Usually the RAILBRICKS staff have advice for our readers on LEGO trains.  This time, it's the other way around. I could use some advice on how to make my latest project work as well as possible!

I'm working on converting my 6-wide GG1 locomotive to 8-wide.You can see the 6-wide model in the picture below.

The GG1 was a massive locomotive, nearly 80 feet long with 10 axles in a 2-C-C-2 configuration. That notation means that it had leading and trailing unpowered trucks with two axles and two central trucks, each with three powered axles.

For my model, I took some design cues from the spectacular GG1 designed by Bob Hayes. My 6-wide model used 9V motors in the leading and trailing trucks, just like Bob's:

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=296786

I want the new 8-wide model to be about 50 studs long, powered by two PF XL motors (with associated gear), and using BBB medium wheels for the two center trucks. I want the articulation to look as good as possible, and I need to direct power to at least a portion of the axles. How would you approach this design dilemma?  Feel free to post comments with your suggestions!

Thanks!

Jordan

On the 27-28th of February, the annual FreeLUG meeting (more than 60 attendees) took place at Veneux-les-sablons, France.

Among other activities, we had a contest - or should I say two contests.

The first contest had to be prepared as it consisted in presenting a LEGO train creations on the theme of shunters.

You can see below a sample of entries.

It appeared to us that this kind of contest is highly enjoyable and addictive when you set up a symmetric yard and play directly against an opponent, face to face, rather than under the pressure of a timer.

You can find more photos and a video at FreeLUG gallery.

Flickr user Jayhurst is dealing with a case of the uglies.....His entry into the Flickr Ugly Train contest blends train with beast.

From the description at Flickr:

It is a Camelback Atlantic 4-4-2, and it is modeled after the #592 steam engine that resides in the B&O museum.

This moc is powered by a medium PF motor that is mounted in the firebox. The rechargeable battery and the IR receiver are mounted in the tender.

LUGPOL member Robson recently posted a nice little Electric Shunter, an E69.

The wheel cowlings are a particularly interesting solution, using the armor pieces from the Knights Kingdom action figures.

Sava Railways has unlocked the company vault, and four of the Sava Railways steam engine blueprints can now be purchased at SRW Locomotive Works.  These blueprints are of an American 4-4-0, a Hudson 4-6-4 with Henry Dreyfuss inspired streamlinging, a Consolidation 2-8-0 (2007 model), and a Pacific 4-6-2 (2007 model).  They are available a la carte, or as a single collection at a discount.

10% of all SRW Locomotive Works sales are donated to RAILBRICKS.

Visit SRW Locomotive Works today!

UPDATE: SRW Locomotive Works now accepts Credit Card backed Paypal payments.

I accidentally stumbled onto a link for rail museums recently and then started looking around where I had landed. I was somewhere on http://www.railserve.com. The category menu had a pretty good selection of all things trains, from models to 12":1', and then some. Then I saw the entry, "LEGO Train Clubs & Layouts". Hey hey, brick built trains are catching the indexing of mainstream (mainsteam? mainline?) railfanning. A few dozen links, most familiar to the readers here, but there might be a few surprises. Nothing is perfect though, as of this writing they still need an entry for RailBricks (grin), but I submitted that request.

For more, see http://www.railserve.com/LEGO_Trains

Flickr user -Cooper- has built an excellent solution to those that can't fit all of the power functions equipment into a locomotive. His solution is a self contained box car that includes all of the needed Power Functions parts and uses 2 PF 'M' motors for power. Click the image for more.

Brickish member William Howard has submitted five new freight car instructions to the Build Instructions repository. Check out the Freight Instructions Category to grab them all.

I must be in a diesel mood today... scary thought. Anyway, Thomas Selander has built a LEGO version of a Swedish State Railways version of a T44 diesel electric freight locomotive.  I love the subtle details, the striking livery, and even the short depth-of-field presentation.  He's done a fine job building this MOC, illustrated with the picture of the prototype in-frame.

Brickshelf user SergioBatista has uploaded photos of a new train MOC.  This MOC is of a Portuguese Diesel engine Bombardier CP1960, and features some very nice details.  It is no secret that I'm not a huge fan of non-steam locomotives, but something about the striking orange and black color scheme kept my interest.  It wasn't until then that I noticed that this MOC is built on the standard LEGO RC train base!

Inspired by the minitruck designed between Shuppiluliumas and myself, TJ Avery has come up with an alternate version.  I think this version would solve some of the issues caused by the 8-toothed gears grinding against the wheels that the original design had, but it should be noted this design only works properly with the non-standard o-rings we've previously discussed.

