Brickthus

Many AFOLs are wondering how the new Power Functions electric system will be used with trains. These new photos on Brickshelf of my 8mm scale Class 35 Hymek loco ("Bear" from the Thomas stories) should explain a little. This is the first loco I've converted for use with Power Functions: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=287010 The basic idea is to put a battery box in the train, with a PF IR receiver showing its window through the roof of the train. You can see the window of the PF IR receiver towards the right end of the roof: The odd bit in the middle of the roof is for an on-off switch. This and the IR window are the only external mods compared to a 9V loco, but internally I have added lights and my own lighting circuit, which latches the state of the lights in the direction of travel, keeping them on when the train stops. This loco has just one front marker light and one tail light at each end. I chose this loco for the first PF mod because it has enough space inside to test the space required. There was enough space for my lighting circuit to remain on a breadboard, so I didn't have to build it on veroboard before installing it. I think it will not be too difficult to install Power Functions parts in a 6x28 carriage, as long as the baseplate is rebuilt from plates. If you use the technic PF battery box, it might need to use some space under the baseplate as well as space inside. An alternative is to use an existing 9V battery box and a modded wire (when they are available). I bought some 12V single plugs for my electrical experiments, in order to connect the power to the two outer wires of 4. The dark grey panels at each end of the loco should be green. I substituted panels for bricks when I added the lights, but didn't have any green ones handy. I hope to get some soon. As before, there is a train motor in each bogie and the cab roof sections are removable so that the driver can be placed inside. I've kept the 9V metal-wheeled motors but when used on plastic tracks, use the motors and wheels from the existing IR train. The Power Functions extension wires, which should be available in 2008, will have 9V backward compatibility so that a 9V train motor can be driven from a PF IR receiver. Driving a receiver from a 9V battery box requires a mod to the wire as above. To enable more trains to be driven on a single layout, I intend to use an interlock circuit, similar to my lighting circuit, so that two IR signals to two receivers will be required at once. This not only expands the number of channels (4x4 = 16) but also makes it more difficult for malicious audiences at shows to interfere with operation of trains if they have a remote control in their pocket! My advice at the moment is to wait for the wires to become available. It is cheaper to modify those than the existing PF parts. More PF news will follow when there is something to tell. :-) Mark

Here are the photos of my new Rail Crane with Power Functions: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=287011 It

Looks good! *y* You might need the pneumatic parts to stop in the middle, in order to control the direction of flight! It is possible, but a bit complicated *wacko* : http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=147931 Have you seen my Apache helicopter? http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=147936 I didn't use pneumatics, but the joysticks and collective pitch levers control the pitch of each blade individually, as they rotate. The tail rotor uses clip plates for collective pitch control. I might finish it one day, but I have too many other projects on the go! Mark

A standard LEGO train (or RCX) wall transformer puts out 7V AC at about 300mA. This becomes about 10V (x 1.414) due to the bridge rectifier and a little is lost in the regulator to give the 9V DC output of the controller. The circuit of the controller is here if that helps: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1559700 I would advise against using a DC power supply to power a train controller as this would use only two of the diodes all the time instead of using all four in alternate pairs for the AC. I use a variable DC power supply connected directly to the track feed wire at exhibitions. Mark

I liked the unloading mechanism of 10017 so much that I used it as inspiration for my Railtrack hoppers: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=199422 Each wagon of the rake of 5 holds and reliably unloads 1400 1x1 round plates! I just need to alter the end of one wagon to add the diesel generator that generates hydraulic power for the doors. Mark

