Powered Up Shunter "Chunky"

[Toxic43]

17 hours ago, faph said:

Good to know! I’d hoped the batteries and the motor would do the trick. 

They do, up to a point. But, as I found out, you can't really pull much more than 3 or 4 carriages/coaches before you lose grip. I upgraded the traction bands to black hardware store O-Rings whcih give more grip, but it would still slip. Ended up having to add some lead shot into the short hood cavity at the back. It is only a small amount, but gives enough weight to be able to pull an extra carriage or two, depending on which ones I run. I'm trying to redesign to a point where I can get a weight brick in there, but I don't think it'll be possible.

Doesn't help that my attic floor is not level and the trains have to run partway uphill!

[faph]

I managed to actually build the blue version:

 

 

Still waiting for some 1x8 yellow plates with door rail to replace the yellow stripes on the side.

It runs pretty well with Pybricks with nice and slow accelerations and braking! So much more fun compared with the start/stop of the Lego train motors.

I will see if I can get a video going as well.

Edited April 9, 2024 by faph

[Feuer Zug]

Looks great. Nice work covering up the battery box/Pybricks controller.

[CastleRail]

17 hours ago, faph said:

Still waiting for some 1x8 yellow plates with door rail to replace the yellow stripes on the side.

Posted them yesterday morning, they should be with you soon   They come courtesy of a #4564 that wasn't intact enough to consider rebuilding 

Is the cab completely clear or is the motor hiding inside it? If clear then that is seriously compact, either way still a cracking build :-)

 

[faph]

@CastleRail Train-to-train recycling, excellent!

Motor does take up most of the cab, roughly up to window level. However, the cable takes up most of the space above, so you still cannot see through from one side to the other.

[faph]

@CastleRail Toe-rail installed and tested!

[JopieK]

Very nice. For shunters the Powered Up brick is way too large. I was trying to fit one in a retro 7760 but so far I'm not satisfied. Your solution is at least already better by replacing the train motor with this one.

[faph]

For avoidance of doubt, this shunter fits both a Powered Up Hub and a Powered Up medium motor. 

[faph]

Shunter in action! Speed control is just perfect if I may say so myself. Nice and slow acceleration and breaking. Constant speed in bends and on sloping track.

Edited May 5, 2024 by faph
Bad video embedding

[JHS_NL]

Looks really cool!

[The_Cook]

I rather like the little green shunter, so much so that I decided to reproduce it. All credit to faph, it's a really nice little design and the internal photo's gave me enough to recreate the mechanics.



So I started ordering pieces and building up the locomotive in abs which was fine until I got to...

Plate, Modified 1 x 1 with Clip Vertical (Undetermined Type)

First introduced in 1980 this piece is ubiquitous and available in every colour, except green...  ...actually there's one seller with 600 in green, which feels like a model shop/LegoLand surplus sales as they can occasionally get parts in special colours, but the price whilst not extortionate is not what I'm willing to pay for something that is pennies in every other colour.

So a redesign is needed, what is available in green that will accept a bar connection.

Brick, Modified 1 x 1 with Headlight

couple the headlight brick with a


Bar 5L with Handle (Friction Ram)

and we've got the vertical grab handle back!

Now it's buildable!

I've taken some license with the chasis, it was impossible to see the internal construction from the photo's. In the end I decided to go with layers of plates and to use as much as I could in order to increase the weight of the locomotive as well as the stiffness of the chasis.

It's not the fastest but it pulls well. I took it to some scales and it weighs 343g, compared with 60098 Heavy Haul Train at 519g. But 60098 has 4 axles, giving a per-axle weight of 130g, whereas the shunter with just 2 axles has a per-axle weight of 170g, which should provide more tractive effort.



Hauling one of my variants of 10194 Emerald Night's carriages, for comparisson.

 

[faph]

This is so cool @The_Cook!

 

[JHS_NL]

Love the extra pictures, are you planning more little shunters?

Edited July 11, 2024 by JHS_NL
Got rid of double posted info

[faph]

@JHS_NL Since you asked so kindly: let me introduce shunter "Bulldog":

Staff were complaining the climb up to the cabin was too high! And forward vision wasn't great either...

This shunter is heavily inspired by some Köf builds including this one: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-68383/Dennis Tomsen/lego-gmbh-spielwaren-kof/#details by Dennis Tomsen.

I will have to work out whether this 8 wide engine works well enough for me. Everything else we have is 6 wide (excluding hand rails etc).

This engine is 2 studs shorter compared to previous ones.

Edited October 27, 2024 by faph

[faph]

The rear of the engine led to the nickname "Bulldog". With respect to all dogs out there: there are more flattering looks around (both for dogs and engines)...

[faph]

Some small tweaks:

[Celeste]

Wow! The Bulldog looks fantastic! I love the shapes and color blocking used! Can't wait to see this in real bricks!