MOCs: Models of trains running in Hungary

[Ashi Valkoinen]

Fortunately @Vilhelm22's Instagram comment reminded me to post the photo of full assembly here, so there it is:

IMG_8025_sm by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

One step closer to complete the layout I dreamt about since 2010. This is my LEGO train station, an average Hungarian mainline station somewhere in the suburbs of the capital, Budapest. This is not the replica of an existing station, but a station built in the mood of Hungarian renovated mainline station and a LEGO-creation, which supports my needs when it comes to play with my trains. The station has six long tracks, each one has a platform and a storage yard (not shown on image, bottom left corner) and a branchline track is attached to the double track mainline. I have this station for a long time by now, but since December of 2023 I replaced all TLC's R40 points and curves to FX Bricks R104 switches and curves for better and more aesthetic operation - and all of the switches are now motorised and controlled by the software I created to manage the train routes and corresponding signals at my layout.

[zephyr1934]

Simply amazing...

On 2/14/2024 at 4:11 PM, Ashi Valkoinen said:

which supports my needs when it comes to play with my trains

Ha ha ha, if you lined all of your lego track end to end you probably have more linear km of track than a few small railways in the world.

[Ashi Valkoinen]

On 2/17/2024 at 3:58 PM, zephyr1934 said:

Simply amazing...

Ha ha ha, if you lined all of your lego track end to end you probably have more linear km of track than a few small railways in the world.

Actually, the six tracks seem to be not enough anymore, a seventh track is under construction...

[Ashi Valkoinen]

The photos below shows my 10th iteration of a LEGO train station. The first version was made back in 2010, with only two short tracks and two switches, with a 6-wide platform beetwen the tracks. As the number of my trains increased the more tracks I'd built during the years - but all iterations were organic developement from the previous version. Two years passed only after 2010 and my station was the biggest in our LUG and was a great junction on our double track mainline and this type of through station was developed until the 9th iteration.

I was really happy with the 9th version, with freshly installed FX Bricks P40 (R104-ish) 9V switches, but the setup time before each show went up crazy - took 14 hours to put it up and 5 hours to dismantle. There were a lot of frustrating, time consuming and boring setup progresses due to the irregular track geometry and the cables I ran through almost all baseplates. I also started to find a through station boring, no shuntings were performed during shows, and as being part of a through line with two tracks, our LUG always put up a double track oval, which resulted in trains going around circles and there were no point-to-point traffic.

So, for this time, the 10th main version, for the first time, I completely erased the full previous station and started fresh. It took 4 months to do, and half of this time was digital planning - I wanted to have a terminus, where all train should reverse, but with good reversing capacity, a geometry, which support arriving and departing trains, shunting, and also easier to install compared to the previous one. The ballast under tracks were increased to 4 plates (I started with 3 plates back in 2010), so now I have a comfortable space under the tracks for electronics and could plan better the cable connections.

All switches of the station are motorised and controlled via Bluetooth on my computer. I started to enjoy managing the traffic done by others, who like driving their trains, but I also really like to run my modern EMUs on it. Fortunately my girlfriend, Tünde, take turn being the traffic controller, so I can drive, do the shunting, going around with locs, pull out some cars, etc.

Switching to a terminus design instead of supporting the double track oval also had good influence on our LUG, more trains were running during the last show and everyone enjoyed the traffic we made - trains started somewhere and then went somewhere else, not just going around again and again.

This gallery features some photos of the full layout we set up for a show at the end of September.

The station has seven tracks for arriving and departing trains, can handle a single track branchline and a double track mainline, has four very long storage tracks and three shorter dead ends for storing the shunting/waiting locomotives. 

Train station and me. by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

Morning hour. by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

Station and computer for switch control. by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

The full layout. by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

Storage yard with wooden sleepers by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

[JHS_NL]

This looks so amazing! Really love it, still wan't to make this myself. 

