Ashi Valkoinen

Very nice cars. Do you use any lubrication material on those small wheels? I had once a RoLA truck transporter car with 8 axles of these small wheels but it was extra hard to pull by locomotive...

Nicely done, I hope you will motorise it. :)

Recently our LUG got the new Powered Up passanger train which was a great fun for the kids at the holiday LEGO camp to assembly. However it seems that TLC will keep the big, one-part train fronts for all upcoming passanger trains, in other details the new City set seems a really good deal even for my AFOL-eyes. The color scheme, the easily removeable battery compartment solution is really nice, and the improved remote handles the speeds better (train not stopping at curves with speed 1). It is a real drawback, that only two outputs can be handled by a single battery box and connectors can't be stacked, but I hope there will be an official solution from TLC to put more motors on the same port (and maybe AA battery box). But back to colors... this bright orange, dark blue and light bluish gray combination is just perfect, I think it looks better than the 75% of real train colors. So I decided to make a try in LDD how this color scheme would look like on my Stadler FLIRT3 EMU (which was build for real recently). I had to change bright orange to simple orange - bright orange parts are still very limited. So, here are some screenshots from LDD: 1. The overall look: 2. Front pattern (light bluish gray cheese slopes missing but could be fit for real): 3. Overall look focusing on front: 4. Next to my GySEV FLIRT3: Basically only small details have been altered - the hinge connection by the front needed to be changed since the 1×2 plate with bar (closed ends) doesn't exist in orange. Also the side detail next to driver's cab and front window have been changed a little. However FLIRT trains have two different levels (upper one next to driver's cab and articulation, lower one anywhere else) I kept all color patterns horizontal through the train. Some lines with 1 plate height in Powered Up set have been increased to two plates (white on side and darb blue on the top), and made the full-orange front to have a line back at the bottom just like Railjet locomotives are painted with the red pattern curving back to the bottom. The doors became orange, sincs new TSI standards require to make doors with outstanding pattern to be easily identifyable to people with damaged vision. For this train I decided to make the plan with 3 cars - most LEGO passanger trains are given with 3 cars. Battery compartment could be hidden at toilet section. Tell me your opinion. :)

Same issue with newer PF-track: http://prntscr.com/kr1rct http://prntscr.com/kr1rmj Simply stressed and not lining up properly. This works however fine with 9V tracks and older PF tracks.

Thanks for you comments so far. She is alive, here are some test loops at our permanent exhibition:

...aaand here I am with the next interpretation of the next generation - the FLIRT3 train of GySEV railway company got finally real in bricks and was publicly displayed for first time next to the real train on her first run with passangers onboard! This variation of my Stadler FLIRT design also needed some fundamental changes - the middle cars are longer by 5 studs (on more window between the two doors) which needed some changes at rotation points of shared bogies to make the train run on R40-based geometry as well. Other important and more noticable change is the front design - thanks to the more strict TSI standads related to collisions and energy absorbing the FLIRT trains of Stadler have been changed a lot, and it is really remarkable at the front design. The more roboust design was fortunately easier to do with bricks than the previous FLIRT-design. The only thing I had to think a lot was colouring - the bottom part under each car is a color which doesn't exist in LEGO - it should be "very dark bluish gray". I was thinking about using black instead of dark bluish gray (and my LDD-plans were published with black design), but finally the front made me to use dark bluish gray - if you check the windscreen, it has a narrow, black, angled pattern under the windscreen and an another strip of dark bluish gray. This gray is the same what colour the train has at the doors and the bottom part - using black to represent "very dark bluish gray" would mean to lose this detail. The new FLIRT3 is compatible with the older version both in real and in LEGO, their run can be synced through SBrick which delivers enough current from the battery box to the three PF train motors under the train. Similarly to my other three FLIRT train it has front/tail lights, which could be controlled independently and indoor lights. Fortunately Power Functions led lights have been improved during their production, and my leds bought for this project give much more light - they could be noticed in the train even when it runs in enlighten enviroment (they are still not visible by sunlight, just artifical lights). I'm fortunately after some testruns (synced run, durability-test, battery test), and it works quite good, however it can eat the 6×2100 mAh batteries fast, so I have to look up for something with more storage capacity. I'm also planning to develope more on bogie details - current design works fine without falling apart but the real thing has little more details around the wheels. Comments and critics, as always, welcome.

