roamingstop

The disadvantage of B is that the two motors have different gearing ratios and may not be providing the same torque for the same control voltage.... Check the specs on Philo-Home page.

That is a very nice black shunter from Mr Blue... and to get everything inside is great, especially given the size of all the boxes. Im intrigued to see how it was done. Checking through the model - there might be a slight technical hitch - sorry. The cable from the IR receiver can be folded to fit a 1 brick wide gap, but it puts a lot of strain onto it, and the space might be better as 2 wide. Ive tried replacing it with my construct of the PF box, which includes the correct placing for the switches and cables. I show in this LXF. I might be able to make the battery box fit, but dont want to destroy your beautiful lines. And here we go. My changes are in red; and it should be possible to make the top of the shunter easy to remove for recharging and switching on and off the batteries.

I dont know what ME models is preparing; although a powered narrow gauge would be great, but would require a custom 9V pickup and a custom 9V motor - or Space2310 powered trucks (bogeys)... so might not be easy. Oh and when you add the IJ ramp track onto ME rails, it makes a great Great Ball Contraption _or_ fairground ride... It is a real pity TLG never did a IJ compatible straight.

Hey Nico Great news; I will definitely be popping by to see what is available. The question for me is whether it will be purely technic, or whether other themes would be allowed (eventually?).

I recently had an opportunity to test 2 short lengths of ME-Models latest 9V compatible track to see how well it would work with the Indiana Jones track and cart concepts. And for profile... First up, the aluminium rails are really well constructed. They fit snugly onto the Lego plates, which is great if you have fast moving trains running over them, although you might not want to be changing them around too regularly. However there is clearly a colour difference with the bley IJ track. The custom made joining plates are great for use with the 9V track, but will have difficulty with IJ connectors due to the studs which are positioned at 4wide. However this is not a real problem, as you can place the normal lego plates close to the end of the ME track track, and hold them in place to IJ with 1x4 plates. The mating connector of the ME rails matches that of the IJ track perfectly, and there is virtutally no height difference. The profile of the ME track is slightly different from that of the IJ rails. I tried out a couple of different wheel types - Lego with rubber band traction, BBB medium (no traction) and IJ cart. The BBB combination worked best, and the IJ cart worst. However it should be noted that the IJ cart wheels have a lot of friction on the axles, which influences this. The upshot, I will be buying a lot of ME model track to make some nice narrow gauge railroads, which are compatible with IJ track. The combination also allows 5 wide track, but I will wait until I see more curved elements to see what is actually feasible. Thanks to space2310 for a great narrow gauge truck design, it helped a lot with the testing of different wheels.

Do you want reviews? Do you want to know prices? What other resources did you look at? For reviews - check Brickset.com (one of many). For possible prices check either completed auctions on ebay, or bricklink.com.

Better link for those interested with the RTZ train / pictures http://www.feuerwehr-fulda.de/index.php?id=460

Nope... because the hinge plate is so far back, the doors swing open without interfering with the equipment wagon attached to the back. There are plenty of other fire train examples; the USA have some in red - with modified water tankers + normal red painted (wooden) cargo trucks, and the all important Red Caboose... The Russians have a nice train concept which is similar to the LRZ but uses their own concepts. The Swiss also have this in Lime Green and silver (the BLS lines) which look great - but currently Lego dont make silver tanker elements ;-), or lime green windows. The equipment wagons tend to be a little bit more yawn boring for KFOL's. A proper AFOL model looks fantastic though. More designs will probably be completed in the coming weeks... My favorite is also the red tanker with white stipe - I think this will be the one which survives, the other to be converted into a little shell tanker wagon. Just a quick search on RTZ trains, showed a nice example. I dont think they look too bad - the trick is to find a way to make this work in Lego format. From this picture I could easily see a combination of roof from 7938 + a split level black base, and some large openings with swing doors. Should be easy really... and gives me some nice ideas since I have some spares. Yes it would be great if Lego chose to make a 'Fire Train'. It is the only large 'fire' related vehicle I can think of which has not been turned into an official model. Certainly I have seen versions of the Red Tanker attached to Red Locomotives; so the new Work train (3677?) could be easily reused, and this sold as a 'seperate'.

I have some ME-Track received for reviewing w.r.t Narrow Gauge - Indiana Jones track. The quality us excellent, the colours (brown / blue grey) almost spot on, the ease of assembly is good, and apart from the slightly different metal rail colours, you would not know you are running on non-Lego (purist) track. Whilst I believe that 100% Lego should be used for most things, there is almost nothing you cannot do without a bit of ingenuity - there will always be some exceptions and metal rails seems to be one of them. ME-Models have filled this gap with something unique, and worthy, just like Big Bens Wheels.