[zephyr1934]

First things first, you really should marry that girlfriend of yours. I doubt you could find a better woman.

Meanwhile, the station looks amazing (even if I say that with every iteration, it's still true). But it is true on so many levels- the detailing in the lego building, the detailing in the operational sense, and the details in the details (e.g., the storage yard with the partially removed switches).

[Man with a hat]

Astonishing! So many clever things to see here.

[Ashi Valkoinen]

On 10/17/2024 at 4:03 AM, zephyr1934 said:

First things first, you really should marry that girlfriend of yours. I doubt you could find a better woman.

Meanwhile, the station looks amazing (even if I say that with every iteration, it's still true). But it is true on so many levels- the detailing in the lego building, the detailing in the operational sense, and the details in the details (e.g., the storage yard with the partially removed switches).

Honestly, i think it will happen, sooner than later. 

Thank you for all of the nice comments - I completely forgot to include a video showing the station during train movements. But now, here it is:

 

Edited October 18, 2024 by Ashi Valkoinen

[Feuer Zug]

Quite the station you've built. Lots of details and the piece count must be insane. Brick on!

[Ashi Valkoinen]

This evening I'd like to share my first train MOC of year 2024 with you - seems building and rebuilding the big station took all the time and money I can spend on this wonderful hobby!

Full consist by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

The biggest change in the train station project was switching to terminus design - and as my Stadler FLIRT and KISS units can reverse quickly, with traditional locomotive + passanger cars consists it takes more time to reverse, especially with the lack of a second locomotive for short reverse. So I decided to build a GySEV/Raaberbahn car again (there are two big railway companies in Hungary, the State Railway operator, MÁV-START and the Austrian-Hungarian GySEV/Raaberbahn).

There are only three of the 8076 series driver cars in the green/yellow livery of GySEV, these cars were former ÖBB units, but some of them were sold to both MÁV-START and GySEV. The green/yellow company uses this driver cars in pulled and pushed trains to serve some local trains, but they also appear strictly in pulled formations on the Sopron-Budapest InterCity line, in these trains they serve the need of bicycle transportation. 

GySEV 8076-102 "Inlandswagen" driver car by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

Full consist with various GySEV cars by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

However this car in the yellow/green livery is really rare (GySEV owns three of them), the LEGO-parts I used for this MOC are even more rare! The 1×4×3 train windows, the 1×2 hinges with 2/3 teeth, the 1×1 plates with clip (both horizontal and vertical) were officially never produced, they are not listed on Bricklink by colour green, but small amount of them were made for LEGOland builds. I was fortunate enough that a German builder, Thomas owned some of these windows (18 were used in total), and sold me his Q-elements at a decent price!

Train windows 1×4×3 in green! by Donát Raáb, on Flickr 

Plate 1×1 with clip parts by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

Beyond the rare parts the design itself was quite challanging, too. These type of cars (known as Schlieren, Inlandswagen) are lower than standard UIC-X and UIC-Z cars, which requires a lowered bogie profile, too. As I was doing the math for the window setup, I realised that it won't be enough to build a simple tower of 1×1 bricks between windows, but a quite unusual offset, 1 stud + 2 plates will be need (=1,8 studs). This was quite hard to carry over keeping structure. The doors are 3 studs wide with 0,5-0,5 plates wide black frame, lot of bracket were spent on them! I'm quite happy with the front, too, unfortunately GySEV has many cars and motor units with green sides but full yellow fronts - the corners are not LEGO-friendly at all!

Front details by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

I hope you like it, I guess this passanger car will be my only train build this year - and 15th anniversary of this topic getting closer. :)

Full consist with interior lights by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

A video of the full consist in pushed train, Bdfmpz 8076-102 + Bp 20-33 000 + Bmz 21-90 000 + ABmz 31-90 000 + Taurus 470-502:

Full speed in pushed train formation by Donát Raáb, on Flickr

[Vilhelm22]

Excellent work as usual sir!  I’ve watched this thread and your other channels on and off for a few years now, and this must surely be quite a large fleet of Hungarian stock at this point!  And brilliant to see the new terminus creation - I’ve seen very few LEGO train termini quite like this on this scale!

