Jongudmund

That's a beautiful picture

Be interested to know if that actually ever happens or whether they were doing something else.

Here's an idea. Why has no one done a loch (or lake or llyn) with a monster lurking in it? That would be a funny cameo. I guess N American outline could have a sasquatch lurking in the trees somewhere.

Eddie Izzard's comedy show "Glorious" is probably his best one. He does a whole bit about Noah's flood which I still laugh about when I think of it. Anyway, nice of him to donate his old trains to the museum and good on the local mrc for making something of it. Good bit of publicity for the mrc, I'd have thought.

Here's the latest arrival from Ebayland - a tipper wagon from the 7898 Deluxe Cargo Train set. This was for sale on its own with an option to make an offer. I made an offer and it's now the ninth wagon in my growing manifest. The Lego is pristine. The sides move up to unload the cargo. I'll get some 'action shots' at some point. I'm going to use it in my scrap metal train so have fished out some Technic/Bionicle sprues to fill the hopper. I'm not sure what the lettering on the under-sill is meant to mean. It looks vaguely continental. As a bonus when it arrived it had been built incorrectly, so I had to take it apart slightly and 'fix' it. Yay.

Instead of digging up the blocks could you add height to the bits that are lower?

I've had this Lego set (number 4561) a long time. It was produced in 1999 and ran off powered 9V track. Lego dispensed with powered track and in the mid-noughties, switching to battery-powered, radio controlled trains. It's a great set and was very fun to build. I had two reasons for digging this set out from my store cupboard of Lego sets. The first was to check the compatibility of the buffers. Lego used to use mounted magnets, but on the RC trains they brought in a new all-in-one coupling unit. You can see the differences here: I wanted to check the old and new buffers would work together as I've been tempted to buy some older rolling stock to run with my trains. The good news is they fit together nicely. The other thing I wanted to have a closer look at was this ramp that was included in the set. I have plans for this and all will be revealed soon. Also in set 4561 was this train spotter. I like him.

I also like the Triceratops.

Great idea using one of those clear boxes. It means you could see what was in it without having to take the lid off, which is what I always end up doing with storage boxes.

I really like this. Love the boat on the aqueduct as well. Bit of a change from a bus on a bridge!

I like the naming rationale for the stations. Suitable memorials, I think!

I think it looks ace

At the end of my previous post I mentioned a new arrival. It came in the post from an eBay supplier, partially deconstructed. (Makes it easier to post and more fun to receive as you have to do a bit of building.) It's the container wagon from the cargo train set 7939. The container comes off, leaving a nice flat wagon that would make a good barrier wagon if one was ever needed. The profile shot below shows how elegant this is. I said before that the train set I bought (60052) had fairly uninspiring wagons. Based on this and the tanker wagons, 7939 had a better array of cargo trucks. I thought it would be fun to add a round up of my rolling stock manifest. I have one loco and eight wagons and here they are... Locomotive 60052 (as built from set 60052) A front view of this battery powered, radio control loco. Container wagon [pictured above] (as built from set 7939) Flat wagon with cable drum load (as built from set 60052) 3 x Octan Oil Tanker wagons (modified version of wagons from set 7939) 2 x cattle wagons, repurposed as scrap wagons (base wagon as built from set 60052) Car Transporter Wagon (MOC, based on wagon chassis from set 60052)