After my recent article, I was contacted by a fellow TexLUG member who asked me about the scale I built my trains.  He is interested in building a particular model and wanted a starting point, an asked me "do you build your trains 10 feet to 8 studs scale?"  After all, I built my two TSRR locomotives at 8 wide scale, and as I said in my article they turned out to be about 10 feet wide.  I replied and said no, that was just coincidence.

I scale all of my locomotives based on their driver size, and for my two locomotives I considered a large BBB driver, 4 studs in diameter, equal to a driver somewhere between 55" and 65".  But then I got to thinking... just what is that?  Well, 60", the average size of a driver I consider to be represented by a large BBB driver, happens to be 5 feet.  5 feet to 4 studs scale... wait a minute... Well what do you know, I really DO model at 10 feet to 8 studs scale.

Math can be fun!

For the curious, 10 feet to 8 studs scale mathematically ends up being 1:48 scale.  Then again, my math skills seem to be a little off lately.

For the first time, LEGO is sharing their internal color palette with the AFoL community.

As Jan Beyer states, "..this is a kind of milestone in the contact between the LEGO Company and the LEGO Community and will ease the communication about the colors tremendously."

Click the image above to see a larger version. The 'Effects' category relates to LEGO's metallic/pearly colors.

I won't post pictures of the new train sets due to the fact that the LEGO group has not yet officially released information about them. However, that hasn't stopped others sites from doing so, most notably, Brickopedia.

My curiosity has been thoroughly piqued by the new sets and speculation from leaked box art seems to indicate that they have it all: motor, rechargeable battery box, IR receiver, and a remote control.

But wait.... The box art clearly states 'Batteries not included'. What? This can only mean that the battery box included in the set is made to look like the rechargeable battery box from LEGO. This is good news for those that may have complained about the steep price of the rechargeable version. I hope they decide to sell it separately.

If you follow the Flickr Train MOCs Group you may have noticed the absence of Gerrit Carstensen the past few months. Well he's back now with a beautiful SD40-2 in Ohio Central colors.

Two of the things that impress me most about Gerrit's models are his excellent ability to render complex paint schemes in brick form and the spot on proportions of his 6wide models. His SD40-2 is a perfect example.

The EMD SD40-2 is also one of my favorite modern diesels. One of the unique features of the engine is the large platforms (or porches as they are sometimes referred to by railfans) at the front and rear. The SD40-2 shared a frame with the larger SD45-2 but used a shorter car body. The extra space not used by the carbody gives the SD40-2 it distinctive "porches" and easily recognizable appearance.

Cale

Back in September of last year I decided to take my family up to the Texas State Railroad to their first Railfest.  Those of you familiar with my work are aware that I have long had a love for the organization.  When I first switched from being a primarily castle builder to a train builder, the third and fourth train MOCs I built were based on two of the locomotives owned by the Texas State Railroad - #500, a gorgeous pacific class steamer in a stunning green livery, and the #300, a consolidation class steamer in red and black (pictured).  I first built the #500, wanting to build a pacific class steam engine with a wheel arrangmenet developed between myself and Ben Fleskes.  Building #300 was quite literally an afterthought, and I really didn't put too much effort into her.

At the Railfest, as I learned through their website, the Texas State Railroad was planning on debuting #300 after a long and extensive boiler rebuild and a fresh coat of paint. I thought just how cool would it be to get a picture of my LEGO version with the real thing.  And what an impressive sight she was.  She was gorgeous, and I gained the appreciation for her that I had of the #500.  But as I stood there next to this giant, breathing, groaning machine, I began to realize just how inaccurate my little LEGO version truly was.  The dimensions were off, the drivers were the wrong size compared to the boiler (something I was aware of but decided not to do anything about at the time), along with a long list of the myriad of things wrong with it.

When I got home I did some further research on my two locomotives and discovered that my #500 was grossly misshapen as well. So I decided to rebuild them both.  Originally built in 6 and 7 wide respectively, I decided to rebuild both the #300 and #500 as 8 wide MOCs, enlarging the boilers and bringing their proportions to the real things.  While I began planning out the two locomotives, using the scaling techniques I've discussed previously on this blog, things were going rather well but I still had some unanswered questions.  So... I sent off an email.

You see, while I was there at the Texas State Railroad I met quite a few employees. I made it a point to ask a lot of questions (including for permission to put my MOC on the locomotive), and I even was able to convince the engineer of the #300 (pictured) to use my camera and take several detailed shots of the backhead.  Among the people I met was a lady who I had been referred to after giving a TexLUG business card to one of the employees in the depot.  She was very interested in talking with me about my LEGO versions of the TSRR locomotives, and we exchanged contact information.  So on a whim, I sent off an email to her with an attached word document - five incomplete lists of detail information for each of the five steam engines owned by the TSRR (locomotive length, width, boiler diameter, etc.).  I politely asked if she could pass the information to those who would be in the know, and said if it was too much trouble I understood, and that I wasn't in any hurry.  To be honest I never really expected to hear back from her on the subject.

