peterab

Hi Mikk, this looks like a very nice start, I eagerly await seeing it in the brick. I noticed you're in Australia too, so I'm not the only German train builder here. (Brickhead in Sydney almost counts but he builds Swiss stuff :-) I'm in Melbourne, where are you?

A bit late but thanks for doing the work that keeps Train Tech ticking over.

I really love your piston design, I'll be trying to adapt it for my German steam trains from now on :-)

In practice it's not wise to run more than three motors per transformer, though I believe the actual transformers vary from region to region, so check what the maximum current is on the wall wart part of yours, and use JopieK motor current to work out how many you can drive. Many train clubs replace the wall wart transformer with a larger current transformer so more engines can be driven. If you have a extra controller, just connect it to the track as well, and keep the two in synch (be careful the polarity is the same, and dont drive them in opposite directions). On larger layouts it can be helpful to connect them on opposite sides of the loop to mitigate against current drop, but that shouldn't be a problem on your layout.

You should build the most Aussie of police vehicles ; A divvy van We even have a chant which comes out in public places when the cops cart someone off 'Your going home in the back of a divvy van' :-)

I don't own a rechargeable battery box, so I'm only passsing on others reports, so take it at your own risk; The electronics in the rechargeable battery box will work up to 18v or so, so you can use just about any 12v adapter with a plug that fits. There is a more detailed thread on the rechargeable battery box which will probably answer all the questions about polarity etc that you should probably investigate. I can't remember offhand if the battery has a rectifier built in or not.

In the linked article, the research TLG did led them to believe that was one of the factors distancing girls. They mentioned splitting the builds to make it possible to start playing earlier hopefully making the Friends sets more appealing to girls. They are deliberately trying to downplay the building part.

Well from my 60's perspective Indiana Jones, some adventurers sets, pretty much all action themes, and space police sets are far more militaristic than Lego was in my childhood. Even creator has had a plane that apart from its colours looks a lot like an F-14 Tomcat to me. There were _no_ conflict based sets in the sixties.

I think this discussion highlights the difficult position TLG is in. There are people out there like me and Def who have higher expectations of them than just taking the most profitable path, based on their own earlier stance. There is also a market reality that boys are more attracted to LEGO than girls, and this has always been so. There is/was a perception LEGO, even in it's 60's gender neutral form, is a boys toy. My mother did a womens study course in the 80's, and one of the interesting bits of research that she brought home from that was; parental influence on their children's perception of gender roles was minimal if the gender roles they were trying to instill were not reflected by the wider community. Lesbian separatist mothers with buzz cuts still ended up with daughters who wanted to dress as fairies and princesses if all their school friends did. I've noted that the toy market in Australia over my life has become far more gender polarized, and in the boys toys far more militant. I'm pretty sure this is in no small way a result of the greater influence of American toy companies, particularly Mattel/Barbie, and action figures (which hardly existed in many toy shops here when I was a kid). I'm pretty sure playing with LEGO is beneficial for kids, and that should not be denied to girls even if it means using more 'girly' colours. The inclusion of the science/robot lab seems to suggest TLG would like to add a bit of balance to this theme too, but there is no point to marketing to an already gender biased pool of little girls something they don't want. A few girls will be interested in the more gender neutral city sets, but many more will like the beauty salon initially. If that leads to many more FAFOLS in twenty years time, who buy from many themes, I think that would be a positive impact. If over time the divide between 'boys' and 'girls' sets gets wider I would be disappointed. Hopefully our society as a whole will change enough that TLG's use of stereotypes can reduce over time, but one can't expect companies to lead society in a better direction, only applaud and support them when they do.

I guess so. A good skill to learn is to try and copy things from photos though, it will help you design your own models too, and it means you wont be rewarding someone who is profiting from a fellow AFOLs creative work. Among train builders if you ask nicely sometimes the original builder will explain how tricky bits have been done or even take more photos to show how.

There will be 1000 tickets in each slot which should mean we are slightly less crowded than last year, we will also have more rooms inside the town hall so crowding should again be less. It should take about 1.5 hours to see all the exhibits on average, so we will be encouraging people to move on prior to each new session to make room. Since we had about 7200 tickets sold last year we hope to sell out all sessions before the day in which case we wont need two lines. Ticket scanning should be far quicker than the purchasing was last year so we hope to minimize the time people spend waiting in line.

