On another note, it's only really necessary to drive one axle - the drive rods tend to work fine for transmitting power.
@Johnbeere posted:On another note, it's only really necessary to drive one axle - the drive rods tend to work fine for transmitting power.
The extra gears were just from playing with the parts.
It's a shame the lego motors run so slow. With the worm drive you lose a lot of speed, but outside of a transverse mount arrangement for the motor, I don't see a way around the worm arrangement. And the modern lego motors are way too long for that, and the older motors are really low power.
@coach joe posted:Is that all LEGO with "O" gauge wheel sets?
Here's a LEGO helicopter next to a die-cast Canada Air Rescue copter that I believe is 1:60. I imagine the LEGO chopper as being a commercial commuter type, 6-10 passenger capacity. That accounts for the size.
Way To Go Coach Joe! Canada Air Rescue copter is my Favorite of all time livery.... and US Coast Guard, and Twin Canadair CL-415 Water Drop Firefighter! (great idea, I'm in, got one on the way! Great Idea, <salute Joe>
Miggy I've got the three USCG helicopters made by the same company that made the Canada rescue copter. I think the Lego helo works with them.
This turned up in my YouTube recommended about an hour ago... a couple of hours ago*
Most of this is only really relevant to dedicated Lego operators, but I recalled talk on this thread about building O-gauge compatible powered units. Round about 6:24 in the above is something that may be of interest.
Being that that aspect of the above project is in development, it might be possible to ask if there is a possibility of an O-Gauge compatible variant (most likely in the form of 'O' compatible wheel/axle sets) being added to their motorized bogie project. It could potentially be useful to more than just Lego-derived trains.
---PCJ
Unfortunately the lego wheels have always been plastic except for the metal 9v track train motors, which of course are L gauge. I read the article about this on Brick Model Railroader, and one of the main reasons the author was excited about the track was the ability to eliminate the batteries. He said constantly dealing with batteries was a major stress point during a public show. So despite some folks saying dead rail is the future, someone was has dealt with dead rail and batteries for years says the opposite.
I always loved Lego trains. Thanks for sharing that great video, RailRide.
@Johnbeere posted:It's going to be necessary to gear up between the motor and worm somehow - if you don't, the locomotive will be incredibly slow. I actually used a worm drive in my Lego B6, with a gear ratio of 4.8:1, it's very slow. The setup you have above is 24:1, about 5 times slower than my B6. Here's a Lego gear ratio calculator, the closer you get to about 1:1 the better: http://gears.sariel.pl/
I didn't realize how slow the lego motors turn. What a pain! I was doing some math today, and gearing up any of the lego motors to go an appreciable speed is going to be challenging. The only thing that works in my favor is the diameter of the drive wheels.
It looks like I will need to change from technic lift arms to technic bricks get enough length. Getting power to at least one axle without the speed loss incurred with a worm gear is going to complicated.
This is such a cool thread! I love all the pics and projects!
What about a chassis like this?
The idea to build Lego trains capable of running on O gauge track is pretty appealing to me, I might even consider seeing if I can convert some of my Lego trains to O gauge. I see several advantages to it... The track will be closer to scale, will be much cheaper, and it means that my Lego trains can run on my O gauge track. Currently, I don't even have enough Lego track to sit all my trains on at once, let alone run anything.
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So I've designed a O Gauge Lego axle to be imported to Studio to help design O gauge Lego trains. I'm going to experiment tomorrow how 3D printing the wheels goes, it might be a viable method to make suitable wheels.
Here's the axle I designed:
Studio renders it a bit weird, but no big deal.
I've attached the file for the model of the wheelset, you need to import it to Part Designer and then export it to Studio.
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where do I find part designer?
I got this guy for the fun of it, but also for the parts! It has one bluetooth hub motor controller and two L motors for less than the cost of those items individually, plus a fair amount of gears, pins and lift bars. Caboose for scale!
Also ordered some XL drivers from BigBen bricks.
As you can see, they are very close in size the Camelback on the adjacent track.
I have not had time to do any design work, as many other parts of life are getting in the way.
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@coach joe posted:Some more LEGO for use on my future layout. I don't believe I'll have enough room for my Lionel intermodal crane so these LEGO cranes will come in handy for a small intermodal scene.
Positively Fantastic!
While not technically a LEGO kit this submarine is a LEGO compatible Angry Birds kit from EDUKIE.. A little more basic than offerings from LEGO, no exterior lights or mechanical grappling armes so I added a steering wheel, some lights and some interior decals to add interest.
This guy will find his way onto a flatcar, as will some LEGO unmanned DSRVs, and they will join the sub from the original post and the propeller flatcar from the Lionel Titanic set to make a shipwreck salvage train.
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It seems like interest in this topic is waning but here is my latest LEGO addition.
I've a Hallmark LM ornament and two other LEGO Space Shuttles so this Creator 3 in 1 is going to be built as the rocket. Voila!
Not really a Saturn V but still a pretty estimable rocket in my opinion. If I ever get my 4x8 set up in the spare bedroom I'll put out all my air and space stuff out and post some pictures of all the LEGO on display.
