Duq

First of all you're hijacking someone elses post with your own question. Showing just this little detail of a train doesn't tell the whole story. If you want help getting this to work then you should start your own topic with a picture of the full train.

Notice the track is not a copy of Lego track; it's using single stud sleepers. The trains look ok. Some are almost complete copies but others are original designs. I've never seen Ausini in a shop though.

On my BR 65 this is the distance: BR65 Drivetrain by Duq, on Flickr It kinda works but is not reliable. Ideally the flanged drivers should be closer. Unfortunately on this loco it would mean an enormous overhang.

Nope, they don't contradict. 3D printing is not suitable for mass-production because the process is slow and labour intensive. That's got nothing to do with being cost-effective. At the moment unfortunately 3D printing is also very expensive as Zephyr mentioned...

You do realise where this is, right? This is Legoworld Copenhagen, a 3-hour drive from a litle village called Billund... TLG are heavily involved in this event so I'm not surprised to see new sets.

I'm really not sure what to make of this post. You get a great Lego set for Christmas and sell it unopened? For a start that would send a nice message to whoever gave you the set but that's another topic. If you have built Tower Bridge, why would you think a train would be any more difficult? The building techniques are the same. The only difference is that you put wheels under the train. It's Lego. It comes with instructions. How hard can it be? The train is constructed in such a way that you can easily lift the roof of the engine to reach the battery box. As mentioned above, if you use the rechargable battery that's all you need to do; lift off the roof and plug in the charger. For the normal battery box you need to lift the battery box out of the engine to change the batteries. There is an on/off button on top of the battery box. Same story: lift roof off engine, press button, put roof back. After that you use the remote control to operate the train. What age are you if you don't mind me asking?

The 9V system made sense in many ways. The track sections are stronger and easier to assemble. Power transfer from the rails is more reliable than the pickups from the centre conductor rail. While most regular model railways use 12V Lego's choice of 9V made sense as they were trying to create a system of compatible components across Technic, Trains and other themes. The geometry of the switches is awkward if you want to combine two but makes perfect sense otherwise; add a curved section to a switch and you're back to parallel. Track is now 8 studs apart rather than side by side which is more realistic and more practical. You can now have a platform between tracks and you can have wider trains. Emerald Night would not have been possible on 12V track. As for the switch back to batteries, as far as I know that was triggered by American health and safety; you can't market a toy that plugs into mains to children under a certain age. Flex track was an answer to the call for more variety in track geometry. I don't think it's been the success that it should have been. Going by the fact that it's no longer included in the new train sets I suspect it may have gone out of production. With all these complaints you need to keep in mind what the target audience is for Lego trains...

Nice ideas and very nice landscaping. On the pictures with the red track it looks very tight inside the tunnel though; if you have carriages with any overhang they'll catch the walls in the tunnel. I've got similar flood lights on my yard. Can't find a picture of them now but they use this part at the top to clip lights onto:

The story is simple: it's no longer cost-effective to create molds for producing custom Lego train track. The cost-effective way is 3D printing. Unfortunately 3D printing is slow and labour intensive so not suitable for mass-production. The way forward, and that doesn't just apply to custom Lego track, is local production. I've already started investigating local suppliers.... It'll be interesting to see what ME Models are going to do now.

You don't 'upload' pictures here, you link them like so: [img=http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/sportinglife/VSR/abd_high_profile_1.jpg] Which will give you: Make sure to click on your picture in Brickshelf to get the 'jpg' link, not the i=123456789 link. But as others have suggested, I would join Flickr if I were you... As for your trains, I don't know the original but I like the shape of the grey roof.

That's a clever mechanism and very well executed.

Also very Dutch... The front piece of the passenger train looks like it's 14 long! And that weird roof over the track in the station seems to be made of 6 6x8 curved slopes, the building itself is mostly panels and columns. Interesting to see the Technic suspension pieces being used as support struts. I probably won't bother with the passenger train but the freight train looks like a nice parts pack. The engine definitely seems to have one of those large tiles with studs on the edge to cover the battery box (so no blue battery box). I like the portal crane; 8 old-school straight rails and those tall supports from the Bentley Bust Out in yellow. I like the idea of the cable drums but I'm not mad about train bases. I know many people are excited about getting them in blue but they're just gonna go on the pile with the black, white, red... The car with the cow is naff but hey, there's a cow to populate my fields ;-) Then there's a car, a forklift, a green wheelbarrow...

Use MLCad instead of LDD. You can download the LDraw files for Big Ben wheels here: http://www.bigbenbricks.com/ldraw/ldraw.html

That's just it. It's not that it looks bad but huge chunks like that is just not what Lego is about. Like 7897 it's got a platform almost half the length of a single carriage. But it's good to see you get 8 straight track pieces instead of those flex things.

Genius! Have to use this on one of my future loco's.

The connector is the same but you can't connect a 4-wide track piece to a 6-wide because the studs and rail stubs get in eachothers way. This is very interesting. What is the print resolution? In other words, how accurate can you make the parts? How is the clutch power? Another interesting part you might make is a converter from 4.5V/12V track to PF track.

The current track has different connectors from the 12V track so it won't just click together. It's the same width though so it should be possible to make it work.

It's been tried but hasn't caught on. Because of the way the 9V train motors are built the tape needs to be on the inside of the track and the wheels are spring-loaded to push against the track and the copper tape wears out. It's also not easy to dismantle a layout with copper tape. The most promising alternative seems to be ME Models but they haven't come back after the initial batch following production issues. Big Bens idea looked interesting but seems to have been cancelled before ever being produced.

Hmm... To me that means the pack of straights is more expensive than it needs to be...

Does this help? The curves are attached at either end, the middle bit just rests on tiles: Ballast_Curve1 by SavaTheAggie, on Flickr If you're not happy with that and want to attach the curves to a few spots along the way then this may help: Curved track attachment points by Duq, on Flickr

You can't compare these sets to the Horizon Express, Maersk or Emerals Night. You have to see these sets for what they are: starter sets for children. A lot of children get one of these for christmas and that's it for trains. For adult builders the freight train is usually a decent parts pack to get started; you get some track, all the PF components for a train with a remote, a bunch of wheels and couplers. I do agree about the track though. It's a mystery why they won't sell packs of 8 straights like they used to.

Nothing stopping you from only using 80's colours... :-P Maybe not in yellow, but the shape is common in Europe. Think Bombardier TRAXX, Siemens EuroSprinter. Sets tend to change in detail from the preliminary pictures. Changing the nose from one huge mold to brick-built would be a fundamental change. I agree that this is a hugely disappointing step back. The green/white World City high speed train was hideous and was a car short. The 2006 pre-PF IR train looked much better in the pictures but had the single nose piece that didn't fit. I think the current passenger train with it's brick-built front is the best passenger train of the last 25 years. That's from retail sets, not counting Santa Fe, Emerald Night and Horizon Express.

That's great. I was afraid I was going to have to buy 2 trains but that passenger train is just as awful as the old ICE. Won't be buying that. Looks like the station will include a yellow taxi again. Nice for play feature but takes a chunk out of the piece count for the actual station.

Whatever looks good to you really. There's no right or wrong answer here. By the way, 'Brick' is not very popular here....

It's always appreciated if you can show what you've got sofar when you ask for help. In the meantime this might help: