peterab

MUGs meets on the second sunday of each month. You can find us and get reminders of meetings and locations via the mugs-list on Yahoo groups. Not my wife, because we don't believe in that sort of thing, but Darrow and I enjoyed catching up too :-) It would be awesome to have you there, not just because of your detailed Mocs either.

I'm still a little shattered after five days of Brickvention (including setup and tear down) but I'm happy you all enjoyed it. The Royal Exhibition Building worked very well as a venue and has room enough for at least a few years of future expansion. I'm not aware of any major drama's and we sold out so it seems it was all very successful at this stage. We learnt a few thingsas you always do in the first year of a new venue, so we should be able to streamline a little bit for an even more successful event next year.

Because the engine they were looking at had a different font. This is quite common, many companies change their logo and branding over time. BNSF seem to have had at least three different font and colour combos on the orange livery and a number of other colour schemes as well.

I've just realised I haven't made my annual Brickvention Post. More info on our Facebook event page. 19th - 20th of January Royal Exhibition Building. We've got so much good stuff to display that some of the committee members have had to leave home some older Mocs despite having double the area of last year. Sessions are already starting to sell out. Once Ryan McNaughts giant helicopter gets published in the paper, tickets will most probably sell out again as they have in years past so don't delay. Online bookings only here:

Your best bet is to contact local LEGO fans. I'd start on 1000 steine since it's a German language forum. The hall sounds like it's a good size for a small town. Having been involved in a number of small events, I recommend selling tickets online. It really helps to avoid a bottleneck at the entrance and avoid overcrowding by using session times. Just work out how long you expect people to spend looking, and how many you can comfortably fit in the hall. Small halls can quickly get dangerous if overcrowded and LEGO is popular enough to surprise you with huge crowds.

There are a few more images on Ryan's Flickr page

Technically yes, practically there will be limitations to what you can do. Using only the wheels that fit on Technic axles will mean each of your wheelsets have higher friction, and as you seem intent on building wider trains they will probably be heavy. On of the guys in my club builds 10-12 wide narrow guage stuff on LEGO rails and has some locos which require four XL motors just to move themselves (they're 12 wide and quite tall) It has taken him a couple of years of redesigns getting his full train to run reliably. The torque required to run the locos also becomes enough that you can start to strip gears, particularly the half width ones. He now uses the old 12V motors because they have stronger internal gears than the technic gears. One of the old 4.5V motors can drive a technic axle, so that might also be an option, though it would limit you to a gauge wider than the width of the 4 stud wide body. I think there's a topic covering using PF receivers with 4.5V motors and battery boxes somewhere on here. Part of the reason people don't stray too far from the 6 wide (7 & 8 are common) of the official sets is once the weight climbs getting reliable operation gets more difficult. It's not imposable though, just a lot harder. BTW you may find the Bricklink catalogue is good for looking for parts, for example there are also larger driving wheels that might meet your needs. You might also want to google Big Ben Bricks who also produce a larger range of sizes and colours of LEGO axle compatible wheels. Or you just avoid all the 9V and 12V fixed width wheels and use standard O gauge track with only wheels that mount on a technic axle so you can set the width to O gauge.

OO/HO is quite a lot smaller than most LEGO trainheads build, and a lot of us have difficulty getting the results we want in L gauge. You'd have to find some way of driving HO sized wheels, or use non lego motors. Hiding a LEGO motor in a HO scale train would be very difficult (it can be problematic in a 6 wide LEGO train which is closer to O ). Also you'd probably have to be happy with far less detail than the average LEGO train MOC at that size. Not that any of this is impossible but there are a number of compromises compared to using LEGO track and building larger.

The blue track does have grooves, and the old 4.5V & 12V wheels have a greater contact patch (the 9V, RC & PF wheels ride a bit more on the flanges I think). I've had no problem with 1 brick per track inclines with 12V and 4.5V but the downhill speed can be a problem. The grip of the train can be far less if the rubber tires have hardened though. PF wheels might not be as effective on blue track.

In response to my own question, here's a link to an article that includes discussion of vinyl dyes; http://www.fineclonier.com/101_2v2_Altering_the_color_of_LEGO_elements_-_Paints,_Dyes,_&_More.pdf

I agree with Duq. People will either agree or disagree, but what is best for you is quite independent of either stance. I'm not a total purist but I've never seen a paint job that has the same appearance as unpainted LEGO so I wouldn't do it. If you are really intending to dye rather than paint, I'd be interested to see if the finished product actually looks like official LEGO parts. If so I'd be inclined to go for it. Has anyone had any success dyeing LEGO?

Welcome to EB and train tech. I really like the firebox door on your engine. This shows some pretty clever details for a first adult build. As you get more familiar with what parts are in current sets you'll be able to avoid rare or more expensive parts. Bricklink really makes the adult hobby much easier though, it's hard to imagine how hard it would be without it. Individual slopes for the roof would be cheaper since the train sets the one piece roof is from are now quite in demand from collectors. Your wheel choice surprised me, I probably would have used the older 12V black or red wheels since I have some extras already and they have flanges so will run better on track.

