Moving vehicles in a Lego city (100% Lego solution)

[ER0L]

Hi all,

some of you might remember the chain driven slot system Altezza and I developed some years ago to get (multiple) moving cars in a Lego city. It worked very well, but a second floor level for the whole city was necessary for it which proved to be quite costly.



However there was already the school bus meant to move on the outer circle of the system where a chain would have been too long so that self-moving vehicles were required. Now I took the school bus to create another - much simpler - system to make vehicles move in a city:



This is all you need for it:

• a motorized vehicle with passive steering
• a guide arm
• a one stud wide slot or groove on the side of the road (which has to be SNOT, of course)
• 4 of those nice bow bricks

With this, you get a circle where a vehicle can move for hours, like on this layout (just a short footage):
 

The system is quite reliable - at no point the bus came off during the two days of the convention where it was endurance tested. And even if the slot is more or less visible (in spite of a black cloth underneath) hardly any of the visitors could tell how exactly the school bus moves. Another advantage of this system is that the movement of the vehicle in curves is much smoother because there's a considerable distance between the turning point and the vehicle which allows much larger turning diameters.

Of course such a self-moving vehicle can be combined with RC vehicles, also guided by the slot, which fortunately don't need an active steering either which often is the biggest problem when building minifig scale RC stuff. Plus there are quite a few other ideas ...

What do you think of it?

Thanks for looking!

 

[Edit, 6 Dec 2016] Here's a better video made by Zusammengebaut about moving stuff and lighting at the Zusammengebaut convention recently with the moving school bus right at the beginning plus lots of other nice stuff.

[/Edit]

Edited December 6, 2016 by ER0L

[letsbuild]

I quite like this idea, but unfortunately I don't have enough parts to do something like this. I do hope to one day accomplish something like this.

 

Cheers,

Let's Build

[TheLegoDr]

CLEVER! I had no idea this existed. I don't have the space, know-how, or time to try to create/copy this idea. But that looks great for a LEGO convention of some sort. I bet it would wow the audience. Very brilliant idea.

[carebear]

O WOW!!!

Love Love Love this Idea!!!

Great Work!!!

Greetings

 

[Ben Andrews]

Mind. Blown. your a mad scientist, arn't you!? such a great idea!! i may have a fiddle with this..... thanks!

[ER0L]

21 hours ago, letsbuild said:

I quite like this idea, but unfortunately I don't have enough parts to do something like this. I do hope to one day accomplish something like this.

 

Cheers,

Let's Build

Thanks. Of course, this is something for Town builders using SNOT roads anyway. Regarding the costs it's rather surprising how much road material you may get for the price of, say, one modular building. 

20 hours ago, TheLegoDr said:

CLEVER! I had no idea this existed. I don't have the space, know-how, or time to try to create/copy this idea. But that looks great for a LEGO convention of some sort. I bet it would wow the audience. Very brilliant idea.

Many thanks! Well, the new system is only existing for a few weeks now. In fact I don't have enough space at home either - this really is something for conventions.

7 hours ago, carebear said:

O WOW!!!

Love Love Love this Idea!!!

Great Work!!!

Greetings

 

3 hours ago, Ben Andrews said:

Mind. Blown. your a mad scientist, arn't you!? such a great idea!! i may have a fiddle with this..... thanks!

Thanks a lot guys!

[Venunder]

Interesting solution.

I may need to do this at some time in the future. 

[King Aragorn]

I've never seen such a beautiful thing before!  

Very cool idea

[ER0L]

20 hours ago, Venunder said:

Interesting solution.

I may need to do this at some time in the future. 

Thank you!

14 hours ago, King Aragorn said:

I've never seen such a beautiful thing before!  

Very cool idea

Glad you like it!

[TheQ]

Very elegant solution! I am very keen on experimenting with this one.  Is one brick's width deep enough to anchor the guiding arm well? In my LUG, we use two bricks wide roads on their side and if one brick's width is enough, the guiding arm could be hidden even better.

I have some experience on getting cars to move on their own but my solution was based on train track hidden underneath the road. That caused the minimal ring of the self-moving car to be quite large and high. This solution seems very nice, alhough it requires also some space in the corners.

