zephyr1934

That is definitely an interesting prototype... for lack of a better word I'd have to say "bulldog pretty" (I like it). And as per your norm, lots of juicy details in your MOC. I like how you mixed a few normal slopes in with the curved slopes on the firebox to get the vertical edge lines.

@CaL @Roadmonkeytj @sed6 thanks for the kind words, I was going for the right form factor while capturing the essence of both Lego and Lionel. Hopefully without looking closely closely someone might not even realize that it was Lego @Eggyslav sorry about that It isn't just camelbacks, I've had problems like that on a northern even. Them darn minifigures are not even proportionate to themselves. In this case I used a 1x4x3 panel to create a two deep cavity for the "cab" while hiding the battery box behind it. That seems to be their thoughts at the closest Lego Discovery Center, I thought it amusing that we used more lego on my club display than the discovery center did. I managed to attach the IR receiver and I still don't know exactly how I made it work (grin). As for the axles, I'm trying to get rid of all of the technic axles except those on the drive wheels. For the normal trucks, I'm planning to test out the roller bearings from BMR and either cut the axles down by 5mm or use the 9v style train wheels with a hole all the way through. Thanks, though are you sure it is not what the L in Lionel stands for (grin). I started with the motor and built the rest around it. The underframe was the biggest nightmare to design... and then redesign. Not showing them up, just educating them about a still wider world (grin)

[gallery] It has been WAY TOO LONG since I've built a new steam engine. Finally happened... well... I built this engine almost a year ago but then rebuilt it last month to get the proportions better and eliminate a structural weakness. While not really based on any specific locomotive, it borrows heavily from Reading and PRR locomotives. It brings together a couple of things that I've been meaning to do for some time: a camelback, and a slope back tender (see later photos). Of course I had to work in valve gear too (grin). The engine design was one of efficient packing, with only 4 studs behind the battery box empty, Note how the IR receiver is actually holing the smokebox on (hard to tell in this image, but there is a pair of grill tiles concealing the actual receiver dome) But all of that is secondary, that was just my wish list that I pulled out and overlaid it on top of mission one: build an O-Gauge lego train. I can't imagine that I am the first person to attempt such a thing, but I haven't seen any other O-guage lego locomotives. The thing that makes this a real challenge is that you effectively have only 3 studs to work with between the rails. O-guage is about 5 mm narrower than lego gauge, so you don't even gain a half technic beam to work with. My son joined a model railroad club and they all figured me for one of those parents not interested in trains. I told them I built lego trains and got the "yeah yeah, sure sure." Then I showed up at their holiday open house last year, threw down my brand new bricktraks R120's, and watched their jaws hit the floor when my trains started running (tee hee). Still though, their space is already full with Z, N, HO, and O, so G and L are just occasional visitors to the club. They sometimes take their layouts on the road, so I wanted to have a train that I could play with when my son is at shows. So began my quest to make an O-gauge lego train. Between the cutaway screen shot above and this view looking up from below you can get a good idea of how I got the power to the wheels. The one not so obvious bit of secret sauce are the three size #8 flat washers on each axle to get the roughly 3 mm spacing necessary for the O-gauge track beyond the 3 wide frame. For the rest of the train I just grabbed two of my regular L gauge rollingstock and swapped out the trucks With the odd spacing I had to use technic axles and the drag from 12 of them is quite a bit (this train might have as much drag as my much heavier 7 car Superliner consist). Still, the L motor is happy to drag the resisting cars kicking and screaming behind. I'm looking to upgrade to roller bearing axles, but all in due time. Here I figured I had the first lego on the layout, and technically I do, but I spied some clones repurposed to good use That's the story so far, but let me leave you with a couple of gratuitous shots [full gallery]

I just stumbled on this new 4DBrix product, looks like it could really help out for 4 wide PF. Hopefully a PUp version will be coming at some point in the future.

Doh! Missed that Doh! Missed that too... brilliant!

A mod to the HP train to make it look more like the real Olton Hall would be a great asset.

That is brilliant, with peeron scans here. I could easily see the mechanism being made smaller and more discrete. Then put a gear on the opposite side to bring the bucket back up to normal position.

The prototype is a beauty, I did not know about those engines, and the MOC does it well. Only the smallest of suggestions, assuming you don't want those studs on the top rear of the tender, you could use this relatively new part to do away with them. There is this bit of track...

Indeed, the Maersk set is ripe for repainting (and usually a lot cheaper to do so). If you do not care about the PF, the long hood can easily be done in bricks instead of the large tiles too.

Congratulations to all who entered and especially to those who won. It was fascinating to see the progress from the comfort of my armchair.

Not sleek, "heavy", sleek came with the streamlined cars that replaced these riveted heavyweights (grin) Seriously though, no matter what the adjective of choice might be, very nice.

