Heppeng

Looks like its just as well I did not get around to it sooner, sounds like I may have been frustrated!!! Many thanks for that!

Its still on the to do list! I really ought to get around to it!

The first orders from bricklink/ebay have arrived, and this is the result! All the doors are now the right colour, the roofs are much more grey, the loco has tyres, and a start is made on the 7815.

The Emerald Night really won't like that! Other trains will probably be OK though.

I think the system you are thinking of sounds like an adaptation of the Faller road system, what I was thinking about does not use a guide wire, but is an adaptation of the slot system above, which would use a moving magnet under the baseplate to pull the car along, as well as a magnet on the car itself. To avoid friction, the magnets could be held a short distance above/below the base plate so they do not rub. Judging by the way that my trains can pull themselves together from a couple of centimeters away when coupling up, I would expect that even with 5mm between the magnets there would still be enough force to pull a car along. The only way to find out for sure is to try it!

I was just wondering, If you put a train magnet under the car instead of the string, and again had a train magnet on the chain, would the system work with the magnets pulling the cars along, and thus no need for a slot? The standard base plates are pretty thin so it might be possible to use them without much reduction in magnetic strength. Its something I might experiment with after seeing your inspiration, but it is some way down the 'to-do' list!!

Well it might not be very long by the standards on this thread, but at six cars its pretty long for a 7725:

Yes, that is pretty much what I am aiming for! BTW, I believe the reason the restaurant car has the pantograph is to power the cookers/ovens/on board supplies etc. I notice that you moved it to the mail wagon where in real life there would not be much call for additional power? Mind you all is possible in lego!

I could not have a 12V railway without the iconic 7740, but as per my usual ethos, I wanted to spend as little as possible, and I enjoy a restoration job so I have ended up with this for a tad over £80: The £80 also included all track, minifigs except the chef, and the station which had the platform top replaced with dark bley plates - which is a bonus as they match my modern platforms which need extending! The red roof tiles are just enough to finish the roof off on a Pizza Hut MOC. The motor works too, as does one of the 12V light bricks which is a blessing as they were advertised untested. The interior of the coaches is a bit barren, missing all the seats, but luckily all the missing pieces generally are the cheaper ones. Those that I do not have in stock - which is most of them - can be had from bricklink at just over a tenner. Of course at the same time I had to bricklink a 7815 and 7819 to go with it so maybe not so cheap after all, but I love it!

Ahh, if you are selling non-original instructions of your own making, and are using anything lego trademarked/copyrighted, e.g. a logo you could be in infringement of copyright. It may be that it has taken them 8 months to notice/get around to it and they have only taken the one example, (so far)

Great job! With the larger diameter wheels do you have to lower the couplings to account for the increased height, or have you modified the chassis to maintain the original overall height?

Don't worry, I very much appreciate the program as it is. I understand its not something done on a commercial basis so I don't want you to feel pressured! one thing I often do is try and substitute any rare bricks with a cheaper/more easily available alternative in order to try and keep the costs down. It seems that this will make the process longer. However, I am prepared to wait! (1859 million solutions and counting....)

My problem is that it is still running my four vendor solution from this morning, 1382 million solutions and counting... Is there any way of interrupting it and just going with the best its found so far?

Very good, looks like an old Massey Ferguson?

This is a very useful program thanks! A few thoughts and observations: 1. Is it possible for the program to be updated to retrieve minimum order values? Occasionally it comes up with combinations that have just a few cheap bricks from one vendor which are below their minimum spend, it would be good if it could automatically discount those combinations. 2. The time it takes to find solutions seems to rise exponentially according to number of bricks and vendors, I am currently running the program on 61 types of bricks in various quantities from four vendors and it is taking hours compared with the minutes a three vendor solution takes. It seems that it analyses every possible permutation, so that a combination that is only a couple of bricks different from another already high priced solution will still be calculated. Is there any way the program can eliminate a whole range of combinations, and thus not spend time calculating them, based upon results of combinations already calculated? i.e. maybe it can eliminate all combinations that include a particular high priced vendor and not spend time calculating them?