[CrispyBassist]

This is a cool method! The bar extending from the vehicle bothers me a bit though. Does it not work with a pin connected to the steering linkage under the vehicle itself? 

[ER0L]

7 hours ago, TheQ said:

Very elegant solution! I am very keen on experimenting with this one.  Is one brick's width deep enough to anchor the guiding arm well? In my LUG, we use two bricks wide roads on their side and if one brick's width is enough, the guiding arm could be hidden even better.

I have some experience on getting cars to move on their own but my solution was based on train track hidden underneath the road. That caused the minimal ring of the self-moving car to be quite large and high. This solution seems very nice, alhough it requires also some space in the corners.

Thanks! Do you have an example of the roads you're using in your LUG? I'd be very interested to see that. In any case one layer of SNOT bricks (= 2,5 plates) is enough to  guide the vehicle well. As said, the bus goes like this for hours. It didn't come off during the whole weekend (which would have meant its total destruction, of course).

Your train track solution looks very nice, too. However, by using the Technic treads you can keep the slot as small as half a stud. 

I'm just wondering what you mean by "space in the corners". Of course, that also depends on the size of the vehicles. Using self-driven vehicles means you have to rely on trucks or buses (passenger cars won't work), and of course you need some space to get them around the corners - like in real life.

4 hours ago, CrispyBassist said:

This is a cool method! The bar extending from the vehicle bothers me a bit though. Does it not work with a pin connected to the steering linkage under the vehicle itself? 

Thank you! Answering your question would mean to repeat the whole story of the original slot system. All I can say is: Try it, and you'll see what can be done about it.

Regarding the guide arm: As said, hardly anybody of the visitors at the convention could tell how exactly the bus moved, even if they stood right in front where you can actually see the guide arm. You can't see it if the bus moves from right to left in front of you, and you can't see it if the bus moves from left to right behind the buildings. And if you discover it, it doesn't bother you at all - you're rather happy to understand how it works. 

[TheQ]

On 6.12.2016 at 1:16 AM, ER0L said:

Thanks! Do you have an example of the roads you're using in your LUG? I'd be very interested to see that. In any case one layer of SNOT bricks (= 2,5 plates) is enough to  guide the vehicle well.

Here is the folder which has images of basic road structure: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=458362 (descriptions in Finnish, sorry). It is quite similar to Michael Gale's MILS MultiRoad and Mike Gallagher's roads. Most notable difference is that our LUG's roads do not use baseplace.

[ER0L]

On 7.12.2016 at 3:11 PM, TheQ said:

Here is the folder which has images of basic road structure: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=458362 (descriptions in Finnish, sorry). It is quite similar to Michael Gale's MILS MultiRoad and Mike Gallagher's roads. Most notable difference is that our LUG's roads do not use baseplace.

Thank you very much! It's nice to have a working road system within your LUG so that you can build a collaborative setup quickly. I know the work of Michael Gale, the train builders are quite good at stuff like this.

Would be interesting to see if the bow bricks would work within such a road setup, too. Guess it would, but maybe the corners of the pavement would have to be rounded. The bottom of the groove would be black anyway which is nice.

Another possibility would be to have the slot in the middle of the road (like on our first system, bow bricks underneath, width only half a stud, see video below). However, the slot might be more visible, plus turning isn't that elegant, as you can see. 

 

[BrickJagger]

This is incredible. I don't have to room or pieces to try something similar but I sure wish I did. 

 

One critique that I have is that the turns are too sharp. I think if you restructured the connection between the bus and the road into a more curved shape the turns would be much smoother.

[ER0L]

21 hours ago, BrickJagger said:

This is incredible. I don't have to room or pieces to try something similar but I sure wish I did. 

 

One critique that I have is that the turns are too sharp. I think if you restructured the connection between the bus and the road into a more curved shape the turns would be much smoother.

Thank you very much, glad you like it!

Regarding the turns:

• old system (slot in the middle of the road) = sharp turns
• new system (slot at the side of the road) = smooth turns 

Even smoother than that might be difficult - but probably you have something special in mind. What would be your suggestion?

 

 

[Sven F]

Great idea. I wish lego made some tiny motors so we could power smaller vehicles too.

