At the end of my previous blog post, the new blue crane was finished.
But that gap between the crane and the track. That just didn't look right. We all know from the real railway that plants make a nuisance of themselves, nature reasserts itself quite quickly. I felt that bare area would quickly become home to some plant life.
So, out came the bits boxes. I particularly went for 1x1 slopes (known as 'cheese wedges') in various greens and other 'planty' colours. I also fished out som
The 'New crane, blue crane Part 1' blog post dealt with the contents of 'Bag 7'. Now on to 'Bag 8'.
Here's what you get:
That little box contains the thread for attaching the crane scoop.
Most of these pieces were to construct the cab. It's a well-designed piece, with an opening front to make it easy to put the guy in and get him back out again.
The rear of the cab is finished off using a technique known as Studs Not On Top (SNOT). This is a technique Lego has really em
A couple of posts back I said I'd received a package ordered off eBay.
If you've been wondering what's inside, then here you go:
These are bags six and seven from Lego set 60098, the latest heavy haul cargo train. Specifically, these are the bags that make up an attractive blue crane, which I decided would be perfect for my attempt at a freight operation. I particularly wanted to use it with the open wagon I had converted from being a unlikely cow transporter to a scrap metal wagon.
Another part of set 60052, along with the track, loco and wagons, was a gantry crane, already shown on this blog in this picture:
And also in action here:
However, now it's time for a closer look.
The crane was fun to build, if a bit challenging. On the plus side it is a nice shade of industrial cautionary yellow. It's got an interesting mechanism to allow it to move along a train to get its jib into position. The down side is that it's very light (well, it is just plastic bricks
I said in yesterday's post that another tanker wagon was on its way from eBay. Well it arrived today (along with something else!) and so I had the chance to take some photos of the modding process.
Here it is straight out of the packaging. For some reason, some people send them pre-built, which I think surely costs more than sending a packet of Lego pieces. As you can see from the picture, this had been built for a while and had gotten a little dusty.
Fortunately, Lego is easy to clean
As mentioned in the first post on this blog, I was underwhelmed by the wagons in set 60052. However, the previous cargo train set (set number 7939) had a tanker wagon in it that I had seen and thought was rather nice. Lego wagons crop up all the time on eBay, so, knowing that the cargo train set was coming I successfully bid on two auctions.
Here is the wagon, virtually as shipped in the 7939 set.
You can just about see from that picture that there are horizontal clips holding the side
This blog is about my Lego trains. Just a disclaimer, I am what's known as an AFOL (Adult Fan of Lego) and I do buy more of the stuff than most grown ups who actually have children to buy it for. Lego is a versatile building tool and crazily well-engineered. We have a Lego Shop in Cardiff and the stuff in there is amazing.
I have a 9v train-set that was produced back in the 90s. This runs in a similar way to classic model railways - power goes through a transformer and is picked up from the
