Farmer Harv

Wasn't real happy with the way the tender full of battery box on the Emerald Night appeared, got to looking at the way the hidden switches were depressed on the Heavy Haul and Cargo trains, and came up with this... Not a perfect solution, but it camouflages the battery box to a large extent, plus nothing needs to be moved/removed to turn it on and off...just a simple press does it. Happy New Year everyone!!

That parts sorting tray is something I've never seen before. Very cool. And the train itself is fantastic of course. Really makes me wish I was aware Lego made trains while I was busy with other things. Looking forward to updates as you build both sets. :-)

Running the risk of thread necromancy, I was wondering if there were any updates on this great layout?

And here's a quick little video of it (almost) fully operational...

Almost there! Received all the track and switches I had on order, and have everything connected and running now. It takes the Emerald Night ~95 seconds to travel both loops and return to the station at just over half speed, which feels about right as it moves around. Now I just need to go baseplate hunting and get building buildings, and then start thinking about elevated tracks once it's all together.

I really appreciate the amount of work that went into Railbricks by all involved, and wish to thank each and every one who contributed. As a newcomer to trains, being able to look through the back issues and see how things have progressed is really quite interesting, and has already helped me as I move down the tracks. Just a great resource to have access to, and hope it will remain available for everyone with an interest in the hobby.

I fully agree with baard. Yes, for some reason the amount I've spent on Lego totally shocks some people, when in comparison to the dollars they're poured into motor/water/snow sports I'm still at a low percentage of those sums. My budget calculation process is really quite simple...since I stopped smoking, I've allocated the amount that a pack a day would cost me to my hobby fund. When I quit in 2003 that was right at $10/day, and now it's up to almost $5000/year. So it's really a win-win situation, as I'm not engaged in that filthy money wasting habit anymore, and I have a decent budget to spend on hobbies and the occasional bottle of fine single malt now.

Thanks for the tips everyone. I see what you mean ecmo47, I just put down a few buildings and see how little space I have left for the town, amusement park etc.. I have a new plan forming which will free up some space, as well as allow a single train to run all of the track without needing to operate switches, or two to run at the same time. Sadly it will require the use of a razor saw to build an interchange, but it's like the old adage about the omelette I guess. And yep, that's my old 1986 CR1280 Steiger Cougar. Not quite as boxy as the first generation, but still that distinctive green. Be cool to MOC it someday if I could ever find enough bricks in that color alright. Been using it as my avatar for a well over a decade on every forum I frequent...amazing how many people have recognized me from it.

I kept buying sets while we were building a new house, but didn't build anything at all for over a year as there was going be a dedicated hobby room that I thought I'd wait to use. I just got everything moved over and in one place, and it turns out I might have just a wee addiction problem happening from the looks of the backlog...

It is fun watching it grow alright, but to make this any larger I'll have to move to the garage I think. Or worse...outside. :-0 Hoping to have 60098, 60052, Horizon Express, Emerald Night and Maersk cargo all motorized on rails and ready to go at all times, and the Lone Ranger theme Constitution train as a static piece. One thing I'm finding now is that once I have all the rail laid that I want, there isn't that much room left for the buildings and things that will bring it to life. Definitely a balancing act between trains and environmental items when it comes to utilizing available square footage.

Received approval to rezone a little more of the room from Hers to His, so think I have enough space for what I had in my head all along. Now I'll be able to have a freight yard, construction zone, town and amusement park, two trains running concurrently, motorized rides and space to have everything shunted off that isn't running. Now I just need to build what I have, and buy what I don't. When is the next double VIP points day..?

I remember looking through my dad's O scale stuff when I was quite young, and then he and I built a quite large HO layout that I worked on until my mid teens. I was always frustrated by the trains never running smoothly due to oxidation on the rails, and spent much more time cleaning track than ever running anything down them. Fast forward 30(ish) years to when I came out of the darkness and rediscovered Lego, Star Wars specifically, and started looking at all of the great stuff I had missed. I found an Emerald Night I was just going to have as a static display, but after doing a fair bit of reading thought I'd give one of these newfangled Power Functions things a go. And Wow! It was amazing! No track to clean, no shorts to worry about, some "give" in the track so it didn't have to be laid perfectly...railroading was suddenly fun. So from a rather innocent start with one display piece, I now have 5 different trains, a couple hundred pieces of track, a significant percentage of the rec room taken over and a whole new way to drain money out of the bank account at a rapid rate. Wifey doesn't seem quite as enthralled as I am, but I'm sure she'll come around eventually. :-)

Hey all. I've slowly been accumulating Lego trains and track over the last year, and finally got around to setting the tables up and laying things out. My only criteria were to be able to run two trains at once, and that there be a reversing loop. I don't think it worked out too bad for the first go, but I'm sure there's always room for improvement. Quite a bit if flex track was used simply because I had it, plus it's very forgiving of poorly planned layouts. :-) Amazingly difficult to get a good picture of a layout. Of course shortly after I finally got this all set up, I found out about BlueBrick which would have saved a pile of trial and error, but part of the fun is taking Lego apart and rearranging it, so it's all good in the end. Haven't figured out how to flex the flex track in BlueBrick so everything connects properly, but it definitely would get things close enough that it'll work in real life were I to use the software to try different ideas. I still have to assemble and motorize a Horizon Express and Emerald Night, and can see I'll need another table and some more track to run a few spurs off to park the extra trains. I had no idea how much square footage a Lego setup would cover, and quickly realized a 5'x9' ping pong table would not do all I wanted, and even adding the 6' folding table for the reversing loop still leaves me at least 15 square feet short of what I want to do. So a few questions about where I could go from here... Has anyone used the Creator houses (Bike Shop & Cafe, Apple Tree House etc) with a train? Do they "fit" well, and are they proportioned correctly? Or should I stick with the City line to add some life to the layout? I have a few unopened Modulars, but think I'd sooner sell them and buy more trains, track and less expensive buildings instead. I've done a little reading about grades and elevated track, and wonder if it would be worth it? Looks like quite a bit of track length is needed to get up to the next elevation, and I'm not sure how I would work it into this space. Any ideas on this welcome. Will I ever go through enough AA batteries to justify the price of the Lego rechargeable packs? I haven't run these for long yet, so don't know which way might be better. I guess at least with the rechargeable pack I won't be just tossing handfuls of AA batts into the trash every so often, and that's worth something. Anything else I should really have/do? Or just flesh it out with some buildings and vehicles and let them run? Any and all constructive criticism welcome.

It was $350 canuck bucks previously assembled but in excellent condition. I was getting ready to drop some bigger dollars on a MISB when this appeared locally, and common sense won out and I grabbed it immediately.

Finally tracked down a 10134 Y Wing for a price I was willing to bear. Now all that's left is a 10179 MF and my UCS collection {Darth Vader Voice} will be complete.