Heppeng

Yippee! Half an hour last night with a soldering iron replacing the transistors and diode and I now have a working flasher! Many thanks to all who contributed to this thread, particularly Andromeda without whom it would have been much more difficult - if I even would have suceeded at all. The most difficult part was removing the old components - it was a bit too much of a challenge to try and unsolder all three legs of the transistor simultaneously with one iron so i could pull it out, so I just cut the old transistor as near to the case as I could, and was then able to unsolder the legs one by one. You need to be careful that the new components are soldered in at the same height as the originals, I put them in a lttle high because I was worried about heat damage during soldering, and longer legs = less heat in to the component. This meant that it was a very tight fit back in to the casing, and it only just went back together! The barriers certainly got a work out last night - you just can't help playing! :)

Problem with Helical gears is that they develop side thrust. This could push a lego gear along its axle and out of mesh if the load is high enough.

A nice female torso would be good - but lego does not really excel at curves...

I think you need to brush up on your lego history! Lego copied the brick from Kiddicraft. if Kiddicraft had never invented the 'interlocking brick' there would have been no brick design for lego to steal. So without lego, we may have all been building from Kiddicraft bricks instead, which ironically makes lego the original clone brand! However one does wonder that if it was left to Kiddicraft, whether we would have had anything like the bricks we have today...

I am impressed! At a glance it is indistinguishable from the real thing. I have also made my own isolating rails, simply by taking a rail out, cutting with a dremel and replacing. It does the job, but yours is much neater!

I think all lego train motor controllers use pwm, I know that the grey 12v lego train one does, and I would expect all subsequent ones would too, so I think it is unlikely that any motor problems will surface. Counter intuitively, PWM is most likely to damage motors when they are run at low speed.

Oh I am sure its worth posting! Its a lot of fun restoring old sets, and perhaps even putting your own interpretation on it - In lego anything is possible - especially with the help of bricklink!

Thanks for the PM! I think I can just about follow, from your description it sounds like I have at least a blown MPSA13 since mine illuminates constantly on either polarity. Hopefully once you have sent me the bits I need I can get busy with the soldering iron and all will be well!

New version is working okay for me!

It has to be said though, that so far it has done me proud in getting bricks at a good price. Its amazing how much you miss it when it does not work! Keep up the good work!

This is what I got from my 'main' wanted list, the only one it seems to be able to find:

Brickficiency has just stopped working for me, cannot find any of my wanted lists despite some of them being identical and unaltered from ones it successfully found last week. Perhaps something has changed on bricklink that is stopping it?

First run last night - the coaches were dragging somewhat at first, to the point where the loco was occasionally pulling the magnetic coupling apart. So to reduce the friction, as well as the strain on the motor, a small amount of plastic friendly light oil was added to the pin on both sides of each carriage wheel, and what a difference it made - the complete train hurtles round the railway like new! I am always careful to use only a little oil - the smallest drop will suffice, as on a toy that relies on friction to hold it together getting it in the wrong place is unlikely to be helpful... In case you are wondering this is what I use: http://www.gaugemast...?code=GM619&r=1 You should be able to get this or similar from any good model shop or online. Also, my curiosity got the better of me regarding pantographs on restaurant cars, as we never had them in the UK, so I looked it up. It seems to be something more common on DB trains, although other European trains do feauture them. Their purpose seems to be to allow the electric cookers to function whilst the train is stationary. Whilst in motion there are generators driven by the axles which provide power, or they may take power from the locomotive, I guess it varies according to the design. It means that for example, dinner can be cooked prior to the journey starting whilst the train is waiting for a locomotive to be attached, so that dinner can be served as soon as passengers join the train. It also means that when under way the pantograph is locked down as it is only designed to be used when the train is stationary and could damage the wires if left up whilst the train is in motion. In the UK we just cooked on gas - BR must have had a good contract with calor for the supply of cylinders!

The last orders have arrived, and it is now complete apart from stickers: Now, do I go through my bricklink orders to find out exactly how much this lot set me back in total or is that a stone better left unturned? Oh and maybe time to edit my signature!

