slagbijnieuwpoort1600

I do not own any Mould King sets, but as I've seen quite some reviews (mainly on trains) and to my opinion this thread is way too short, I'll summerise what I've seen so far. I will limit myself mainly to trains, although many things are also applicable to other sets. In general my conclusion would be that quite some of the sets had their problems, but they are getting better and better. Youtuber 'Bricked4you' reviewed quite some of their train sets, the title of the first one (on the set 12003, the Chinese locomotive QJ, from 2020) is titled noch nicht der ganz große Wurf (not quite the big hit yet), while the last (on the set 12017 EMD FP7, from 2024) is titled Der Eisenbahnkönig liefert ab (The Railway King delivers). That describes it I think in a nutshell. Other general things to mention is that most/all train sets are designed by @marbleman, for a few years active on this forum, so no stolen designs. Most sets are complete starter sets, with motorisation, a remote and tracks and quite often also with lights or other accessories. Pro's: Usually the designs are great, sometimes a bit overcomplicated for the parts that are being used (e.g. a 8w steam locomotive on R40 tracks) The quality of GoBricks parts are getting better and better, only the tiles are still below TLG quality, colour consistence and clamping force are better/higher. The latter is definitely an advantage for these more complicated sets. They include R104 curves in some of there sets Innovative electronics that are a great addition in building trains, e.g. a steam generator (probably the prototype can be found here: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/135094-upgrade-smoking-effect-to-my-qj-locomotive/), a train motor with battery and receiver integrated. I like that for once not only European and American trains are provided. Quite some steam trains with non-standard size train wheels (the Orient Express has 6 XXL wheels and 20 (!) M wheels) A very good price to value ratio. Con's: Some train specific parts where quite bad especially in earlier sets, e.g. bogie plates that do not hold in a technic hole. They (almost?) copied the new TLG train wheels without metal axles. Although in the EMD FP7 they are performing quite good and the wheel holders are in flat silver. Usually no prints, all details solved with stickers Blue pins Cable management can be quite challenging, as there are usually many electronics that have to be packed in a locomotive, and it is not very clear from the manual where they should be put. Most sets consist of a locomotive with only one coach/freight wagon and are a bit hard to extend, because the coaches/wagon's are not sold separately. The train motor with integrated receiver and battery is hardly usuable as it is delivered, because the battery has only an tiny 100mAh of electricity that can be stored. This can be solved by equipping an external battery to it (while still maintaining a quit compact size). See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gonwum_4ZuE and https://youtu.be/CfdqLTT48Sc?t=538 Many trains come with a remote that cannot steer the motor proportional, only on/off. Does any one know by the way why the majority of not only Mould King but also Cada, Xingbao, Reobrix, etc are in German and not in English?

It seems that BlueBrixx has solved their issues with their train wheels see their website (https://www.bluebrixx.com/en/trains/401327/Theme-set-Trains-improved-Axles-and-Wheels-BlueBrixx) and a review (in German): I haven't tested these yet, my most recent purchase where 3 second hand 8w Rheingold coaches. They look excellent, and most of the bricks are good, but they all required longer axes and ball bearings before they had an acceptable rolling resistance and didn't derail in curves. Also maybe worth mentioning here is that BlueBrixx seems to have started a whole new niche of brick build trains on 1:18 scale. After their release of the V100 in this scaled turned out to be quite popular they have announced a green Crocodile and a BR 01 in the same scale. These models are too large for my taste (and my house), but it is nice to see that there are more possibilities then only 8w and 6w trains.

I'm sorry but I don't understand how this works: how can the wheels on the middle metal axis move left and right? And how does the metal axis not interfere with the vertical and horizontal technic bars, does the metal axle just fit under the gear? And regarding that is not for purist: that is mostly because you cut several 'Train Motor Decorative Side'-parts into two? That is not strictly necessary for this solution, am I right? Regarding the traction system, if I'm correctly a L-pf motor runs at 272 rpm and with a torque of 6.48 N.cm at 9V (from philo), so this means with a 5:3 up-gear (and with assuming no loss of efficiency) a 453 rpm and a torque of 3,88, which makes it still much stronger but slower then a train motor when using S-wheels, am I right? When using S-wheels it will have an speed of around 1,5 km/g, when using M-wheels it is a bit more respectable at 2,1 km/h but still quite slow. Or am I missing something? Ideally I would be able to reach ca 3 km/h because in real life the maximum speed in service of this locomotive was 130 km/h. If this is not feasible I could live with a bit slower speeds, but it seems that I have enough room for e.g. another 5:3 up-gear, which would definitely help in getting more realistic speeds. Or would you recommend increasing the voltage or using a non Lego 'enhanced motor' to achieve this? You are talking about the distance between the two axles, right, just like in the article below. I didn't increase that, only extended the bogie further forwards and backwards. So they are still 13 studs apart, which indeed is a bit suspicious but seems ok with S-wheels as long I'm not driving to fast. I will not be using 9V-tracks, and the largest wheelsize I'm considering is M so then it wouldn't be that much of a problem probably? A more radical way to solve this is to put the blind drivers at the outermost axis, the other two will then be 7 studs apart which is perfectly fine. Another advantage would the be that the technic bar that forms the turning point of the bogies/trunks can be placed much closer to the front/rear of the locomotive, which then improves the possibility of connecting the couplers to the body instead of the bogies. My guess is that the disadvantages are that quite a large part of the bogies (the part towards the centre) is not under the body any more in tight curves, and that the blind driver can be seen from the front of the locomotive. Quite some things to test out. By the way, the link http://railbricks.com/magazine/issue-7/ doesn't seem to work anymore, but I found the article at https://brickmodelrailroader.com/wp-content/uploads/railbricks/railbricks_7-print.pdf I get the point of the article, but this would mean that my (otherwise symmetric locomotive) would get a clear front and backside, am I right?

