[MOC - IDEAS] THE OLD WORKHORSE - TRACTION ENGINE

[Bricked1980]

Hi everyone

You may have seen my MOC modular buildings on here recently, The Queen Bricktoria and Brick Square Post Office. For my new project I've decided to build something completely different. This is also my first ever entry as a Lego Ideas project.

"A roaring fire and a full head of steam, the old traction engine is ready for work!"

I have created a scene set some time during the early 20th century. Farmers are working in the fields with their steam traction engine, affectionately known as "The Old Workhorse". The model includes a detailed mini fig scale traction engine, a wagon and various other accessories and mini builds.

 

THE TRACTION ENGINE

The main feature of the model is the traction engine itself. I've used a classic green and red livery with polished brass lining and details. There are several interesting parts used to create this engine including paint roller handles and mini fig syringes used to create the piping around the boiler and inside the cab.

 

A system of cogs ensures that the flywheel spins around as the traction engine is pushed forward.

 

A detailed cab interior includes steering wheel, controls and a firebox door that can be opened and closed to reveal the burning fire inside.

The front wheel axle can be pivoted left and right.

 

THE WAGON

I've also included a wagon/trailer that can be coupled to the back of the traction engine and used to carry the various accessories included with the model.

The sides of the wagon can be dropped down to provide loading access for the mini figs.

 

There is space at the front of the wagon to hold tools and mini fig accessories.

 

MINIFIGURES & OTHER ACCESSORIES

Included with the model are 2 mini figs, a dog, a rat and several mini builds including tree stumps, logs and rocks. These are all designed to be carried and towed in the wagon.

 

THE FINISHED MODEL

The overall model contains 480 pieces. Here is a shot of The Old Workhorse, steaming past the buildings in my MOC modular street. 

LEGO IDEAS

As mentioned earlier this is my first entry as a Lego Ideas project. If you like what you see then I really would be so grateful if you could please support my project on Lego Ideas, and help The Old Workhorse to gather steam. 

https://ideas.lego.com/projects/2a2ec583-9836-4868-8dc7-6b3bb0a2fe80

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this and I hope you like the model. Feel free to let me know what you think. If you'd like to see more pictures, there are many more on my Flickr page.

Edit: I've added a new brick built version of the model on page 2 of this topic.

Edited October 26, 2018 by Bricked1980

[jimmynick]

Gold & dark green is a wonderful colour scheme. It's a charming model that reminds me of going to steam fairs as a child . Your solution for the rear wheels of the traction engine is convincing yet conservative in the number of parts, so good job there .

I see you included the classic chain steering mechanism. Is it possible to steer from the cab, or is one limited to directly pivoting the front axle? If you had a steering wheel built into the cab, that would be a great play feature.

[carebear]

Jaw Dropping!!!

Great Great Build!!!

love the way you made the Pictures!!!

Greetings!

[Pandora]

This is a masterclass on how to present an LEGO Ideas submission on EB:- Lots of great pictures with a good amount of text to explain a bit about it. 

Well done on another beautiful build. This engine is aesthetically lovely, and I really like how the sides of the wagon drop down. Adding the tools and flora to the set turn this from a very nice model into a playset, and essentially gives it dual appeal. Your choice of Minifigs suit the build extremely well, and in the last picture it looks like the engine has escaped from some sort of Wild West themed fair to run riot on the streets of your modular builds!

Good luck with Ideas. 

[LegoModularFan]

I'm not a vehicle expert but it always makes pleasure to see detailed and accurate ones like yours. Great color scheme and I'm blown away with your presentation skills once more! 

Edited June 25, 2018 by LegoModularFan

[Digger of Bricks]

Best of luck to you on your journey towards ten thousand supporters!  

You know, I have a slight feeling that many of your potential supporters may vote for your project for nostalgic sentiments towards the Earth Green and Gold in its color scheme, as it may remind them of Lego's Emerald Night from 2009 in a way. 

Edited June 26, 2018 by Digger of Bricks

[Pdaitabird]

This is brilliant! Train fans will love it because it's a steamer, and town fans because it doesn't need rails! 

[sunhuntin]

I just love this, and hope Lego produces it. What a stunning design. I have shared on Facebook with fellow lego and steam fans who will hopefully support it, too.

[paupadros]

Very nice design! The first thing that came to mind was like @Digger of Bricks has said, Emerald Night, but the fact you've added some red and gold, makes the whole creation pop a whole lot more . I love many of the details, especially the golden accents, which your new render engine really makes shine. By the way, is this Blender? I'm either utterly dumb or something as I've never made as nice renders even trying again and again.