I said last time that the final version of the car transporter probably wasn't final because the ramps weren't right. So I went back to them. This was the starting point. (I put the transporter next to another wagon to compare the height.) But first I also needed two more cars to load onto the transporter. I mentioned this to my wife, Cathy, who went and had a rummage in the Lego boxes and dug out this fire chief's car that she had bought a while ago and not got round to building yet. It was ideal as it was the right width and looked the right length. As a general rule I tend to build things at least once the way it's meant to be. Then take it apart. I duly built it. You can see how by not putting on the stickers and taking the light off the roof it could easily pass as a regular car. However, there was a problem. It was a bit long. It was also too high. The transporter fits convertible cars. The roof had to go. Out came the bits boxes and I rebuilt the back end as well. I also gave it doors from the bits box. The tan bumpers were from the bits box. I dumped them and gave the car some killer exhausts as well. The other donor car was a Lego Friends animal ambulance that I had picked up super cheap in a supermarket a couple of months ago (mainly because it had a Lego hedgehog in). I quite like the Friends kits as they have a different colour palette to most other sets. I had thought when buying it that the bits might be useful. Now I was looking at those pale blue wheel arches thinking, yeah, that could work. I'm not quite sure what the rear assembly on the white car was meant to be, but I liked the look of it. The windscreen is the rear window from the fire chief's car. I tried all 4 cars on the transporter. They fitted and I was pleased with how it looked. However, the rear assembly on the white car meant it didn't fit on the lower deck, so I had to junk it. Probably for the best. I mentioned 'greebling' in my last post. I had some ideas for adding detail along the sides of the wagon using half-length Technic pins, grills and things. I also identified some new pieces to make the hinges. The 1x1 printed tile is a spare piece from a Nexo Knights set I got given as a birthday present and I thought it would make a nice 'maker's mark' for whichever wagon works made this. Unfortunately, the greebling interfered with the elevator rods preventing them from laying flat when the top deck was collapsed, so I had to scrap this idea. The 1x1 tile worked, though and you can see it in the photo below. Even better, the hinges worked, closing up the gap when the ramps were dropped. I had to mount them differently on either end, but the wagon is asymmetrical anyway, so that didn't matter. In this photo you can see there isn't much of a gap now for the cars to drive over to get off the ramps. So, I am finally happy with this. The ramps work. The top deck lays as flat as possible. I may go back to tinker with the white car at some point, or replace it if a cheap set with a 4-stud wide car comes available, but there is no rush for that. Thanks for reading these blog posts. I hope you enjoyed them. I have a couple more to come including news of a new addition to the rolling stock manifest.

This is the third blog entry about building a car transporter for my Lego train. The first attempt ended with a model that worked but was too wide and ungainly with an over-sized top deck. So, back to the building board. The first thing I did was remove the upper deck and rebuild it. The ladders that are being used as runners for the cars slide into each other so I overlapped them by four studs. This also meant adding another layer of plates at one end to fill the difference in height between the lower ladder and the overlapping one. I rebuilt the deck to 28 studs long - the same length as the wagon base. I then swapped out the modified plates with Technic pin holes I had been using underneath the top desk for the red ones I had been using on the lower deck and strengthened the structure with some more red plates from the spares supply. Having used the red mountings on the upper level, I now needed to find a way of attaching the rods to the lower level. I decided what I needed to do was build a new layer on the wagon base comprised of Technic beams, blocks and plates from the spares supply. You can see here how I have attached the on-off ramps using the yellow 'handles' that came off both the wagon and the transporter. With a gap in the middle I needed to check the spacing. A downside to Technic beams are the rows of holes in the sides. Fortunately I know a way of hiding these. By using short Technic mounts you can attach other pieces perpendicular to the beam. I chose Lego Space U-beams from the spares supply. Adding detail like this is often called 'greebling' but in this case I realised after I'd put them on that these would make handy tie-bars to help secure the cars when they were on the wagon. So, if anyone asks, they're tie-bars and that was the plan all along. After I took this photo I realised they would interfere with the support mounts when the upper level was dropped so I inverted them. I added the top layer. You can see quite clearly here how the ladders overlap. The pressure sensor halfway along is supposed to be a weight gauge or something similar. It's attached using a short pin like the blue tie-bars. Sets that contain pieces like this often have a spare in, which is how this ended up in my spares box. I then tested the spacing on the upper level. The two cars fitted neatly. I checked the cars still fitted on the lower level as well. I wasn't particularly happy with the wagon ends. I had attached the wagon ends pieces as 'gates' using hinges so they could swing out to let the cars on or off. However, this added two studs to the length of the wagon, leading to overhang problems again, the hinges weren't stiff enough to keep the gates closed, and above all it didn't look right. So I took the top deck off and used different hinges (again from the spares supply) to add small ramps using plates. I also added some modified 2x1 plates with a handle at the end along the edges of the top deck to act as tie-bars for cars parked on the top. The new ramps weren't perfect but they looked better and were functional, so at this point I think the wagon is done. (Who am I kidding, I'm going to fiddle with these!) However, even though this is done (fiddling notwithstanding), it has also put me in mind to hunt out two more cars to fill those gaps. A full transporter wagon will look pretty good I think. Among adults who play model with Lego, there is a phrase for models like this. It's a MOC (My Own Creation). Although I did use the wagon that came in set 65002 as a base and borrowed heavily from the car transporter kit as a source of parts, I like to think I put enough work into getting this right to call it a MOC. I'm looking forward to seeing my cargo train pulling it around the tracks.

