peterab

AFOL's are about 5% of the market and I suspect train fans are less than 5% of AFOLs. We are a niche of a niche market. Most of the starter sets are selling to kids for Xmas. They have a much longer retail life than any other theme at four years; think of Ninjago which gets updates each year, or city which gets two waves a year. Starter sets are the sweet spot. Everything else means less sales.

I speak German fairly fluently but find reading a bit more difficult particularly if the subject matter is of a technical nature. So far my skimming has convinced me I need to find time to try and read this excellent book in more depth. Thanks to Holger for this great addition to our hobby.

I made a pledge of a few hundred dollars and haven't received any communication since March 2016. I hope they are just busy and I haven't dropped off the system.

I've built a rake of those with a control car. I intend on matching them with a steam loco once I get the control car running correctly. I eagerly wait to see how you build yours.

That sounds like a good score. Though fewer people collect blue era stuff it can be interesting particularly because it is less common in some parts of the world. $50 is exceptional value for what you got. I'd happily pay $30 each for working points with their switches. In Australia some of the 4.5V blue era trains are fairly common but the 12V ones are quite rare.

Beware of Scottdee's instructions 'inspired' by Jayhurst. Jayhurst wasn't very pleased that Scottdee reverse engineered his Big Boy quite poorly, he got a lot of heat from people who bought the instructions and couldn't get the model to run right.

There is a interesting article in Railbricks which explains this problem. If the torque twists in the wrong direction, the truck will catch on the join of 9V track and derail. The solution is to run in the opposite direction, or reverse the torque by redesigning the truck as suggested.

Scott Dee reverse engineered Jayhursts Moc without his permission, and did a poor job of it. He was asked not to sell these instructions more than once.

I was an avid reader of Railbricks, and even got printed copies of most issues (I'll have to get the last few now). I'd probably subscribe to a new magazine if it were similar to Railbricks. I'd love to have printed copies but digital prints are fine, particularly if I can avoid shipping to Australia. I've always felt that the forum on the railbricks website was doomed, there are already active communities of train builders both here and on Flickr, trying to compete was madness particularly when the Railbricks website was continually flaky. After a while I no longer even tried to use it. The only real drawcard was the instructions.

I'm pretty hopeless at documenting my builds, as you probably can tell from the dates on the BR103; it has a rake of ten carriages to go with it including a Rheingold observation car which I'm particularly proud of but I've also never photographed them.

It really is a joy to see you build the sort of stuff I'm passionate about. Most of the layouts I participate in model local prototypes but I feel less of a total weirdo because every now and then you build something awesome that I've either built or want to build. I've built the same consist with an extra 2nd class carriage. I've been toying with building one of the prototype control cars which I aim to use with a BR23. Not being particularly creative seeing your builds also allows me to improve my own. These are lovely and will force me to make a few changes to mine. I'll stick to regular green on mine though since it means I can use dark green for 1930's carriages and use the 2x3 windows as doors on these. Regular green is a bit too light but I think dark green is a little too dark too. I have plans to upgrade my whole fleet of passenger cars since I saw those, I'm particularly hopeless at bogies, they are a godsend. That pin with pin hole is an awesome part, I've been wanting to upgrade mine since they relied on string jammed between the roof end plates to stay in place, I hope I can find room for a technic hole. I also used the single buffers but love your use of the telescope. I'm trying to find a way to stabilise my steps, the rest of my train club make fun of them falling off all over the layout, I love the look of your steps but they also seem like they might be fragile. I used hammers. Though the bucket handles look great. You might want to try these, and they're better because they don't have internal tubes. If you buy them regularly in small batches you can easily amass a couple of hundred over time (ask me how I know), and if you set an upper price limit and do it slowly new lots will become available regularly without forcing the price to spike and spoiling it for everyone http://alpha.bricklink.com/pages/clone/catalogitem.page?P=772p01&idColor=12 My one suggestion is a more rounded roof these had quite a curve on them, I'm currently buying arches to upgrade mine.

