[WIP] [MOC] [OcTRAINber] AshiValkoinen's entry - Wiener Linien ULF tram

[Ashi Valkoinen]

Hello all,

I start this topic to show the planning and building progress of my OcTRAINber's contest entry! 

Where did I start with it?

I was just lurking around at Eurobricks Train Tech when the OcTRAINber contest of Brick Model Railroader just popped up. It wasn't the original topic, but a WIP entry, the words "Hungarian" and "Lencse" caught my eyes (I'm Hungarian and I have a lot of Hungarian rolling stock). I was wondering why someone I don't know and surely being not Hungarian builds a track maintance vehicle of my country, then I have read the terms of the OcTRAINber contest. So, here I am, and after carefully reading the contest rules thinking about what to build which is definitely NOT Hungarian. Stadler vehicles, CAF Urbos tram, CKD Tatra generations and many European locos and passanger cars are out since I own some of them or they run in Hungary, so I tried to find a special vehicle.

This special vehicle I would like to entry in the real buildings contest is a secret right now. I can tell you that they are running in Romania and Austria, they are urban vehicles - and they have no axles between the wheels. My LEGO MOC also won't have any axles, which will make it especially hard to make it run. But hey, this is OcTRAINber, for some challange!

Here is a part of a technical draw of the real vehicle, my aim is to make it possible that minifigures are standing between the wheels where originally axles should go.

Edited October 30, 2018 by Ashi Valkoinen

[Ashi Valkoinen]

Today I almost finished with the two rotating articulation of my tram, which is my entry to OcTRAINber contest!

This is an axleless articulation, which allows a low floor through the tram at the level of t.o.r.* + 3,5 plates. If I can make to upper (roof) suspension strong enough I can leave the bottom 2×2 turntables and make the floor at level of t.o.r. + 2,5 plates (in this case t.o.r. + 1,5 plates is also possible, but 2 plates height is needed to make the plates connected to each other...)

The design of inner wall will be surely altered to make it less narrow, but I also have to consider that the articulation should look as closed as I can do and it would be unhappy if any of the minifigs could fall out or touch the rotating wheel underneath!

*t.o.r. = top of rail

 

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Nice start ...good luck for the contest!

[ScotNick]

Oh, what an interesting prototype you chose! Living in the city they drive around I see them everyday and have often ridden them.

I think I've seen the wheels once (the tram had some kind of problem) and as far as I remember the engine was mounted upwards. Yes, the inner walls probably should be further apart, but the articulation on the prototype isn't very wide on the inside either...

Looking forward to how this progresses. If you need any pictures I might be able to take some ;)

[Roadmonkeytj]

Very interesting  ... Liking the progress 

[Ashi Valkoinen]

15 hours ago, LEGO Train 12 Volts said:

Nice start ...good luck for the contest!

Thank you very much. I did yesterday and today a great progress in LDD, however I'm not satisfied with the result yet. At least the proportions in 1:38 fit the prototype, but the inner stuff just as the aticulations, seating and floor level needs tons of more work.

15 hours ago, ScotNick said:

Oh, what an interesting prototype you chose! Living in the city they drive around I see them everyday and have often ridden them.

I think I've seen the wheels once (the tram had some kind of problem) and as far as I remember the engine was mounted upwards. Yes, the inner walls probably should be further apart, but the articulation on the prototype isn't very wide on the inside either...

Looking forward to how this progresses. If you need any pictures I might be able to take some ;)

Fortunately I have a solution for the articulation by now, after the second row of bricks it will be wider and will have similar look to the prototype. I'll shoot some photos today after work. The "articulation" with the driven wheels will be narrower, with the gears inside I have really little space to deal with.

10 hours ago, Roadmonkeytj said:

Very interesting  ... Liking the progress 

Thank you! Keep an eye on the topic, I'll post photos of the progress every two or three days. :)

[Ashi Valkoinen]

RED FLAG for my project!

I spent a little more on Bricklink orders than I thought for first I will, but now I grabbed almost all the needed parts and my entry is only matter of time which I don't have too much. Fortunately red flags are not involved in a financial term and abandoning the project, but I used 2×2 square flag LEGO parts to get the right detail of my entry.

This is the base of my tram's suspended cars, and the edges should be built with SNOT tiles to leave space for the wheels (see my images above) on the articulation pieces when the tram enters a curve. The horizontal black and red pattern (5 plates height and 3 plates height) should be continuous. It is easy to build 5 plates in SNOT 2 studs, but 1 brick (3 plates) height is 1 stud + half plate, which is not that trivial to build. 1 stud is given by red tile, and half plate with the edge of red flag part - fortunately it is placed high enough that it wouldn't conflict with the tram wheel.

Tram module - make a guess, why are there those one plate high gaps in the red pattern:
 

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Wow, what a clever technique! 