Thanks Hoexbroe, I went in to bricklink and made a selection of cheap plain parts. At the moment i am looking at a price tag of about £65 for 100 complete figures. At only 65p per figure it sounds good, but when you want 100 or so it all adds up to a tidy sum!

I was not thinking of getting Market Street, however it has occurred to me that it would be perfect sat to the right of Parisian Restaurant, as I think the two open sides would compliment each other, and if I was to bricklink it I certainly would not mind changing to a few cheaper parts. I even have a lot of black hose spare which I may even consider painting white... Damn you!!!!!

I think you are right about keeping the logos and numbers separate, as I expect people would only want one style. I also think I may have twigged the reason for some of the other groupings like this one: Is it because all these stickers need an opaque white background and therefore cannot be printed with the others that require transparent? Would it be possible to replace the knifes/forks and Shell logos (which I think you do on other sheets as well) with two extra envelopes so that you could get all 4 required for 7819 on one sheet?

OK you have finally prompted me to update my profile! So I am in Derby, England. As far as amount willing to pay, well as cheap as is possible, just as long as they are complete! I don't mind scratched/faded/non existant printing either, so I really am looking at rock bottom price wise.

I have a need for a lot of cheap City minifigs. The reason is that I would like to use my pair of 7725 trains to represent a crush loaded peak commuter or metro service. Looks like I can fit up to four seated/nine standing per car, so with 6 cars that's 70-80 minifigs for the whole six cars. I would like to have a crowd on the platforms too, so i guess I am looking at getting about 100 minifigs. Condition is not that important - scratched or rough is fine. I have been looking on Ebay, but the trouble is that any large job lot of city minifigs seems to come with star wars and other unsuitable figures mixed in such that I may only be interested in about half the figures on offer. I am not sure if there is an easy way to bricklink a variety of cheap minifigs, preferably from one seller either.

Well hopefully it will be the right size on my order! My own hopefully constructive suggestion would be to have all the stickers for one set on one, or perhaps two sticker sheets if they will not all fit on one. Currently it would seem that to get all the stickers for 7740 I need to buy four different sticker sheets, which also include stickers for 7760, 7819 and others. Not a problem for me as I happen to be building those models and need them anyway, but for someone only building a 7740, or a 7760 they end up having to buy a lot of stickers from other sets which they don't need just because they share the same sticker sheet. Unfortunately as I have had no bricklink orders for this project arrive this week there are no changes to update you all with, hopefully more will be done next weekend!

Perhaps I use a little bit of reverse psychology - I often seek out items with poor, stock or even no photo because I know that it puts other people off resulting in a much lower price. Got a near mint Pet shop that way for the lowest price of any sold on Ebay UK for the last three months. I have never had any problem doing this and have had some spectacular deals/finds as a result.

Not had any horror stories with lego - used e-bay for ages before coming out of the dark ages, and if you know all the tricks you can buy low and sell high, although for real bargains you do need a bit of luck as above. After using bricklink for a short while I have had no major problems, even with old used parts from cheap sellers - In fact often the parts are better than advertised! One annoying trend I am noticing which could apply to brand new parts as much as used, is sellers not paying attention to detail and accidentally sending similar, but not quite the same parts, e.g. sending black 1 x 8 plates instead of modified 1 x 8 plates with door rails. I have had this with several orders now, and so far they let me keep the wrong parts and send the right ones, or have refunded without issue, but I would have preferred they got it right in the first place!

The one carriage can be either a blessing or a curse, depending on what is important to you. For example, I got lucky and bought a complete boxed Emerald Night via gumtree just a few months ago for £95. I then sold the coach on ebay for £80, so I got loco and tender for a net cost of £15! I have also added four new coaches from elsewhere (that match the engine rather well) for less than I sold the original coach for. In my case I was more interested in running an engine and decent sized train without spending silly money, and I was not bothered about splitting the set.

Likewise no problem, you have been very helpful and your contribution is welcome!

The next tranche of bricklink orders have arrived and this is the result: The 7740 is almost complete just waiting on windscreen, black 2x6 plates and a couple of other little bits. And the addition of seats now means that I can fill it full of passengers! Still a bit more required for the 7815, and the 7819 is just a small pile of bricks, but there is one big order yet to arrive which will hopefully contain enough to complete everything.