zephyr1934

Take that to shows for the kids with touchy hands! Brilliant.

That is hilarious, awesome and insanely cool. Indeed, like a cartoon from the 1930's. Still though, I just wish you had pushed it to the breaking point at the end, with bits and pieces flying off (I noticed that one of the telegraph poles was kind enough to abide with my anarchistic wishes). The clouds were a an excellent touch too.

That is insane!

If the locomotive is powered you probably do not want to do that, the axle will slip out of the axle hole and the engine will run away on its own. Technic half beams would work though. Actually, you can do dual gauge using the old 4.5v rail, but you can only turn one way... Both 4Dbrix and Trixbrix offer narrow gauge track too.

You have been prolific, and indeed, this might be the best of the three (presumably reflecting the learning curve from one to the next). Many Lego steam engines only have one driven axle, so powering two should not cause troubles, but only put traction bands on the powered axles... actually, if you are including the blind driver, might not be worth powering that one. What is critical to prevent binding is that you quarter the wheels (rods 90° out of phase between one side and the other). Now one potential problem you might run into with this build is the very long wheel base between the flanged driver wheels. At a minimum extra friction in the curves, and potentially jamming up entirely on R40 curves. So I would suggest doing a quick and dirty test build of just the wheels to make sure it handles whatever curves and switches you plan to throw at it. Might be better to swap the blind an flanged on the first two axles. As for rods, if you are looking at me, yeah, I can do any unusual arrangement you might have. Either PM me here or drop me a bricklink message if/when you would like to discuss further.

LDraw, LDD, or Stud.io are perfect ways to express grad creations for low cost! If you are building on a budget, you can always focus on building something small but in hyper detail, e.g., a small engine pulling a specific car, or what have you.

You just keep making it better and better, amazing work!

You have turned into a prolific designer. The build looks great. Two small suggestions, first, the front-most 2x2x0.67 curved slope on the jacket seems too much, I would replace the cheese brick above with a 1x2x0.67 curved slope and a 1x1 tile below the clip (like the other clips on the grab iron), then maybe use a 1x1 panel to simulate a step down from the running boards and a cheese brick in front of that to preserve the curvature. Second, the prototype shows a gentle tapering support under the roof, while the moc is just flat. Perhaps you could capture this essence by extending the 1 plate tall brown frame below the roof 2-3 studs towards the back?

very nice indeed!

That's a nice looking locomotive

Nice! (and I just noticed your great solution for the ladder to the cab)

That is a great little engine and the propulsion system that you built in is insane! Amazing work Try some old fashioned debugging. (1) I assume you know about quartering the wheels, if not, good chance that is a problem and see the linked image after the next quote for more details on quartering. Otherwise, next, (2) remove the rods altogether, does that help? If so, my first guess is that the tecnic axles on the rods are slowly slipping out. To verify, test using replacement technic beams or bricks for the rods, if that fixes the problem then you know. I had this same problem on this locomotive, I had a technic beam handy to "true up" the rods every time I charged the battery. You might not need washers to solve the problem, note in this image how I used technic bushings to keep the wheels slightly off of the backing bricks (also has a note about quartering in case that was your problem).

Thank you all for the feedback so far, please keep the thoughts coming if you have any insights or opinions. Meanwhile, surprisingly, I might be forced to use dark blue based on part availability, but we'll see how it all pans out. For being a slightly irregular box, I'm finding that the P42dc is amazingly difficult to make look right in lego. Small angles in different directions is crazy.

