Brickworld Chicago, being one of if not the largest gathering of AFOL train builders in the world, is often a time of incredible conversation about the hobby as well as announcements regarding new models and products.
This year saw new innovations and a wonderful announcement from BrickTracks, which is today’s topic.
BrickTracks’ New Short Straight Track Pack, Box #1, signed by Scott
This is comes as a very welcome breath of fresh air since ME Models stopped producing track. As a community, we’ve largely been stuck to straight track in 16-stud multiples. Unless you’re alright with cutting up track here and there, there hasn’t been anything smaller than that for those of us who need it.
Wait no more. Scott Hoffemeyer of BrickTracks is now offering a solution. Enter the Short Straight track pack, available from BrickTracks for $19.95 USD.
Brickworld 2019 has come and gone. It’s time to reflect on all the excitement, pain, wonder, frustration, and joy that characterized my trip this year to one of North America’s premier LEGO fan events. Brickworld takes place at the Renaissance Hotel & Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL every June, and is one of the largest LEGO fan events in North America. It draws some of the best builders in the country, and even a few from over seas. It is also typically the largest gathering of LEGO train fans, and train clubs in the US. If you love LEGO trains, you’ll be in good company at Brickworld.
In the last 5 years, me and BigDaedy have been desiging our own takes on the Bombardier Traxx in 1:45 scale. The Traxx runs both in the Netherlands and in Germany, and is, together with the Siemens Vectron, one of the two truely “European” Electrics out there at the moment. While we had very different starting points, we more and more converged to a same type of design, but we’ll get back to that in a future post. Since both of us have just finished our respective versions, we thought it would be nice to present them together in one post.
The Bombardier Traxx is the current workhorse on most of the Cargo trains in Europe, but next to that, it also has seen a fair share of use in passenger trains. In the Netherlands the High Speed Line – Zuid between Amsterdam Schiphol, Rotterdam and Breda is their main operating ground, but there are also several private freightcompanies that run Traxx’es. In Germany almost every Rail Cargo company uses Traxx’es, plus several of the big passenger train companies like Deutsche Bahn and Metronom.
Between our two models there are some very big similarities, which (most of the time) are intentional since we worked very closely together on this design, sharing WIP pictures quite often. Some differences are the vents on the side of the roof, the pantographs, the sidepanels and a different motorization option. Whereas I (raised) chose to go all-in with two 1:2 geared PF L-motors for extra speed, a PFx Brick (with the potential to include lights) and an additional XL Speaker for sound, all build in, BigDaedy chose the always reliable 9V motor. Who says Modern European Elecitrics can’t have some heritiage in them? (In all fairness, with the future arrival of FX Track, a hybrid of both might not even such a bad idea to begin with…)
Even though the most beloved scale of BMR is somewhere in the lines of 1:45 (Europe) or 1:48 (US), that doesn’t mean we don’t try go give some love to other scales as well. Today, over at the Eurobricks Train Tech Forums, Sérgio Batista showed us what you can do if you go a little bit bigger, by presenting his 1:20 Siemens CP4700 in Medway Livery. And with “a little bit” I mean more than doubling the size to 16-wide compared to 8-wide, and more than 2.5 times the width when compared to the 6-wide trains by TLC! And yes, you can definately see that.
When it comes to this size, it’s mostly the numbers that say it all, so I leave that to Sérgio himself:
“1:20 scale replica (16wide, 128 studs long) more than 5000 parts.”
By the way, this isn’t the first time that Sérgio made this loco. In fact, the Medway version of the CP4700 is ‘nothing more’ than a reskin of his previous incarnation, when Medway was still owned by CP, the National Railways of Portugal, and named CP Carga. In my opinion this is an even better loco, and it’s a shame that Medway decided on this absolutely boring livery, but hey, it did give Sérgio a chance go build this beauty, so I guess that’s something.
Brickworld Chicago is now in full swing. After a setback in travel, BMR (just Cale this time) is at the event and enjoying the fun. Unfortunately I (Glenn) can’t be there due to prior obligations, so I’m tasked with writing the article this time.
The idea for this kit was taken from our NMRA 2018 exclusive kit, which was a Missouri Pacific version of the same car. The plan was to release a more generic version of the car, so I decided we would include instructions for one of each style of caboose – centered cupola, semi-offset cupola, and offset cupola. Each car would have it’s own interior faithful to the prototype. Cale, however, convinced me that three cars would be limiting for the consumer, so we decided to expand the plan once more and onclude instructions for six unique cars.
The book is laid out much differently than our previous models. The approach we took is a modular design, reflected in the instructions. Instead of building a caboose from start to finish, the builder first builds the many sub-models appropriate to the caboose in question, and then builds the framework of the caboose and adds in the sub-models. Part lists are included separately at the back of the spiral bound, 164 page book.
I’ll be honest. Building models for BMR, such as the NMRA and Brickworld exclusives, the bulkhead flatcar, and now six versions of an extended vision caboose, has been fantastic. I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything. But it’s now been over two and a half years since I added a locomotive, or any piece of rolling stock for that matter, to my personal fleet, coming from my to-do list rather than BMR’s.
