HoMa

I would define myself as a "Seller" or better "Creator" of Instructions. Why am I doing this? In the past I was not keen on creating instructions for my MOCs, there is too much abuse around where people rebuild the models and sell them without mentioning the original creator of the model or sharing the money they've earned. Things did change a bit when I had the offer to write a LEGO train book. The publisher wanted to see building instructions in the book. So I sat down to MLCad, LDView and LPub and finally to InDesign to create a bunch of instructions. The instructions for two of my steam engines didn't make into the book (because of page limitations), but I do offer them for free now on my personal LEGO hobby related website. Actually I didn't had much of a choice which model will go into an instruction. For a majority of models featured in the book I have created instructions. All my model are created because I like to build trains with LEGO. Creating instructions or publishing them in a book was never my main goal. So for me the model is always first. And I am very poor in designing a MOC just virtualy, I need the bricks in my fingers to figure out if the model works or not. Creating instructions is a subject itself. For me it takes 5-10 times longer then designing the model in LEGO bricks. It is not only about the recreation of the LEGO model in MLCad, if you are making instructions you need to devide your model in chunks which allow a nice building experience for everyone who did not design the model. For me this is a very enjoyable but also time consuming part. Another challenge are special elements like cables, wires, rubber bands which are very complex in a virtual model. For proper PF cables in an instruction you might need 2/3 of the time of creating the complete instructions. LPub is love and hate at the same time. I am happy that there is such an open source software tool around which allow to create building instructions. But the arrangement of multiple steps with sub-steps on one page is a real nightmare. You never know what the page will look like and you need to wait till the page layout is re-rendered. And the measurements are also confusing to me. You can define margins and others at 0.000001 – but what is the unit and where is the 0.0 reference point? After many nights, this is still a black box to me. (Maybe someone can suggest other tools to create instructions with more control and more WYSIWYG?) Another thing which is a little bit anoying is the behaviour of some "users". If you offer instructions, they ask for part lists. If you offer part lists, they ask for part numbers. If you offer part numbers, they ask for a wantedlist to upload to bricklink. And they want me to tell them the one bricklink shop which offers all elements needed to build the model. Very often "newbies" which have never build a regular complex LEGO (train) set will start with the most complex model. And then they get frustrated because my high-end AFOL models are tricky and complex to build ... even with instructions. Hope that helps? Holger

Hi Cale and all the others from BMR! Thank you for setting up this new resource for our LEGO train hobby. Here are some further suggestions what could be added: Some historical stuff which I wrote down about the 7777 ideas book and which was originally published at brickset: http://brickset.com/article/25119/7777-the-1981-trains-ideas-book Instructions which were originally published at railbricks.com and which can be found in the webarchive at: https://web.archive.org/web/20160301051000/http://railbricks.com/instructions My BR 10 and BR 80 steam engines and the free building instructions at: http://www.holgermatthes.de/bricks/en/br10.php and http://www.holgermatthes.de/bricks/en/br80.php Thanks and good luck with BMR! Holger

Great work, well done! I really like modern high speed trains build in LEGO. You did extremely well with the streamlined nose and the shift from the slope nose to the roof section. And you covered the color scheme extremely good with bricks and minimum stickers. Merry Christmas! Holger

Ashi, that looks really great! Well done. Now you need some R104 curves! Would be great to see your RailJet and my ICE 3 on the same layout some day. I will need to shift from 9V to PF and include various train motors, batteries and SBricks in my ICE as well as you did. Best regards, HoMa

Thanks for sharing your pictures. Unfortunately I haven't had time yet to set up my R104 switches which I've got from BrickTracks recently. But they really look promissing! Could someone who already painted the white 3D print prototypes give some advice about the type of (spray?) color which was used to color the tracks in gray?