If you have a topic for this train we can continue there, but I think the following lines are ontopic here in mine as well. So as far as I could notice your design is even longer than mine, since you have two studs between the center side windows on each car. These cars are still shorter than traditional 8W carrieges modelling a 23-26 metres long 2'2' passanger car, but these are connected with shared bogies which means total different behaviour on curves and points, especially if you put more of these next to each other. The perfomance of my trains is good with two motors on straight tracks or on one switch turnout, but it struggled on 180 degree turnbacks (R40) or more points placed fter each other. So I went up for three train motors, but even an infrared V2 receiver can't serve their needs and SBrick also allows synced run of more motor units. This synced run the other thing I really need to work - with two motors in coupled run the train reaching the curved slowed down too much and had been pushed out by the second unit by the coupler, so this was an another reason to go up for three motors. Also PF train motors are different and newer series are worse - the bottom part of the motor has a number XX JX, where X are digits between 0-9, the first XX seems to be random, but JX shows the "age" of the motor, J0-J1 as oldest and increasing X mean newer series motor. J0s and J1s are simply faster and stronger when top perfomance is needed - but this difference is not noticeable when you run LEGO-set sized train. I'm pretty sure you will run your loops with motorising this wonderful EMU - I worked on it for around 3 years to find a good solution and make my trains run almost flawlessly. :) EDIT: Also you can check my design here, as I upload every LDD's I managed to build for real bricks to help anyone else who wants to figure out how my builds work: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=573893 I think for you car length the pivot point of shared bogies should be moved 1 more stud more under the carriages to make it run on R40 geometry.

Ahhaha, thank you, I'm not totally satisfied with the photo since this photo was taken with a 12 years old Canon PowerShot, and the lights were not so good at that time because I couldn't reach the photo place where I wanted to take the photo first. And this old camera couldn't handle lower light level and 140 km/h at the same time. :) I found it easier to manage and show my MOC trains if I put all of them to the same topic - I have some others with trams but they are visible only to those who are browsing Eurobricks Train Tech at the time when I post the topic. And yes, almost 10 years, and almost ten years ago when Eurobricks Train Tech Contest was held. I hope I can introduce here something at the annivarsary. :) In what scale are you building it and what scale did you use on the previous version? What problems did you have with motorising? I went for SBrick and 3 Power function train motors - train motors give enough power to go through on everything (and SBrick can deliver enough current for this), I ended up with around 3700-3800 grams of each FLIRT units. :D I remember I had seen one digial SBB FLIRT years ago here: And I found a really nice 12V version on some german site, with the scale of official LEGO set trains, but now I can't find it anywhere. UPDATE: found it, there she is: http://www.l-bahn.ch/de/flirt/

Thanks to n3t3rb's request I put some work ours to my Stadler FLIRT design - after finishing the third motor unit with refreshing the front design and adding SBrick I didn't think that I will ever change something on them - until May of this year. The request was the SBB (Swiss Railway Company) FLIRT in LDD - and it has a long horizontal pattern on the angled part of the roof which makes my previous design to be unuseable in this case. The redesign of the angled part also made the redesign of the front necessary - at least a part of it. So, here is the entire train in LEGO: The difference between the new and old roof solution: The new design of the front's top part allow to run through multiple narrow color lines (the line of cheese slopes can be a different color next to the whie on side): Overall look:

It is not cheating, but a really good offer for our train hobby. Multiple motors served from same port (and SBrick actually allows 3A per output!), synchronising outputs or different SBricks for multiple locomotive or EMU/DMU traction. I use currently 6 of them, but plan for more.

Really nice design and it totally fits the 12V era. I always wondered how people can make wonderful MOC trains with simple building techniques and such good match with the chosen train era, however I build and design a lot, I could never replicate they style of original LEGO sets.

I don't think so, I have some motors of the newer series running under different trains of mine for months by now, but they didn't get any faster at this time. Something had changed, and I had no chance this week to do the comparison by opening them up. :(

So, finally, got my 12V straights, built into the layout at a small section, had time to take some videos, so here it is (first time I have to hear my voice and I don't like it :D)

Haha, Hungary, they made an advertisement if you bring your own LEGO MOC train you can have a free ride. "Gyermekvasút" means "kids' railway", it is a narrow gauge line EW from capital of Hungary, Budapest. In the communist era the kids with good school grades could get there to learn, how a railway system works and actually work there, this tradition is still kept. The only job kids can't do is driving the trains, but they could work at holidays in different positions - selling and checking tickets, handling points and signal and managing the traffic. It is quite hard to get there to work as a kid, and a good start for those who are dedicated enough to spend their lives as adults by different railway companies.

On Monday I will open up two of them, document it and also send my (and it seems your) rightful questions to TLC.

Good point, but I bought motors only, without wheels, I replaced the wheels from old setup. However the problem now seems solved, the motors with mark XX J0, XX J1, XX J2 seems to be faster while other ones (J3, J4, J5, J6, J7) are slower. I found some older motors and put under the green-yellow FLIRT (with same wheels), now it runs the same speed as the red and blue-white one. Next week I will open up a new and older one to see what's the difference inside.