Is the guide arm fixed to the chassis or is it hinged in some way?

[BrickJagger]

5 hours ago, ER0L said:

Thank you very much, glad you like it!

Regarding the turns:

• old system (slot in the middle of the road) = sharp turns
• new system (slot at the side of the road) = smooth turns 

Even smoother than that might be difficult - but probably you have something special in mind. What would be your suggestion?

 

 

 

 

I think if you were to move the connection to the middle of the bus instead to the front, it would make for a smoother turn because not as much of the vehicle would be jutting into the adjacent lane.    I think you'd have to find a way to restructure the bus for that to work, though. 

 

Good luck!

[ER0L]

17 hours ago, Sven F said:

Great idea. I wish lego made some tiny motors so we could power smaller vehicles too.

Is the guide arm fixed to the chassis or is it hinged in some way?

Thank you! Yeah, that would be great. Plus some smaller battery boxes ...

The guide arm is fixed to the body of the bus which is quite sturdy, there are no hinges.

13 hours ago, BrickJagger said:

I think if you were to move the connection to the middle of the bus instead to the front, it would make for a smoother turn because not as much of the vehicle would be jutting into the adjacent lane.    I think you'd have to find a way to restructure the bus for that to work, though. 

Moving the connection to the middle of the bus would have exactly the opposite effect - the bus would then be jutting into the adjacent lane (which also means it would bump against the pavement in front of the tire shop and not get around the corner). I tried several positions (which is no problem since the guide arm can be repositioned easily). This is the position where the bus exactly gets around the corners and doesn't affect the oncoming traffic. 

[ER0L]

Hi all,

an update of the slot system:

Here you can see both the school bus plus the police command center (see https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/103425-moc-police-interceptor-of-the-year/&do=findComment&comment=2711090) moving on the slot circle together for the first time. The police truck has its own chassis now - it had to be modified and reinforced due to the smaller steering lock compared to the school bus. 

As you may spot both vehicles can be used on the same slot, however after some time they're going to collide since the school bus moves a little faster - which is quite logical because lights are missing here. In any case the police truck will be rather used on a night layout.

The next step would be an RC vehicle which is able to adapt its speed to the self-driving vehicles to prevent collisions. I'm also thinking about switches but haven't found a proper solution yet. However, together with the trains, the monorail and an elevated train which is in the making there'll be quite a few traffic on the layout - day and night.

100% Lego (lighting included). Thanks for looking!

 

[ER0L]

Hi all, some updates.

First-off, a short video of the second “Route 66” joint layout in March in Hungary, again together with Gábor Horváth (https://www.flickr.com/photos/gabor_horvath) and Steffen Kasteleiner (https://www.flickr.com/photos/29666619@N04):

Even though the airfield is missing here, we had a lot of fun, since there are quite a few further developments, inter alia a big motel by Steffen (see his Flickr) and a trailer home by Gábor. For me it was especially nice to see the moving vehicles together with the new 9w trains (1/43 scale, all by Steffen, I couldn’t bring mine) on a loop which didn’t exist on the first layout. Just a beginning, but there’ll surely be more interaction between the different types of moving vehicles. Another moving object is the newly built oil pump, at the wedding chapel replacing the gas station I tried to combine all kinds of old and new Lego lighting stuff (will be shown more closely later). Just an impression of the “action features” being part of the concept of the Route 66 Brick Project.

Now, a new vehicle, easy to recognize:

There’ll be three types of moving vehicles on the R66 layout:

• A - slot guided vehicles with fixed speed and passive steering (school bus and command center so far)
• B - slot guided RC models with variable speed (so that more than one vehicle may use a slot) but also a passive steering (not yet existing)
• C - full RC models which are also able to use the outer lanes. They will also be able to pass railroad crossings or even use dirt roads.