While scanning my 7777 I had the idea to write down some memories about my LEGO train childhood related to this fantastic ideas book. Huw from brickset not only was happy to offer the scans in his document library but also published my #ThrowbackThursday article about LEGO ideas book 7777 some hours ago. Feel free to jump over to brickset.com and read through the article. If you like, leave your own childhood train related memories here as a comment. And maybe some of you can confirm the original price of 7777 in your country (if it was ever available). Best regards, Holger

Hi Ben, welcome to Eurobricks train forum! Taking pictures of your model in its natural environment is great. Thanks for sharing here. A Flickr account is highly recommended for LEGO fans. I've been to that museum last year. Gray to see the original engines. Unfortunately most of them were standing in the round house so it was impossible to take nice pictures. Holger

Just added my support, good luck for this project! Holger

Great layout and very nice train MOCs. Just great to see trains running on long curves. Can you give some further information about the electrification of the tracks? 9 volts or more? How many feeds are used along the long loop? What kind of modifications have you done in the speed regulators? Keep up with your great work, HoMa

The 7715 was designed to add a motor later. Check out the instructions on www.peeron.com http://peeron.com/scans/7715-1/14/

You need two of them to build a remote controlled signal 7860. Here is the instruction: http://peeron.com/scans/7860-1/ Have fun with your old 12 volt stuff! HoMa

BR 10 steam engine with 3 dark green passenger coaches at BrickCityDays in Völklingen/Germany on R104 me-models.com curves. Here you can see my trains in action:

Hi Sven, thanks for sharing another great 1:33 train MOC from your building workshop! Very well build, great details. The snow ploughs in red are really eyecatching. And the dark blue makes it all look very noble. I love the combination of a great design and functionality done with LEGO bricks (and some necessary custom parts like the wheels and the rods. The locomotive seems to be heavy enough that the dirven axle has enough grip on the metal LGB rails? Have you tested the locomotive pulling some of your waggons? These LGB rails and switches are amazing. Would be really nice if ME-Model or anyone else will come up with something like that in L-Gauge scale. Best regards, Holger

Fantastic MOC! After all these years stopping at static train station both the driver and all passengers from your 7740 musty veer really happy to stop here, get out, use the escalator, get a coffee and meet many unique nerds at the platform and in the mall. Great video, worth the efforts making it!

Hi Tony, it was worse the long design process! Your #5447 locomotive is just brilliant. Using all the nice curved elements makes this a very iconic LEGO model of a very iconic prototype. And the lettering and stickers add a lot to this model. And for you as a masterbuilder you incorporated both design and functionality on a very high level. Great that this loco can ride on all the curves, even the tiny LEGO curves. But obiously it will look much better on long ME curves (can't wait to see pictures from this year's Brickworld layouts and trains). Can you provide some pictures showing the body and the drive separated? I am really interested in how you've solved the piviot issue in the drive an how the drive is attached to the body. Would be great if your US streamlined #5447 could meet my German streamlined BR 10 some day ... Again, great LEGO train work! Holger P.S. Well done with the mirco gaps at the tender wheel covers. Did you use 1x2 panels here?

Thanks for all your congratulations and feedback! Availability outside of Germany: The book is primary targeting the German-speaking market. But I assume that you will find an online book dealer in each country which will order and ship the book to your home. I already saw it on amazon.com (kindle and paperback versions) and on ebay.de. Maybe it will be added to the "Books" category at bricklink.com? German text but pictures, renderings and instructions are international: Yes, the text is German. And there is a lot of text to read through. But even without knowing how to read German texts the book might be inspiring for you. From 294 pages nearly 100 pages are instructions like you know them from LEGO. They can be "read" be everybody. If there is a demand of translating the book, my publisher has to find a publisher in the US or UK who is willing to buy a licence, translate, print and distribute the English version. 1000grüße HoMa

Hello! I am happy to announce that my first book is now available! It's a LEGO book ... it's a LEGO train book! The book is in German and the title "LEGO Eisenbahn – Konzepte und Techniken für realistische Modelle" means "LEGO® trains – concepts and techniques for realistic models". I've received my first printed copy last week and it seems that the book is in stock at amazon.de and other online shops. The printed version has 294 pages, kindle and ebook versions are also available. Amazon.com also lists the kindle version and the paperback seems to be available from amazon marketplace shops. I've roughly translated the Table of contents, you can find it here: http://www.holgermat...o-eisenbahn.php And I just not did work on the book but also build a couple of trains which are featured in my book. The German Regional-Express was anounce here early this year: http://www.eurobrick...opic=119238&hl= As counterpart for such a modern train a more complex steam engine was needed. I've choosen the BR 10 once again. My first version from the year 2000 was missing moving pistons and rods. This is what my 2016 version of this great German steam engine looks like: Larger image over at flickr: https://www.flickr.c...157668271658135 On nearly 100 pages in the book you'll find various building instructions for various train MOCs. Due to page limitations some instructions could not be included in the book. But I am happy to offer PDF downloads of instructions for my new BR 10 and my little BR 80 on my website. Just check out the train section at: http://www.holgermat...s/en/trains.php 1000grüße HoMa