It all depends on what you want to do. I would recommend building in the direction that is of the greatest interest to you. Some people go for hyper detailed "prototypical accurate," but most of those folks have built dozens of train MOCs. In fact if that is the destination you are ultimately aiming for, I'd suggest viewing it like writing, start out aiming for a pretty good rough draft. Don't worry if your first train MOC is a little too long, or too narrow, or whatever. Maybe try to get one or two of the distinctive features spot on. Then in later drafts (potentially years later) come back and bring in more details after playing with it and you start either thinking of solutions to the problems you've encountered or you spot how others solved those problems. The key to good writing is actually good editing, the same is true for MOCs. In either case both writing (building) and editing (rebuilding) are skills that take time to learn and you only learn by doing. Many folks do not even think about prototypical accuracy, there is nothing wrong with that either. That can present way more challenges- but still many of these challenges are centered on how do you get the detail that you want in to the model. In most cases where do you start is either picking a subject, or upon spotting a part, "gee, this would make a great ___". So you've picked a subject, a 4-8-2 steamer. Not an easy challenge for your first train MOC, especially if you are aiming for the standard R-40 lego curves. You might want to insert a few intermediate objectives- make an 0-6-0 work, then make an 0-8-0 work. Why? Because the mechanicals of a steam engine can be a massive challenge. You do not have to make either of these switch engines look like an actual steam engine (no boiler, no cab, don't even worry about color, just worry about getting them to work). In this way, you will have to work out how to do the wheels (e.g., flanged-blind-flanged-blind), get quartering working, deal with clearance issues, and figure out how you want to do the motor, battery box, and receiver. All things you will need for the 4-8-2. Next, extend your chassis for the 0-8-0 to be about as long as you think the 4-8-2 will be and build one or two layers of bricks as wide as you anticipate the rear of the cab will be, and build up a flatcar "tender" with a similar layer of bricks simulating the front of the tender. Now you can test and refine to make sure it goes through curves. Next, figure out how to get the pilot and trailing truck to work on the locomotive on the curves you plan to run on. Once you have all of that figured out, now you have your constraints for everything that comes on top (boiler, cab, etc.) or at least you know that you need to tweak your frame to accommodate something you want or need up top. If you are going for prototypical accuracy, certainly know your target dimensions, but don't worry about bending one of them to make the other two fit. Keep your prototype frame around (or at least documented in photo or CAD format) so that you can use it for test building as you work out details of the rest of the locomotive.

Wow, that's some crazy workings you had going on, but it came out great!

My thoughts are turning to designs for a contemporary Amtrak train and I'm stuck on the blue. The closest Amtrak train that passes my house is 2 hrs away and it does so in the middle of the night, so first hand inspection isn't going to happen any time soon. To my eye the on-line photos vary in tone, falling between lego blue and lego dark blue... but not a perfect match to either. The kind folks at Wikipedia note that the current Phase V blue is, "darker than Phases I–III, but lighter than IV." If my designs ever go anywhere, ultimately I suspect I will be constrained by part availability, but I'm still curious what folks think is the best lego color for the current Amtrak paint scheme.

Aw you all, you're the greatest. @Roadmonkeytj, yellow has been on my mind for these, next time I get close to yellow I'll probably give it a try. If there's specific demand we could discuss via PM.

@Carefree_Dude, thanks for the kind words. The suggestion is a good one as well. So far I have not had any problems like that, but I'll keep that in my back pocket in case anyone does report such a thing. For the main design there is actually a cascade of three successive plates where a given cylinder is held on by only two studs. The clutch should be strong enough to hold on the cylinder itself and the 4L bars are very low resistance for the "piston" sliding on them. Anyway, if more clutch were needed, the round cylinder alternate design would be well suited for it. The 2x3 plates and the 2x2 plate with pin in this image being replaced with a 2x8 technic plate and the pair of 2x2 plates with two studs (or are they tiles with two studs?) being replaced with a 2x2 round plate, and then use a technic axle pin to connect to the pilot truck.

I've just added one more train related minifig tool to my shop, the classic step box used to help passengers on and off trains for centuries. Available here. As with the lantern and oil can, the real part is less grainy then the photo suggests.

The gallery showing the steps for my MOD is now open (link also added to my original post) Note that the alternative cylinder build can be found here. Comments and questions are certainly welcome

Hey, I'm quite fond of retro feel of the original with standard slopes. It does an amazing job of showing what was possible. But the curved slope version is nice in a contemporary sense. To my eye the buffers seem to be too high. But if my eyes are correct then to get them in the right place you might have to put part of the "front" on the trucks.

I don't remember for sure whether the pin on the bogie plates is long enough to fit through two technic plates- if it clicks when you insert it, then it is probably long enough. Regardless, I'd probably just use one technic plate. I prefer the 8 long for greater clutch to the model above, but for your train it probably isn't critical. If you can work red or yellow in with the design, you can stick with the currently available colors of the bogie plate at least for those cars. However, both the 2x2 and 4x4 turntables work fine too.

Wow, the 4.5v prototype is easily recognizable and I would even say that it still stands up even today. Now the retro build I would say that feels more like 12v era rather than 9v (too many bricks to be 9v, grin). The bright green is probably the only thing that would not have been period accurate. Whatever the era, they look sharp on their own without considering the part availability and unbelievable in the "retro" category with the limited part palette.

Fine! I'm going to take my legos and go home! (grin)

Until they removed the weight on the drivers as they offloaded the battery box to its own boxcar. Still, why not 6 C cells in series for PF?