This was a topic of conversation between Cale and I at the end of 2018. We were hanging out together over the final weekend of the year getting ready to announce the T-1 and prepare for other things coming up. At that point, it had been a little over two years since I built a locomotive that was good enough to keep. (I did build a 2-10-4 in that time, but I don’t count it because it never worked properly and has been mostly dismantled.) That had to change.
BC&G #13, modeled by Glenn Holland. Fireman’s side front, 3/4 view. Cale Leiphart photo.
Several locomotives were brought up as contenders for my new project. My primary goal was to select a locomotive which could be built from start to finish with a minimum of custom work and electronics. In essence, I wanted a strong jumping off point instead of having to perfect several new techniques like a drive-train. Cale and I had recently completed the S160 2-8-0 for Brickmania, so I was inspired to build a similarly sized locomotive: a 2-8-0 or 2-8-2 would be the perfect size, it could use the same “golden” drive-train as the S160, and I had no suitable freight locomotives. I began to look through my build list and found a locomotive that met all the criteria.
The Buffalo Creek & Gauley Railroad
Growing up I was gifted a boxed set of VHS tapes called “American Steam: A Vanishing Era.” These old tapes comprised of old black and white and color film of steam railroading right up to the end of mainline steam power and beyond. My favorite was “Steam Shortlines of the South” which was a collection of footage from numerous small steam-powered railroads in the Southern United States. The Buffalo Creek & Gauley was one of these railroads, although featured for only a few minutes. The tape showed a hefty 2-8-0 switching strings of coal cars at the line’s interchange with the Baltimore & Ohio. That was my first contact with this incredible shortline.
The BC&G shops at Dundon, WV. The mainline is to the right and continues on to the interchange. The rest of the line continues the opposite direction behind the photographer.
Doug WIngfield photo – November 1961, from Brook’s website
The Buffalo Creek & Gauley was a coal hauling railroad with connections to the B&O in Dundon, Clay County, West Virginia. If there was ever a perfect West Virginia coal-hauling shortline, the BC&G was it. The line ran from Dundon all the way to the mine in Widen, West Virginia with several unincorporated towns along the way.
Every now and then our readers themselves get so excited with BMR that they send in their own articles. This is of course something we really appreciate, so please keep them coming! Today it’s Enrico Lussi’s turn, who has written an article about his MILS layout “NeuKirche”. You might have already seen his layout before in our coverage of Legoworld 2018, but today he will give some more insight to how this layout came to light. Enjoy, and thank you Enrico for this entry! Please feel free to keep them coming!
Introducing Enrico
Well I can’t believe I’m actually writing a post for BMR! What a honor. First I would like to introduce myself. My name is Enrico, 18 years old and currently studying to become a civil engineer at the University of Applied Sciences in Rotterdam. I have been building 1:45 scale trains for the last 3 years (could be 3,5 already). My passion is history and especially train related history. So I build a lot of steam locomotives and historic railway wagons.
My current collection is 7 steam locomotives, 4 diesels, 1 Intercity train (ICM 4001), 2 diner wagons, 1 postal wagon, 2 passenger wagons, 5 closed freight wagons and 4 flatbeds. My biggest project is my Bahnsbetriebswerk. In this article I would like to take you through the design and building project. I hope you enjoy this article as much as I did building my layout!
We all know Scott Hoffemeyer for his outstanding work in engineering new LEGO-compatible track elements. Those who know Scott personally will know that he never fails to deliver anything less than awesome, and this week he again proved this to be true.
Scott published an excellent model of Chesapeake & Ohio (C&O #377, a 4-6-0 steam locomotive with classic lines and fun colors.
Each year at Brickworld in Chicago, attendees gather together to participate in what has become an fun, exciting, and unforgettable events held during the convention. The Esther Walner Memorial Charity Fundraiser. Th auction features unique LEGO® and LEGO Fan Community items donated by individuals, groups and companies to help raise money for charity. Proceeds benefit several deserving charitable organizations, including Creations for Charity, Riley Children’s Hospital, FIRST LEGO League, and the Make a Wish Foundation. 90% of the proceeds raised is donated to these charities. The other 10% Brickworld uses to support other opportunities to help kids in the community. Last year’s auction raised $22,300 with 100% of that money going to charitable organizations.
2016 Brickworld Charity Auction.
Trains at the Auction: Stoking Rivalries for a Good Cause
If you’re a registered attendee of Brickworld Chicago this year, we would like to extend an exclusive opportunity.
Similar to our NMRA 2018 National Train Show exclusive, we are happy to announce that an exclusive Premium Instructions Kit is now available for registered attendees of Brickworld Chicago 2019 to pre-order.
The Model
To celebrate the Sesquicentennial of the completion of the first Transcontinental Railroad in the United States, I chose to model a B-50-25 “Challenger” Express Boxcar.
Rendering of the final model.
I’ve always had a taste for shorter (in height) boxcars, as well as clean but attractive paint schemes. This car checks all of those boxes. This particular car has been an interest for me since I first saw Nate Brill’s rendition of one a few years ago. It was a striking grey and red scheme with a stylized “The Challenger” to the right of the doors.
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