Hi Udo, good to see your large Santa Fe Super Chief here! I saw the pictures already on your flickr account. And now we get the full story. Interesting concept using 9 Volt train motors and 12 Volt transformers from the 80s. Maybe you can make a picture how the transformers are connected to the track? 8-wide is super for this model, my only complain is the front window. You use 2 standard 4-wide windows in trans-clear. So the red frame is missing which is, at least for me, an important detail of this engine. Saying this, I can not think of an easy solution for this myself. Maybe red flex tubes or two of the old standard windows in 4-studs (http://alpha.bricklink.com/pages/clone/catalogitem.page?P=453ac01)? Looking forward to the video of the complete trains ;-) 1000grüße Holger

Will it really make a difference to post here? I think, the money I send via kickstarter for the ME curves is gone for me. I am also waiting for the metal curves ... I've bought all radii in plastic when they came out, but this was a normal order via the me-models website. This normal order was ok. But this kickstarter thing is strange ...

My Bucket Wheel Excavator MOC from 2001 (!), see more at http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=9483 An now a LEGO Bucket Wheel Excavator set! Seeing the pictures from Nürnberg and following the discussion I have some mixed thoughts: (+) Great to see a huge LEGO Technic set. (-) Looks more like a parts collection rather then a cool model (+) Great new pieces for large turntables (or a bucket wheel), these look very promissing to me (-) The colors of the LEGO set seems to be randomized, maybe my very-very-old MOC with a yellow bucket inspired LEGO to come up with a yellow bucket themselves? (+) New kind of machinery as LEGO set, not jet another truck or helicopter (-) Just two tiny link treads for the complete machine? They opperate in muddy, non-solid conditions and they need big wide feeds. Even Wall-E looks better equiped with treads than this monster (+) Lots of parts, good to start a Technic collection if you don't have one already (-) The wheel looks great on the box. But the counterweight part? Just a tiny control board for the six functions? And the main upper frame? Is this the handle to throw away the complete thing? (+) The extra truck, reminds me of the little Rebel Blockade Runner in the #10030 ISD (-) they'd better spend these pieces in a longer arm and a real counterweight (-) None of the typical strings or links are to be found which hold the main arm (or the missing counterweight arm), just tiny linear acturators (?) I assume one XL motor is to weak to power all the functions. Especially the drive mechanism down in the under structure. From the video the motor seems to be far far away from the place where the power is needed. (-) No high end functionality like the steering of the Claas tractor (or I haven't seen it so far) Rarely a new LEGO set caused so much like and dislike at the same time for me. Normaly I like or dislike a set, but this one is ... different. Holger

Regional-Express with Bombardier doubledeck coaches and a Siemens Vectron engine Today I am presenting my new train set which is a typical German Regional-Express with doubledeck coaches and a modern electric loco. These trains can be found all over the place in Germany and some years ago I used one of the to comute to work. Since then I had the idea in mind to build a LEGO model of this train. The train consists of 3 Bombardier doubledeck coaches (one with the streamlined end cap) and a modern Siemens Vectron electric engine (you can find the original at https://www.flickr.c...oto/13558726015). The train is build in 7-wide and is powered by Power Functions and two train motors in the bogies of the engine. The Deutsche Bahn company does not use the Vectron engine to push or pull regional trains like this one but I felt that the "grill" structure on the head of the Vectron engine is a nice challenge to be captured in LEGO bricks. The most challenging part was in fact the end cap of one of the doubledeck coaches. Using various curved slopes I ended up in a result which is not perfect, but close to the original shape (see it at https://www.flickr.c...6man/9465049170). At least I've avoided the non-curved 75° slope bricks which would have been to square-edged for the latest version of the end cap. The design phase started with the windows of the upper deck. They have a very iconic bend in the lower half of the window. And I also wanted to have a complete brick-build red-colored frame around the window. The lower part of the window are transparent cheese-corners with the higher side facing outside. The bended part of the window is a SNOT transprent panel which is attached to a Technic hole somewhere inside the coach. The upper red window frame is build using the thin part of a 1x2 - 2x4 bracket element. Unfortunatelly the 1x2 plate of this bracket is facing right inside the interior so I had to modify the minifigs a little bit. The display on each side of the coaches between the lower and upper deck has an offset of 1/2 a plate height and again the thin part of a bracket was used to cover the small gap which is left over when a 1-stud-wide subgroup is build in SNOT wise. Videos I took two short, bad videos just to prove that this train is running. At the end of the "push"-video the power of the batteries died. Pictures You can find more pictures in my Flickr album https://www.flickr.com/photos/holgermatthes/albums/72157662500969610 Enjoy and happy new year to all of you in the Train forum! Holger

