Entry posted by Jongudmund
709 views
At the end of my previous blog post I said I had plans for the rather boring long wagon that came in the original cargo train set (60052).
I was prompted to use it as a 'donor' base wagon for a car transporter project by this:
It was on special reduction in my local Asda. I saw it one evening and had a think about whether I wanted to buy it, then went back the next day and bought it. I think it's good value as the car transporter alone usually cost between £20 and £30.
The other two models came boxed within the box. I plan to keep them as gifts for some of the kids I know at some point in the future.
It's very rare I buy a Lego model and don't build the model it's supposed to be at least once. I had a good reason to do it this time as I wanted to see if the car loading mechanism was transferable to a wagon. I skipped bag 1 as I wanted to get straight on with the truck.
Bag 2 is a fairly straightforward, satisfying build of the truck cab.
Bag 3 contained the truck ramps and the trailer.
And then I went back to bag 1, to build the cars.
In the parts photo you can see the moulded chassis for the cars. They are 12 studs long. This turned out to be an important detail. Also in bag 1 were the minifigures.
I particularly liked the yuppie's slicked hair. The driver's clipboard is a sticker, not a printed piece. I've already made my thoughts clear in previous posts about how stickers are a disappointing substitute.
When built, the cars looked pretty nice.
There was even space included for the yuppie's briefcase.
I tried them out on the transporter.
But two problems quickly became apparent. Firstly, being 12 studs long the wheels lined up badly with the circular slopes on the floor of the transporter's lower level. This led to a chronic case of 'overhang'.
Secondly, the ramps to drive the cars up onto the transporter were too short. Which led to an insurmountable grounding problem.
I'm surprised by this because the engineering in Lego sets is usually much better. Most of the time they design the cars to fit the space for the cars to go, but equally if they knew they were using the 12 stud chassis piece, why didn't they work out where the wheels were going to be on the floor of the transporter? It was also annoying that you couldn't drop the truck's upper level when the trailer was attached. So you would have to load up the truck first, then attach the trailer and load that up. Fine, as long as you load the cars in reverse delivery order, but any change of schedule and that would be a real bind for our delivery driver.
So, there were several learning points to take from this. Firstly, the build techniques and most of the parts looked transferable to a wagon. Secondly, I'd need to make sure the car wheels weren't positioned on the top of slippery circular slopes. Thirdly, I needed to find a way to bring the top levels down together.
So the next thing to do was take the car transporter apart again ready to re-use the pieces...
-
2
1 Comment
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now