Interesting to see the new GySEV stock and something I was unaware of - admittedly with quite limited knowledge but I’m not sure how common these type coaches are.  In Britain we call them Driving Van Trailers (DVTs), and the London terminus I commute into still uses these locomotive hauled trains with DVTs for its intercity services, although I think all other UK passenger services except the sleeper trains are now multiple units.  A great job you’ve done on this one, and remarkable that you’ve obtained such rare pieces!

Best,

William

 

P.S. my memory may deceive me but from my visit last year I seem to remember Budapest’s modern trams  carry a green & yellow livery - is this GySEV, or just coincidence?  It seems odd for city public transport to be run by a completely external company.

[Ashi Valkoinen]

Hello William,

thank you for your kind words!

And for your questions and thoughts, just in order:

GySEV/ROeEE is quite small operator compared to MÁV-START (Hungarian State Railway) and ÖBB (Austrian State Railway). GySEV works mostly with motor units - diesel ones on branch lines and electric ones on mainlines. They own some Jenbacher single and double DMU's (bought from ÖBB), FLIRT, FLIRT3 and Desiro ML electric motor units, and these serve all the local passanger train needs in general. In the rush hours some additional trains are required - these are served with traditional locomotive + passanger cars setup. Since all time schedules are set up for motor units (quick reverse at end stations), the loco + cars formations need to be reversed quick - that's why they use these driver cars. The InterCity service between Sopron/Szombathely (western Hungary cities) and Budapest (capital of Hungary) are served by loco + passanger car trains, but these have enough time to reverse, so if they contain this driver car, this is only for bicycle transport, because former ÖBB cars don't have compartment for bikes.

Basically in Hungary there were many driver cars, but since we were unfortunately part of the Soviet Union for a long while, no western european standards were used here when driver cars were produced. The wiring, the remote control setup is unique on these, old BDt cars could remote control diesel, electric, even steam engines, but if a car was able to remote control the electric loc, it wasn't able to do this with the diesel one, so each locomotive series had their own driver cars, without the interoperability.

After russians went off, we never really reached "west", and while we bought these Inlandswagen driver cars for MÁV-START, too, they never used them as driver car. It took a decade to use the "Halberstadter" driver cars in pushed formations - we didn't have any locomotives compatible with the remote control system of those (later some old electric was upgraded to work with them, but they lost their ability to work with old BDt driver cars). GySEV was forced to make the "Inlandswagen" work due to the discussed operational needs above.

Budapest owns yellow trams quite a long while, their look is quite coherent, and only Siemens Combinos got a really small green and blue pattern, but this had nothing to do with GySEV railway operator. 

 

8 hours ago, Vilhelm22 said:

Excellent work as usual sir!  I’ve watched this thread and your other channels on and off for a few years now, and this must surely be quite a large fleet of Hungarian stock at this point!  And brilliant to see the new terminus creation - I’ve seen very few LEGO train termini quite like this on this scale!

Interesting to see the new GySEV stock and something I was unaware of - admittedly with quite limited knowledge but I’m not sure how common these type coaches are.  In Britain we call them Driving Van Trailers (DVTs), and the London terminus I commute into still uses these locomotive hauled trains with DVTs for its intercity services, although I think all other UK passenger services except the sleeper trains are now multiple units.  A great job you’ve done on this one, and remarkable that you’ve obtained such rare pieces!

Best,

William

 

P.S. my memory may deceive me but from my visit last year I seem to remember Budapest’s modern trams  carry a green & yellow livery - is this GySEV, or just coincidence?  It seems odd for city public transport to be run by a completely external company.

 

[Shiva]

Fantastic Terminus and train combo :)