Hi papacharly, thanks again for your useful tips! Now I can use the light.dat and it's modifications to the object { lightsource ... Basically this is, what I wanted! The coordinate system is really helpful, I felt a bit lost in pov-space and did not now where "zero" is, which makes it hard to estimate which numbers needs to be changed. I also found out, that just using the 3 default lights plus an 4th extra light at the camera location is a great help also. But it is good to know, how to use the light.dat set in MLCad later in the rendering process. This might be handy for lights in headlights etc. (like you've done it in your submarine underwater scene. Also, thanks for the link to the pov tutorial. This is written in a language I really understand because it gives examples from the real world, e.g. describing a light source like the sun or a local lamp. Kind regads, Holger

Hi papacharly, thank you for looking into my "problem". So far I was able to follow you: light.dat is now visible in the rendered scene using #declare LDXQual = 0; object { LDX_light_dot_dat ... is identified in the pov file. If I just use object { light_source { <0,0,0> color rgb <1,1,1> } matrix <1,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,1,-11,-41,0> } and delet all other lights, I just get black boxes and no light at all. It seems to be that the lights should be declared as light_source only, without object { light_source }. Adding the matrix information to one of the three default lights which were set by the LDView-2-POV export doesn't make a difference: // Lights #ifndef (LDXSkipLight1) light_source { // Latitude,Longitude: 45,0,LDXRadius*2 <0*LDXRadius,-1.414214*LDXRadius,-1.414214*LDXRadius> + LDXCenter color rgb <1,1,1> matrix <1,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,1,0,12,-90> } #end I think I do not understand the position definition <0*LDXRadius,-1.414214*LDXRadius,-1.414214*LDXRadius> + LDXCenter in the light_source. LDXRadius and LDXCenter are variables which are defined at the top of the pov file. But I have no idea what these four values are: 0*LDXRadius -1.414214*LDXRadius -1.414214*LDXRadius LDXCenter Anyway, thanks for your help so far and great to see your renderings at your http://www.flickr.com/photos/107790234@N02/ gallery! Kind regards, HoMa

I am currently working myself through this great tutorial using MLcad 3.4, LDView 4.1 and POV-Ray for Windows 3.7: [Guide] Rendering LDraw models using POV-Ray http://www.eurobrick...showtopic=65876 Now I want to gain more control of the the lights, so I've added a light.dat in the source .ldr file in MLCad. In LDView this light.dat is shown and I can switch it on and off and I can play around with "replace main lights". When it comes to the POW export I do not see any difference in the .pov file which is created. It always has the three default lights and I wonder where the only one light.dat is which I have inserted in MLCad. This is the //Lights section in my .pov file: // Lights #ifndef (LDXSkipLight1) light_source { // Latitude,Longitude: 45,0,LDXRadius*2 <0*LDXRadius,-1.414214*LDXRadius,-1.414214*LDXRadius> + LDXCenter color rgb <1,1,1> } #end #ifndef (LDXSkipLight2) light_source { // Latitude,Longitude: 30,120,LDXRadius*2 <1.5*LDXRadius,-1*LDXRadius,0.866026*LDXRadius> + LDXCenter color rgb <1,1,1> } #end #ifndef (LDXSkipLight3) light_source { // Latitude,Longitude: 60,-120,LDXRadius*2 <-0.866025*LDXRadius,-1.732051*LDXRadius,0.5*LDXRadius> + LDXCenter color rgb <1,1,1> } #end Is there any option in the export settings for the pov export of LDView to overwrite the default lights and just use the light.dat from the source .ldr? Anyone any ideas? Thanks in advance, HoMa

Hi Thorsten, what about publishing instructions via Flickr in the Lego instructions group or try mocplans.com (which I never tried neither as instructions author nor customer) Holger