Trains and Legos?

YES! No pictures though, just took it apart.

Lego and FasTrack might have been made for each other. Those thin grey baseplates that you get with the Lego Technic sets will clip to the underside of FasTrack as though meant to.

We - my grand children and I - use Lego to build not only line side structures but working accessories like cranes and conveyor belts. I got lucky and found a whole bunch of vandalized sets on sale at a flea market and paid $100 for them all and got probably a couple of grands worth including two of those mini-computers and dozens of wheels and gears of every size as well as tank track belts and chains, too much to list.

Try adding up that lot from the online parts list and the total is breathtaking!

Anyway, I used to teach and used Lego to compete in the F.I.R.S.T contests, so I like it and my grand children like making useful accessories which keeps them very busy for hours. You can even make switch motor mechanisms and semaphore signals, its only your imagination thats the limit to what you can do.

The play value of trains and Lego together is immense. I've often wondered how come Lionel and Lego don't work together on producing some kind of interface that would benefit them both. Of course it goes without saying that my interest is in trains as toys rather than as scale models.

As Mike mentioned Trains and Lego play value are amazing. These fairly new Christmas village house/ building from Lego are very nice and can really see them as being integrated into an O gauge Christmas layout or even more.
Did this Harry Potter mix of Lionel and Lego with my daughter this summer.

My son would built stuff for his layout in his room.

That was a good idea for the hogwarts train. I got a harry potter lego set for one of my nephews this year. The oldest got a city police set, and the youngest (2) got a duplo toy story train .. it was a lego christmas this year, I was actually surprised they wanted legos instead of video games (!) .. I figured the winter village kits would work best for me since all I have is North Pole central trains.. the hudson engine plus the dasher, dancer & prancer cars. Hopefully I can get them to help me build everything next year when I get stuck babysitting while their mom is out shopping on black friday.

A neat Lego layout at the RR Museum of PA in Strasburg:

wow that looks great. Going to have to go there sometime, it's not that far away from me.

I got a bunch of Amazon gift cards this year, I'm going to order the lego toy shop and bakery tonight since those are both discontinued, and then I'll get the post office later on since that should be around a while.

Lego 10219 Maersk Train ($119): http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=10219-1

LEGO's are also making famous buildings like the Falling Waters, Robie house($169) and the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. I saw them in Barnes and Noble before Christmas. They would look great on a layout, relatively realistic looking.

Here's some pictures I took of the Lego layout on display at the July 2006 NMRA Convention:

must... resist... starting... another... expensive... hobby... I can't... afford...

too late, I just ordered the winter village toy shop and bakery on Amazon today while they're still around. I think the toy shop is discontinued now and the bakery is about to be, so I'll save the post office for later. They had 5 toy shops still available this afternoon, and when I got home there was 1 left.

That Mersk train looks great! I had no idea they had so many kits out there, I never bothered looking further than what was on the shelf at Target...

I HAD NO IDEA THAT LEGO HAD TRAINS AS PART OF ITS SYSTEM UNTIL I VISITED THE RICHARD NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY A FEW WEEKS AGO. THEY HAVE AN ENORMOUS LEGO CITY WITH TRAINS GOING AROUND IT AS PART OF THEIR CHRISTMAS MODEL RAILROAD EXHIBIT.

THE LEGO TRAINS LOOKED REALLY NEAT AS THEY ZIPPED AROUND. THEY APPEAR TO BE NEAR O GAUGE IN SIZE.

Sorry for the caps above; my wife had the keyboard set for that and I didn't relize it until I stopped typing!

Always have to blame someone don't we. Can't just take the responsibility ourselves and correct a situation.

Just joking a little here...

Longtime multi generation Lego fans in this house...

Lego (there is no S!) have made trains since 1970-ish.

Lego trains are fun, but the US ones can get expensive. While on a business trip I bought (for the kids you see) a European freight set with a nice baby Krok a while back along with a bunch more track, switches, etc.

quote:

Originally posted by pennsydave:
LEGO's are also making famous buildings like the Falling Waters, Robie house($169) and the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. I saw them in Barnes and Noble before Christmas. They would look great on a layout, relatively realistic looking.

Realize that the architectural models are very very small compared to their other buildings. My 10 year old just knocked out the White House pretty much by herself. But again very small, a standard minifig is almost as tall as the building.

When my son was little, I glued a piece of the green Lego base onto a flatcar.
He would build something on it and then run it on the layout, take it off, build something else. It was endless fun!!! I still have that car around here...


Pete

Used to have a lot of Lego spaceships and aliens around our basement layout. They left us and moved upscale.

Already took down my Lego Christmas Layout. Here's some old photos of my favorites:







-bruce

Very interesting thread.

Let me ask a question though. Does anyone use Lego kits with their O Gauge layouts? Note that I meant with their layouts, not a Lego train layout. I see plenty of the Lego trains on the web (and in this thread), but I'm not really interested in Lego trains. My boys are both into Legos and have some of the Lego City sets. One of the reasons why I eventually chose O Gauge in my return to model trains after 30+ years is that the action accessories that I've been buying happen to get the attention of my boys (watching the HO and then N scale trains that I bought previously going round without any interaction quickly bored them). Plus I get to play Legos along with them.

With the Lego City kits roughly the same scale as the Christmas Village sets, I thought this would be a fun thing to do together with them as we build our first permanent layout. I won't have a total Lego City layout, just have a section on the layout dedicated to those buildings.

A photo of my son's Lego City Police Station Christmas present being reconstructed after it met an untimely demise.

I would like to put the lego white castle hamburger building in my scale town. Just have to find one.
Clem