zephyr1934

Great work! Back in the day of only R44 curves 8 wide was a challenge to get looking nice, but now with wide radius curves it looks like you are making great use of the flexibility and pushing beyond the limits of 8 wide. Finally a train that looks good against the 6 wide road vehicles that Lego is producing these days.

Nice!

I was only able to get the link to work by clicking on the "R" in the first word of the original post, but after that small bit of work I must say WOW, that's an incredible build! You clearly put a lot of time into this and the payoff really shows. Then all sorts of little easter eggs (e.g., the Gremlin hiding on the underside of the rotary). Did I spy a loading facility in the background of the video?

What a great display, the elevated track is very nice, as are many of the structures and of course the trains.

One of the things that I do with the rods that I sell directly is that I actually test every hole (well, except for the one long washers) to make sure they have clutch and free rotation. If they don't, I fix it. I also spot check to make sure the length is correct, but it has been so consistent that I no longer need to check. Regardless, if a problem slipped by, I would refund or replace. (Free replacement also applies to rods that fail in the line of duty as long as they were not abused.) As we have all seen with great instructions that someone has distributed freely, some scammer then takes them and sells the model or the instructions claiming it was their own. So I do not plan to distribute the artwork. Likewise, I have put a lot of work into developing the designs and the above quality control. At this point I probably have made every obvious regular arrangements of holes on the rods up to 21 studs long. But I don't charge anything extra to generate unique, uneven spacings as folks need them. Indeed, putting together the parts for a specific order to post to an online print house would take a little time, but I THINK that would be offset by saving the time it would take me to finish and pack the rods.

Looking good! And it is always neat to see a MOC in front of the prototype

Unfortunately there is no cheap solution, as you enumerated, the resin printing brings in a lot more labor time. Also, one of the biggest points of putting these on shapeways or Sculpteo would be to overcome some of the costs and hassles of international shipping- incoming customs can be a major pain for the receiver in many (most?) countries.

I've started exploring Sculpteo. Their storefronts are not nearly as well developed as shapeways and I don't think they lend themselves to being easily discovered. As such, I don't think it would be worth developing a comprehensive "market" there. But if there is someone who wants me to upload specific parts to fabricate on Sculpteo I'm up for exploring it. Just drop me a PM here in EB. Their gray seems a lot nicer than shapeways' gray. Of course any parts you might print from Sculpteo is like shapeways- I cannot do quality control on the parts, so customers would have to be prepared to drill out the holes as needed. Meanwhile, I have made an advance over the motor truck sides in the first post of this thread, see new thread here. The old version is presently on shapeways (not the new version), but like Sculpteo, I can upload specific parts on demand.

Thanks for the kind words Okay, I've taken some pictures and started a new thread.

Recently I made some "three axle" sides for the standard Lego train motor. I've talked about these in two different threads, but both of those were focused on other topics, so I'm starting a dedicated thread here. The first version had a faux middle wheel molded in to the side. The non-turning wheel is just a little higher off the rail and the flange a little smaller so that it can negotiate standard Lego switches and curves. Trouble is, the faux wheel is the same material as the "frame," so it would look a little odd in gray. To solve this problem I've recently finished up v2, that has a hanger to hold a Lego wheel. So this time the middle wheel is the real deal. Like v1, the wheel is slightly raised so that it too can negotiate switches and R40 curves. This image shows both how the wheel hanger works and the way the 6 long technic axles are discretely covered Unfortunately these are still stupid expensive to fabricate. With v2 probably retailing on the order of $13 per motor side in black or gray. I don't like that price either, so I'm still searching for cheaper fabrication options. For now I am not going to list them in my store because I suspect the price is prohibitive for many. But they are now officially available by request [contact me via EB (zephyr1934) or bricklink (zephyr) messages]. If I am wrong and there is enough demand I will start stocking them. Meanwhile, comments and suggestions welcome.

Incredible! A great looking MOC from far away, and even better close up. And all of that without realizing that it is prototypically accurate. While I like all the details (and use of old windows), the classic space terminals were a particularly nice touch

That is really good!

That is hilarious!

@ScotNick I'll look into Sculpteo and see what I can make of it. So is that generally a better shop for Europeans?

You are too kind, but you are welcome. The the right lettering in the form of stickers are just as important (if not more so) for adding pop to a train MOC. Seeing your NP lettered so cleanly is really sharp. Meanwhile, I keep looking at the steps on the front of the running boards, using the pair of neck brackets is so eloquent.

