Duq

Here's a picture of the station as it was in Skaerbaek: Dfenz at Skaerbaek by Duq, on Flickr And one from the event in Raheny (Dublin): Kildare station by Duq, on Flickr The public in Raheny really liked the station. A lot of people recognised it straight away. It certainly helped us get the public vote for 'Best display in show'. What Dfenz didn't mention is that we had a little accident on Friday night when a 10ft tall panel fell over and smashed the right hand side of the station to bits. It took about 2 1/2 hours to rebuild...

I missed this topic the first time around. I just found this picture of a DB 442 EMU a few days ago and though that would be a fun project. And then this thread got a little kick...

Very impressive! I think you've got the movement spot on; very well engineered. It's not something I'd put on my own trains in a hurry though. For me it's too disproportionally wide. What made you pick the BR22? It's not the most obvious choice.

That argument would work for retail sets but you see the same strange differences with exclusives. Some sets are cheaper in one country, some sets are cheaper in another.

It's no longer being maintained or updated but I still use TrackDraw for planning layouts. I'm still hoping someone will pick up that project some day. If I had the time and the programming skills I'd give it a go... You can still get the last version (13 from 2005) here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/trackdraw/files/*Latest%20Release*/

Great station! Well done on the curved platform, it looks great. All it needs now is a little more life on the platform ;-)

It's funny to see how often this discussion is repeated on various forums. So many train fans can come up with many reasons and scenarios for producing sets with extra rolling stock. All of those stories sounds really plausible. Unfortunately they're also wrong.... I'm lucky enough to have been to Billund and to have met a number of people at Lego. They all say the same: we do our market research, we analyse the sales figures, and rolling stock just does not sell. Just think about it: how many train starter sets are sold in your local toy shop compared to the number of fire stations, police stations and castles? Who will be buying rolling stock sets? Only people who already have a train set. That means a tiny proportion of their customers will be buying the rolling stock sets. And AFOLs buying multiple copies just won't make up those numbers. Don't get me wrong. I would love to see train sets like in the 80's. I'd love to buy a shunter in my local toy shop, and a restaurant car to add to my passenger train. I just don't see it happening any time soon...

Rather than speculating I thought I'd ask Big Ben. On connecting to standard track: So that means you can't put 1x8 plates in between the ties for ballasting.

I don't think such a list exists but here's a few pointers to get you started. All Lego trains run on the same gauge; the dimensions of the track haven't changed so trains will fit on any track. Most 4.5V trains are battery operated and will run on all track. 12V trains will run on grey track with a centre power rail. There are 4.5V trains with a centre power rail but they're well before my time ;-) 9V trains will only run on 9V track (metal). IR trains (and there are only 2, 7897 & 7898) are battery operated so will run on all track. Power Function (PF) trains are battery operated so will run on all track. As for motors, the size and shape of the train motor hasn't changed since 1980, but there are differences. The 12V one uses wheels you can pull off. The 9V one has fixed wheels, while the IR and PF ones use train wheels on technic axles. You can replace the PF motor with a 9V motor on all PF trains (except Emerald Night) to make it run on 9V. The other way around may work, but you'll have to fit a battery box and receiver into the 9V model and there may not be enough room for that.

Building Lego trains is all about compromises. For a start minifigs have odd proportions. Track curves are ridiculously tight so trains at a proper scale-length will look silly. The walls of a Lego train are also extremely thick (the width of a 1xn brick at 1:40 scale is about a foot!) so while the outside of the train may be to scale there is little room in the interior. Combine that with the proportions of a minifig that's much too wide for its height and you see the problem... Generally minifig-scale is taken to be about 1:40. L-gauge is 37.5 mm. Standard Stephenson track is 1435 which would give a scale of 1:38, which is a good match for minifig scale. However at that scale trains should be 10 wide which just isn't practical. Cape-gauge which you have in NZ is 1066 mm which would give you a scale of 1:28... Building 7 or 8 wide allows for a lot more detail in your models and works well with minifigs but it also makes trains a lot heavier. My advice would be to stick with minifig scale to keep things managable, especially if you want to start doing buildings as well. Although I'd love to see some larger scale narrow-gauge trains.