[Roadmonkeytj]

Wow the flag works quite well! I'm hoping those gaps are for working doors lol! 

[Man with a hat]

Brilliant!

[Ashi Valkoinen]

9 hours ago, Roadmonkeytj said:

Wow the flag works quite well! I'm hoping those gaps are for working doors lol! 

Yes, the plan is to equip the tram with working doors. They won't work on any technic mechanism, just able to be opened by hand and that way I can reach every seat inside and place figures into the tram.

The (now tested) door will look like this:

I used droid arm to connect the 1×2 plate with bar part, and inside the tram there is a 4L light bluish gray bar holding it.

10 hours ago, LEGO Train 12 Volts said:

Wow, what a clever technique! 

 

8 hours ago, Man with a hat said:

Brilliant!

Thank you for both of you. Opening doors, red flags, but the articulations' suspension and motorising still a secret. :) Soon I'll move one with these details as well and hopefully she will run before the 31st day of October!

[Vilhelm22]

Looking forward to seeing the completed train - yours are always some of the best!  Will the .lxf file be available once completed?

[Ashi Valkoinen]

On 10/18/2018 at 9:13 PM, Vilhelm22 said:

Looking forward to seeing the completed train - yours are always some of the best!  Will the .lxf file be available once completed?

I'm also, because only 4 days left and I'm still swearing at the powering of the tram. It is incredibly hard to bring down the motor's power from the roof to the wheels (the articulation between powered wheels will be accessible!), train motor in the top or M, L motors doesn't have to torque, XL has the torque to pop all the tram to parts. For me Technic is a totally unknown and hated field of LEGO, I think it maximizes the "out of comfort" factor for the competition!

[dr_spock]

Cool.  It'll be interesting to see how you will solve the powering challenges.  Good luck.

[Ashi Valkoinen]

And finally it works and this morning (3 a.m. in Hungary) I posted my entry to the BMR's dedicated Flickr-group.

I'd like to also share images and story of the tram here.

When I noticed BMR's contest I thought I might participate with my fresh Stadler Citylink design but BMR's contest stated that it should be some foreign build - and Citiylinks will be running in Hungary from 2020. So I looked around on the market of possibli low floor and modern passanger trains/trams (I prefer these instead of diesel and steam engines) and than I remembered that  read an article in Hungarian about the ultra low floor, ULF tram of Wiener Linien. I have also seen the prototype in Oradea (Romania) when I travelled through the city to a Romanian LUG's event in Cluj.

So, what do we know about this tram RL?

Ultra low floor entry: 18 cm top of the rail.

Shorter trams (there are three sectioned and five sectioned) consist of three cars (two ends, one middle), and these cars are suspended on 4 pair of wheels - but there is no axle between the wheels to grant 18 cm floor all over the tram.

This first image is the comparison of the LEGO MOC and the official technical draw published on Siemens Mobility. At my MOC the first and last "articulation" is rigid and there is no turning around neither forthe wheels nor the suspension point, but the two middle ones work as ridicolous 1 "axle' Jacobs-bogies, while the neighbouring cars are suspended by the top. Only the first pair of wheels are driven which caused... problems when powering the tram itself.

The real thing is 2400 mm wide and since I built it in 8W it results in scale 1:37,5 (1 stud = 300 mm).

This image shows the moving articulation with the axleless wheels and shows how the tram is accessible between the two wheels. The floor level of the tram is 2 and half plates, which goes down to 1,5 plates at the doors - the real thing has entry level of 180 mm and 1,5 plates (4,8 mm) upscale is exactly 180 mm. Unfortunately something has to hold the bottom plate level together, so after the doors I used 2,5 plates floor level height.

Tram on curved track - note how the middle and side articulations work. I am quite lucky with this build - I couldn't put turn signal on the articulation's side or even complete the articulation without the quite new tile parts:

-2×3 tile

-2×2 tile with two studs on one side.

All tram doors could be open by hand, this method is not too complicated to do, but caused some brainstorming when it came to the first and last module - the 1 stud wide tower of bricks and plates between the first (last) articulation and the doors should have a gap for the droid arm to make the door opened - but what is holding it together? Of course, the light bluish gray bar inside (the other end of droid arm), which connects the bricks with 1×1 plates with horizontal clips.

All doors opened. Note the battery box in the first compartment - it was the only place to hide it in some aesthetic way and it gives enough weight for the first (powered) wheels. The tram driver's back is connected to the studs of battery box so there remained a small room for him!

We do care for the disabled passangers in our LEGO City and the small platform I built aslo shows how low floor is the tram, the height of the top of the tiles is 4,5 plates (1 plate + 0,5 plate + 2 plate + top tile), and this 4,5 plates should be decreased with the value of 3 plates which is the height of train track.

And finally, powering.

It was a really strict condition for me that I build this tram with no axle connecting the wheels. This was easy with running ones, but quite hard with powered ones.