Well the lego shop lists it as 'hard to find' whatever that means...

Yes unfortunately. However with the high value of these it is worth repairing, a replacement LED is just pennies, and it should be a quite straightforward soldering job once you get it open. You can even completely rebuild the insides if required, see here- http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=78487&hl=circuit

Firstly, make sure that you are using DC, not the AC output of your transformer. Then make sure that when testing that you reverse the connections correctly. The only way I can think that you would get the results exactly as you have described is that 1. you are testing on AC, and 2, the red led is bust. If you were testing on AC and the red was good, you would have the appearance of both red and green simultaneously - perhaps with a perceptible flicker due to the AC. If you were correctly testing on DC a green illumination on both polarities is impossible.

Great use of an Enlighten train! You have to be careful with clone brands - there are great differences in quality between the different ones, and it is unfair to label them all as equally poor. Enlighten have some way to go before they are as good as lego, but they appear to be the best of the bunch, and I have yet to have any Enlighten train fall apart as frequently as my Emerald Night...

I am just blown away by this set! Only recently emerging from my dark ages I missed out on café corner, so this set was going to be a high priority even before I saw it. But now I have an opportunity to buy this fantastic restaurant which more than makes up for it! I wonder if there are others thinking on the same lines and maybe café corner prices will come down a bit?

So I have taken out the stripe, I think it does look better! And with an extra 'unit' it is helping with the rush hour crush, especially as with two non motor cab cars you are more than doubling capacity as there are three extra seats compared with the standard 7725.

The bits have finally arrived! - Well at least all the ones I remembered to order, I am missing the black inverted slopes and a couple of others, but otherwise it is assembled and looks like this: I think the colours look pretty good on it - it even seems to make the original look a little dull! I am not sure about continuing the stripe between the headlights mind, I think the front end may look more tidy without it - what do you think? As far as running is concerned, the technic axles add even more friction than I anticipated, and are noisy too, to the point where I might consider replacing them with 12V ones. The 12V motor still seems to be able to haul it all around at a good speed none the less, they do seem to have some power! You also need to add a couple of extra magnets to extend the couplings between the two cab cars, as with the overhang of the lights they would otherwise foul on the corners. But overall I am pretty pleased with the result! Next project - a red 7760 shunter!

I suspect that a feedback controller may also counter the effects of voltage drop - since there is virtually no current flowing when the controller is measuring the back emf of the motor, there will therefore be almost no voltage drop during measurement even if there is a comparitively large resistance between the motor and controller, and the controller will still see the motor slowing and bump the volts up to compensate. I got a cheap controller from ebay to try and see what difference it made, and the result was that it made a really substantial difference! The one I used was a Hornby R965, which is reviewd here as well as others: http://www.scottpages.net/ReviewOfControllers.html

It does just fine over switches - the brass strip is similar width to the original 'sleepers', so it does not fall off the side on corners, and as long as the distance between the two ends is greater than the dead part of the switches it will perform just as well as the original 12V system. You do have to make sure that the ends are turned up a little to help them ride over the gaps and rails, but thats all. Yes, its the insane price of old 9V/12V motors (or indeed the complete cost of the full PF kit) that made me take this route. It is interesting to note that voltage aside, the 12V and PF motors have very different characteristics, the 12V motor seems to be much more torquey and does not slow down on hills and curves nearly as much as the PF motor, which on the uneven and slightly sloping floor of my old room means the train can be crawling round the curves whilst hurtling downhill on the straights almost too fast for the next corner! I have cured that by using a Hornby controller which has feedback, ie it measures the speed of the motor and adjusts its output to maintain that speed, so now my freight train can trundle sedately around the whole circuit, whilst the Horizon Express can maintain high speed without slowing down! I do wonder if that means that the standard PF module incorporates feedback to maintain motor speed, and thus allows lego to use a simpler cheaper motor?

I like that!