Thanks for all the help! It took me some time to process all the advise and work a bit further (and I'm still quite slow in digitally building). I decided that a blind driver in the middle would be a good balance between ambition and realism for me. I saw quite some 4 x 4 technic bricks with hollow centers in the different bogies from e.g. @dtomson, and I guess this will increase the strength of the bogie by using these instead of 2 1 x 14 technic bricks? I therefore extended the bogies a bit so that it now looks like this from beneath: I didn't replace the wheels on the middle axis yet, because I'm still undecided on using the Hockey Puck, a round tile + plate or even move to M-wheels that UrbanErwin used as well. At the DSB Litra MZ III bogies I see that a 4 x 4 turntable is used instead of making everything flat. This is probably to increase the strength of the connection between the bogie and the body, right? I think I'll apply that too. Regarding the motors, according to https://www.philohome.com/motors/motorcomp.htm the XL motor is a bit more efficient than the train motor, but I'm guessing that this is mostly because no gears are involved, so you loose this (and maybe even a bit more) when adding the necessary gears to an XL motor? I would however also like it to be able to move a bit slower then with the train motor, and with a higher torque the speed stays probably also more constant in curves and when climbing a slight slope? With the battery I used (a 9,4V Zenter battery) in my V100 with train motors the locomotive is even a bit too fast for my taste. With M-wheels the speed would be even higher. A train motor on the side would still probably fit in the model (the locomotive is quite large and the sides are relatively simple 1-wide bricks), but aren't you then loosing on performance because only one of the two axle holes is used? I already have the carriages so I will start experimenting with a flatcar as locomotive whether it is possible to connect the couplers to the body. It will probably then also help to put the technic bar that connects the body + motor and the bogies as much to the front (or rear in case of the second bogie) as possible, am I right? I was already trying to do that in the current design shown above, but I could move the bar one stud further to the right but then I cannot keep the 4x4 technic brick with hollow centre at that location. Thanks again for all the help!

Dear all, I recently became interested in building Lego/other building brick trains, to accompany the Lego trains of my son. I recently bought three second-hand Bluebrixx 8W Rheingold carriages, so now they also need to be pulled by an appropriate locomotive. I decided to try if I could design/MOD one myself. Because I’m living in the Netherlands I would like to build a NS 1200 locomotive, to recreate trains like this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cklx/44453150825/ I started off with the stud.io file that I found on https://www.mybricks4u.com/trains---loc.html with a design from jokey02, because I thought it would a bit hard to completely start from scratch. Of course I also looked to the nice model of UrbanErwin as an inspiration https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/182433-moc-ns1202/. I changed the main colour to dark blue and added a yellow line and red parts, I added 4 studs to the length of the locomotive and added extra lights to the front. I find it however more difficult to change the design of the technical parts just via a digital model. The thing I am not sure about are: · The bogies in the design by jokey02 consist of 2 14-studs long technic bricks that are 4 studs apart. This means that these will hardly go through any curve, am I right? As I have seen in other models there are four different ways to solve this: 1. Make the bogie only 3 studs wide in the middle, so that the wheels on the middle axis could move from left to right. This is comparable with e.g. the Bluebrixx Flying Scotsman 103481. It might however become tricky to motorize the bogie, as there will be not much place left for gears and an extra technical axis in the middle of the bogie? 2. Make it possible for the whole centre part of the bogie to move left and right, like with the Lego Orient Express 21344. Motorization the becomes probably even more difficult with this option. 3. Replace the wheels in the middle by blind drivers, this is I think the most common way to do this for e.g. steam locomotives. These blind drivers look usually still a bit odd in my opinion, but for this particular locomotive the blind driver will be mostly covered by the side decorations, so it might be a good solution here as well. 4. Split the bogie into two parts, one with to axes and one with one axis, as is done e.g. with the Bluebrixx BR 103 in 8w, 104283. This makes it easy to motorize it with a train motor, however also this solution looks a bit odd aesthetically, especially in curves. Which would have your preference if you were building a locomotive? The main curves on our railway track are R88 and R104, and although it would also be nice if the locomotive could move on R40 switches it isn’t strictly necessary. · The second decision I have to make is how to motorize the locomotive. Solution 1 to 3 in the bullet above will all make it necessary to make use of M, L or XL motors if I’m not mistaken. Meanwhile with option 4 I could also choose for RC train motors (or even 9V if I would have had the rails for that solution). How do you pick what is the right motor and the right gear, is a bigger motor always better as long as it fits in the locomotive? And the gears, do you usually pick them so that in the end the locomotive can travel at ca. 1 m/s or 3 to 4 km/h, given the maximum number of rotations per minute of the motor at 9V? · I noticed that the magnetic couplers of the locomotive designed by jokey02 are attached to the locomotive body, and not to the bogies. While this is the same as in the original (and as I understand one main reason why I run much better then e.g. the NS 1100), I have not much seen this at Lego/brick-built locomotives. Would I need to change this, or is this all right as long as the pivot point of the bogie is not too far away from the coupler? What is then considered ‘not too far away’, or does that also depend highly on the wagons the locomotive will be pulling? · Is it more in general possible to design the technical part of a motorized locomotive digitally? Or would you always make sure you have some extra parts to experiment with different possibilities/configurations? Thank you a lot for the advice!