fred67

^ I realized that a little bit after I wrote it; I was thinking of the Toy Story train, but yes - the wheels wouldn't match. I think it would look terrible.

Thanks for replies.... the answer is because I'm using the old 9V motor, not the new PF motor. I did do that to the Toy Story train, which I converted to run on PF, but you can't drive the large wheels with the old 9V motor. I mean, I realize they are both 9V, but it just seems, for consistency sake, easier to refer to the last metal rail system as 9V (as opposed to 12V), and the newer system as PF.

We actually discussed this a long time ago in this thread. I did the red variation myself, it looks great. I still have not done the tweaks to make it my Hogwart's Express, but even as is it's a far better Hogwart's Express than any of the official sets. There's quite a variety of colors you can do this in.

Just some observations from my experience this year; any comments or insights are appreciated. For the past six or seven years, I've only dug out my 9V trains for my holiday set up; I get to set it up the week of Thanksgiving until after Christmas, and I usually just had the Holiday train (that I had to build from my own and BLed parts). I don't have room for a permanent layout, so it's the one time of year I really get to play with my trains. This year I got the new train, modified the tender to run the 9V motor, and noticed a few things. 1) The new holiday train seems to have a lot of friction. It seems to me the old style wheels (with the metal axle) offer the least resistance; the newer style offers more resistance (even if I play with how far onto the axle I push the wheels to keep them loose). It's even worse with the rotating Christmas tree gearing. The older one could pull all the cars from the original set plus a couple of MOT passenger cars (hey, green and red... Christmas-y enough) with no problems, but just with the addition of those two small cars (and using the new engine, which also uses the new style wheels with the plastic axles), the motor overheated after running it for just a few minutes. After letting it cool off, I took off the additional passenger cars, and it seems to run fine.... but I haven't let it run all that long either. Curious if running the motor at a commensurate speed for the size of the train and the curves it has to go through... and the fact that it's a relatively modest sized train layout (two folding tables in an L), I'm wondering if running them slowly makes the motor overheat more than just running at a higher speed. 2) I also noticed, for the first time, I needed to weigh down the tender with the motor, or else it slipped terribly. 3) Even after weighing it down, the train still slipped on the older ME models metal track. I know it's long been discontinued, and people had connectivity problems (thus the metal tape it came with), but I found that if I didn't run two sections together... IOW, I alternated them with LEGO track, there were no connectivity problems.... but the train would only slip on those sections. I've removed them and dug out some more straight LEGO track... 4) ... track that was on display on a double-wide trestle I made probably 15 years ago and just had on my shelf with a couple of trains on it for display. The track was dirty... and a bit oxidized. I blew them with compressed air and then wiped them down, but the train still slowed going over them. I found a regular pink pencil eraser worked wonders.... it runs perfectly now. Is that a problem? Is there a better or easier way? With my LEGO collection sprawled throughout various shelving and closets, and tucked away here and there, I decided to dig through all of it and really get a handle on what I have. To my surprise, I discovered I had not the three or four motors I thought I had, but six - including a brand new one still in the box in sterilite drawers with variety of other train parts. I thought NOT running them for too long might cause a problem, but I've run them all (except the NIB one), and they all seem to work. Anything I should be worried about? Do they need to be exercised every so often? I also found my Railway Express. The ugliest 9V set ever made... but also the one that started it all for me. I was disappointed when I got it because it wasn't a classically styled train, and when I discovered LEGO offered a lot more, it kind of went in a box, not to be seen for nearly 15 years. But I ran it... and you know what? It's not all that bad for a modern looking city people mover. Closer to a monorail/train hybrid looking thing... Anyway, just a bunch of minor observations and questions - I didn't think any of them was worthy of a new thread, so figured I'd recount my experience and questions here.

I will disagree with you that kids are the more likely army builders. Even if the parents are willing to by multiples, it'd be very unlikely they'd get the quantity that an AFOL army builder would get. However, I do think that, while the point of LEGO being a toy is not lost on AFOLs, that some of them tend to lose sight - for every 100 figures you buy for your army, there's hundreds, if not thousands of kids getting a few. No matter how you shake it, AFOLs are not the driving force of ANY LEGO sales, we're still just along for the ride.

Yup. Dang. With the "M" in the timezone I was thinking U.S. Mountain Time. Oh well. The entries have been great, though.

I wish I had time to do more detail, but it's about what I had in mind.

I know we all have different opinions on this, and I have mine - like the architecture series, which started off simple and affordable, it grew out of control and now many architecture sets are not affordable to a lot of people who got hooked when they were $20. I'm not going to whine that it's "unfair" they release super expensive architecture sets, but will opine that they alienate a lot of people who would otherwise like to keep collecting architecture, but now cannot. The modulars are little different. At under $200 a set for ten years (gradually increasing by $10 or so here and there), an $80 or $90 jump is tremendous. It will necessarily mean that a lot of loyal modular followers will have to give up on the series, and not be able to collect them all even if prices come back down next time. They are alienating a lot of people; they can make huge, expensive sets - like GBHQ, that might nicely work inside a modular city, but aren't really part of the line. Real wages in the U.S., on average, are stagnant at 1999 levels. When you're talking about adults, like myself, the level of disposable income I have has gone down, not up. Despite getting COL increases based on government statistics, my expenses have only increased while my salary, adjusted for inflation, has actually dropped (because "real" inflation is higher - especially when it comes to medical expenses - Bill Clinton was spot on in his analysis, but I don't want to get political). This is actually fairly common across the U.S. right now. TLG has every right to price me out of the market if they want; I'm certainly a capitalist at heart, and TLG is a profit oriented company that does it's research, and prices to maximize profits - that's what businesses do. For everyone like me they may lose sales from, they will gain a lot more. I have not checked in several years, but last time I did their growth in sales was quite high; their growth in profits was higher (meaning higher profit margins). That's also what businesses do; if they kept prices lower (even while making great profits), they might not be able to keep up with demand - they actually self regulate their own market by getting people to buy less by charging more. But this is different; the coin analogy is not really a good analogy. If you were going to do that, it'd be like collecting the state quarters (and the other new ones) the U.S. government has been releasing... they are all still quarters, and all still worth 25 cents. If they released a $50 coin, it wouldn't affect your collecting quarters, as it wouldn't be part of that "series." That's like TLG releasing a $350 GBHQ - it would be cool to have, but you shrug and move on if you can't afford it - it doesn't "ruin" your modular collection to not get it. Like I said - this is capitalism, and if TLG can sell enough "premium" sets, then it's worth their while to sell fewer expensive sets than a lot of smaller sets; it's less work, easier resource management, fewer sales for the same profit. It just makes sense. But on a personal level, they are pricing me out of modulars. If I have to skip one, and can't buy the complete series, I may just stop buying them. No point in trying to keep up with an incomplete collection, especially if this price point becomes the norm. They have already priced me out of architecture, and the other themes I was interested in before have been disappointing... classic castle, trains.... there's little for me to follow anymore. But they lose me and pick up 100 kids into the hobby who actually like Nexo Knights, then that's what they need to do. It's just disappointing for me on a personal level.

Don't believe I've thrown my 2 cents here; Railbricks was quite good, very high quality, and much appreciated. I would subscribe to a print magazine if it were available. Life changes subtly over time, I find I'm more interested in trains, and less interested in other themes. I set up my annual Christmas layout - the only one that I generally make during the year, and ran some trains I haven't run in over a decade on it, and really want to spend more time on "L-Gauge," which, for the record, would be a decent name for a magazine since other gauges have a similar magazines.

Wondering if it's allowed - seems a lot of the instructions are creative commons, so I think it should be, if I can get the PDFs I can host them. It may not be until Monday or Tuesday, but I will put what I was able to get. It seems like the first pages of each section you could DL the PDFs, but after the first page in each section the instructions were not available.