There are a few techniques that you can use. If you want to use standard bogey plates, you need a hole in your train base centered on the middle stud of your 7 wide base. Thin Technic liftarm or these plate with hole will work, though the liftarms normally give a more solid base. Another technique is to use a standard 4x2 technic plate with brackets on either end followed by a plate on tile as illustrated in this thread These techniques also work for power function bogies, where the hole allows a technic axle to drive the wheels. My favorite solution, for carriages where I don't need powered bogies, is just to build a 7 wide base with a six wide plate and a one wide plate followed by a second layer of two wide plates on the sides. I then use a 2x2 turntable to connect the bogie, it can attach into the tubes (rather than between them) of the six wide baseplate which gives the required offset to correctly center the bogey. It also means you can abandon the more expensive bogey plate in favour of a brick built bogey which is likely to be cheaper and more flexible for detailing.

In all likelihood their are no 'original' instructions that were stolen, the guy selling them reverse engineers the designs from photos posted by the AFOLs who built them and makes instructions.

I'm looking forward to testing on Kubuntu :-) Thanks

As a long shot I thought http://www.peeron.com/scans/724-1 fits the yellow diesel but it was 12V.

After a quick look I'd suggest swapping the placement of the battery and receiver. You should be able to save a couple of studs length, though you would end up with wires visible poking out the tender doors. Would all the other interconnections still work?

Congrats, and I'm sure the LEGO will help her fine motor skills

Given the food is probably used to make compost, those brown piles would be fine too

No, I lengthened the wheels so I could include a larger gear above the bogie, it made a small difference but I plan also to use 8 x 1.2V rechargable batteries to get back up to 9V max. If that doesn't give me enough speed I might have to remove one motor to give me enough room for some higher gearing.

My BR103 was initially powered with 2 M motors, with 1:1 gearing. They had plenty of power but were very slow. I pulled 5 50 stud long, 7 wide passenger wagons with no problems. I was using AAA rechargeable batteries so only had a maximum of 7.2 V available.

I've always thought the 7740 was based on German TEE's of the 80's. In that case this is the appropriate loco. Before they were used these were. I'm pretty sure Railbricks has free instructions for a Br110, which is very similar to the 114 in the second link, you just need to play around with the colours to suit 7740. The good thing about LEGO though is you can choose how realistic you want to be, and for many the charm of the original sets wins out. In that case anything you feel fits is fine. I'd dearly love a 7740 but since they are quite rare in Australia I've never had one. That has led me down a different path I've built five cars now too.

What markings do you plan to use? I still remember a Tamiya model I wanted as a kid which I think was Vietnam era, it had a very cool Pink Panther mascot :-) I'm a Tomcat fan too. Far cooler than the Australian airforce upgrading F111's for decades past their useful life :-).

There seems to be a gap on the rear vertical edge of the crappy front piece to me, and it's pretty visible in all the marketing photos I've ever seen of this set. At least they didn't airbrush it out because that would have been misleading, but that piece is one of the worst LEGO has ever sold. I don't mind the RC base too much either for what it is, but it is very restrictive in the type of loco you can build, and it was definitely a backward step, even 4.5V stuff was far more flexible.

Given the BanBao train looks like it's based on this it's hard to argue that LEGO has far superior quality in this case. 7897 has to be the worst train produced in the history of LEGO (IMHO of course), combining as it did the RC baseplate and the one piece nose, which is notorious for its poor molding resulting in gaps with adjacent bricks and poor clutch power. The BanBao train at least doesn't have visible gaps on the package. Anybody want to 'invest' any of their money for a BanBao review? While I'm interested, I'm not interested enough to test it with my money.

I now understand why I couldn't work out the layout from your videos :-) It's quite complicated, I really like it, particularly the broad curves in the dinning room. It seems your girlfriend has unreasonably limited you to only half the apartment though, after all who doesn't want a train to play with while cooking or bathing or in bed