What Size to Build In?

[Locomotive Annie]

Hello everyone, I'm very new to brick built trains despite having been a railway enthusiast for as long as I can remember. When I was younger I was into scratchbuilding railway models in the smaller scales, but recently I've been working in 15-16mm scale on 45mm track.

I was aware of the Lego trains line of sets, but it wasn't until I discovered the on-line pictures of Carl Greatrix's work almost by accident that the scales fell from my eyes. After years of measuring and cutting out and sawing things and soldering and gluing & etc to make models the idea of being able to make railway models to a good standard by a 3D jigsaw puzzle process (if I may call it that) that requires nothing to be glued, or screwed together or soldered is a revelation.

I would like to make models of the locomotives, carriages and wagons that were used here in New Zealand during the 'Small Engine' era circa 1890-1910. Most of the locos I want to build are small boilered tank engines of British origins and the track gauge is 3ft 6inches.

Having found out a little about the mysteries of 6 wide and 8 wide & etc I've been experimenting with a 4 wheel carriage based on the MOT coach because it's reasonably close in appearance to the type of carriages I want to build. I could see right away that 6 wide wasn't going to be any good for NZR models on L Gauge track, so I tried 8 wide which is much better and I could now at least have an aisle between the seats inside the carriage. Only now I'm wondering if 10 wide would be the best choice in order to obtain the best proportions between model size and the track gauge.

If I do that I'm definitely going to be moving beyond minifig scale which doesn't worry me so much, - only I don't want to set off on the wrong foot with building my trains as I ultimately want to build a small 1900s layout with all the usual railway buildings, houses and so on you would've expected to find back then in the district where I live.

Am I just being a complete newbie here? - worrying too much before I even start to build anything (sigh).

[Frank STENGEL]

Well, a lot of L-gauge builders tend to go for 7-8 wide trains because it goes well with minifigs and because it remains affordable... However if one looks at the wheel base, then 10 wide is better proportioned, but the minifigs are vertically challenged. It all depends wether you want to have a layout with people or without. Inhabited would mean 8 wide with a wheel base that is too wide. Keeping the proportions right while retaining the ability to use minifigs is a fun challenge.

[Locomotive Annie]

Thankyou for your advice Frank. I do want to have people on my layout and it would be nice to be able to use minifigs. With some of my larger scale models I used Playmobil figures (am I allowed to say 'Playmobil' here?) which were a lot of fun, but I don't want to start pushing the proportions out that far or I might as well stick to 15-16mm scale and be done with it.

I must admit my part built 4 wheel carriage is looking reasonably nice at 8 wide, so I think I might have a go at converting a MOT loco into an 8 wide single Fairlie as a test piece and if that turns out alright as well I'll stick with 8 wide and not look back.

[Dan-147]

I model in 7-wide and one of the factors that keeps me away from 8-wide is the diameter of the available wheels. They tend to look smallish in 8-wide (although the oversized flanges do create an illusion of a bigger wheel). For a long time, the standard sized wheel was the only one you could get, aside from the very rare Large Spoked Train Wheel (29mm). Now, LEGO makes a steam driver wheel and BBB wheels has a variety of sizes (his medium driver could be interesting of you decide to go 10-wide) but the costs do go up.

Dan-147

[Locomotive Annie]

Thanks Dan. All the locos I want to build had 3ft 6 inch driving wheels so I think I will be alright with 8 wide. I really want to get the semblance of narrow gauge proportions with my models which is why I experimented with 8 wide first rather than try 7 wide.

Amongst my 'G' gauge spares I have some driving wheels that are the same diameter as the Lego track gauge. If I was to build my locos to suit those wheels I would be building some big locos and using a lot of bricks which is something I don't want to do.

It was the BBB wheels that helped to make up my mind for me as I think it would be just about impossible to model steam railways without them. I still like to do a little 'G' scale modelling and I was thinking that I might even try using some BBB wheels to construct a small 0-4-0 just to see how they would work out.

[Duq]

Building Lego trains is all about compromises. For a start minifigs have odd proportions. Track curves are ridiculously tight so trains at a proper scale-length will look silly. The walls of a Lego train are also extremely thick (the width of a 1xn brick at 1:40 scale is about a foot!) so while the outside of the train may be to scale there is little room in the interior. Combine that with the proportions of a minifig that's much too wide for its height and you see the problem...