I found that using a file to eliminate any moulding attachment points on the flanges can help to avoid the flanged drivers jumping on 9V metal curves. This was a precaution only, and is only required if you intend to run trains at the limit of the wheelbases that will stay on the track (up to about 12 studs apart if you have blind drivers between 2 pairs of flanged drivers). They're definitely worth buying if you want to make steam engines or diesel shunters with wheels that are on the track, instead of using 40-tooth cogs or model team wheels with tyres for your driving wheels. If you build to 8mm scale the drivers are equivalent to 3'9" diameter, larger if you build smaller scale trains. Since the wheels are mail order from the US, I got most of mine as part of a larger order when someone from the Brickish Association (UK AFOL club) was putting an order together. After 2 such orders, I have about 20 drivers, 10 blind drivers and 20 small wheels, as well as some pneumatic non-return valves that were also on Ben's website. It takes a while to put them all into MOCs :-) but here are the ones I've used them in so far: An 0-6-0 diesel http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=121842 This is an 8mm scale model of a Class 14 diesel shunter. It uses a bogie of 4 wheels and a bogie with 2 wheels and the jack-shaft, which is kept in the correct orientation with a link to the 4-wheel bogie. Power on Technic axles from a 43362 gearmotor is sent to the wheels through 4x4 turntables over each end pair of wheels and the rods do the rest. The flex parts allow the rods to vary in length on the curves. I'll put 9V train motors in an adjacent wagon to pick up the power. There are 9V connectors above the couplings on both ends of the loco. An 0-4-0 diesel chassis http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=2346438 This is a prototype for a Class 02 diesel shunter. Basic chassises to try out: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=241797 Mind the overhang at the ends of the 0-10-0 chassis as it could foul anything that's too close to the track. I reckon to use the 30.4mm wheels for train wheels in the range 3'0" to 4'9", with 40-tooth cogs or model team wheels for wheel in the range 4'9" to 6'0". We need some larger wheels like the BBB ones but ones with flanges would not be practical on LEGO rails. I've asked Ben for flangeless ones of 49.6mm diameter because, being 19.2mm bigger than the 30.4mm wheels, they would be mounted exactly 3 plates higher in a loco. They would be 6'2.4" in 8mm scale so they would cover all sizes up to 7'0". I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has asked Ben for any larger wheels. My experiments with the smaller wheels have shown reduced friction compared to some standard wheelsets, plus the advantage of not having to modify the standard wheelset housing to do wagons without standard suspension equipment. I have more plans to use the wheels but I'll wait till I have a MOC before I tell you what they are :-) Mark

The circuit diagram of the 9V train controller is here: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=1559700 As you will see, it's a standard 3-pin regulator design, with the voltage varied by tapping off the resistor chain. Some people have substituted the regulator with a 5-Amp version, for driving trains with several motors, but some other components need uprating as well, as well as using a more powerful transformer at the wall. The controller is designed so that the minimum useful voltage of just under 3V is at the first notch. LEGO 9V train motors under any kind of load don't do much below this voltage. It is possible to stop the dial at the point mid-way between 0 and 1 such that resistor R3 is shorted out, giving a lower voltage that will just move the motor. However, it's useless for all but 0-4-0 light engine movements. If you want to avoid juddery start-stop trains, you really need a Pulse Width Modulation controller. The advantage of this is that the motor sees pulses of full power even from the lowest speed, so it has more torque when starting away from a station. The disadvantage of using PWM with LEGO 9V train motors is that they buzz horribly. All that buzzing noise puts heat and vibration into the motor coils. The 12V train motors coped better with it, but the 12V train controller was more like a traditional train controller in that it uses a tapped transformer. Its supply is also rectified but not totally smoothed, so it gives the 12V motor the extra torque of a PWM controller. I advise looking in The Complete Book of Model Railway Electronics by Roger Amos ISBN 1-85260-288-0 if you want to get further into model railway electronics. That book has 6 controller designs, auto start-stop, track circuits and more. I personally use LEGO 9V train controllers only in the yard of my 9V railway. On the main lines I use a Maplin dual 30V 3A bench power supply (at 9V or less of course, usually set to 1.5 Amps per track). This gives smooth power, which the 9V motors prefer, and has worked well at 2-day exhibitions with trains running constantly at up to 8V 1 Amp (for a 4-motor train) all day. The switch-overs between trains take more current when both are working at the same time. The power supply is an analogue one with variable resistors for voltage (coarse and fine) and current limit. Not sure if you can still get those or whether they're all digital LED displays now (harder to read with varying voltages and currents). I don't mod more than I have to, but anything beyond the feed wire to the track is fair game (cut a 9V lead in half and put 12V plugs on the end :-) ). I reserve the right to make LEGO train electronics what it should be in my quest to build a realistic 8mm scale model railway out of LEGO :-P Mark

I'd like a wider range of bricks in these colours we already have: Dark Orange (especially to make the Annie and Clarabel train coaches for Thomas) Knight Bus purple Dark Tan (more realistic sand colour than tan) I'd like bricks in these new colours: Cream (not just faded white!), especially train windows for "chocolate and cream" train coaches. More shades of green for scenery (plant parts, rods, plates and tiles) I agree that there are reasons to retain the old greys and brown, not least the fact that railway ballast yellows over time just like old grey plates. Bley tiles might make good concrete sleepers but the ballast should be old grey. The main thing is for the rarer colours to be widely available as the full range of standard bricks, plates and tiles, so that more specialised parts that I get in sets could fit in more easily. It would be interesting to have un-pigmented bricks too (the natural tan-like colour). Hopefully these could be cheaper than other bricks given the lack of colour processing required - ideal for all bricks in places you can't see them. BTW the Cafe Corner is a great parts pack for the desirable colours - sheer indulgence using medium blue for parts you can't see once it's finished! Mark

This is updated from an earlier answer I posted on Lugnet: The track link price range on Bricklink is currently falling, such that >1000 links can be bought at $0.57. I checked out the break-even point, below which the track link price would make a tracked monorail track as cheap as the old monorail (assuming structure parts such as Technic beams are already in one's collection), and was surprised to find that it is above $0.20 for some monorail track pieces (due to their rarity and popularity): Taking the Bricklink price guide average prices, and assuming that it takes 44 track links to make a 33L straight equivalent to a 32L old monorail straight, the track monorail is cheaper if the links are under $0.266 each. For short straights it's $0.239 and for a short curve it's $0.304. For the more common 90 degree curves it drops to $0.041 (I wish the tracks were that cheap but it will never happen as they weigh 1.38g), and for ramps it's $0.075. It's more difficult to calculate for points. I'd like to think the scheme could become more feasible if the track link price drops when the bulldozer is released. I hope it will! My hope is fed by the recent drop from $1.00 to $0.90. The additional possibilities for roller-coasters also increase the appeal... Meanwhile you'd need at least 1 Bulldozer to get the motors and RC parts, so the first 84 track links are effectively free (the price of motorised sets tends to be the equivalent of having most of the other parts free if you add up the spares cost of the electrical parts). The cost depends how long a coaster you'd like to build. With all the track systems I've had, I kept adding more track :-) I'll experiment with hills and a loop, so that all the elements of a full roller coaster are possible. I'd like to combine corners with twist action - that would reduce any tendency to lean out on the corners, which is probably due to the ability of the vehicle to twist each axle against the others, which I added to permit it to do the 360 degree roll. I need to work on getting the weight nearer to the track, though any motor gearing due to repositioning would increase friction. It's not possible to gear 1 motor per axle because corners have fewer tracks on the inside than on the outside - this is a difficulty with using any kind of tracks rather than rolling wheels. The advantage is that the vehicle should stay on the track even if it leans outwards on the corners. I wish it always did so on the 360, but I think it would improve if I motorised all the wheels. However that would limit affordability at 1 motor per wheel! I have considered using a PP3 battery box with a cut lead >:-) That should reduce the weight. Mark

New videos of my PF roller coaster: Flat circuit: 360 degree roll: My YouTube channel (with other MOC videos): http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=mbellisbrickmocs Mark

The name's Mark ;-) Here's a video of the GBC module: My YouTube channel (with other MOC videos): http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=mbellisbrickmocs Mark

One thing I tried was using the pull-back motor to pull along a horse on a string that was pulling a railway wagon in a siding. Horses used to do the railway shunting at small branch line stations in the UK in the early part of the 20th century. The train would uncouple the last wagon (often of coal) and the horse would pull it into the siding. Unfortunately most of the pull-back motors give out more rotations forward than reverse, so the LEGO horse might get a bit wound up ;-) Mark

Since my FP roller coaster brickshelf folder seems to be having problems with completing moderation, you can see the other pictures of the flat track and vehicle here: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/mbellis/...r_coaster_1.jpg by replacing the 1 at the end with a number from 2 to 7. Mark

Thanks :-) The idea of GBC (see earlier links) is that several people make modules with a standard interface and then get together and display a ball-run layout. Someone also made an entire pinball machine with a few RCXs http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=154358 I'm an electronics and safety engineer by trade, but I think I was born an engineer because I always wanted to know how everything worked. I have now learned to temper my curiosity by not taking apart anything I can't put back together! Whilst electronics is my first degree, I branch out a bit into mechanical stuff, primarily in LEGO. The safety part (my MSc) means I have to think how things might fail and ensure that the possible failures and their effects have been considered in the design. For instance, it led to me placing plates in strategic places on the GBC model to prevent balls straying off the track. I hope enough people understand inertia :-) I bought about 300 balls in Pick-a-Brick a while ago, for just this purpose. I filled a tall PaB tub because it was before PaB was sold by weight at Legoland Windsor. Besides, I think footballs are probably cheaper by volume than by weight. I'll have to take some pictures of my ball lifter. I also made a double see-saw device that splits the balls into two streams alternately. A ball falls onto the lower see-saw, which tips the upper see-saw to send the next ball in the other direction. This is useful when the ball reservoir can put out more balls than the 1 ball per second standard! A lot of the models I make are mechanisms rather than complete MOCs, particularly the Technic ones. My hope is that lots of people will use my brickshelf gallery http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=mbellis as a resource. One reason I have been so prolific recently is that I have had the privilege of helping the LEGO company with electronics for the Power Functions sets. Once we were cleared to share information about the new elements I felt it was my duty to let fans know as much as possible, and to see the parts in action. Mark