Well, it is also a way to keep the build doable. Simply requiring people to quarter the wheels is difficult to clearly communicate to all builders. If you do not appreciate that suitability, at best, you spend an hour on customer service to figure out that you need the 1/4 turn for the rods, at worst you never seek help and go away thinking you wasted $300 on a set that doesn't work. So both the HP train and Disney train have "rods" that move, but do not require quartering. For non-train heads (and even many train heads) that is great. The mechanics to get rods to work is a lot more complicated, e.g., quartering, and also figuring out how to keep the rods from interfering with the pilot truck. I'll be taking a stab at that at some point in the near future, but I can totally understand why Lego did not want to include that detail in this set where most of the buyers would not even notice the difference.

Lots of great little details in that build and a nice mix of old and new parts.

Nope, a modification to make it easy to run on lego curves.

If you are using standard lego curves (a good place to start) I'd suggest sticking with 6 wide for now. As it is most passenger cars and modern freight cars would have to be truncated. For example, the superchief cars were 32 studs long but they should have been on the order of 50 studs long at 6 wide to be fully proportional, at 8 wide they should be about 60 studs long. In contrast, a quarter turn of standard R44 is on the order of 64 studs long. You can make the cars take the turn but they look REALLY silly. Depending on how deep you get into the hobby, you might eventually want more detail than 6 wide provides and also make the plunge to get wider radius 3rd party curves. So at some point you can make the jump to 8 wide. The one caveat is that steam is hard to do in 6 wide. All of the lego steam engine sets with rods are at least 8 wide at the rods, the EN was 10 wide at the rods. I don't remember off the top of my head which (if any) had 8 wide cabs though. Personally, most of my trains are 6 wide but most of my steam engines are 8 wide. I then build a 7 wide tender to ease the transition. Ultimately though, build what you like, and if you don't like what you build, rebuild it. Oh, and as for future lego trains, if the Disney train is a success, it will probably be available for a few years and during that time I doubt if lego would come out with another AFOL train. If it isn't a success, you can bet that it will be a very long time until they do another AFOL train. So probably no worth worrying about future sets.

Actually that motor side is already available on shapeways, see this thread. However, as Roadmonkeytj noted, I've designed and tested version 2 (as a result of discussions we had). This v2 replaces the faux wheel with a bar to hang a stock lego wheel on, thus, allowing me to also fabricate these in gray. The bad news is that both versions are stupid expensive (though v2 slightly less so). In either case, I can also fabricate them, but it takes a couple of weeks and the price would be similar to that on shapeways. As a result of the high cost I incur, unless there is much demand I will not stock them pre-made. I'm still looking for ways to bring the price down and have made some inquiries, but nothing tangible yet.

That is looking good.

Excellent work and great presentation- I particularly like the cutaway seen where you can even see how the trucks work (that is efficient engineering to get the gearing and sliding axle like that). Also a great reproduction of the prototype. Just one question/thought, is there any chance you could move the front cab window up, or at least the bottom of the window? On the prototype it looks like the bottom of the front window should be roughly in line with the bottom of the side windows.

Thanks for the kind words. But I must say, the prototype is incredible. I try to picture what it must have been like walking into union station and having 3-10 different railroads with trains up to 20 cars long in uniform paint schemes. As for shows, I typically only do one big show a year (NMRA or Brickworld). The rest are local shows, so last weekend was the Great Train Show.

The interior is incredible! The opening doors are fantastic and the mail slots are spot on. Great work!

I finally have a moment to come back and talk about my remaining MOCs from BW. Having been dragged in to the modern age of railroading by my container cars and my son's contemporary interests, I felt obligated to make a Northern Pacific heritage unit to go with my North Coast Limited cars. Sadly, I did not get the chance to run this train at the show, but it did take a madden voyage this past weekend at another show. My inspiration for making this heritage unit was sparked by this design. My last new MOC was a PCC streetcar, complete with PUP control. It has a lot of detail, including a fare box in the front window. Ironically while I got a lot of stuff right in my opinion, I set out with the objective of getting the widow's peak in the front window right and I never really got that at all. And if you have a streetcar, you need streetcar tracks too. One thing I learned from that experience is that I hate building roadways The full gallery of my MOC's that debuted at BW can be found here.