I like your solution a lot - I did the same thing, but extended the front with a couple of 1x2x3 black slopes. My two cents (and then some) about this train. First, I did not have the original 10173 version of the train, so I pretty much bricklinked it having so many of the pieces already in my collection anyway (including a ton of train items). It wasn't exact (new couplings, for example, instead of the older exposed magnet ones), but it was pretty darn close. Compared to the older set, the newer one, without a doubt, has a better engine; the big wheels make a big difference on these old style steam engines. That's the good. The bad is two short cars make for a terrible train "set." The spinning tree is interesting, but it seems rather pointless and annoying after a while, and like something that will just wear out quickly. The passenger car is actually quite nice, IMO... just way too small. So on my Christmas layout (that I set up every Thanksgiving week and leave until after Christmas), I am using the new engine with the modified tender, pulling the both the new and older cars. I also threw in a couple of MOT passenger cars (they are red and green, after all). My observations: despite only being two small passenger cars, the friction in the new engine plus the flat car (with the tree) is much higher than the usual wheels (with the metal axle). The motor had to work quite hard to pull the whole train adequately. In fact, it overheated after less than ten minutes... I was not running it on full, but perhaps running it moderately slow was just as bad, requiring more torque than it could handle over time. I had to weight the tender to keep the wheels from copious slippage. The spinning tree is a novel idea, but when you've got the train running at speed (not fast, a moderate, comfortable speed for the scale and type of train), the tree spins too fast and you can't really even tell it's got it's own train going around the tree. Since I don't run the trains that much anyway; I took out the MOT passenger cars and let the engine cool off for a couple of hours, after which it seemed to run fine again... but I didn't use it for more than a few minutes. I don't actually get to play that much, just stopping by the table as I pass by and playing for a couple of minutes at a time. Going a bit off topic, on a side note, being short on straight tracks, I supplemented what I had with ME models original metal track they used to sell some years ago. Apparently they had a connectivity problem and came with some metal tape, but I did not have a problem when they were connected to LEGO track, so I staggered the several pieces I was using, never doing ME sections in a row. But I found that, even weighted, the LEGO motor slipped on only those ME segments. Hoping the new stuff won't suffer from the same problem. After that happened, I tried an experimental section of plastic ME track that I did the copper tape trick on, and the motor seemed to grip it really well. The only problem I have with that solution is how fast it wears out due to the way the LEGO motor train wheels are rounded and push out instead of having a metal flange. It puts all the force right on the "sharp" edge of the plastic track, cutting the copper tape over time. I know it's a bit much to ask, but I hope ME makes a replacement motor with metal flanges for the pickups. Also wondering if anyone's tried a non-LEGO speed regulator. I don't see why it would be a problem if you didn't overload the motor.

Going to jump on the pile here - I added PF track to my Metal backing after they communicated over the summer they were offering a special to backers that have been waiting.... to the tune of another $150+, and haven't received a darn thing. I can understand the wait for metal, but not the wait for the PF I added... the insult added to injury is that I also ordered directly some PF rail last Christmas, and had no problem... I know it's not their intent, but it seems like they are shafting the backers, and rubbing salt in the wound by enticing them to give more money for a deal on PF stuff over the summer and then screwing them again. I know it's not the intent; I know they are busy. I know they are just a few people who all lead other lives... but then why ask us to make additional orders if they are so swamped they cannot fulfill them? And really, if they want people to stop bugging them in email (they haven't responded to my only email asking for more information - one email in two+ years), a once a week blog - even if it says "We're still waiting," is better than nothing.

OK, I'm an old timer (ready for my older than dirt tag in a few months); I've been playing Counter Strike for 15 years, but having a job and kids (and a LEGO hobby) it's hard to find time to play. However, I work for Turner Broadcasting, and this year we started E-League. I actually get to work on the broadcasts, and even wrote code to integrate with the game engine to get information out. It required me getting the latest Counter Strike - Global Offensive. So I started playing again. Excepting a month binging on Tomb Raider a couple of years ago, I haven't found anything I enjoy more. I have like 75 steam games (mostly from sales and Humble Bundles), and find every time I try a new one, I go back to Counter Strike. Watching it being played by pros helps raise my interest, too. I get to meet some of the players and sometimes just sit in audience and watch.

I don't see how anyone can feel "betrayed," since TLG owes us nothing. I also find it hard to belittle them for doing stuff to make money instead of satisfy my personal LEGO wants. That said, I feel like what ratjag said is extremely insightful. I understand using themes to draw in new customers, or to give younger fans of LEGO something to latch on to, but the interesting ideal of LEGO is that they can take castles and rebuild them into other period pieces, or something completely new in the same theme (or not). Of course, you can disassemble Nexo sets and do the same thing - but you don't get any generic knights, you only get Nexo knights; you get odd colors and shapes for castles... in other words, it's more suitable to build Nexo alternatives than generic alternatives. A "real" castle theme can represent anything from 1500 to 200 years ago (or wider). But it's TLG, they want to sell sets, they want to make money, and I do realize that something like Nexo is going to sell more than Castle, despite how many AFOLs what classic castle - there are far more young kids interested in something new. I suppose I'd rather them continue Nexo and release parts sets that would help people who want classic castle - like releasing wheels and tires for people who want to make vehicles, roofs and windows and doors for people who want to make houses and other buildings, and a lot of gray of various types that might be conducive to building castles. And like any generic sets, they could be used for anything, even if aimed at being more suitable for castle (or houses, or cars).