So I ran into a problem I couldn't solve on my own but reduced the possible error to the PF train motor. I have three, differently colored, but in dimensions and structure identical Stadler FLIRT electric motor units built from LEGO bricks. All three of them are powered with SBrick, using three PF train motors under each train. Here they are: I noticed that the yellow-green one runs slower than the other two, the speed difference on the same level of SBrick slider is very noticable, and there is a speed level when the yellow stops, but the other two runs on multiple curves and points with no problems. For first I thought that it could be the failure of the oldest SBrick in my yellow train, but when I replaced it with a new one, nothing happened. I measured output voltage on the output reserved for train motors, but it was just fine, only 0,02V less than the actualy batteries had. Than I replaced train motors, all three to brand new ones and the train became even slower. Than I replaced all PF extension wires between battery box and train motors, still runs slower. I measured the weight of the train, but they are 3882 and 3814 grams, the difference is only 68 grams (the yellow-green is heavier)., this is no explanation for the speed difference. Than I put the new train motors under the red one and it became slow as well. It is also noticable that a train with new motors is harder to push by hand than the train with older ones. So, my question is, did TLC change something in the internal gearing and other properties of the LEGO train motor? Neither Bricklink, not Brickset knows about the difference (if there is any), and the PF train motors has no production year printed on them, just "(C) 2005 The LEGO Group" on the bottom and a four digit code at one end, like XX JX, where XX is a two digit number, J seems constant (I checked 10 train motors), and the X after "J" seems increasing with time (my oldest motors have J0, J1 or J2, while newer ones have J4, J5, J6 underneath). The XX digit seems totally random. So does anyone know about any change in the inside parts of the PF train motor and could you advise me a method to select the faster ones?

Received my R104 Test Track recently. As far as I'm a 9V guy I need no RC-only tracks, but I consider to buy a full loop of R120 to carry out hight speed test for my trains. As others in this topic and in LEGO Train Fan Club Facebook-group, I'm totally satisfied with this single item. I showed it to my LUG members and they also find it really similar to LEGO-product tracks, the color match is really nice (don't you sacrifice cheap DBG bricks to get material? :D ), and the clutch power is just as good as LEGO's. There is no noticeable difference in the clutch power when connecting tracks to each other compared to LEGO-only, but the top studs have a little weaker clutch power. Bottom part is just as fine as LEGO's. Despite I'm a 9V guy (however with the exception of two locomotives all my trains are PF/SBrick, I want to keep backward compatibility with my tracks) I consider to buy a full loop of R120 to carry out high speed test for my trains. Hope it will help the buisness and 9V long radius curves will appear. I'm a patient guy, I'm waiting for such a product since 2012. :)

Thanks for your kind words. It is special for me, because the book you had written has your Vectron locomotive on its front. :) Some straight 12V tracks arrived finally (this is my first order of such and old system excluding some 12V parts ordered before for the locomotive), and of course it haven't worked first as I hoped. It worked quite slow on 12V sections (they were powered from a 9V speed regulator, because I don't have any 12V :D), so I decided to measure voltage on the track, on the 12V pickups and on the light gray plug of PF-cable, which leads to the train motor. There was 9V in the track (I cleaned them and all connections before) and 5V at the PF-cable, and it came quite clear in minutes that there is a 2,5-3 Ohm resistance between the 12V pickup and the 9V motor. Since the current flows this through twice (+ and -), it results in 5-6 Ohm resistance, while the internal resistance of the 9V train motor is 10 Ohm. So, that's why the loco runs slow on the 12V section, I'm pulling electrics apart and cleaning every connection I have - the old 12V parts seem to be little corroded, while the PF-part is fine - when running on internal battery box, the 7,2V of my rechargeable batteries appear on the PF-plug as well.

Thanks for all the replies so far. I'm currently working on a video showing the locomotive running between differently powered sections, the only problem occured I don't have enough 12V straight tracks! I'm waiting for a bigger package of track to arrive, then I can continue with the video. :)