I think your using the wrong term here. Purist make MOCs, they just don't use non LEGO parts. There are even shades of gray. Some will use modified flex cable, some will use BBB wheels. I see it as a balance between the added challenge of doing a pure build and the greater ease of getting a more prototypical result if you don't. It's all a personal choice, no right or wrong. I think a better term for the people you are thinking of are collectors. Even then I can a least understand the impulse, though I think it lacks the creativity of MOC builders. I'm appalled at the non-scientific babble here everyone knows it's the lingering remnants of the special Bilund air that we detect. Most can detect it in a newly opened set, but the more carefully you keep the set together, and the more sensitive you are, the longer you can smell it. I also have a collection of most of the 70's era train and Legoland sets packed away separately to my MOCing bricks

While I don't disagree with Mark's views on the relative merits of the RC & PF motors, if you are going to run the standard green cargo train set, I wouldn't spend the money on upgrading the motors, battery and receiver. For a start you'd lose the convenience of easily changing the battery, and for the train as supplied in the set or similar the RC motor is fine. I'd still recommended newer traction tyres, and a second motor as an OK upgrade if you want to add a few extra freight wagons. If you want to build heavy AFOL style trains it's not a good choice, likewise if more prototypical slow running speeds are of importance to you.

As AussieJimbo says the 6xAA base adds quite a bit of traction, and since the weight is quite low these bases tend to be quite stable at high speeds. I'm converting one of my MOCs over to use it just because it's reliable at shows and less fiddly than taking the engine apart to replace batteries.

While the conventional wisdom is the motors are poor I've found they are not as bad as their reputation provided you change the rubber traction tyre for some more modern ones. I also like to add an extra motor. Given the above they become quite powerful locos. They are not as good as the newer PF train base, but quite workable even for AFOL length trains. Probably not worth paying extra for to get specially but if you happen to like the green cargo train like I did, not bad enough to replace. Also the 3 RC IR channels can be used in addition to the PF ones so it gives a little more flexibility on huge exhibition layouts :-)

You can use a 9V motor with PF gear provided you can connect it. There is an adaptor cable available I think. Running that set up on 9V rails should be safe enough for the rechargeable battery since it has built in overload protection, but I wouldn't with a normal battery pack, even with rechargeable batteries in it. There's an interesting topic by Toastie here somewhere which discusses using 9V track to continuously charge a PF rechargeable battery, but I seem to remember it involves modifying the motor. I could be mistaken though. Best to read the original. The motor will be fine since it will only draw the current it needs and twice 9V is still 9V in this case. You'd need to be a bit careful about polarity though.

I'm pretty sure the tech spec for the receiver includes an extra address bit potentially allowing for 16 independent trains, but I'm not sure anyone has hacked around with it yet. Even on club layouts it's pretty hard to control eight trains at the same time so I'm not sure anyone has really felt the need so far. My club runs a mix of 9V and PF and we just try to make sure the running PF trains are set to different channels, and the ones in the yard are turned off. You could try in the technic forum if you want further details on the extra address bit.

It's probably pretty pointless to speculate on what the designer had in mind, since at the time LEGO trains were not based on a real prototype. They simply were not detailed enough to distinguish between many similar locomotives anyway. It's not really till the grey track era where they become unique enough to usefully try and point the finger. That being said this engine has an unusual wheel arrangement 2-4-6, which I think would be farely rare. You could use that as the starting point for a google image search and see if something similar turns up in the real world.

'The' Stig is a character on Top Gear. He's a racing driver who tests the performance of cars. Part of the character is he has a black visor on his helmet, so you can't tell who he is. The person who plays the role is under contract not to reveal his identity. In the MOC he's the guy in the white racing suit with black visor on the trolley.

The EN is no doubt a beautiful train, however it can have issues running reliably. There are fixes available but it can take a bit of mucking around and some odd extra parts. The bricklink price is about $180 which is probably as good as you'll get it for. It has a number of rare pieces which will be hard to find cheaply so putting it together from parts is probably not worthwhile. Many people also feel it needs extra carriages, which make the tan windows even more sought after and therefore expensive. The holiday train is a cute train but was designed for the now defunct 9V train motor and track, so motorising it would also take a bit of trial and error if you wanted to use the newer Power Functions train motor. From memory it doesn't have too many exotic pieces so despite the 2nd hand price it would be possible to buy the parts on bricklink fairly reasonably, and use instructions downloaded from the lego customer service website. The Hogwarts trains (there have been about three versions now) tend to suffer a bit from being more designed as toys for Hogwarts fans than train fans, IMHO. Some of them (the first two) don't have proper train wheels so if you want to motorise those ones you also need to convert all the wheels to make them run well on train track. The third one has standard train wheels on the carriages as well as the engine (unlike the large drivers on the Emerald Night engine) so it's not very realistic. There is also a motorised version, but it is ~$350 on bricklink now so probably better to buy the parts and work from downloaded instructions (though the 9V motor is likely to be expensive so a PF motor might be a cheaper option), and it too has small wheels on the engine in any case.

http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?S=7900-1

The brick figures with the articulated arms were released in 1973 http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=200-1 The proto minifigures were released in 1975 http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=363-1

Your first hurdle is to find enough like minded people to build a display who are willing to spend a weekend running it. Our layout can take four or five hours to set up with 12 people. It's quite large but smaller layouts will take just about as long with fewer people. The more local people you have the more likely it is one of them will be able to suggest a venue. You will also need access to some where you can plan and test build the layout before the show. This is very important if you haven't done a show before. All sorts of little problems can crop up particularly in collaborative builds that you won't find until you try and set up.

Since 7740 came out in my dark ages I decided to build my own http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterab/6110603909/. Since then I got the chance to buy 7740 at a good price so I now have both. I tend to keep my older sets original for nostalgic reasons, and build Mocs to the latest AFOL standards. As an example the pantograph shoes on the BR103 I linked are now Belville ice skates. By the way the prototype E03 and early production engines of the BR103 had double diamond pantographs which were later updated to central arm types.