Time went on and I began to rebuild my #300, and then the #500 afterward. I increased the size of the #300's boiler from a studs up 4 wide design to a 5 wide SNOTted cheese slope design, and increased the overall width from 6 wide to 8 wide.  Of course I changed quite a bit more than that, such as updating the piston design, credit to Cale, adding details I never added before, and lengthening the locomotive and tender.  So, too, did I change the #500's boiler from a design that started 4 wide on the nose and ended 5 wide at the back, to a cheese slope design that started 5 wide and increased to 6. I also increased the overall width of the locomotive from 7 wide to 8. The #300 only grew by two studs in length, but the #500 grew an impressive 7 studs, which posed quite a few design challenges.  But in the end I was not only able to adjust for the extra 7 studs but I was able to build a fully functional 4-wheeled pony truck that navigated around the pistons.  With my locomotives built my thoughts turned to other things.

How surprised I was last friday to find an email from the lady at the Texas State Railroad sitting in my inbox with an attached PDF.  Someone had printed out the word document and filled in all the data I had requested on all five locomotives - locomotive height, weight, boiler diameter, even tender dimenions.  What a truly awesome thing they had done for me (and I replied and told them so).  But the awesomeness didn't stop there, my friends, oh no.  A tidal wave of awesome washed over me as I looked over the data and began doing some rough calculations and cross referencing.

#300, the red locomotive, has a uniformly sized boiler which turns out to be 6 feet in diameter, which I modeled in a 5-wide cheese slope boiler.  #500's boiler, which increases in size, starts out at 5'11" in diameter and increases to 7 feet, which I modeled in a 5-wide cheese slope boiler that increases to 6 wide.  Not only did I get the relative sizes of the boilers correct, which I thought the nose of both boilers were the same diameter, the increase in size of the #500's boiler more or less fits with what I modeled.  #610, the massive 2-10-4 Texas Type (pictured), I was going to model with a 6 wide boiler with an 8-wide overall MOC.  The diameter of the real #610?  86 inches, or 7 feet 2 inches!  Everything started falling into place.

The widths of the five locomotives (measured at the cab) are 10' 6",  10' 3", 10' 3", 10' 6", and 10' 6".  Which means not only did I do right by building both the #300 and #500 the same width, but building all of them as 8 wide MOCs will make them relative in scale to each other.  On top of that, the boiler diameter of the two other locomotives, #201 and #400, are just shy of 6 feet, which means I can build them with 5 wide cheese slope boilers as well.  This is all a round about way of saying that my calculations based on scaling out pictures turned out to be pretty darn accurate, and I'm rather proud of it.

But there were some surprises as well.  I knew #300 was quite a bit shorter than #500, but I didn't know it was a full 2 feet.  I also now know that the smallest locomotive, the ten wheeler #201, is not small in all dimensions - it's 14' 11" tall (counting the stack).  That's only shorter than the massive #610 by about 6 inches.  The tallest locomotive, which was a complete shock, is the #500 - taller than the #610 by about 6 inches.  The #610's boiler increases in size, something I guessed at but didn't know - by about a foot.  And since I also asked and received the dimensions of the locomotive's tenders, it will be a HUGE help in rendering any future engines in LEGO, as well as allowing me to go back and double check the tenders I already built - who knows, I might find some more room for PF equipment in there.

The moral of the story?  Be nice to and engage with those who help preserve these great pieces of technological art.  And don't be afraid to ask questions - you might just get all the answers you're looking for

RAILBRICKS Blogger Tony Sava has received prototypes of Big Ben's new XL drivers. Join in the discussion of these fantastic new elements over at the Flickr LEGO Train MOCs Pool.

The Flickr Train MOCs group is running a new contest. Check out all the discussion and details here.

From the Contest Page:

Let's start the new year with a new contest, an ugly train contest! I know in your train research browsing you've come across at least one train item that struck you as the ugliest train you'd seen. Well, now's your chance to build it! The contest is open to all manner of trains: locos, rolling stock and train accessories. Entries must be 8 wide or less and be able to operate on some version of Lego track, if applicable. Locos do not need to be powered, but would increase your chances. There will be 2 categories and 2 prizes. The first is overall ugliest train and the second will be for most accurate ugly. The prize for each category will be a brand new power functions rechargeable battery! Sorry, charger not included because this is an international contest. Entries must be based on a real object that the entrant can provide photos of or links to. You do not need to enter a specific category; both winners will be chosen from all entries. Judging will be handled by yours truly and also by informal voting by all of us as the cream, so to speak, usually rises to the top in the end. The deadline for entries will be February, 28 2010 so everyone should have plenty of time. Now get out there and build something ugly!