I have long fancied making a nice version of the LRZ trains (Loesch und RettungsZug) which run around the Swiss railways a fair bit. They are based on Windhoff chasis. I have seen good MOC's (Tablizm) and am creating am slowly creating a larger version 44 studs long (per engine) with integrated PF. However in the meantime I had some older concepts kicking around and decided to start building a version which is suitable for KFOL's. In my view, a KFOL model should have a good colour scheme, and include realistic play features, without necessarily having to fit exactly a real life model. This allows me to have a bit of creative thinking with regards to where to place doors / openings etc without having to worry too much about realism. But it also means it is important that play features are present. The first model which has been assembled in various states for the past two months is the Tanker Wagon, which finally got finished today. Although I cannot decide between the two colour schemes; the light grey tanker elements are so expensive that the only realistic option is white or red. Obviously I would need to get some white 2x2x65 slope elements, and more white hose / cupboards, but for now light bley is acceptable. In the first version I also fitted in a little diesel engine which is used to pump the water to the top mounted cannons. In the cab is space for two seated, helmeted firefighters. Other LDD designs have been completed for the Self powered rescue wagon (PF eats up so much room I will probably need 9V) and the equipment wagon (I cannot decide whether to include a crane)... These will be posted when finished. Some questions: Which colour scheme do you the reader prefer? And which rear opening - the hatches which expose the diesel engine inside (but no real access for fingers / mini-figs) or the swing open doors which allow access.. but somehow look less appealing (in my eyes).

Some ideas: A large well positioned mirror to help people look up, into, the station from a low eye perspective... A small webcam linked to a video monitor which puts you at the eye perspective of the mini-figs? A roof which can (randomly? Motor) open up like a clam shell so people get a chance to see inside, and appreciate the building. (ok not possible if the roof struts are too important). A second version of the station minus the roof (lots of bricks and space = , but chance to appreciate the build

Is that a nicely modded Town house station?... and the rods do look nice. Do you have a link for it? I have been building a locomotive workshop but had to really widen the doors beyond a normal arch to enable an EN to be parked in side... so this might solve that problem.

First up - really nice model. Reminds me a lot of Zurich Hauptbahnhoff. Second the struts on the roof look to be in tension - how were they made as the technique looks good.

Educated Guess: TextLocal.cpp is the localisation code; which is related to the language / keyboard options which are used to work out which country / language the software should be. Perhaps for additional information the people with systems which are not working should provide information about their language and code page settings. I know a bit strange... but perhaps there is a hint there?

Nice mod... and I will be making mine up this weekend (I have one dismounted in bags) so perhaps (if I find the time) I will try your changes instead.

I once saw rotating, motorised grapple - it used the old 9V micro-motors... but I dont remember where... Perhaps one of Jennifer Clarks models?

Since we have been having clear, blue sky days for the past week (sorry UK people) I will be cleaning with Vanish (Oxi, Colour powder) and Hydrogen Peroxide. Hopefully this will work, because finding strange brands in Switzerland (like Oxyclean) is tough. Before / After Results will be posted over the weekend.

If you look on Flickr there are a few examples of modified EN tenders; either with 9V or PF motors + receivers + battery boxes integrated. Some of them are also linked into the EN threads on Eurobricks; check the Train Tech register at the top of ths forum.

It would sound like a manufacturing tolerance issue; slightly too large studs, or slightly too small holes, and / or slightler thinner plastic which puts deformation strains through the slopes. Since the material is not particularly ductile it could easily crack and continue. Can you check to see if the non-cracked slopes from the same model batch have any microscopic cracking on the surface? Or shine a beam of light (laser pointer) and an oblique angle to see if deformation is occuring on the slope surface. The reflected point would change if you scanned this across the surface. I dont think it is a big problem - just imagine what would happen to all those Tower Bridge models... but something to check. I do know some of my models with red cheese slopes (assembled 2+ years) dont show any signs of cracking.

If you read superkalles post you will see that a (restricted bricks) Universe mode is now enabled as default for all users, and that 'Extended' will renable all the (restricted bricks) of the old Universe mode. No time to check the functionality at work - but apart from naming conventions, are there many new features or is it pretty much the same as before? It will soon be time upgrade all my LXF models to 4.1, check the missing parts list and then re-upload.

Relieved of duties? I think not. They will be work horses around different parts of the track; I saw quite a few of the BNSF logo'ed container trains between Vegas and California... no Maersk blues there... but definitely a few BNSF logo'ed 10219's (like Lightning Tiger's)

These two posts should help http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=53438&st=72 http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=53438&st=0

Well Happy Birthday!! And once again many thanks for running the container contest; some nice little packed mini-figs arrived on saturday.

Er what about

Points / Switch in IJ track and you will be fantastic... or track which can be 5 studs wide... for Narrow gauge / trams Pick up connectors for PF motors ould also be nice.