ps1flyer

Quick remark on the power of the Crocodile... I have to admit that I'm quite impressed by the power of this engine. (And I shall add that I all my engines have conventional train motors so far, be it blue era 4.5V, gray era 12V, or power funcions train motors. I didn't have trains with M, L or XL motors before the Croco.) I've done a bit of a load test yesterday. While my classical 12V engines start to have a hard time pulling more than 4 (long) cars, the 60052 engines pulls 6 cars. But the 10277 engine still manages to pull 12 cars (without any mods), a mix of new cars (60052), and old ones (7814, 7815, 7735, 725).

(Note: hope I put the topic in the correct sub-forum. I did so because I found previous NASA VAB discussion in here.) Hi all, I’d like to share with you the first MOC I’ve ever designed and built myself. It all started with the well-known Lego 21309 Saturn V rocket which all of you know and was one of the first sets (that did not belong to the kids) for me after the dark ages. Sometime later I discovered the wonderful worlds of MOCs and came across the various acclaimed designs for the Apollo Launch Umbilical Tower (LUT) and decided to build the LUT design by Valerie (co-designer of the Saturn V) - in order to have a nice display for the rocket - over the course of one year, with some own modifications. But something was missing. My wife offered help by getting me to buy a nice cabinet for the Saturn V and the LUT, to avoid both being covered with dust. But somehow, that did not feel right. I rather felt that something more appropriate was needed. As the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon approached, plenty of new books were published and one included nice diagrams and measurements of the NASA Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at the Kennedy Space center. I started to convert the numbers for height and length/width into studs and started wondering if it would be feasible to … you get the idea. To keep the story short … the footprint of a Lego VAB at the 21309 scale of 1/110 would be enormous, some 2m x 1.65m, ~1.5m high. But why not go with one high bay, or one quarter VAB? That’s all I need to store the Saturn V, plus the LUT, plus the Crawler. I figured that this might actually be feasible at 1/110 scale. (Note: previously shown in the Facebook group "Bricks in Space") Fast forward to 9 months later… let me please present an actual MOC build of the NASA VAB, one single high bay only, at the same 1/110 scale as the 21309 set. Let me start with a rendered image of the MOC (which came last, after building was completed). Lego NASA (Quarter) VAB MOC (Flickr) A design goal was to have fully operating and moveable doors: Lego NASA VAB (Single High Bay only) (Flickr) Lego NASA VAB (Single High Bay only) with LUT inside (Flickr) so that I can move the full rocket stack in and out: LEGO MOC: Quarter NASA VAB with LUT, Crawler and Saturn V at 1/110 scale (Flickr) In terms of building, it rather went the other way. For a building of this size (0.8m x 0.8m x 1.5m) I first had to check whether this thing is actually affordable. It was clear to me from the beginng that I would not build the interieur structure of the building (the "high bay") - this would require thousands of parts and cost quite a significant amount of money. So I started out with the outer walls and had check how to do those. I was lucky - I came across approx. 1000 white 1x2x5 bricks, used and rather cheap. Time to buy them and check whether I can build a wall from them: Phase 1: Concept Phase by ps1flyer, auf Flickr Yes, works. If placed correctly, it does not tip over. But it's obviously fragile and definitely needs some (internal) support to prevent it from collapsing. It did that with a basic LEGO technic support structure made out of frames and liftarms, plus a few extra liftarms for stiffening at critical points. The next image shows the support structure mostly done, with four pillars and almost complete. I had to insert a few extra liftarms later because the door clearance was not quite sufficient yet. Phase 2: Building the Support Structure by ps1flyer, auf Flickr Putting all this together shows that I'm getting closer to something that look like an actual VAB. The LUT fits in, it's getting massive... but still, the doors are missing. Phase 2: Building the Support Structure by ps1flyer, auf Flickr Building the fully workable (not yet motorized) doors was almost half the effort and required s.n.o.t.ting on the meter-scale. The doors are being built with rail/sliding pieces, with their studs perpendiculat to the studs of the wall. The trick here was to get the 1m long 7-fold slides stable, at the same time connect everything to the wall (to prevent collapse) and still stay only 3 studs thick. (I have one layer for the black color and connection to the wall, one layer for stability and one layer for the sliding bricks.) And this is how the final doors assemby looks like: Rollout_AS500_v4 by ps1flyer, auf Flickr Rollout_AS500_v9 by ps1flyer, auf Flickr Rollout_AS500_v10 by ps1flyer, auf Flickr Rollout_AS500_v1 by ps1flyer, auf Flickr A few more pictures are available in the Full Flickr album. Some minor items are yet to finish: the roof, possible a motor to get the 7 vertically opening doors automated, ... by now I have all doors installed and built with tiles (not shown yet in the images), and a few extension like a crawler way inside and outside, etc... By the way, quite obviously the VAB is shown during the Apollo era, so no flag or NASA logo yet. So, hope you like the pictures, and I'm looking forward to your comments. Thanks for reading, Markus