Hello all, I'd like to introduce my latest MOC, the Siemens Vectron locomotive of GySEV/ROeEE railway company. These locomotive appeared only months ago on Hungarian rails, the Austrian-Hungarian railway company, GySEV/ROeEE bought 9 of these with different equipment. Some of them are dual-voltage and run under 25kV, 50Hz (Hungary) and 15kV, 16.7Hz (Austria), some of them are capable to work with DC supply as well, and 2 of them with the two different AC-supply will get diesel units inside to ensure the locos can move on industrial tracks not electrified at all. When these locomotives started to appear I designed it in LDD, there was a little competition between Hungarian LEGO train fans with the design. I was the first who finished the virtual build and I loved it, so I decided to build it as soon as possible. This was the first versions, but only AC-DC locomotives have 4 pantographs, the AC-only types have only two of them. I'm quite proud of the angular green tile in the side pattern and also the angled front needed a little thinking around. I started to love the old hing plates with two and three teeth - these teeth do NOT brake the line of the hinge plate and the whole LEGO part fit into less space and easier to build other things on the top of these bricks. The slots for lights are also capable of to be lit by LEGO LED lights - another good invention introduced first in my Stadler FLIRTs to use the flexible exoforce tubes which are capable of bringing the light of PF LEDs where I need that light. You may ask why is that M-motor hanging around - it has a great importance in this model! As the real thing with two different AC-supply, my Vectron works under two different LEGO-voltages - it is compatible with 9V track and 12V track as well! The M-motor switches a polarity switch brick, which cuts off 12V pickups from 9V train motor's contacts - when the locomotive runs in 9V mode, the pickups for 12V track could touch the same rail when going through 9V points, and the loco could short circuit herself! When the loco runs in 12V mode, the polarity switch is ON, and the 9V train motors are supplied from 12V track. At the other end of the locomotive there is an another M-motor - it cuts off the 9V train motor from the output of the controlling SBrick - it won't be a wise idea to power that SBrick both from battery box and both from the 9V track, through its output... Look at the next image, how it works: So if the locomotive reaches the end of electrified track (12V or 9V), it still can carry her train forward - it can run on internal battery box as well. And finally, yes, these stuff did fit into the model: (Since the lower light on each side serves as red and white light on the real thing and upper slot serves for long distance lights at night I put white lights on the upper, red lights on the lower slots.) Also some other images and further details can be found in Hispabrick Magazine #29: http://www.hispabrickmagazine.com/sites/default/files/Descargas/HBM029_ENG.pdf Comments and critics welcome! Some other photos:

Thank you. It was worth redesigning it, but truly said I'm still thinking about how it could be improved. I will never finish this project. :D Each motor units has one big (Technic, AA) battery box (I prefer these because of the bigger capacity and the fact that they don't turn automatically OFF), an SBrick is plugged on the battery box. Three PF train motors (bogies 2,3,4) are under each train, the remaining three outputs of SBrick are reserved for front tail light ("A" and "B" end of train) and indoor lights.

Yeah, the two above photo was taken when the real thing was moving in the background (freight trains rarely stop at tracks with platforms, and even when they stop, the locomotive surely won't be next to the platform, on the other hand I was going for open lines, not train stations :) ), and by the time both the V63 and Railjet arrived it get darker and my photo machine needed more than 1/500 sec to take the photo. Last weekend I shot couple of videos about my finished FLIRT trains - finally at last the yellow-green colored train got an SBrick, so now the three differently colored EMU can work nicely together. I tested them in different configurations by running, and I found that even a non-working motor unit can be pulled with a working one or with two working ones in "sandwich" configuration. Good to know, if the batteries die in one of them, they can still be pulled to the next station for changing the batteries inside.

I took some photos during the last weeks, trying to capture my LEGO trains with their REAL sisters. To take this photo with Ganz V63 locomotive was quite easy, the only thing I had to do is wait next to a busy line until it appears with a freight train: Railjet train wasn't a hard task to find, but I had only one hour to go out for the photo and the first place where I planned to take the photo was unreachable, someone blocked with huge rocks the old road leading there. I had no plan "B" for this so I quickly decided to go to the nearest train stop, but railjets do not stop there and that stop was in shadows by the time I got there. And ÖBB sent this train with reversed locomotive, showing it's black end on the front and braking the nice red color pattern going through on the side of this train: The hardest photo was my new BVmot train, there were only three sets of them produced, BVmot 001 was stored at an engine shed, BVmot 002 was stored far away from me and BVmot 003 ran on daily routine, but not with her cars. Fortunately the guys at the engine shed were kind to let me in for a photo - BVmot 001, one of her middle cars (2nd class) and her driving car (Bmxtz 001) was present, so I could take this photo: I haven't stopped building train, I'm currently working on the Siemens Vectron locomotive of GySEV / ROeEE railway company, and the FLIRT3 train of the same company. FLIRT3 won't be the only Stadler vehicle under contruction, the 6-carriage MÁV Stadler KISS should be ready until the end of 2018!

Some friends of mine and me assembled a long radius curve loop last weekend. There was no exhibition, just some fun playing with our long, 8W trains, and due to the lack of the right size room and thanks to the good weather we decided to go outdoors. Here are some photos of my trains on these curves built from straight track pieces, my 8W trains really like these turns. With coaster's future 9V R120 points I can redesign my exhibition layout as well. My latest creation MÁV BVmot train: MÁV Siemens Taurus locomotive with some passenger cars: ÖBB Railjet trainset: