zephyr1934

If you don't want to ballast the track you should still be able to make it work. The track sections are sturdy enough, or you could experiment with green plates attached to the track and bounded by plates on the side to hide the gaps. With two layers of plates on the edge of the track and one layer of plates on the ground you should be able to both have a crack free incline (except the unavoidable small extra gap at the the rail joints) and a constant increase in elevation from the ground to the track as you move across the track.

Weren't all of those countries (UK included) standard on the stickers for most of the train sets at the time? So even if you didn't live in the UK but you picked their logo on your other lego train set you could sticker your new steam engine accordingly?

Great work with all sorts of fine detailing, always neat to see what your club is up to.

Yeah, that layout was a lot of fun and for now is my favorite for shows (I too do not have room for it at home), particularly having the inner loop pull away from the outer loop at the top of the diagram. The yard on the top is for freight and the one on the bottom for passengers. But I digress, back on topic, I left out important bits from my last post. The R120 do not get you much that the R104's already provide but if you have the space, the wider the radius the better. Operationally I have several trains that will sort of run on R40's but are VERY testy, they run quite happily on the R104s and R120s at full throttle. It is great to see 3x 50 stud long cars in a 1/4 turn (instead of 1x on the standard curves), that is starting to look like a real train. I already have R88 and R104 from ME so I only went with the R120. It is neat to have 3 radii of curves to play with, something I did not appreciate when I first bought the ME track. So now the sidings can follow the curvature of the mainline. In terms of quality, the BT curves are a league above ME. You could easily mistake BT for lego in terms of quality (though lego would never be so kind to us AFOLs as to produce such a large radius). The BT rail profile is identical to lego PF (whereas ME is similar to lego 4.5v). BT rails are plug and play with no problems (whereas ME is assemble, shatter, assemble, shatter, assemble + glue). If you are holding the BT track in your hand you could spot minor differences from lego, but those are imperceptible from more than a couple of feet. From a distance under very bright light the gray seems a hair lighter than that used by lego, but the difference in shade is probably smaller than the range you would see from pure lego in yellow or dark red. Since I typically do not run on baseplates, a few years back with the ME curves I found out the hard way that after several hours of running that the tracks can slowly slide to the point where trains on adjacent tracks might collide if you failed to notice the creep. So I now use 2x10 plates as spacers every second joint on the curves and maybe every 3 ft on straights. This creep is not a function of the tracks, just the physics of trains being able to run over them at higher speeds. So it is a handy thing to know about. If you are ballasting or otherwise attaching the tracks to baseplates it should not be a problem. Also, if you are running lighter trains or paying attention every couple of hours it is easily fixed.

The R120's are incredibly awesome. And as a bonus, a sequence of 2xR104 bending left, 5 16 long straights, and 2xR120 bending right jogs the track over 48 studs to the left while keeping the subsequent straight segments in line (under 1 stud offset) with where they would be had you gone straight (see the inside loop at the top of this layout for what I mean)

Nice work. My first thought is go all black or all blay to look like a unit coal train. On second thought, it is always nice having a variety of colors. On third thought, if you go for the all black, maybe add the marking for a rotary coupler, e.g.,

Just a heads up that my store will be closed Feb 14-Mar 26, 2018. So for those of you in need of rods in that time window, please plan accordingly. Orders paid in full by 5p local time on Feb 14th for items in stock will ship that week. I'll post a bypass for those wishing to shop but no other shipping will be done while the store is closed. Feel free to PM me here or on Bricklink if you have questions.

I keep wondering if the passive steering design would benefit from a special treatment for only the last axle in a train. It seems to work like a charm mid-train, and only the last axle gives problems. Stupid solution, rigidly mount the axle. More sophisticated solution- play with the pivot point or other tricks to get the rear axle in to place. That said, if the elastic bands could provide a universal solution that would be even better.

To be clear, both PF extension cords are also PF to 9v converters. One end is PF female the other is 9v female, thereby preventing you from (easily) connecting one battery to another.

An amazing little build

Well, unleaded bricks have been shown to be lighter than leaded ones (grin)

Reverse compatibility is important for up to 5 years, e.g., the 9v motors were available for a few years after 9v trains were discontinued. But with the move to a software based controller, once the hardware it runs on is obsolete it becomes much harder to control, e.g., my pile of old RCX bricks. Not a huge problem, if lego doesn't provide a solution to outlive contemporary smart phones I'm sure someone will come up with an emulator app or simulator down the road. On the other hand, I can't wait until someone hacks the protocol and puts together an automated layout using 100% unmodified lego parts.

So here is one problem with BT controlled trains or anything else lego. Eventually the App will become obsolete and not be supported by the current operating systems. So unlike today where we have many people still running their 12V systems that are 30+ years old, if lego does not have a standalone controller, the new trains could become uncontrollable in 10+ years. Ah well, we'll worry about that headache when we come to it. Meanwhile, thanks for the info about the current PF motors. I suspect the only "train-specific" components will be the train motor itself and a software UI. Everything else should be cross-theme. That was the whole point of going PF in the first place, to standardize the motors, batteries, etc. Now it looks like they are trying to pull the three power systems together (PF, mindstorms, and WeDo). Hopefully they won't mess up the other PF motors and make them too large or otherwise difficult to fit in trains.