Thus this can be considered as a type C vehicle. Some specs:

• 8w, ~1/40 scale, 100% Lego 
• Credit: I took some inspiration here (and just copied the sign which can't be done better brickwise, I guess; the bus will also get the lettering, but it may take months to collect the necessary parts).
• front and back lighting via PF LEDs
• M motor with worm gear plus transmission with a 20:12 ratio (also 24:8 is possible which increases speed but reduces manoeuvrability)
• servo motor for steering
• pendular front axle so that the vehicle is always steerable and has enough traction all the time, also on bumpy grounds (it can even climb pavements when reversing) which might be necessary in certain conditions in a Lego town
• movable second rear axle so that climbing ramps is no problem

With the emerging PF 2.0 this may be outdated within a few months, however for a long time I wanted to build one of those - now that there's a requirement of a bus for another R66 section (a downtown section which deals with several kinds of public transport) I used the opportunity. Build was relatively quick (less than 3 weeks) due to the experience with the other movable vehicles. However there wasn't a full RC model yet, also because I didn't know how to build a proper steering. With that fantastic servo motor I used for the first time these problems are history, fortunately. Build was fun, there were only two major issues: the frontend which took me several days (especially because a slanted windscreen was absolutely required) plus lack of stability, caused by some large SNOT sections and the construction of the steering which is supposed to deliver the utmost manoeuvrability (most important at these dimensions). Next time I'd rather try to build a completely stable frame at an early stage rather than reinforce the structure later - which provides a good stability too (see the video below) but makes the whole thing quite heavy.

With 8w and about 1/40 scale this model has a large footprint on a Lego layout. Although it fits very well into the scale range (since the 9w trains are still considerably larger which they ought to be), this will have an impact on the scale system, but more on that subject later. It’s obvious that such a vehicle enhances the possibilities very much, also because you get proper contraflow. 

Video:

Though built for wider brick-built roads, the bus is also able to move on regular road plates - as long as you let it circle on straights and curves. At crossroads or t-junctions It isn't able to turn, neither left (which is no problem on the much wider R66 road setup) nor right - at least not in a single movement. In another portion of the video you may watch the bus climbing a SNOT pavement with its considerable height of 2,5 plates -  however this only works in reverse.

Thanks for reading all this stuff! More pics on Flickr.

 

 

 

[ColletArrow]

Excellent work! I love motion and realistic functions in LEGO, and everything's better when motorised.

I think you've done a neat job of this coach. And I can't really complain that it turns like a bus, since it is a bus... 

[ER0L]

Hi all,

a few years have passed, and there hasn't been much Lego building in the meantime. However, most of the models and especially the Route 66 layout still exist, and there has been a small exhibition in my home town. I just showed my part of the 2018 larger Route 66 layout presented in Györ, Hungary, together with Gábor Horváth and Steffen Kasteleiner.

However, since there is the RC Greyhound Bus, it is now possible to have oncoming traffic on a road in a Lego layout, which might be a rather rare sight:

 

[imvanya]

Looks great, oncoming traffic does add life to the scene.

It’s good to know you are still around, ER0L. I’ve been following you on Flickr for ten years ever since I came back to LEGO, and your MOCs have always been an inspiration to me.

Anyway, I would love to see new builds from you but I understand life can often get in the way, so hopefully, it’s the good kind of life things.

[ER0L]

23 hours ago, imvanya said:

Looks great, oncoming traffic does add life to the scene.

It’s good to know you are still around, ER0L. I’ve been following you on Flickr for ten years ever since I came back to LEGO, and your MOCs have always been an inspiration to me.

Anyway, I would love to see new builds from you but I understand life can often get in the way, so hopefully, it’s the good kind of life things.

Thanks imvanya for your kind words, I remember your great car MOCs, too. However, there was a time I thought I had come to an end with what I was trying to achieve, most of the models I wanted to build I had built. Also, there was a problem of space, I had just no more room for new models.

However, since I might be able to exhibit my stuff more often there's the goal to work on the things I already have and maybe add new things to improve the layout. So maybe there will also be new builds in the future, though probably not so many vehicles.

To be honest I took a look into the actual Speed Champions range to see if something is suitable to be conversed to minifig scale ("City Champions", as I called them back in the day). However this looks rather difficult considering the much too big 8 studs width. (Ask TLG to make things smaller to better fit into your City surrounding and they'll make it bigger ...  ). I really like what you did with your Meteora, though, but how to build a superlow super sportscar with that windscreen plus the City mudguards?

Anyway, let's see what will be coming up in the next few months.