Duq

On my holiday in August I'll be passing the Brand stores in Manchester, Milton Keynes, Watford and Westfield. Is there any difference between them in terms of stock, particularly PaB? What are the shopping centres like that the stores are in? In other words: which would be the best of the four to visit?

Noticed that white box in the top right corner? It says 'Search'. If you type 'Hogwards powered' you'll find the Train Tech registry. And in there, under 'Powering unpowered engines' you'll find these threads: Harry Potter 4841 Question Lego Harry Potter Hogwarts Express with Power Functions Advice needed: Powering 4708 Hogwarts Express

Thanks 12Volts! If only I had the space to have this layed out at home... I already have plans for more modules!

Putting the large drivers on the PF train motor will make your train very fast but with very little pulling power.

Any chance of some pictures of how you have powered your train? Do you have rubber bands on at least one of the driven wheels?

Of course there was this piece: But I don't think that'll come back because it won't play nice with the wheel holders for making simple bogies.

Last week I had a display at Titanic Belfast. They have the travelling Brick City exhibition and to add some excitement there was the Big Build weekend. A number of brick.ie members exhibited; Oiley brought part of his fleet and his army and his new model, the battle of Rorke's Drift. Janet VanD had brought an impressive Tomb Raider level and Dfenz was showing Heuston Station and other Dublin buildings. My contribution was this layout; my German station Neuffen, the old engine shed, the goods shed, the signal box and some of Daisy Duqs landscaping: Big Build layout by Duq, on Flickr For this show I MILSified my display. Rather than having the track just on a baseplate the landscape is a brick up as can be seen in this picture of a typical lazy construction crew: Construction crew by Duq, on Flickr The layer of black bricks around the outside looks good but more importantly it makes the modules a lot more rigid which in turn made setting up a lot easier than before. The downside of course is more weight and volume to transport. At the moment I have 4 steam engines; My own BR55, BR65 and BR70 and a copy of Bens well-known BR23. All four were running as well as my little Kof II. Unfortunately none ran trouble-free... The Kof ran mostly ok until I didn't slow down in time for a corner and it flew off the track... It didn't take long to rebuild. I think it scared the public more than it did me. Apart from that it pulled a short freight train for hours on end without complaining. Both the BR70 and BR23 need to be pushed by a motorised carriage. The BR23 ran fine but I did find out why the instructions specify the long shaft version of the 2x2 plate with tow ball. With the short version the cab hits off the tender in corners so I had to remove some pieces to make it work. The BR70 started out ok but after a while it slowed down and the motor began to stutter. Initially I thought it was a dying 9V train motor but on closer inspection it turned out to be the running gear. There was a little too much play in the way the cylinders were attached which resulted in it binding at one point in the cycle. Resolving this meant emergency repairs. Luckily I had enough spares with me... Repairs by Duq, on Flickr The BR65 struggled more and more in corners. I suspect it's the wheelbase; FBBF is too long for L drivers. That means I have to change it to FBFB or BFBF but either way means an enormous overhang in corners so I'm not sure what I'll do about this. Maybe I'll wait for the ME-Models wide turns. Finally the BR55. It ran fine for a while but eventually the driving gear started to snag and it pulled itself apart (yes, that L-motor is quite powerfull!). I tried a few things but ran out of spares on this one. In the end I put her back together the same way as before and she ran trouble-free again. Still, I need to do some more work on those custom driving and connecting rods to make them more reliable. I guess the moral of the story is that building steam trains is really difficult...

Please, let's not start that one again. Fans claim they would buy separate carriages, Lego's market research says they're not profitable. They could have made a set with two carriages but that would have pushed the price up a good bit which in turn would have reduced sales. Was it a mistake? Hard to call... I know from experience how hard it is to make a steam engine. Last weekend at a show I made some changes to a model that had run for several hours at previous events. It had survived a good bit of testing but still developed an issue where part of the running gear had too much play.

The train release cycle has been fairly consisten. City trains were once every 2 or 3 years but are now 4 years: 2003 4511 + 4512 2006 7897 + 7898 2010 7938 + 7939 2014 60051 + 60052 The only odd one in the cycle was 3677 (Red Cargo Train) in 2011. So it's a safe bet that the next City trains will be released in 2018. The Exclusive/Expert train sets are also on a very predictable cycle: 2002 Santa Fe 2005 10133 BNSF 2007 10183 Hobby Train 2009 10194 Emerald Night 2011 10219 Maersk Train 2013 10233 Horizon Express So yes, the next one is due in 2015. And since the last one was a high speed passenger train I'd be very surprised to see a Shinkansen. I'm still hoping for German steam although that's been done a lot by AFOLs, myself included...

I have space envy... Looking great. Just wish I had the space to run long trains like that...

Funny thread. Looks like it could do with an update though ;-) The shop in the new station (60050) has a coffee machine as does the bar on board Horizon Express (10233).

Many real life trains in the Netherlands have similar motor control and as a result make the same sound.

Hmm.... That wouldn't exactly be my top 10...

That's a cute steam engine. It reminds me of the old Thatcher Perkins. I'm not sure using the train motor is a good idea though. It's gonna make your train very fast...

Can you put two battery packs in daisy-chain? Or is that too big again? I'm sure the motor will run on 3.7V but it'll be slow. If you want to use the PF receiver you may have a problem. I don't think that'll work at all on 3.7V.

LOL! That's not easy being the chocoholic I am...

They're appearing in shops in Ireland now: Station €65 (US $88,50) HS train €125 (US $170) Freight train €180 (US $245)

Hey Jennifer! Good to see you here! I've fond memories of playing with your models in Geldermalsen. Hard to believe that's 12 years ago... Gonna have to build the crane. Been meaning for ages to have a go at modding it for PF but life keeps getting in the way ;-)

Maybe the nose piece can be used for an airplane?

Yup, first thing I thought when I saw it was: 7725! Just another model that proves you don't need big sleek nose pieces. This could be released as a set and would definitely sell!

I can't see them. It could be a case of a designer pleasing fans, that's known to happen. However a more likely explanation is that the 1x2x3 panel in black was last used in 2009 so it may not be a 'current' element while the 1x2x3 black train window was produced for Horizon Express last year so it was available. I fully understand why Lego would have gone for the single big nose piece. Expensive as it may be to produce it's probably cheaper than x other parts to make up a nose so it would either keep the price down or allow for more elements elsewhere (such as including straight track sections). At the same time I hope they're not going too far down the Megabloks road where regular bricks are just used to keep big pieces together like here:

I wasn't going to get the Sea Cow - too expensive. Now my wife has got it and it's just one of the best sets ever. And I mean ever. So now I want my own... Other sets on the list for this year: UCS X-Wing (check) Lego House (check) Cargo train Volvo Technic set spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! Mos Eisley cantine Sandcrawler Trevi fountain Ghostbusters Time to rob a bank or win the lotto...

I'm sorry but does anyone really care what the first two digits of Creator set numbers in 2019 are going to be? Lego set numbers rarely follow any reliable pattern or logic.

That's a beautiful train! I hope Lego are watching: this nicely shows you don't need a single big mold to do the front of a high speed train.

I was well impressed with the entries on the night (and felt really bad about not finishing mine....). I somehow didn't realise at the time that first place (Rolli), second place (Rufus and Pandora) and third place (Dfenz) are all brick.ie members!