Ashi Valkoinen

Now it is 100% sure that I will participate BSBT this year, too, and for normal gauge train I'll bring the Croatian electric motor units. This year my "main" contribution will be a narrow gauge layout.

Thank you guys all for nice comments! Some personal stuff - when I started the hobby back in 2009, I had a vision, what is ahead and what I want to achieve. A large station, with functional switches and lights, track ballast, acceptable radius and rolling stock I love to build. I did know that it will be a long story, a lifetime project. Metal rails of LEGO went off the market, no large radius custom track, neither plastic not 9V was available at that time. I waited with patience with my R40 system, trains adjusted to the limits of R40, that some day someone will make it, and we can have metal tracks again. And FX Bricks did it, was a long journey of them too, and as the succeeded, the way opened up for me to continue. The same thing was with this train, I have seen it in Zagreb in 2011, I returned to that city between 2014 and 2015 a lot, while I had a girlfriend there, and always bugged me to make it once. As in April of 2025 we got an invitation to the Alpen-Danuv-Jadran Railrod modell show for May, 2026, it was the final kick to start again with that Croatian beauty, and after the battery-electric one was completed I knew that the "old" 6112-101 electric train can be built as well. And changing the blue from simple blue to discontinued medium blue (it is a nice color with relatively low saturation compared to other colour) made the build challanging.

And NOW, 11 years later I am happy to show you the completed train! It was a while when I made the first attempt to create this train. The height, the shade of blue and the most important front design changed a lot, but this year, in February I finally made her. However it was ready 3,5 months ago, I kept her in secret and the first event for running was in Zagreb Railroad modelling show in May, I built the train especially for that event for the Croatian kids and adults to see some domestic train running around (no traditional railroad model company making these trains). The front design is heavily based on my previous physically built Končar-train, the 6211-001 battery-electric prototype, however, I was sad when I discovered that different series of these trains were build with slightly different front cones. The first of these trains were 6112-001, regional electric prototype and 6112-101, suburban electric prototype (this is the train I built, it has 8 doors each side), these trains had a little narrower white part under the windscreen and the third headlight is under the windscreen. The frist series (6112-0XX and 6112-1XX) had the same front, but with third headlight on the top, and later series (6112-2XX and 6112-3XX) had a differently shaped front as well, just like the battery and battery-electric versions. I hope you like it and you can forgive me raising such an old topic here!

Same issue, I cannot order anything to my Hungarian location. I tried to open a cart with none of the new products, but generates the same error. For me it seems the error occurs when you enter your Postal Code.

No, when a new item appears at the FX shop, but still not available for order, they used the sold out tag in the past. When they finish the first batches of production and packaging, they will be available in the shop.

Reading back the topic now I see why I missed it. Haven't seen your MOC at BSBT, at least this one. :( And overall nice design with lot of details, as usual. But tell me, what do the LEGO string with 1×1 round plate parts doing at the bottom of the train bogies?

I really like this work, especially because of the appearence of 5 studs covered narrow gauge track piece. We are used to use normal LEGO gauge as normal gauge (1435 mm), LEGO and TrixBrix narrow gauge as 600/690/760 mm narrow gauge, but the track inbetween representing 1000 mm gauge real life tracks are really missed!

Thank you guys! The layout was made by Nándor Mészáros, András Pécsi and me, but actually my part was just a quick improvising putting my houses, trees around the small two-track station. I just joined narrow gauge at our LTC, but I plan to make Sátorkő station of the Sand Railway network based on old aerial photos to figure out the track plan and it will include more details and will be better built. I really love the coal waggons, too, they are the smalled train MOCs I have ever made, the good quality (SKF) ball bearings under each waggon cost more than all the LEGO pieces, including the old and quite rare container lid I used upside down. There is more to come as I will make my own narrow gauge layout. On the long term I plan to make a hill where trains can go up - with total height of 51 plates (17 bricks) to climb! But I estimate the full project approx. 2-3 years!

No, not. But there is a small switch to turn the Cube ON (left), OFF (middle) or BLE (right). If you leave it ON, or BLE, you can charge it. When you connect the charger, the green light (turned ON) or the blue light (BLE) will turn off, red will turn on to indicate charging. After charging finished, red light turns to green, but still no output while the charger is attached. If you remove the charging cable, you get back your Cube charged and in the state you left (turned OFF, ON or BLE). So basically I don't need to reach the turn ON/OFF/BLE button during showtime, I turn the locs to BLE at the beginning of the day, I am charging if necessary and turning locs OFF at the end of the day. But I can confirm you can charge while BLE is on, I didn't try what happens when the Cube is turned ON (continuous outputs) and I start charging.

I used their original application to control the cubes. Since they added the option to connect to two cubes at the same time via Bluetooth, for me it is quite viable to use it from this app, I never need to control more than two small locomotives at the same time. For the "Babycroc" locomotives, charging can be done just removing the roof with the pantograph, to turn on or off the cube must be lifted and rotated out. Basically, I don't turn it off while charging, so it needs no turning on after charging is finished. The small 9ton locomotive's 1×4×3 panels can be easily removed (they are not part of the structure), the charging port is behind one of the panels. The turning on/off bottom is underneath, and nothing covers it so really easy to access. And as I promised, here is the video of the running locomotives with their freight trains. A few notes, problems, I faced: TrixBrix switches are pain when it comes you go straight one them - the lack of second moving rail giving support for the wheels is really bad when you have a locomotive with such small weight and such small axle distance. TrixBrix track vary a lot in quality unfortunately - there were some tracks bended from the beginning, and wheels were is to start spinning at these sections. The smaller loco's weight distribution is really bad, having the battery in the cab, it required some small magnets put in the cavities of the front to balance it, but without careful driving it may leave the track when the small nose part is leading the train. The big "BabyCroc" locomotives worked well, but quite slow, I managed to put only one CC-motor inside, and due to the overall shape of the locomotive, there is not so much weight at the only driven axle. Both locomotives and freight trains were able to handle R36 - I wish no more. The minecart-train, with that small wheels, small axle distance, it is really pain when it comes to push such a train.

That's a long river, and the biggest river in Hungary. Last weekend we had a show, narrow gauge only layout and the small mining locomotives did really great. Circuit Cube components are small, very flexible items, I am glad that it allowed me to make my 4 studs wide and 4 studs+1 plate wide locomotives motorised, without adding a constantly couple freight car for batteries. Some really nice photos coming soon!

Wow, that's something. I am always feel good when I see people building some Hungarian or Hungary-related stuff, our country is so small and unknown, I am always wondering why people from a different country choose to build our locomotives. The steam is right on spot, and using two CADA-motors facing each other, giving enough traction power is really clever idea. Hiding them in such small locomotive, great work. I guees that orange and dark green train windows are clones, but what about other bricks in those models? Some years earlier I found a danish MOC passanger car with dark red windows - all the 1×4×3 train glasses where held by SNOT panels in place and the train itself gave the impression train window part was used there, but no, just SNOTting around, since no dark red train windows were produced.

After finishing the work at my normal gauge main station's signalling I turned back for narrow gauge, especially the "Sand Railway" network. The mainline locomotives were shown above, but there were some small locomotives doing the shunting at the sand mining site. These had rod pantographs as the overhead wires were offset from the centerline of the tracks. This locomotive had a really nice path of service - all started in 1922 where two identical, 2-axle electric locomotives, as twins, sharing one full pantograph were built to serve on the first version of the "Sand Railway" network, built using 580 mm as gauge. The network got its name of the sand transported on it - sand was mined from the sediments of river Danube to fill up the nearby coal mines' unused tunnels. In 1935 gauge was switched to the more reliable 760 mm, and three new locomotives arrived (TC series, number 1, 2 and 3). As the twin locomotive wasn't needed anymore for the mainline service, twins got separated, regauged to 760 mm and each half got a rod pantograph - so they were able to do the shunting at the sand mining site, where the overhead wire was offset from the centerline of the track. The "Sand Railway" worked until 1988, the nearby coal mines got depleted or victims of underground water, without the need of sand the entire network and all vehicles were scrapped. My LEGO MOC locomotive is number 5, I found a couple of coloured photos of the real train from the last decade of the service. Number 5 had an orange paint, number 4 was yellow, with some diagonal black stripes. However there is no photo proof that number 5 ever had stripes, I added them to improve the look - I used original LEGO stickers to do it. I powered the locomotive with Circuit Cubes HUB and small motor - these are really tiny electronics but still very hard to fit to the locomotive. The HUB is quite heavy compared to the overall weight of the locomotive, fits only the cab, while the motor has odd dimensions, and the bottom is lower than the top of rails. I hid the HUB in the cab, old (no side support) 1×4×3 panels are around it. I added 2× original traction rings to each wheel, it increased the height of the loc so the bottom of the motor is not touching the level of the top of the rails. Honestly, to make this locomotive run was maybe the hardest task I ever did with bricks, due to the inbalanced weight distribution, only one axle driven, it was really challanging to make it work on R36 geoemtry (trixbrix points and curves) and also pulling, pushing some heavy cars!

All the best, Ben!

For the signal Ties used the new track element introduced with the Arctic Train set, which triggers the rocks falling off from the top of the tunnel.