EuroTrains

I do 10 wide exclusively for at least the past 5 years. Somebody pointed out the 1 stud == 1 foot relationship with the tracks a while ago and I have been a fan of this scale ever since. The minifigs are about 6 feet tall at this scale (albeit wide little fellas). I love the realism of this scale. The only real problem is the track curve radius.

Dude I would love to have all of these pieces. Where are you located?

Sweet locomotive - I really love the scale of it. It is presented well, and the colors work as well.

Thanks for providing these details! I had seen some images like this before, but for some reason they gave me the impression that the pantograph was very wide. Maybe I was confused with other train models? I think I will try my hand at modelling the new ones, because they seem like they might be a bit easier and they look a bit more modern too. Since they are 6 wide, I may as well try to use the LEGO part: since it is about 6 studs wide. I had not seen your trains before - I really like how well you captured the look of the trains and the passenger cars. Packing a lot of detail into 6 wide is quite hard but you did it very well. You can definitely recognize what they are. If I ever go back to Switzerland (I was there in 2009) you will definitely hear from me So many cool trains there...

I did try to do the third headlight but I could not find a way to make it look good. I am happy that you noticed The ripples were also something I agonized over in the early days. It is kind of cool to talk to somebody who knows more about this train than me, because I studied it so hard before I built it! I wish I could see one in person. Do you have some good pics of the pantograph? That was very difficult to model and I am sorry to say that I probably gave up at some point. The interior is full of wires and other PF stuff. BTW I have a few other SBB trains that I will be posting at some point. SBB has the sweetest trains IMO, I build more of their trains than anything else.

I agree that new PF pieces would be good. I would love a motor that is a bit more flat than the M motor and has an axle running all the way through, but it would have limited appeal I suppose. A subtle looking PF switch so that you did not have to expose the battery box power would also be nice. I want to see a crossing as well. Electric switches like the 12V days would be good. I would buy a modern train station if I they made a cool looking one. I loved 8404, I bought 2 of them for parts but the designer of that would probably make a killer station that I would probably like to build.

This is a pretty sweet diorama. You did the building and tram well, but also the road and other stuff. Well done!

I have actually been scouring the webs looking for something to build next. But nothing seems to grab me like other trains have, or it seems too ambitious (like the SBB 514). Looks like more time on Railcolor, Railfan EU, etc is needed....

This train is one of those that I always wanted to build because the picture of it on Wikipedia looks so captivating: As with all my recent trains this is 10 wide with a scale of 300mm to 1 stud. This was my first build experimenting with making flush cheese slopes (which I have since seen a lot of other people do independently too, including the Maersk train): It is PF, with a single XL motor (it could run two XL motors if needed one day). The little hump on the back is the power switch. I managed to get the lights in this one to work, which make it look pretty cool IMO. All pics are on my Smugmug: http://bencon77.smugmug.com/Other/SBB-RE460-1375-Scale/23195873_73hNrR#!i=1869567641&k=VBLp773

I would love to build a Railjet but I don't know where I would put the finished product :) I will have to wait until somebody commissions one of them It is actually a question I have been mulling over (how much of a trainset to build). I built 4 cars of a Sydney M set in 10 wide, and now I don't know whether to keep the whole thing built. Part of me just wants a lead car and a passenger car left built.

These look good, especially the green one. You captured the look of the real green locomotive well. What are the pieces on the front of the cab? It looks like a window piece but I cannot place it.

These letters were done with plates - I use the term "brick built" because it is 100% Lego. You always have two options when making details like this - you can have plates run horizontal or vertical. I chose vertical for this because I think that it came out the best given the resolution available. I have done other mosiac style logos on trains where I change from horizontal to vertical because some letters are better suited. Then you have to be lucky / good about the 5 plates : 2 bricks ratio. The way I design these logos sometimes is to take a picture of it, figure out how big I want it, and then do a non-proportional scale in photoshop to the target size, and then another non-prop scale with nearest neighbour. Let me know if this needs more pictures to make sense and I will start a new post on it. I could probably write a program to do it in 1 hour too but I am lazy :) Dude, you work for Siemens? You lucky dog! You work in transport or somewhere else? Thanks for the kind comments. I have looked quite a bit at the Vectrons but I have not seen a paint job on one that "grabbed" me yet. The Eurorunner is one that I do want to build - I think that it has a great shape to it: I must be getting old because the newest locos don't appeal to me as much as the 5 - 10 year old ones. Oh wow that is quite the compliment.

It turns out that is a great match for that part, if you put a 1x2 tile behind it. The emerald night does something like this on the front, and I did this on my NSB 93 at the end of the cars: Hope this helps...

I had to look up the term micro-striping. It turns out I have done something similar in the past on another train (half plate gap using a bracket brick). I suppose I could try a thing like that at some point here. I would need to do two of these stripes because of the height involved (or make the half plate up with some other snot). There is probably room for it, given that the XL motor is only 5 studs wide and mounted vertically. I have never put anything on Flickr before. I have looked at some train pics there before - is that a different community than you get here on EB or is there decent overlap? EB seemed like the most active forums to me.

Here are some pictures of another one of my creations, a DB 182 Eurosprinter with the DHL paintjob. With image from the excellent Railcolor site for comparison: (I got this from http://www.railcolor.net/index.php?nav=1404958〈=1&id=26222&action=portrait ) More pictures at the smugmug site: http://bencon77.smugmug.com/Other/DB182-ES64U2-1375-scale/23037359_RqMM2q#!i=1853333440&k=dNNDF9M This one is powered with a single MXL motor. Building the front of this locomotive was a real challenge - the curves were hard to capture the character. But in the end I was very happy with it. The logo is a bit wrong sized but I had to do it bigger to do it with bricks. No stickers! I am considering building another Eurosprinter with a different paint job. The OBB 1016 looks pretty sweet, even if it is a plain red paint job.