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It's neat to see Lego content on the OGR site. I have been a seller on Bricklink since 2012 and it has helped fund some of my train purchases. I'm less involved with it lately and I'm winding down my inventory and will close up when it's all gone. The market has been pretty saturated since about 2015-16 for sellers and it has become less and less profitable.
I've already got a whole thread dedicated to this but my Lego Liner 100% fits here:
It's a heavily modified Lego KT404-1 Small Locomotive with Tender set from the early 2000s that's currently outfitted with an MTH trolley motor, but by this weekend will hopefully have a Lionel Junction 0-4-0's frame and guts in it.
It's also a bit different but I purchased a Cobi (lego lookalike) kit of a German Panzer 3 tank which conveniently enough is 1:48th scale. As for why and how a German panzer found its way onto an American freight train, if the US Navy can get the warship "Prinz Eugen" as war loot, the US Army can have a couple tanks, as a treat.
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Patrick, I'm glad you brought the LEGO Liner over to this thread. I spotted it on some of the Modular group photos Peter posted and asked him if you could post about it. Seeing what others on this thread had to do to make LEGO trains run on O gauge track I found your way of mounting Lionel trucks very interesting. As I said on your thread I have a Harry Potter Hogwarts Express that I may try converting like the LEGO Liner.
Does anyone have any experience with the "Creator" series of town buildings and how close to O scale they are? These buildings look pretty impressive from what I have seen online.
@Big Jim posted:Does anyone have any experience with the "Creator" series of town buildings and how close to O scale they are? These buildings look pretty impressive from what I have seen online.
It's LEGO, scale is a nebulous concept.
@Big Jim posted:Does anyone have any experience with the "Creator" series of town buildings and how close to O scale they are? These buildings look pretty impressive from what I have seen online.
I have lots of Lego buildings, including a few that are still in the boxes. If you mix trains and toys the scale is pretty good. If you're a rivet counter it doesn't work. Lego minifigures do not scale to anything remotely human.
@Big Jim posted:I understand about the figures. It's even worse with Dept.56 figures! I was just curious as to how the buildings in this series scaled out?
Sorry I just don't have any good pictures in my phone right now. I will try to take some though. Let me know if you had certain building set in mind. I will look for something I have with a similar height, and take a few pictures next to a common size loco.
@Big Jim posted:I understand about the figures. It's even worse with Dept.56 figures! I was just curious as to how the buildings in this series scaled out?
Jon mentioned the term nebulous above. I tend to agree, but my term would be adjustable.
Why is that? In the early days (1960's), before umpteen-gazillion "special" pieces, we had bricks of only a few configurations, and then windows, doors, small wheels, and slightly larger wheels.
Assembling a building, or a vehicle, from this limited set of pieces always resulted in a fixed scale, which to your eye the size of the windows and doors had established. This scale was in my opinion very roughly 'O', even though the bricks individually were clearly much larger than 'O'. They were clearly not HO, N, G or anything else, other than maybe 'S'.
With the addition of so many special pieces over the years, to introduce curves and add details, doors and windows no longer set the stage. Sizes for special pieces are all over the map, and often created initially to make nicely complex models of varying sizes without regard to a specific scale, but still built around the core bricks. Therefore these models are never scaled to a standard, but they are scaled to some undefined reference scale, in order to make them look correct, in three dimensions, to your eye.
My conclusion: Things can be made in many scales, but approximately 'O', maybe 1:50, is probably the smallest size when you're building with Lego in which you see start to see nicely-detailed models, given the nature of the special pieces. Anything smaller and they're not detailed enough for most of us.
It goes up from there. Clearly if you shoot for 'G' you can build much more nicely detailed stuff than if your target is 'O'.
Most often though you use the special pieces to set the level of detail you'd like to see, then the scale follows automatically from there. What ever that scale turns out to be, precisely, is of no great consequence to most Lego modelers. This makes it hard for 'O' scalers because you have to work backwards.
Mike
Main St. looks fabulous!
O the lego buildings make a huge increase in play value for kids. Technically, you can't break the buildings, although they do get rearranged🤔. My kids will play with the layout even without the trains running.
Along with that, the Creator series has the back of the buildings open in order to play inside like a doll house!
A couple additions from the Mega Bloks Alien Agency Line from some years ago. First up is the DNA Lab. The building front is 24" wide by 2" deep. It sits on two base plates. It would make a great flat against a wall but the base plates are 7-1/2" deep to allow for the all the examination and experimentation equipment necessary to analyze the aliens. I may lose the second story section and create a single story building on a single base plate or I may cut one base plate in half and use the pieces to get a 3-1/2" deep building flat.
Next is Hangar 18 from the Arrival set. I think it's pretty cool and I have a second sheet of corrugated roofing and the semi-circular pieces for the front and rear elevations. I'm going to try to cobble together another one.
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Mega Blocks- Nooooo!!!!!
I've got a whole bin of 'em in the garage. Dragons and ice castles and some sort of ship. I kept all of this stuff once my son outgrew toys because I thought I could use it on layout. I've been putting some of his bigger sets together to make sure all the pieces are there with the intent of selling them but he's kinda convinced me to keep them and display them in th train room.
What is the website you use to buy LEGO bricks?
Thanks guys.
Joe,
I think the buildings look great. You just prove that there many different ways to tackle scenery.
Thank you Alan. That means so much coming from such a skilled modeler.