First attempt was this (designed in LDD and build for real):

It was a nice idea for first and I used mostly system bricks for the powered articulation, but the two perpendicular gear connections meant a lot of energy loss and neither PF M, PF L and PF train motors couldn't do anyrhing with it under load. So it came to buy a PF XL quickly, but with its torque I was pretty sure this thing will blow up.

It did.

So I redesigned the gearing, replacing bricks with 11 long beam which holds the gears:

This design holds better, but some gears I should have doubled to avoid some undesired forces turning out some gears from the desired direction. This part was the most barinstorming part because I'm really unfamiliarwith technic, I hate it, everything I tried blowed up or didn't work - but after some tests this started to be good...

...until I connected all cars and it didn't move again, but the driven wheels were slipping.

I figured out this first wheels need some weight so I moved the battery box (AAA one) from the roof to the place of tram driver to give more weight. It worked a little better and moved very, very slowly, but wheels were still slipping. 

And finally I remembered that I am using PF train wheels as running wheels so I took them our from the tram and removed the traction rubber from their surface. Magically after this it started to work, still slowly due to the characteristics of XL motor (and I did really have no time to gear it up keeping enough torque), so it shall run on a LEGO city sightseeing line. I posted a video to my FLICKr album linked below.

Two more images:

Overall look.

Disassembly for turning on or changing batteries. Driver minifigure is mounted on the batter box!

Check my FLICKR-album for better resolution images and a video showing the tram running:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/150200265@N08/sets/72157700704620731/

 

Edited November 27, 2018 by Ashi Valkoinen

[Hod Carrier]

Congratulations, Ashi. That's a monster build!! You really set yourself a huge challenge, and now that the tram is complete it's easy to see just how much planning, effort and creativity has gone into your project. I'm sure that with time you will be able to crack the drivetrain issues and have the model running smoothly, but at least you've managed to get it mobile before the competition deadline.

Have you considered swapping the LEGO traction bands for something with more grip, like rubber O-rings? If you only have a single powered "axle" you need to maximise the grip available, and I think you've already done about as much as you can by redistributing the weight, etc. Using rubber O-rings really helped my tiny TRAXX loco overcome wheel slip.

[Capparezza]

Oh wow. Stunning implementation and great look. Lots of ingenious GPU too (great parts usage). Good look for the contest!

[Roadmonkeytj]

This came together well really well done!  I love all the working drawings of the real thing.   Side by side you would almost assume they were made for the brick tram not the real thing lol

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Wonderful ...now that the work is complete I can say that those doors are totally cool!

Very well done!

[zux]

Wow, that's a heck of a model built in such a short period of time with these amount of features. Well done!

[ColletArrow]

You've managed some excellent building to overcome a unique set of challenges. Everything you could want in this model is here, from the opening door to the driver squeezed in the cab. Overall it's a stunning model. Good luck in the competition; I'm glad I don't have to compete against you!

[Ashi Valkoinen]

I'd like to say a big thanks for your kind words. I worked quite lot on this tram in a short period of time (and I had a full-time job and one of the biggest LEGO-events this month) so I sacrificed many sleep hours to complete this MOC. But it was worth.

On 10/31/2018 at 1:48 AM, Hod Carrier said:

Have you considered swapping the LEGO traction bands for something with more grip, like rubber O-rings? If you only have a single powered "axle" you need to maximise the grip available, and I think you've already done about as much as you can by redistributing the weight, etc. Using rubber O-rings really helped my tiny TRAXX loco overcome wheel slip.

I try to use as less non-LEGO parts as I can, but I'll consider your trick, maybe it will give the little more I need to make it run better. However I had seen many people talking about this "O-rings", what the hell they are for real? I don't know the good hungarian word for it to google, and can't be transleted nicely, so where can I buy these, what material they are consist of and what size do I need for a LEGO train wheel? :)

[Hod Carrier]

I’m away for a couple of days so I can’t send you any specs for the ones I bought, but what you’re looking for are rubber gaskets (Google Translate suggests tömítés...?) for domestic water pipe installations. I’ll try and get you some more specific details over the weekend.

I know what you mean about LEGO purity, but sometimes a little outside help can go a long way. 

Edited November 1, 2018 by Hod Carrier

[Hod Carrier]

These are the chaps. They are rubber nitrile gasket rings of 1.5mm thickness and 14.5mm diameter. I found that they sit very nicely inside the groove of the LEGO train wheelsets very nicely in place of the standard traction bands.

Hoping this helps.

[Roadmonkeytj]

19 hours ago, Hod Carrier said:

These are the chaps. They are rubber nitrile gasket rings of 1.5mm thickness and 14.5mm diameter. I found that they sit very nicely inside the groove of the LEGO train wheelsets very nicely in place of the standard traction bands.

Hoping this helps.

Do you happen to recall the P (or G number)  is P22 or G15?