I made sure to smooth off the BBB wheels because moulding points on the flanges can catch on the curves. For a 3'9" wheel (BBB in 8mm scale) the wheels are usually no further apart than 6ft on a real steam engine. Since there are no larger BBB wheels, there is, fortunately, no reason for me to put flanged drivers further apart! Since I model to 8mm scale, I have a much wider loading gauge than 6-wide builders. Mine is 5 studs either side of the sleepers on the curves and 14-wide in total on the straights, so daisy-cutters are no problem within reason. I altered the design of my LMS 2-6-0-0-6-2 Garratt engine http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=116053 to reduce overhang, by allowing the train motors to pivot between the raised driving wheels. The Pendolino http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=77379 still overhangs by 5 studs on the outside of curves. My rolling stock (up to 80 studs long) goes right over the lever frames on switch points, which is why I use different motorised http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=230517 and pneumatic http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=147934 mechnisms and have abandoned the yellow levers. This also allows a bit more room for working valve gear rods on steam engines. The curves themselves are spaced out with straights - 2 per curve on the main line and 1 in the yard. Mark

Oops! Jargon alert! :-$ On Google I found there's a whole website devoted to it: http://www.greatballcontraption.com/ OK, I don't meet all the standards just yet http://www.teamhassenplug.org/GBC/ , but I can always build a special bit at each end in order to interface with other people's modules, whilst building wild stuff on my own modules :-) Mark

I

Here's a 3-trunk tree with geese, probably the most summery pic from my gallery: Mark

...whilst doing it remotely and allowing most of the motor power to be tapped off for any useful application at the same time... perhaps! :-) It is useful to prove that a system can work before applying it to a MOC that might take months to build! Besides, it depends what price you put on the enjoyment of doing things simply because they can be done! This scheme really saves on relay switches, for those MOCs where you were going to use that many motors anyway. A LEGO pole reverser switch used to cost

I've posted some pics of basic steam loco chassises using BBB wheels. http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/mbellis/...s_0-6-0_top.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/mbellis/...-6-0_bottom.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/mbellis/..._0-10-0_top.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/mbellis/...10-0_bottom.jpg One reason for this is that I can now re-use the wheels in a more complex MOC :-) There's an 0-6-0 and an 0-10-0, both using the blind drivers to get round curves. This is a bit different from my UK Class 14 shunter, which has synchronised pivoting wheels and extending rods! http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=121842 Mark 8mm scale Trains gallery: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=62749

It also needs lots of basic bricks and plates to make a layout resembling the real railway. That's what I'm trying to do with these modules: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=178214 It takes a lot of 1x1 plates for ballast and lots of bricks for the module structures. I bought 18 tiger mosaics and loads of the grey and dark grey plates packs for ballast before the old greys became extinct. This is because ballast is really old grey (slightly yellow), though concrete sleepers might be new bley (not yellowing until they're old). I'm trying to go for mostly black sleepers (like wood) because black will always be available. 12000 1x1 black tiles is still a lot though! I managed to get a few statues of liberty and Yodas *yoda* *yoda* for the green plates for scenery, but even these supplies are running a bit low, so some darker green will be required. The whole layout will be 4.8m x 3.6m in a double track looped-eight, all built to 8mm:1ft scale. The pictures with the red Hogwarts Express train show one corner of the outer circuit, with tracks sloping in opposite directions so that they end up one over the other. The point module in the gallery is pneumatic powered BTW. I expect this project to take another 5 years, especially because I'm also doing Power Function stuff, which can be applied to trains too, with this point motor: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=2346439 Mark

Thanks. It could be minifig sized in some cases, such as a roller-coaster that is 4 people wide. "Air" at Alton Towers in the UK is one: http://www.coastergrotto.com/photo.jsp?pic=256c01.jpg and Nemesis is another: http://www.coastergrotto.com/photo.jsp?pic=264c14.jpg Mark

2 medium motors and 1 sound brick, with 1 IR receiver and battery box. I think the sound brick switch is pressed as one of the motors moves the dinosaur. Mark