MOC: 8-Wide Maersk Train

[Toastie]

It may still say WIP in the title of this thread, but it's done.

!Wow!

I am reconsidering or better take back every single comment I made about 6 vs 7 vs 8 wide in the past. I am still on the mostly 6- to 7-wide scale and thought this is it. Seeing this ... yes, 8 wide was a very good choice. An excellent model.

You know what Ralph? Just keep on building trains - I guess with this type of inspiration, we can pull over a good number of people to become train heads ... once your are here, you never want to leave again ...

Thanks for sharing!!!

Regards,

Thorsten

[Ralph_S]

!Wow!

I am reconsidering or better take back every single comment I made about 6 vs 7 vs 8 wide in the past. I am still on the mostly 6- to 7-wide scale and thought this is it. Seeing this ... yes, 8 wide was a very good choice. An excellent model.

You know what Ralph? Just keep on building trains - I guess with this type of inspiration, we can pull over a good number of people to become train heads ... once your are here, you never want to leave again ...

Thanks for sharing!!!

Regards,

Thorsten

Thanks Thorsten. There are plenty of good arguments on why 8-wide and a matching length isn't always a good idea. This works as long as it sits still or if you can run it on a layout with large radius curves (made with flex curves or by interspersing straight track between the curved sections) and that's often simply not an option.

A member of the hispalug forums has seen it here on EB and posted it on their forum, with somebody arguing that it would have been better at 7 studs wide (Hispalug showed up in my flickr stats).

It's a never-ending discussion. Over the years I've been having a fair few discussions on what constitutes minifig scale. With this new train I decided to take a picture showing the respective sizes of some of my vehicles and the train.

It's a question of scale by Mad physicist, on Flickr

I'm not sure whether anybody else will be prompted to have a go at building a train MOC after having seen mine, but I certainly enjoyed it.

Cheers,

Ralph

Edited May 30, 2011 by Ralph_S

[LEGO Guy Bri]

That looks amazing! Very well done!

[snowvictim]

Wow! Amazing build. Might attempt this myself. Oh, what's SNOT lettering?

[Murdoch17]

Wow! Amazing build. Might attempt this myself. Oh, what's SNOT lettering?

SNOT: Studs Not On Top.

It can be used as brick built lettering, like on the Modular buildings Cafe Corner, Fire Brigade, Pet Shop, & Town Hall. Here it's used for the large lettering on the locomotive's side.

...Personally, I prefer printed 1x1 tiles on trains, but to each their own.

Edited September 30, 2014 by Murdoch17

[Ralph_S]

Wow! Amazing build. Might attempt this myself. Oh, what's SNOT lettering?

Thank you. It is several years old, as is this topic, but by coincidence, I recently added cars to this model. This is something I did consider a few years ago, but I never got around to it.

They are three TTX double-stack container cars, using stickers from the original TTX Lego set. I have built four containers in total, because I didn't have parts for more. Because the containers are built to scale with my trucks, they are 7 studs wide and the cars for them are just a tad wider than 8. The whole assembly can navigate a gentle curve built with flexible curve parts.

As Murdoch17 mentioned, SNOT stands for Studs-Not-On-Top. This really has very little to do with whether or not the model has studs on top or not, but is generally used for build techniques where elements are mounted sideways or upside down, with their tops (where the studs are) not pointing up. The lettering on the side of the train is an example. It has been done in a few sets and I have done it on a fair few of my builds, such as this SWAT van.

It gives a nicer result than using stickers and working out how to do it is a lot of fun too.

SNOT: Studs Not On Top.

It can be used as brick built lettering, like on the Modular buildings Cafe Corner, Fire Brigade, Pet Shop, & Town Hall. Here it's used for the large lettering on the locomotive's side.

...Personally, I prefer printed 1x1 tiles on trains, but to each their own.

If it would have had small silvery or white letters against a black background, I too would have preferred printed tiles, but since it has big black letters against a grey background, I had to do something different. I guess you could say I prefer to do whatever gives me a result that looks right for the situation ;-)

Ralph

[Man with a hat]

Nice containers. It works really well at that scale. Also a simple but brilliant solution using those headlight bricks.

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

May I have a closer look of the locomotive bogies?

Is the locomotive without any motor?

The wagons and the containers are very well done!

[UrbanErwin]

It is a very detailed engine with some great container wagons. Looking at your cars and planes, I can´t wait for what´s next.

Edited October 8, 2014 by UrbanErwin

[Ralph_S]

Nice containers. It works really well at that scale. Also a simple but brilliant solution using those headlight bricks.

Thank you. I think the containers on the Maersk train set are a massive improvement over the older 4-wide ones, but my minifig scale trucks tend to be 7 studs wide, so a 7-wide container fits better. The headlight bricks make the containers look just a bit less like a plain box.

May I have a closer look of the locomotive bogies?

Is the locomotive without any motor?

The wagons and the containers are very well done!

Thank you. I'll see that I take a picture of one of the bogies sometime soon. They have three axles and are very long, which pretty much rules out driving any of them. Despite the size of it, there's also very little room inside the engine for a battery box and say, a medium PF motor. All the SNOT work for the diagonal stripes and the lettering takes up too much space.

Currently it is unpowered. I did buy a PF train motor with the intention of using it in one of the wagons (with the battery box and other PF elements tucked away inside a container), but haven't done it yet. Due to the length of the wagons and the engine and the large separation between the aft coupling on the engine and the point where its aft bogie is attached, the train cannot go through a tight curve. I don't think my house is large enough to fit a full loop of track with a large enough diameter!

It is a very detailed engine with some great container wagons. Looking at your cars and planes, I can´t wait for what´s next.

Thank you. I think it's best to consider the train a bit of an exception in my collection of MOCs. Although I did enjoy building this, I'm not really a train builder and I also don't do a lot of minifig scale stuff. I'm currently planning a few more large scale aircraft.

Ralph

[Gordon Werner]

Has anyone made a model of the ATSF style MAERSK SDP40F? Or the GP60M?