[Bricked1980]

Well since I posted this MOC yesterday I noticed my Lego Ideas support count shot up quite a bit. A huge thanks to everyone who is supporting me, I really appreciate it. 

 

On 6/25/2018 at 4:33 PM, jamesn said:

I see you included the classic chain steering mechanism. Is it possible to steer from the cab, or is one limited to directly pivoting the front axle? If you had a steering wheel built into the cab, that would be a great play feature.

Thank you for your comment @jamesn The front wheel axle can't be steered from the cab unfortunately. Don't think I would have been able to build a steering mechanism very easily at this scale and it would have eaten in to the space around the cab too much. Good idea though. 

On 6/25/2018 at 6:44 PM, carebear said:

Jaw Dropping!!!

Great Great Build!!!

love the way you made the Pictures!!!

Greetings!

Thanks @carebear Glad you like it.

On 6/25/2018 at 10:32 PM, Pandora said:

This is a masterclass on how to present an LEGO Ideas submission on EB:- Lots of great pictures with a good amount of text to explain a bit about it. 

Thanks for the lovely comment @Pandora  I wanted to present this without sounding like I was dwelling on the Lego Ideas stuff too much (apart from the end paragraph  ). 

On 6/25/2018 at 10:52 PM, LegoModularFan said:

I'm not a vehicle expert but it always makes pleasure to see detailed and accurate ones like yours. Great color scheme and I'm blown away with your presentation skills once more! 

Thanks for the kind comments as always @LegoModularFan and thanks for your support over on Ideas.

On 6/26/2018 at 3:47 AM, Digger of Bricks said:

Best of luck to you on your journey towards ten thousand supporters!  

You know, I have a slight feeling that many of your potential supporters may vote for your project for nostalgic sentiments towards the Earth Green and Gold in its color scheme, as it may remind them of Lego's Emerald Night from 2009 in a way. 

Thanks a lot @Digger of Bricks. Regarding the colour scheme, I chose green with red wheels as I always think of this as one of the main stereotype colours of traction engines, certainly in the UK anyway. Here are a couple of examples.

Spoiler

 

 

On 6/26/2018 at 4:08 AM, Pdaitabird said:

This is brilliant! Train fans will love it because it's a steamer, and town fans because it doesn't need rails! 

Thanks so much @Pdaitabird Yes I reckon it would appeal to Lego train fans. I can imagine it sat next to the track on a Lego steam train layout.

On 6/26/2018 at 8:29 AM, sunhuntin said:

I just love this, and hope Lego produces it. What a stunning design. I have shared on Facebook with fellow lego and steam fans who will hopefully support it, too.

That's brilliant, thanks very much for doing that @sunhuntin I certainly need all the help I can get promoting this. Please let me know what sort of feedback, if any, it receives on your facebook page.

On 6/26/2018 at 8:48 AM, paupadros said:

I love many of the details, especially the golden accents, which your new render engine really makes shine. By the way, is this Blender? I'm either utterly dumb or something as I've never made as nice renders even trying again and again.

Thanks a lot @paupadros. I'm pleased you like it. I designed the model in LDD but then imported the finished thing in to Mecabricks so that I could use the built in render feature. I think Mecabricks uses Blender to create the images but it is much simpler to use than the native blender software and is also incredibly fast.

Edited June 27, 2018 by Bricked1980

[Digger of Bricks]

28 minutes ago, Bricked1980 said:

Here are a couple of examples.

Why of course, Trevor! 

[Littleworlds]

Thats not only a really stunning build, but also a perfect example on how a post to promote someone's ideas-project should look like. Great!

[Bricked1980]

On 6/26/2018 at 4:52 PM, Digger of Bricks said:

Why of course, Trevor! 

Well actually, during the early stages of designing this I looked through loads of images of traction engines online and did actually use some pics of Trevor as reference to help me figure out the proportions and overall shaping of the model. 

21 hours ago, Littleworlds said:

Thats not only a really stunning build, but also a perfect example on how a post to promote someone's ideas-project should look like. Great!

Thanks @Littleworlds glad you like the design and the way I presented the post. 

[Littleworlds]

2 minutes ago, Bricked1980 said:

Thanks @Littleworlds glad you like the design and the way I presented the post. 

A lot of people just throw a link at you with barely any effort put in, or at least engaging in the community, so your approach is more than welcome! 

[Bricked1980]

My traction engine has been featured today on 'the lego car blog' 

https://thelegocarblog.com/2018/06/29/the-old-workhorse/

[greg3]

This is awesome!! I love all the "brass" pipework and other details and the colour scheme is perfect. (The trailer and extra bits are just the icing on the cake!!)