Are you looking for someone elses MOC to copy? In that case the Railbricks link above is probably your best starting point. If you're looking for inspiration to start your own MOC then I can recommend Railfan Europe. Pictures of trains from all over Europe. I can also recommend Jake McKee's book Getting started with Lego trains: Amazon link. It's a few years old so it doesn't use all the latest pieces but it's a nice book to get you on your way.

Let me repeat what I said before the server crash: that's a really nice model! Lots of interesting details. I especially like the driving gear.

I guess I'm one of the few who couldn't care less about monorail sets. I'd much rather see Lego produce wider curves for the regular track and straights for the narrow track. If LEGO say monorail isn't commerically viable then I trust them to have done their homework. They tend to be pretty good with their market research these days. But never say never. When 9V was introduced we thought we'd seen the end of battery trains but they made a comeback after all. LEGO said they wouldn't produce modern army sets but look what happened with Indiana Jones...

It's not pulling the carriages; the motor must be in one of them. There's just no room in the engine. I like the looks of your BR80, especially the drive-gear. I must really find some time for my own next BR...

Pity about the porthole windows but over all it looks the part.

Mine are also 3-axle with sliding middle, based on the excellent design by Scruffulous. I didn't have room for a vertical mount so I've got two 90-degree gearings with the gearing up done inside the engine. The bogie gearing is 1:1 using 12t bevels. I'll have a good look at the bogies to see where the friction may be.

Thanks for testing that Thorsten. I'm planning to have another look at this next week. I'll post my updates here.

That's a pretty good introduction. Welcome! My only comment would be about the slopes that are really close to the track. I don't think any of my trains would make it past that station...

I'm working on a model that at the moment has two M-motors with a 20:12 gearing to the wheels. The model is 6-wide so I've no room for XL motors. I've a steam engine with a single M-motor and 1:1 gearing to the large drivers. That runs ok so I figured with the smaller wheels I'd need to gear up for this new model. Thing is, it's fairly slow and had surprisingly little power when I tested it last weekend, even with a fully charged battery. Would 1:1 gearing be better?

An RCX to save space???

Pneumatic Lego trains have been done: That's a model by Rene Kok. I also found this thread here on Eurobricks. I see a few problems with this approach. First size. You think a battery box + receiver + motor is tricky to hide in a model? Now add a compressor! Efficiency. I wonder if you really will get more power by converting electric power into pneumatic pressure first. Rene's engines are indeed powerful, but they run on a proper compressor. Still, I'd be interested to see some experiments...

Thanks for the replies. Nothing wrong with that cheeky question. I have indeed simplified the code but I've checked the original code for typos (long live Notepad++). It's a small program that only uses a handful of variables so I'm nowhere near the limit of 32.

That's exactly the problem; I would expect the value to be changed to 20 but that doesn't happen. I'm writing this in NQC in Bricx Command Center 3.3. I've changed the program to do things a different way but I'd still like to know if this is a known issue or whether I'm doing something wrong...

I couldn't find a topic on this subject (although search is not easy with a search engine not allowing 3-letter words like 'NQC'...) Anyway, after dusting off the RCX I'm giving NQC a go and I seem to have a problem with a global variable. I can init a global variable and I can set its value in task main. However when I start a second task from main and I try to change the value of my global var in the second task then nothing happens... So what I'm doing is this: int x; task main () { x = 10; start task_2; } task task_2() { x = 20; } I would expect x to be 20 after running this but it's 10. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

No offence Tony, but it's more than just a novelty. Here in Yurp we have these things called tank engines. They don't have a tender. If you want to model one of those you've no choice but power the drivers...