Ladies and gentlemen; proof positive you could literally slap a brick on a plate and have it accepted by ideas: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/154740

Like I said, just not purist. Is that any different than people here using Roller Coaster Factory or SBrick?

What... Santa can't deliver below the equator? EDIT: I realized that can be taken two ways... please keep a clean mind.

The biggest problem with an upgrade like this is getting accustomed to it . I can probably get used to this, but there are definitely things I'd like to be different. I almost always just used the "new posts" feature because I am interested in so many different topics; it's been replaced by an "unread content" link, which I suppose works - but the layout of the page when you see it is not as clear and clean as the old one. I'd like to see better delineation between posts in a thread. I'd like to see a LOT better contrast. As I'm writing this, for example, the subtext for the attachments ("Max total size...") is barely readable. The arrows at the bottom ("GO TO TOPIC LISTING" on the left, "NEXT UNREAD TOPIC" on the right are fine, but the subtext of those is also barely readable. When the posts are made ("Posted x minutes ago") is barely readable.

http://www.slashgear.com/flybrix-is-a-drone-made-of-lego-that-you-can-crash-23457310/ I did a search of the board, and maybe it's because we're in the midst of an upgrade, but I didn't see any mention of this.... actual powered LEGO flight, just not purist. I'd include a picture from the article, but don't see how right now.

I have to say it really does look absolutely amazing. Awesome job.

My wife has a lot of money in reais tied up in Brazil. We're hoping with Dilma gone the economy, and exchange rate, will improve. Having shipped a number of things to family in Brazil, it is ridiculously expensive and scary hoping people receive what you sent at all sometimes. I guess the moral is that Bricklink is not Amazon Prime. A company like Amazon can amortize shipping costs based on average shipping charges over millions of orders. Bricklink vendors can't do that. I would rather wait and get the cost after I commit if it means paying first class instead of flat rate, which costs a whole lot more for LEGO parts.

I agree - I haven't weighed the sets (although I know the weights are out there), and as I said in my last paragraph, if it really is that much better - 30% more substantial, perhaps, I will make every effort to get it. I am a very happy owner of the IFS, and the Black Pearl, and the QAR; I've recently been selling off sets because of lack of space (for both storing sets and showing built ones), but the ships are just too beautiful. I guess I can just see it being either way - a 30% premium for just some cosmetic changes, or it could be a substantial upgrade more than worth the price increase - but it seems to me that, while I realize TLG has always had a couple of large, very expensive sets out at any given time, that the quantity of these enormous and expensive sets can be off-putting to people. As long as people are paying, though, it's easier for them to make money selling fewer, but more expensive sets than selling more smaller, cheaper sets.

Agree with Captain, though - I have had a couple of great orders from Europe, but even with good luck shipping costs more, it takes longer, and if there is a problem, and they need to send another package, it takes that much longer.

I probably whine about the cost of LEGO way too much, but these things pop up and I feel like I need to say something. I've been collecting some responses to reply to in one post; this one seems the most accurate for what I was thinking when I read this: Indeed, over the last few years what I've seen happening is that TLG is releasing these enormous D2C sets, like the Hellcarrier, GBHQ, the Disney Castle. They are spectacular sets, but the trend has been to more expensive sets overall. I'm not talking necessarily about value (although I believe that's true also), but affordability of sets. Take the architecture theme; it went from $20 sets of dubious value to some enormous sets that may have provided better value, but were not affordable to a lot of people that would otherwise be interested in the smaller builds. Inflation has been quite low lately (if you believe the US government). A $70 premium over the IFS demands a lot more, but given the trend lately, while I'm sure it'll be a gorgeous build, I'm guessing that you're not going to get a (roughly) 30% more substantial set. See above - I think you will get some great little details, but I'm doubting it'll be what you'd want for $70 more. If this is simply a UCS ship (the IFS was - at least going by set numbers), and it's that much better than IFS, then I'll make every effort to get one.... the prices are getting out of hand, though.

I stand (actually, I'm sitting) corrected.