These cars are fantastic, I trust that you will soon have videos posted of them running through crazy curves?

Another great MOC, I drool at the detail you can fit in to 10 wide.

Another excellent build! Like the prototype the color scheme really pops

That is insane!

Ideal battery/BT receiver combo: 3 studs wide so it can be hidden by tiles in a 4 wide build, at least 3A output, and 4 ports. My guess is that we will see none of this except MAYBE the 4 ports. If the output power is limited to 1.5A that will make long trains a lot more difficult... or $50 more expensive because you have to buy two batteries. As for the separate IR receiver, there was a post a few pages back that recognized the new passenger train has the same 1x2 cheese slope assembly as used on the current passenger train to hide the IR receiver. The IR receiver option might be a legacy feature while they are finalizing the PF2 that will be removed from the artwork, or...?

Looks like they are bringing back the Duplo Intelli-Train.

The hatch on the tank car is brilliant and the side dump is eloquent

Great work... I could see lego using this idea for the next generation of city trains in 2021.

For all of the really nice trains on Lego Ideas, if you sort by "train" tag and most supported there are two sets that hit 10k supporters but were not approved (modular train station and the vintage tram), the 3rd highest was a roundhouse that almost reached 3k supporters before it expired, and the fourth highest (first one that is still active) is a very nice looking build in what I would call "city train set style". Given that this set is rising to the top suggests to me that Lego has the pulse on what is popular with the city train theme. Part of what makes the set pop is the dark green loco, but I highly doubt that lego would use a relatively rare color for a loco in a city set like this. Two spots down in 6th place is an interesting little chemical plant that is still active, though in this case the "train" component is a tank car, with the main focus on the plant. If instead of "train" you search for "railroad", "railway", "locomotive" or a few tag words then that city train tops the list in terms of supporters.

Traction bands should help a lot. Plastic wheels on plastic rails have a lot of slip. If you have some of the lego wheels with the groove for the bands you might want to try them to see if it has more traction. If so, but you like the BBB wheels better then there are ways to add grooves or paint on bullfrog snot.

I am not advocating for what Lego seems to be doing, I am just saying that I don't think they will change. And if they don't change, what can we do about it. Lego has turned in to a massive company driven by profits. Seems like rational behavior for a company. I was a lego ambassador for several years and saw some of the thinking that goes on behind the scenes. I brought up the idea of specialized sets for niche markets that would only sell on S@H, but at the time they were concerned about the number SKU's, they did not want to have too many SKU's. Have to keep the number of SKU's down. So they only had 6 slots per year for direct to consumer sets (now "creator expert") that were targeted at AFOLs. There is a business model somewhere driving those numbers, so only a few sets will be produced for AFOLs. And since they are seeking to maximize profit, should you produce a Horizon Express that train heads will buy, or produce a Star Wars set, or a modular building that will sell way more copies? As long as the number of production slots are limited, the profit margin on trains simply can't compete. I don't like it. I would love it if they did a revamp of the Super Chief in a different railroad's colors each year. It would be great if they had a selection of basic cars like the MOT, but for now the profit margin is not there to get their attention. Had lego not bungled the hobby train (no exclusive parts, common color) or the HE (woops, common color again... hum...) I would think there could be a shot at a 3 in 1 freight car set (one Euro, one US, and one ??? model). But freight cars do not sell on their own, you need a good engine, so perhaps a 3 in 1 engine set too... but that is now two train sets where they currently have none. I presume this to mean the profit margin is not enough to entice lego back in to that market right now. [don't get me wrong, I love the historic TGV scheme, but there is not enough demand for orange to turn it in to a parts pack the way the BNSF, Maersk, and EN did] Yes they are missing out on the population of railfan kids who don't have access to bricklink or the budget to do a $500 MOC, but for each railfan kid there are 100's of minecraft fan kids. So again, potential profit to be had, but it is much smaller than the other profits to be had. Anyone reading this thread probably loves trains... but if you were going to find a single model that would appeal to the world wide market for trains what would it be? What could it be? The Santa Fe worked because it was iconic, but was still limited to the US. As an American, Santa Fe was never my favorite railroad because I never lived near it. So even in the US market, regional tastes made it harder to sell. Clearly its sales exceeded expectations since the "limited edition" gave way to a not-so limited edition and was followed 6 mo later with passenger cars. But that was the old lego company, the set sold, but it would never sell as much as a licensed theme, or a city police station. So there is profit and then there is profit. I am sure they are hard pressed to come up with a set that enough folks would buy if it were to be the only AFOL train set available, but if trains keep getting to the top of Ideas they will probably start considering an AFOL train again. If you can't find a singular train that everyone will flock to, what can lego do? Well, keep the train parts available, and that is what they are doing. They know how much lego we consume, and they want to keep that going. It strikes me as pragmatic on their part. I am pretty sure that lego is still slowly working on a scheme that will allow them to sell niche market sets. That was what lego factory was supposed to allow. But the hand picking of individual pieces makes that an expensive option and the limited pallet makes it hard to design something nice. As more automation becomes available on the production side I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually do have an option to do runs of a few hundred sets or real sets on demand for specialized tastes.

Do you have traction bands on the wheels?