Generally minifig-scale is taken to be about 1:40. L-gauge is 37.5 mm. Standard Stephenson track is 1435 which would give a scale of 1:38, which is a good match for minifig scale. However at that scale trains should be 10 wide which just isn't practical. Cape-gauge which you have in NZ is 1066 mm which would give you a scale of 1:28...

Building 7 or 8 wide allows for a lot more detail in your models and works well with minifigs but it also makes trains a lot heavier.

My advice would be to stick with minifig scale to keep things managable, especially if you want to start doing buildings as well. Although I'd love to see some larger scale narrow-gauge trains.

[Hrw-Amen]

I build a lot of train MOCs, both steam and diesel and also rolling stock. I always start out in 7 stud wide but often there are overhangs and things that end up with the model being 8 wide in places. So i would say 7 to 8 studs wide is normal. From what i have seen on the web most train builders do go for that size. My carriages are usually 7 studs wide and that allows for a 1 stud corridor. It is narrow but then again the corridors on trains (At least in the UK.) are very narrow anyway.

Then as every one else has said you have to factor in the mini-figs if you are going to use them as they are a lot wider than real people at that height.

The one thing that does annoy me with the 7 stud build is that you cannot cover part of the wheel very well as the chasis is not wide enough. You can just about get away with it in an 8 wide build but even then you are limited by the rods which on LEGO trains tend to be quite big. I would recommend using the BBB wheels to get a more accurate wheel size. It took me a while to use them but now I do they are really good.

I think the problem you may have with tank engines is fitting all the Power Function bits into it. The battery box is the hardest thing to hide. I have built a tank engine myself but it was one of the very big British ones that to be honest was not far off the size of the EN engine.

Anyway, good luck and we will look forwards to seeing the pictures.

[zephyr1934]

Another neat thing about Lego compared to conventional model railroading is that if you change your mind, it is fairly easy to tear apart and rebuild. If you are new to building Lego trains, it will take you a few models before you find your grove, e.g., it wasn't until my 3rd or 4th steam engine design that I had something I liked and that ran reasonably well. So don't worry too much about getting it perfect out of the gate (you probably will not, but it also will not be that hard to go back and rebuild later to fix whatever troubles you).

My first passenger cars were largely repaints of the Santa Fe passenger cars. They are proportioned well for the Lego curves but they are stubby for standard gauge passenger cars (the LGB effect). Using 6 wide = 10ft, I came up with 52 stud long passenger cars (see the Sperliner article in Railbricks 10). They are well proportioned, but are very heavy and have a lot of drag on the tight Lego curves. I'm settling towards 40 stud long passenger cars as the trade off. I actually picked this length before building the Superliners when I rebuilt my CNW bi-levels from 34 studs to 40 studs long.

If you are modeling narrow gauge, then the Lego proportions probably are less of a hassle. For steam, I think getting the running gear working well can be the trickiest thing. You definitely want to build working prototypes of the mechanicals to make sure everything works and so that you can revise your design early (you don't have to use the colors/bricks you need for the final model, just something that will get the wheels, rods, and flex points where you plan them to be). Then the next trickiest is figuring out how to make a round boiler with square bricks. While most of my cars are 6 wide, I've found that 8 wide is a LOT easier for steam engines (with 6 wide boilers and running gear that extends beyond 8 wide). I then step to a 7 wide tender before hitting the 6 wide cars. I'd guess that your wheel selection and boiler options will determine what size to build everything else in, but there will be compromises and clever tricks.

If you are jumping head first in to Lego trains, I would recommend that you get familiar with LDraw, especially if you do not have a huge stash of parts. There are a couple of good books on the PC software (although several years old, much of what they say still holds) as well as some good on-line tutorials. It is a lot easier cleaning up virtual bricks than real bricks. One word of caution though, if you are building virtual models that you some day plan to turn in to real models, keep an eye on the bricklink prices. Parts that you would think should exist don't or might be very expensive when they do exist. And your first few LDraw models will likely have a few parts that float in thin air or otherwise violate the laws of physics. So all the more important to remember- still build the mechanicals in real bricks before you get too far.

[Locomotive Annie]

Thanks Zephyr

I do actually have a fair few bricks as I've dabbled on and off with making various models over the past couple of years. It's just that I never saw them as being something I could build locos and rolling stock with. Lineside buildings yes, things that run on the track no. But of course I've now been proved wrong and it's a very pleasant discovery indeed.

Something I have learned though is that I can have hundreds and hundreds of bricks, but still not have the one that I want

The loco I want to build is a NZR 'R' class single Fairlie which was an articulated loco with a light axle loading that was used for branchline work where tight curves were par for the course. Sounds perfect for Lego track doesn't it?