Excellent work and I hope it does well on Ideas!1

[Bricked1980]

On 7/1/2018 at 10:32 PM, greg3 said:

This is awesome!! I love all the "brass" pipework and other details and the colour scheme is perfect. (The trailer and extra bits are just the icing on the cake!!)

Excellent work and I hope it does well on Ideas!

Thank you, I appreciate that.  Originally I was only intending to build the traction engine itself, but I added the trailer and all the other bits just to give it a bit of extra interest. I wanted it to appeal to as many different people as possible. I'm hoping that AFOL's would appreciate the details and display value of the model, while kids would enjoy the play features.

Another thing going in its favor is that it contains 480 parts, so could potentially make quite an affordable set, if ever I was lucky enough that this thing reached 10,000 votes and got selected. I can at least dream! 

Just trying to work out now how best to promote it.

Edited July 3, 2018 by Bricked1980

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

As already said this creation is adorable!
Right proportions perfect colors and amazing details make this moc a true masterpiece! 

[Bricked1980]

21 hours ago, LEGO Train 12 Volts said:

As already said this creation is adorable!
Right proportions perfect colors and amazing details make this moc a true masterpiece! 

Thanks very much for the kind comment. 

[Digger of Bricks]

On 6/29/2018 at 5:38 PM, Bricked1980 said:

My traction engine has been featured today on 'the lego car blog' 

...and now on The Brothers Brick! 

The Brothers Brick - Full steam ahead on the farm! 

[Bricked1980]

4 hours ago, Digger of Bricks said:

...and now on The Brothers Brick! 

I know, that really made my day when I checked the brothers brick earlier and saw my model on there. 

As well as that it has also been featured today in an article on zusammengebaut https://zusammengebaut.com/lego-news-von-unseren-lesern-53-zug-rost-und-steine-53776/  

[Bricked1980]

Here are a couple of new shots of my model.

 

I have also created a 3D view of the model. You can use your mouse to pan around the model and zoom in and out to give an idea of how it was put together. You can find this at the following link https://www.mecabricks.com/en/models/X8jO5V79aYJ

Thank you to everybody who has supported this so far on Lego Ideas.  It's not too far off the 1000 mark now, so if you like the model and haven't done already, please give it your support. https://ideas.lego.com/projects/2a2ec583-9836-4868-8dc7-6b3bb0a2fe80

[paupadros]

49 minutes ago, Bricked1980 said:

Here are a couple of new shots of my model.

 

I have also created a 3D view of the model. You can use your mouse to pan around the model and zoom in and out to give an idea of how it was put together. You can find this at the following link https://www.mecabricks.com/en/models/X8jO5V79aYJ

Thank you to everybody who has supported this so far on Lego Ideas.  It's not too far off the 1000 mark now, so if you like the model and haven't done already, please give it your support. https://ideas.lego.com/projects/2a2ec583-9836-4868-8dc7-6b3bb0a2fe80

Congrats for the articles. Those would be a "first" for me . The new black and white picture looks very cool indeed. I'm starting to wonder what you're planning to do to get more votes 

[Digger of Bricks]

12 hours ago, Bricked1980 said:

Here are a couple of new shots of my model. 

That first one is most beautifully composed.  

[Bricked1980]

Thanks. The first one is my favourite too. The sunset background contrasts well with the green and red of the engine.

On 7/13/2018 at 1:18 PM, paupadros said:

Congrats for the articles. 

Thanks very much. Actually this week it's also been featured in 2 other blogs that I know of. One called "Mike Shouts" https://mikeshouts.com/old-workhorse-traction-engine-lego-ideas/  and secondly in a Portuguese Lego blog https://oficina.blogs.sapo.pt/tag/bricked1980

On 7/13/2018 at 1:18 PM, paupadros said:

I'm starting to wonder what you're planning to do to get more votes 

Well I'm doing all I can think of at the minute. I'm finding it harder to get votes now that it's dropped away from the top of the homepage. It's much harder now for people to find on Ideas unless they're specifically looking for it.

I've posted it on Reddit and have signed up to Instagram and twitter. Don't really know what I'm doing with twitter though and so far I've got no followers.  

I have been in contact with the editor of a magazine called Vintage Spirit. He likes the model and is hoping to run a feature about it in the next issue due out in August. This is a printed magazine aimed at Traction Engine and Steam enthusiasts. So who knows, that might generate some interest from outside the Lego community.

Edited September 5, 2018 by Bricked1980