The curves were built by trail and error mostly by Teunis Davey, essentially just mucking around with inner and outer rails till a reasonable fit for the available space was found. There may be cut pieces but not too many (I hope anyway since it's my 12V track). There may also be gaps filled by 1x4 and 1x2 panels but if I recall correctly only around the points. Teunis tries to be purist so there is probably not a lot of illegal stuff going on. Pretty much copies of the link provided and other similar ones on flickr.

For a German locomotive you pretty much can't go past the BR 52 otherwise known as the kriegslokomotive or war locomotive. They were made in the thousands to aid in supplying invasion forces. During the war they were simplified as steel became rare so there are many variations and are simple shapes so should be easy to build.

I'm pretty sure he is active on his Flickr account. You should be able to find him through the Flickr train groups.

Re-read 1974's post. This is his guess, though he admits to having no inside info.

I thought this was a great project. Probably my favourite train one so far. It would also have been a very welcome parts pack. For me this project proved that the LEGO train community is either too small or too fractured to ever get an ideas project up on its own.

The reason is that trains as a whole are not that popular. It's not so much that trains are unsuccessful as most train companies would be very pleased with similar sales, it's just that the other LEGO themes are so much more successful. The results on ideas are very clear; any train struggles to get attention compared with many other subjects. It's not that the train community would rather build MOCs, it's that even if most of the train community buy two (as I and many others did for the HE) we just are not that large a group compared with the general LEGO buyer.

Everything you have described is normal except the battery life. I get 3-4 hours out of a set of batteries. There are a couple of known issues with the PF gear. The first which others referred to above but didn't really explain is that some batteries in LEGO battery boxes don't make sufficient contact with the terminals. If the positive end of the battery is too large for the hole it may make a very poor contact and loose a bit of voltage overcoming the extra resistance. Check to make sure the batteries are not tight in the hole for the positive contact (the raised end of the battery). One solution to this is to drill out a bit of material to make the hole larger, another is to put a conductor such as aluminium foil in the hole to improve the contact. The second known issue is that some of the PF gear was faulty. If you cant get it to work better as above it might be worthwhile to call LEGO customer service; you'll be able to find a local number on their website.

I'm pretty sure the very small wheels on the pilot truck are still not available in red. http://alpha.bricklink.com/pages/clone/catalogitem.page?P=50254#T=C

Since many of the sets I buy are really only for the parts to build trains; I have a pile that I will never build and haven't gotten around to sorting. Those also include Ninjago and Star Wars sets which I pretty much only buy because I have a ninja and droid figure addiction. I also have a bunch of Creator houses and modular buildings which are great parts for train layout buildings. Like baard I have half a room for storage, which is getting increasingly crowded, but I figure while I'm working a lot and have less time to build at least I'm earning more so can stockpile sets for when I have more time

While I too would recommend Brickvention, I'm a little biased since I am a M>LTC member and was also on the Brickvention committee for a few years. In fairness BrickExpo in Canberra, SydBricks in Sydney, BrisBricks in Brisbane and also the event in Perth all are likely to include train layouts. The coming Brickvention will have a number of layouts by members of the M>LTC. Brickvention info can be found here; http://www.brickventures.org.au/

You have now established a bridgehead (literally) ... so now run a branch line into the kitchen :-)

Indeed all your models are beautiful, and another confirmation, there are others building big:

The problem with that is when you display a layout with a lot of rolling stock, it is all in different scales. The track gauge is probably a good starting point if consistency is a priority. The are a bunch more wheel sizes (and colours) available from Big Ben Bricks. It is almost impossible to pick a scale, so no one scale is right, but the larger it is the more detail you can model. 7 and 8 wide are compromises which allow more detail without making running the trains very difficult.

There are only 11 pairs brand new in bag. The same part is readily available; http://alpha.bricklink.com/pages/clone/catalogitem.page?P=bb53 http://alpha.bricklink.com/pages/clone/catalogitem.page?P=bb53b