Those are the "missing pieces" prices though, right? Some elements can be WAY more expensive this route than if you buy the "set" consisting of the single element. I've tried to check what they are charging for the current PF elements on missing pieces, but they are listed as out-of-stock even for the brand new 10268 that has PF. I bet the parts packs will be cheaper than those prices, but not as cheap as the current PF counterparts. As a proxy for the individual part cost, looking at the two new PUp train sets, they both have more parts and more minifigs than the PF sets they replaced. So a small amount of the increase is possibly due to the normal bricks, perhaps some just to increasing prices overall, and the rest due to the (more expensive?) electronics. Looking at brickset, the passenger train increased by $10, while the freight train increased by $30. I would expect that the hub standalone would be less than or maybe equal to the cost of a PF battery box + a PF IR receiver, which is $28. Hopefully the cost of a hub + rechargeable battery will not be much more than a PF LiPo + IR receiver (net of $65), or $37 for the rechargeable battery assuming that it drops in to the hub... but all is speculation now, who knows where Lego will put the actual prices (on rare occasions they are even lower than one would think, e.g., PF XL motor being cheaper than an L) and I am only suspecting that a rechargeable battery will be coming.

It is great to see you (and others) stepping up and providing top notch models for the AFOL where TLG is not doing so.

Indeed, sorry to hear. Though if you polish up one or two of the designs you might be able to sell them as instructions or secure a commission that would allow you to build two+ copies (one for you and one for the customer). As for the war baby, looks great, though I would suggest making the rungs on the ladders black. It does look to be white or silver in some of the photos, but to my eye the white plates draw too much attention given the fact that they are so much larger with the limited resolution of lego bits at this scale.

I think the Maersk and EN were good enough sellers, but that was in part because they had high part-out value with rare colors.

I had never seen a high hood GP30, how odd looking (the prototype, not your build). There is a lot of great detail that becomes so much clearer in the lighter colors of the UP renders. There are some neat tricks I've not seen before on the trucks and the ends of the engine.

Yet another incredible MOC, the detailing is unbelievable and some really great parts usage (looks almost as if you picked up that arched window and said to yourself, "I know what this would be good for..."). Indeed, there is a wide variety of interests in this forum and there are almost as many different "end goals" as there are active participants in this forum. So I doubt anyone would find fault at your objectives. And you are right, Lego is not the medium of choice for the highest realism, though I would argue that many of the top Lego MOC's have overtaken some of the O gauge and G gauge stuff (just the low end stuff, not the high end models). But getting back to your builds, here is one thought to consider. Why build in 6 or 8 wide if you want a nice looking static display? As a mostly 6 wide builder, I sometimes drool at the detail that 8 wide builders can squeeze in. If you are not aiming to run the MOC's on Lego track, you might want to consider 12 or 16 wide either for strictly display or perhaps build for running on G gauge track. Some of the builds I've seen at this size can be mistaken for commercial mode railroad cars.

The engine could easily be mistaken for a high end O scale locomotive, can't wait to see more details on the cars, they look great in the videos

Indeed, I have no doubt that if I asked for a replacement part that they would be happy to do so (they even tossed in a free crossover track with my order). I have not yet made the request because I figure at some point I will place another order. As long as you are not pinning the switches to a baseplate the adapter piece works fine in either left or right, but for the left branching crossover the tracks are off by about one stud in one direction and half a stud in the other. The adapter piece is the same if you flip it around 180° (rotate "/" by 180° and you still get "/"). So either my order was miss-packed or the one direction adapter piece was an accidental oversight since that could have been easily overlooked since it seems like they mostly do not use baseplates, in all of their videos and demos they are laying the track on the floor or ground. So far all but one of my trains can negotiate R40 curves and the lone exception can still negotiate R40 switches, so I do not have an immediate operational need for the R104 switches beyond the fact that they are far more aesthetically pleasing. Still, the one thing holding me back from ordering the R104 switches is that now my outer curves are BrickTracks R120. A double R104 and R120 diverging switch would be an incredible piece though.

Agreed, a very nice build in its own right. The outside captures the look and then the details with the track map and computer terminals inside really make it pop!

What are your thoughts about the switch mechanism itself? I have some of the TrixBrix R40 switches I bought for the ability to have a continuous curve or a crossover. They have an adapter piece to join two of the R40 switches for a crossover. The adapter piece has a small jog in it, unfortunately, they sent the same adapter piece for both right and left crossovers, so the right one has the correct spacing but the left one does not. It looks like they only have the one adapter piece from the examples on their store. At any rate, I have not really tested these much, but I did use them for a dog-bone single track at our last show. The "spring" action in the switch itself seems to have a large variance, some were quite stiff and might derail light trains, others were loose enough that we had some problems with trains picking the switch as they went over. I can't say for certain that our problems were due to the switches though, the turnaround loops were on uneven tables. I need to do another trial on a flat floor, perhaps over the holidays. Anyway, thanks for the review!

Very nice little steamer you have there, great work!

You are prolific with your great steam builds, another great MOC

You could try worldcat to locate a physical copy of the book at a library, or perhaps someone in a local lug might have a copy. Though I would agree with an earlier post that it should be easy enough to reverse engineer your own version.

A great build of a great prototype, excellent work! I bet the cost is less to build this engine, still in the 100's but probably more like $200 (still nothing to sneeze at). There are some builders who will make 2-5 copies of a MOC and then sell all but one on ebay or bricklink. If you ever feel inclined to realize your creations in brick you might want to try that for yourself with a small build (passenger car?) and see if it works for you. You could also sell your digital design. Some people might pirate it (or try to sell physical copies) but there are enough honest people that some would likely pay.