Winter Village: Model railroad display (Competition entry)

[majorna]

Hi

I'm kind of new here, but this competition was too fun to pass up. The Lego town model railroad club has set up their winter landscape layout in the Winter Village.

The layout features a snow-covered mountain, a cozy red house with chimney, and a couple of trees, including one decorated for the season. Here a father and his daughter are admiring the layout from the poinsettia-decorated viewing platform.

The operator sits at his control board and makes sure the train runs on time. There is a little locomotive, a yellow tanker car, and a red box car.

Naturally, the train really runs, by clockwork mechanism! Here it is in action, I'll try to make a better gif (minus hand) later:

Please check out my other competition entry (also clockwork-powered!), over in the Technic Forum.

[lightningtiger]

Great entry 'majorna' and it's wonderful to see it's clockwork too.....very clever and very original indeed.....good luck and Brick On 'majorna' !

[eurotrash]

Excellent work! I love the use of clockwork mechanism and those small trains are perfect.

[NoEinstein]

Cool entry! It reminds me of the Constitution train I MODed to ride around my Winter Village.

Good luck in the contest.

[LEGO Family]

Lovely microscale display. I like it. :)

[Yooha]

Incredible that it works, nice job!

[Paperballpark]

This is really interesting! Good work!

[lugnut]

Oh Wow!!! Too cool!!! May have to borrow this idea for my Winter Village (with your permission, of course) ...

[F0NIX]

Nice micro model!

My first thought was that this was a micro version of Cecilie's Winter Mountain Village MOC :)

[dr_spock]

Very good Christmasy idea. Nice use of parts. Where can one find a Lego clockwork mechanism?

[Kristel]

This is so gorgeous! Good luck in the contest.

[timmyc1983]

Fantastic entry, I really like this one!! Such a cute little railway and it really works, awesome.

Good luck

[majorna]

Thanks everyone for your kind words! I took another shot to show the mechanism a little better:

Finding a combination of gears that provided a "wandering" path while keeping the tread links at a reasonable tension was a bit of a challenge, but this geometry worked well. The train is supported by 1x4 tiles, which fit sniggly over the 3 wide treads, the posts in the bottom of the tile fit into the holes in the tread.

Lego has produced a number of clockwork motors over the years, this one I picked up on Bricklink, and is from set 4093.

[NoEinstein]

Thanks for sharing all the details majorna it is a real feat you got this working in such a small space. I really have to get me one of those clockwork motors to tweak with.

I forgot to mention it in my prior post but the operator is pure brilliance. It gives it a real "proud owner" vibe, just like the people showing of their MOCs and stuff on brick conventions.

[Trevor_F]

I love this! The clockwork motion sets it over the edge!

[wonderpuddle]

Love the actual working train. Very nice job!

[TheLazyChicken]

Very creative idea!

[gazumpty]

This is really nicely put together entry and the mechanical feature sets it apart :) great work and good luck in the competition.

[sgeureka]

The train is cute. I admire your mechanical work (I suck at this). Thanks for the animation.

[majorna]

I finally got around to making a better animated GIF of the model in action. Happy Holidays everyone!

[LukeClarenceVan]

Lovely scene, very picturesque.

[LAKAbricks]

I loved this entry from the very first sight. It's a brilliant idea and that the train can "drive" does certainly not make the idea worse

[majorna]

I got some requests to show the mechanism that makes the train run in more detail, so here are a couple screenshots of a quick LDD drawing of the model:

The "motor" (from set 4093) gets placed on the purple plate and feeds the 12t double bevel gear, which in turn feeds the 20 t bevel gear attached by a 4l axle to a 40 tooth gear. The other gears are held in place on the frame by pins, and the frame itself is set on jumper plates supported by ordinary bricks. The train is built to fit on a 4l tile (the orange round 1x plate is not necessary in reality) and these are then placed over the 3 wide treads (available, for instance, in the 9391 Tracked Crane set). I couldn't find these treads in LDD, but they will get linked together snuggly around the four cogs. I hope this is of assistance!