with one RCX brick. Each semaphore took a little time to go up/down. So I checked to see if a train was present on track 1, then on track 2. Then, for track 1 if the signal was up and the variable indicated a train was present the RCX would start moving signal down, set a variable to indicate the status of the semaphore and start a timer for the motion but then return to the loop without waiting for the timer to end, ditto for track 2. Next, check to see if the move timer had run out for track 1, if so stop moving that semaphore, ditto for track 2 (I used bands to serve as clutches so I expected to be just a little late). My assumption was that it would be a couple of cycles before the "stop moving" was implemented, but I never tracked it. Next, if track 1 is occupied reset the "timeout" timer, ditto for track 2. If the timeout timer for track 1 made it all the way to the end then start moving semaphore up and start the move timer but return to the loop without waiting for the move to end, ditto for track 2. A few thoughts, first, how are you going to propel the train? If it is by the EV3, then problem solved, it should know which way it is going without any further sensing. Second thought, to let you keep progressing on this project while you scratch your head to determine the direction of travel, either make it be a one way vehicle (that just looks like it is bidirectional) or have a selection at startup where you press a "button" to choose the direction of travel. I don't think it is unreasonable to require human input for that binary decision. The button could be virtual or you could build a touch sensor in to make the selection mechanically. Third thought, there was an IR sensor for the NXT, if that ever made it to the EV3 and you are using an IR receiver to control the train's motion, perhaps you could also have the EV3 "listen in" to the same IR commands. Though the IR receiver was really low power, so you had to be within half a meter or something like that before it would sense the IR controller.

Great use of the window pieces to build up the wall on the palace car. Looking good with lots of great detailing throughout both cars. Quoting Johnny Cash, "I'd get it one piece at a time and it wouldn't cost me a dime"

Oh, that wasn't meant to be critical, you had just opened by mentioning a deliberate anachronism with the sleeping car. The cars and train look sharp. The one sad thing about detailing the heck out of the inside is that so few people get to see all of that meticulous work. But you know its there and you've got places like this where we'll marvel at all the effort you put in.

Looking good! If anything, the dining car might be the more anachronistic, I THINK dining halls at stations were the norm in that era (Harvey Girls).