majorna

Yes! More program card builds! I made a little proof of principle "robot" utilizing this concept and the pull-back motor and posted it a couple months ago somewhere on this forum...

Fantastic detail, and I love the modular element of this build. The freight yard and factory are my favorite. Good luck in the contest!

I finally got around to making a better animated GIF of the model in action. Happy Holidays everyone!

Fantastic theme masterfully executed. Great work!

Excellent entry! Great use of parts and exquisite detail in such a compact space.

Thanks everyone for your kind words! I took another shot to show the mechanism a little better: Finding a combination of gears that provided a "wandering" path while keeping the tread links at a reasonable tension was a bit of a challenge, but this geometry worked well. The train is supported by 1x4 tiles, which fit sniggly over the 3 wide treads, the posts in the bottom of the tile fit into the holes in the tread. Lego has produced a number of clockwork motors over the years, this one I picked up on Bricklink, and is from set 4093.

Hi I'm kind of new here, but this competition was too fun to pass up. The Lego town model railroad club has set up their winter landscape layout in the Winter Village. The layout features a snow-covered mountain, a cozy red house with chimney, and a couple of trees, including one decorated for the season. Here a father and his daughter are admiring the layout from the poinsettia-decorated viewing platform. The operator sits at his control board and makes sure the train runs on time. There is a little locomotive, a yellow tanker car, and a red box car. Naturally, the train really runs, by clockwork mechanism! Here it is in action, I'll try to make a better gif (minus hand) later: Please check out my other competition entry (also clockwork-powered!), over in the Technic Forum.

I came out of my Technic "dark age" with that little red container truck, which I bought on a whim on sale at the grocery store just about a year ago. I had hoped that I would be able to pilfer some gears to mechanize some of the constructions my six-year old daughter and I work on together, but was a bit frustrated by the studless building technique. It just doesn't feel like "Lego" to me, not that that's a bad thing. But the little truck's mechanism was incredibly original and effective, so I've complemented it with the tracked crane and the tiny Unimog, all in the same scale. It will take some getting used to the new building techniques to do decent MOCs. The odd-even thing is very noticeable on these small models. To accommodate the six-wide truck body half bushings are used to space out the mechanism to the body dimensions. It's a pretty clever solution, really. The pedagogical aspect of the Universal sets I remember as a child is lacking in the new kits, though. I bought my daughter the Klutz "Crazy Contraptions" filled with gears, studded bricks and plates and a book with lots of ideas for models. Highly recommended!

Steam Engine Here's a scale 1:1 model of a Wilesco-style steam engine and workshop, in its natural environment, surrounded by old toys. First, allow me to present the steam engine itself, weighing in at around 150 parts: The steam engine itself features a dummy boiler made from a System cement mixer drum, piston, flywheel, governor (which can be rotated manually to cycle the flywheel and piston) and transmission shafts. Here's the drill press, (85 parts or so) with power transmission by rubber band. Like the original it features a table that can be raised or lowered by a lever: Finally, the table saw (approx 105 parts), which differs from the original to more resemble the cabinet saws I'm familiar with. The blade is raised and lowered through a worm gear mechanism with the crank on the front, pivoting around the drive shaft. On the right side is a crank which winds up one of the new pull-back motors (visible below) which powers the saw... ...and the steam engine and drill press as well when they are all hooked together:

Sorry to dredge up this old topic, but since the pullback racers appear to be sticking around for 2014, I thought I'd share a little proof-of-principle "robot" I built using the new pullback motor and the rack gear programming featured in the old idea book 8888 yellow crane. This simple model uses the rack gears to control power to the left and right wheel independently, allowing one to "program" the robot to follow a prescribed path. The concept works, but needs further refinement.

As I have just recently returned to Lego through my daughter's enthusiasm, I find the studless construction technique makes incorporating Technic elements in System construction (as I try to do when playing across generations) much more difficult, but doable. But more on topic, there are many elements that were originated for Technic which have migrated into System building. For example this plate... ...which was originally released for a Technic engine model kit in 1980

Hello from Sweden. My daughter (6) shares my wife's and my enthusiasm for Lego at that age, and has brought the whole family out of our "dark ages" as it is called around here. I've been lurking just a little bit, but the new Technic contest inspired me to sign up. I have found my way back to Technic through a few small models, though I'm a bit sceptical of the whole studless-building thing. My daughter likes the new Friends lines, and the whole family likes City and Creator sets. As a kid I enjoyed all types of sets, but mainly the classic Space series and Technic Universal sets. The float plane 8855 represented the climax of my Lego interest, the biggest, coolest kit of my childhood.