There was also an 'S' class single Fairlie as well that was similar, but had a larger cab and longer side tanks and was heavier than the 'R' class. I might build one of these too, but only once I've got a properly working 'R' class.

Being able to rework and modify a loco quickly and easily to try out a new approach is delightful. I was having a play at getting some of the proportions right on a tryout 'R' class loco body tonight and I ended up being reasonably happy with what I'd done. In getting the cab right I used some bricks that were a bit of a make do in that they were two studs wide where one wide would have been better, but they are Ok for now.

In the past I've tried to use various types of virtual design software and I've never been able to get the hang of it. Even with my handmade 'serious' railway models I've always been a work-it-out-on-the-job-at-hand type of girl so I guess I might just stick to what I know. The mysteries of Bricklink prices is something else I found out about. I wanted to use a particular type of brick in red for the 4 wheel carriage I'm building, - only I discovered it was $NZ0.50 each because it was rare to find in red, but cheap as chips in other colours. Far too expensive for making a coach, - or at least a red one, - but fortunately some of these coaches were painted brown back in the day so a brown coach it shall be as brown bricks only cost $NZ0.03.

[Laura Beinbrech]

You might also want to try doing 4-stud wide track (like the current narrow-gauge track that comes with the Joker funhouse) for your Cape-Gauge trains... I use it to represent 3' gauge for my on LEGO trains, like my Heisler-style mining train that I built a while ago:

NGTrain2 by Hikaro Takayama, on Flickr

[Brickthus]

I build regularly to 8mm:1ft scale, 1:38.1. This fits with the track gauge of 37.66mm being the standard gauge of 1435.1mm. At this scale British stock is 8+ wide - I start 8-wide and add the trimings or improve the body width from there if it's 9ft or more. At 8mm:1ft scale a minifig should have 1 plate added to its feet for 5'4" and 2 plates for 5'11, the average female and male heights. Adding a neck-held item like a rucksack helps to add height to the minifigs but they are meant to represent children anyway so being shorter than average adult heights is OK if you don't want the extra plates.

For 3'6" gauge the scale to L-gauge track is 1:28.33 or 10.76mm:1ft. This might mean minifigs could have longer legs, like Woody from the Toy Story train set. The minifigs would be slimmer, less than 2ft wide and therefore more like real people!

I see the coupled wheels of the loco are 36" so, at 10.76mm:1ft, 32.28mm is the ideal LEGO scale size and large BBB wheels or Emerald Night (red-belted) wheels are closest at 30.4mm. The red belted wheels give plenty of grip if they are the motorized wheels. I tend to think of each BBB wheel size as covering a range of 9" so for 8mm scale I use large ones for 3'9" to 4'6". For 10.76mm:1ft scale it is 2'10" to 3'5" for the large wheels. It often pays to have wheels a bit smaller than proper scale size because the flanges on LEGO wheels are bigger than on real ones and extra clearance is a good thing, especially on a bogie. That's why I use them to represent wheels of the exact scale size and a bit larger.

A coupled wheelbase of 6'9" becomes 72.63mm or 9M, so 4.5M and 4.5M axle centres or you could extend to 5M and 5M for convenience and ease of connecting rod construction. With a total wheelbase of 21'10" (234.9mm = 29M or make it 30M if you use 5M + 5M for driving wheel centres) I would recommend the 6 drivers on one bogie and the 4 trailing wheels on another. This means you would need a driving axle down through the bogie centre if there is a PF motor in the loco body instead of using a train motor in the rear bogie.

What is the width of the loco? Just multiply by 10.76mm:1ft and round up or down to the nearest 2M. It is possible to build to the nearest 0.2ft using SNOT tiles (on their side), or to the nearest 0.1ft if you have space to fit SNOT and half-stud jumpers inside.

My latest PF shunting loco incorporates the battery box, IR receiver, 2 motors and a gearbox on the red-belted wheels, so this shows the minimum size to fit all the parts in. The loco is more Technic than brick-and-plate but larger locos have more freedom to be brick-and-plate with some Technic inside; not such a squash for the PF parts! I have a few steam locos too. Definitely consider the power and speed you need before fixing the architecture because this sets the motor type and gear ratios. Do you want to reach the loco's top speed of 53mph?

