Cooper

The L.A. Times has a photo gallery up of the new Star Wars Miniland

Personally, I'm a huge fan of 7 wide. They look more realistic and still go through the standard LEGO curves without looking totally ungainly. Mind you if you build articulated steam engines in LEGO, then I think people are just amazed that they can make the corner at all, and anything else that follows looks normal by comparison even if it does overhang the curve a bit.

Here you go. Both shields have the same design.

4200 parts is a lot of parts. I'm only now starting to work myself toward the end of the 1st of 3 booklets. It feels like I'm barely making a dent in the parts. From a parts perspective $239 is a very good value for what you get.

The following photo is clickable to get to the high res version

My girlfriend got it for me today at a LEGO store here in California.

FWIW, pictured below is the Atlas V rocket operated by ULA. The odd shaped nose you refer to is the larger diameter payload fairing. Obviously not the exact rocket LEGO built, but the larger diameter fairing is realistic.

I really like the look you've achieved here. The IR sensor is pretty tucked away and only visible through a 1x2 slot. Have you noticed any impact on the response? I presume there is an XL motor tucked away in the cab is that correct? Nice work packing all the PF gear in.

Thanks. I have intentionally been trying to stick with color schemes that convey something a little more mature. It's been a bit of a challenge at times and some of these have been rebuilt a few times in order to preserve some kind of overall fit color wise. My intent throughout has been to build coaches that could still look good together if they were mixed and matched to form a complete train. Here a few videos. My earlier cab forward with two EN style coaches, the 3rd coach (right in front of the boxcar) is one of the 7 by 46 long coaches shown above. VIDEO #2 (curves and switches) - same setup, the 3rd coach is 7x46. VIDEO #3 - more of the coaches shown above, but no real curves. I really need to get some new video with the updated cab forward and all the coaches in tow.

The line of thought wasn't quite that clear, although elements of that were involved. The color scheme of the MK1s was certainly an inspiration I intentionally constrained the design to only 46 studs long so that the coaches did not look too ungainly navigating curves and switches. That said, similar coaches from South Africa were also an influence. Ref 1 | Ref 2 | Ref 3 Since these coaches run with my Southern Pacific Cab Forward, the coaches were Americanized by not utilizing buffers. That was the original jumping off point anyway.

As much as I love the Emerald Night, like many others I was left wanting more passenger cars. Initially I just wanted more coaches, but that soon evolved into a desire to have the coachs be wider and longer. In the end, that lead to settling in on a 7 wide by 46 long platform on which to build the basis for a fleet of passenger cars to tow behind my Cab Forward (and another large steam engine that is still a WIP). The image below is the current state of my passenger car fleet If you click on the image, or follow this link to my flickr there are links to each of the passenger car variations with higher res images.

5893 Offroad Power is now available on the U.S. site ($89.99)

7938 Passenger Train is now available on the U.S. site ($129.99) no cargo train yet

MOC V1.0 - I had the same reaction as a lot of the others in terms of the overall fairing height relative to the top of the trailer. MOC V2.0 - A nice improvement. It certainly addresses the height differential in V1.0. However, I personally liked the way you left the back side of the fairing open in V1.0 because (as your photo shows) the back side of the fairing usually is open (at least on the trucks I see around here - California). Now, if it were me, I would also explore how much of the roof of the cab under the fairing you could tile, so you didn't have the studs exposed from the back side of the fairing. Just thought.

Thanks!