and_ampersand_and

I've used the last one and confirm it works pretty well!

Probably, depending on the engine. But what's the point of a tender engine without it's tender?

If you're looking for a MOC, any of the tank engines from Block Junction would fit well. I have one of their Terriers built and it fits very well with plenty of room. Any of their tender engines would be too big. https://blockjunction.co.uk/downloads/category/railway-lego-instructions/locomotives-lego-instructions/steam-locomotives-lego-instructions/

I'm not saying they would print on-demand replacement sets, if that's what you think I'm suggesting. I'm saying that it's pretty standard practice for large companies to assume they'll need X number of products extra and to manufacturer those extra during the production run, and that Lego may or may not do this. Making the exact number needed at this scale isn't really feasible. What if while in Lego's possession one of the sets gets destroyed? It gets run over by a forklift or a whole palette is in a truck accident. Does Lego just randomly pick someone's order to cancel? Maybe, or maybe they've planned ahead. Planning for damaged freight is a part of the field of logistics.

Interesting. Seems like a massive oversight from Lego considering how good their customer service usually is. Kickstarters I've backed from small companies have had extra of their limited run products on hand for this exact purpose.

I mean that's not correct, at the very least the review copies sent out early and display copies shown off at conventions were made. Even then from a logistics standpoint any company has to expect some items to need replacing, even from limited run products.

Lego surely has some extra stock for replacements - what if a package is lost or destroyed during shipping? However, hopefully they're just saving those for more serious issues than box damage.

In the US - one of my sets has shipped and the other is now 'in Warehouse'. Both charges are still pending on my CC.

I have a number of trixbrix 3-d printed switches and they are fine quality wise. You have to be a little careful with them as they feel more fragile, but I haven't yet had any break. I still vastly prefer injection molded switches when that is an option (i.e. BrickTracks R104 switches vs Trixbrix R104 switches) but you can't beat the vast variaty of switches that Trixbrix is able to provide via 3-d printing.

Heads up - instructions are avaliable for all the Series 1 models. There are links on the BDP page on Bricklink.

Except for not having a parts list until closer to or after release.

Glad it's working for you. I'll need to retry my L motors with the latest version of Pybricks. Perhaps they've made a change that's fixed the issue. When you connect the hub to the browser, then run the program to save it to the hub - it's actually running the program at that time. So it starts to try connecting to a remote, and if it's successful you can start controlling things with the remote. Since it's connected to the browser, data will be outputted into the console. Most importantly, if there's a crash it will tell you the error message and the line of code that it crashed on. If you run into any issues again, let us know what the error message is.

Hey, is PyBricks giving you an error message if you try running it while connected to a computer? I've noticed some issues with L motors recently with the script. I haven't been able to recreate the errors in a brand new script. The error I'm encountering appears to be with interacting with the motor at all. Trying to set or read the speed fails. It's acting like the L motor has been disconnected. The program would start fine, but as soon as you would hit a button on the remote it would crash. The issue only started showing up in newer versions of PyBricks. I was able to roll back the PyBricks version (3.2.3) and the issue went away. However, that means newer features like Broadcasting isn't avaliable. I found someone asking the Pybricks devs directly about the error here, back in December: https://github.com/orgs/pybricks/discussions/1320 Knowing that more people are encountering the issue and not just me is a bit concerning. I'll revisit trying to fix the issue.

I emailed them a week ago with a question and haven't heard back. Hope everything is ok with them.