Mark

Edited October 15, 2012 by Mark Bellis

[Locomotive Annie]

Thanks for the suggestion Hikaro, but I think I'd rather build larger on the standard L gauge track than use a narrower gauge. After having worked in 16mm scale I much prefer models with some heft and size to them even if it means a lot more bricks per model and increased weight.

Hrw-Amen: I had a look at your locos on your Brickshelf page and I saw your large tank engine. Getting enough room inside a model for a battery pack is something I'm very much keeping in mind which is another reason why I think I'm going to have to build to a larger scale and use at least 8 wide as a minimum.

Mark, thanks for your advice. When I first started to think about building Victorian era NZ railway models I guessed that 10-11mm scale was likely to be the correct size in relation to the track gauge. Obtaining a true scale top speed is not on my list as I'd prefer to aim for reliable slow running which is just plain going to look better on Lego track. Train lengths on branchlines at this time weren't very long with only three or four wagons or carriages at the very most.

I had wondered about extending the legs on minifigs to make them look a little better with larger sized train models. For the 1900s it's easy to make a female figure taller by using a 2 wide slope brick to represent a long skirt, but with the chaps it might come down to surgery. Because I had a bash at Brikwars sometime ago I've got heaps of minifigs, - including some clone ones, - that I can convert into railway staff and ordinary townsfolk. I'll have a go at sawing up some clone legs and converting them into legs for taller folk.

Something I do have is a solitary Lego Junior minifig which as it happens is nicely sized for what I'm aiming to build. Has anyone used these minifigs on their Lego railway layouts?

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

I build a lot of train MOCs, both steam and diesel and also rolling stock. I always start out in 7 stud wide but often there are overhangs and things that end up with the model being 8 wide in places. So i would say 7 to 8 studs wide is normal.

...the same goes for me

The shorter the locomotive and the more I project with 7 stud; for long stem engines I usually work with 8 stud.

[peterab]

One of the guys in my train club has built a bunch of narrow gauge engines (see Puffing Billy) in 12 wide on L gauge track.

It allows him to put in the detail he requires, and makes modding parts for the running gear pretty easy. His working valve gear also sits well rather than protruding as with the emerald night. He's a fireman on the real railway so he's more concerned with reality than LEGO purism. 12 wide allows him to get the scale right. Minifgs end up being children, and the old 70's homemaker figs are adults. The downside to it is powering such heavy beasts. He uses modified 12V pickups and track to drive XL motors. There's been a lot of trial and error in getting them running.

[Locomotive Annie]

Wow, 12 wide on L gauge track, - that would be so amazing to see. I suppose there's no chance of seeing any photos of his locos at all?

I've seen photos of the Puffing Billy line before and always thought it was amazing. I haven't visited it myself yet, but a relative who did was kind enough to bring me back a copy of the preservation society's magazine.

[SavaTheAggie]

I've stopped thinking in terms of 6, 7, or 8 wide. While it is true many of my trains are 8 wide, I find it more productive to consider scale instead. In my case I build at roughly 1:48 scale. This allows me to build trains with a more or less appropriate length to width ratio.

It also allows me to consider a minifig as the height of a normal person.

For example, while an American locomotive may be correctly built as 8-wide at 1:48 scale, building a British locomotive in 8-wide is not the same scale, the majority of British trains are 7-wide at 1:48 scale. Similarly very old locomotives would be 7 or even 6 wide in "8-wide scale".

But then again I'm very anal retentive when it comes to LEGO trains.

--Tony

Edited October 19, 2012 by SavaTheAggie

[Frank STENGEL]

I've stopped thinking in terms of 6, 7, or 8 wide. While it is true many of my trains are 8 wide, I find it more productive to consider scale instead. In my case I build at roughly 1:48 scale. This allows me to build trains with a more or less appropriate length to width ratio.

Same here, The only thing is that sometimes this leads to very long coaches.

It also allows me to consider a minifig as the height of a normal person.

Ditto.

For example, while an American locomotive may be correctly built as 8-wide at 1:48 scale, building a British locomotive in 8-wide is not the same scale, the majority of British trains are 7-wide at 1:48 scale.

British trains are slimmer than their continental european counterparts: the loading gauge is about 8 inches narrower that what is usual on the continent (2896mm vs 3100mm). For most european locomotives, 1:48 is roughly 7.5-8 wide (the loading gauge being 8-wide).

[peterab]

Wow, 12 wide on L gauge track, - that would be so amazing to see. I suppose there's no chance of seeing any photos of his locos at all?

I'm not aware of any online or I'd have linked them. I'll ask him if he has any up anywhere and post if he does.