So ... finished building and put this fine model on the actual track. That was a nice build (my 8 yr old son helped, did all the "double" parts in parallel) and my kids and I like it. By the way, my digital stud.io model has a few color errors and a few very minor part errors; will provide an update some time later.

Thanks for sharing the pictures. By the way, I concur with Dirk, no rubbing at all. I finished building and cross-checked against the stud.io model and connections are correctly done. I agree, it looks tight, and it probably is tight in the real model, but 100% stable and has perfect clearance. (Anyway, the model has a few color errors and very 2 minor parts errors. Will do an update some time later.)

Wow, that was fast. Ordered yesterday at midnight and now the parcel is here, was just delivered to my house. But I guess I have to be fair and wait for the kids to arrive back from school (and get my work finished) before starting the assembly.

But now for something completely different. I've finished building the Crocodile in stud.io e.g. for rendering and MOD purposes, based on the now published instructions. If you need the file for your modifications or whatsoever: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mbvaqj8t9mz4hnj/10277.io?dl=0 The build should be accurate, with the exceptions of prints (which are missing) and minifigs, which are approximate only, of course. Colors should be mostly correct (fingers crossed ), the only items that are not 100% exact are the magnetic couplers and the small train wheels in terms of item number, but optically they look correct. And the whips = red electrical cables on the roof are not flexible. The rubber tires to the big wheels are missing, though. Have fun!

I completely missed the promo set (but no worries about that). When I first loaded up the store page (Germany) at 7 minutes before midnight, the Croco was still "not available", but when I refreshed two minutes earlier (still 5 min to midnight), I was able to order. But nothing was mentioned of the promo set. Maybe that became available only at midnight? Anyway, I don't care, my package has already been shipped and has a valid tracking number.

Same here, but the confirmation email came finally through some 10-15 minutes later. But this time I was not worried because I've experienced the same store behaviour during earlier "midnight" releases of highly anticipated sets (e.g. ISS or Lunar Lander) which were causing high loads on the server. If you're used to the lightning-fast Amazon store this is puzzling but now I'm used to it and not worried anymore. If the store system properly displays an order number, the confirmation mail will come sometime later, for sure. p.s. Thanks for the instrucions link ... the motor and hub are already sitting on my desk.

Unlike when the ISS became available, the online shop did not crumble. My order did go through already ... looking forward to delivery now.

No real issues, I think I had to adjust the underside by 1 stud to ensure proper movement, but it was easily done and is not noticable at all.

For the sake of completeness, I might add that I run two Horizon Express (coupled together) without switch or polarity reverser (so just one set of IR receiver, PF motor and PF battery box in each unit). I do this by having one motor placed on the front bogie in one unit and on the back bogie in the other unit. Both IR receivers are set to the same channel, obviously.

Thanks for the warm welcome. I will ... so far I have decided to keep the number of different motors small (and I already have Lego 4.5V [set 182], Blue era 12V [my beloved set 752] and gray era 12V) and stay with PF, running 60051 (High Speed Train), 60052 (Cargo Train) and 2 x 10233 (Horizon Express). But the (hopefully) upcoming 10277 crocodile will most likely be my first PoweredUp locomotive. Looking very much forward to it.

Hi all, it's time for a first post after having been approved here on the forums (thanks!), after being a long-time silent reader, enjoying plenty of ideas and topics. Originally, I am an avid lover of gray-era12V trains and I still have rather large layout of gray and blue tracks, recently also expanded by a few ebay acquistions and some PF trains run by my kids. The trains spent a long time in storage while I was studying and started a new job + family. As usual, I finally got back into business when the kids where old enough to play with my trains, so the layout came out of storage and also the surviving city and classic space items were restored with the help of bricklink, which I started using some 2-3 years ago. I finally discovered the wonderful world of MOCs when I bought the Lego Saturn V and found that Valerie has also designed a matching launch tower which is now sitting below my Saturn V. This brought me in contact with other Lego space fans and what happened next will be the topic of a future post... For now, I'll just leave it to the 12V layout, here shown as it looked 2 years ago. Best regards, Markus