Yesterday I blogged about building a car transporter set that I bought with the intention of turning this rather dull blue wagon into something more interesting. The first thing to do was take off all the bits above the base plate. The little Octan tank will come in useful somewhere. This left a nice bare surface to start building on. For reference, this plate is 28 studs long and 6 wide. The holes in the middle are because it is also used in the model locomotive and the wires need to go through somewhere. Just to give a sense of the below decks engineering, here's a picture of the wagon's wheelsets. You can see how it has two free-turning bogies to enable it to cope with the sharp radii of the Lego track system. Relocating the transporter deck to the wagon was tricky. For starters, it meant moving the connectors out a bit as the red bases with holes for technic pins had to overhang the side of the wagon. (Hey, in the background are the cow and scrap wagons!) When completed this meant the transporter deck was 10 studs wide, when measured from the outer edges of the support beam mountings. The wagon base was only 6 studs wide. That's two thirds wider in real terms and would make the clearance pretty huge on corners. This felt even more obvious when the decks were collapsed for loading, but at least they lay flat (well, flattish). One plus was there was plenty of space up top for both cars. In fact, too much space, as the top deck was 32 studs long.You can also see in this view just how wide the whole mechanism was. The overhang on the top deck was a real problem. For one thing it looked a bit weird. For another if I ever built another of these things they couldn't be coupled together without clashing as the overhang went beyond the buffer heads. I know it's only Lego, but it just wouldn't be built like this. You can see the overhang in this photo, and also the instability on the lower deck caused by having to mask the base units for the upper deck supports. So, in conclusion, it was a workable model but it didn't look right and it didn't work very well. I wasn't happy with it. Somehow I was going to have to find a way to lose 4 studs from the top deck and move the supports in to the true edges of the wagon. An 8 stud wide car transporter would still be ungainly, but it would work. The great thing about Lego is you can just take it apart and put it back together again if it's not looking right. In my next blog post I will tell you all about that.

Me too!

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...

When in June? I might come up for that. (Please don't say the 11th as I have something on!)

Well, I'm back after more than six months. When I started this blog last year I talked about the train set that kicked this off. I made a throwaway remark in that opening post about turning the cattle wagon that came in the set into a wagon for scrap 'metal' (actually Lego Technic and Bionicle bits). But I didn't have any pictures of it. I then moved on to blog about tanker wagons and didn't say anything more about the newly repurposed scrap wagon. So, this post is a bit late coming. Apologies! What's prompted it is *cough* an eBay purchase of another cow wagon. I'd been meaning to get one for a while and then one finally appeared on eBay for less than £10 and, anyway, what we have here is effectively a before and after shot of the new arrival complete with cow, and the converted scrap wagon. You can see there in the picture how unsuitable the wagon is for transporting livestock. For one thing any cow worth it's salt would be able to jump out of there. I like the Lego cow. It's quite a friendly looking beastie. She also comes with a farmer to look after her. Again, not exactly true to life as putting a person in a metal cage wagon with a cow for a train journey is likely to end poorly. It's a nice mini-figure, though, complete with neatly trimmed beard. The cow from my original set has been absorbed into my larger collection of Lego and this one is going to go the same way, along with her hay bales, her farmer friend and his red bucket. Actually I might keep the bucket for the goods shed area I'm planning. What I need to do now is sort out another scrap load a bit like this one. I'm planning on using the blue crane to load and unload scrap on one of the sidings. I do have a tub somewhere of other Bionicle bits and random Lego parts that would be suitable for an industrial scrap-pile. I will fish them out shortly. Meanwhile I have another project coming using one of the other wagons from the original set. It won't look like this for long!

Yeah, Sarah, I was thinking if they had the jar on the counter in the style of a sweeties pick and mix as someone else had said. Makes you wonder... impulse purchases and all that.

I've just gone through some of the preceding pages on this thread and realised that a) it's buggered up my cookies. Ebay is going to show me a lot of rubbish now as its suggestions of things it thinks I might be interested in, and b ) some of these things sold! for money!

That's not a bad idea really. You might only want one pig for a backyard pig sty for example.

The Pontypool & Blaenavon railway has a lovely Austerity in Mech Navvies livery. The thing out of place on this line is of course the big fat coaches! EDIT: Just seen there's a pic of this on the previous page as well. They also have this lovely little Barclay 0-4-0 What's not to love? (Oh, don't get me wrong I like big engines as much as the next man, but surely we can all find room in our hearts for these too)

I like the bridge on an angle. That's a clever way of making the layout look less 'boxy'.