After a great and exciting month that we dubbed OcTRAINber, the difficult part for us judges had only just begon. However, we have managed to finally decide on the winners, which will be announced in this post!

First of all, let us say that we are pleasantly surprised by all the high quality entries and the great Swoosh-videos. We were very glad to see so many great ideas and prototypes being build, both digital and in real life. In fact, the reason that it took us so long to judge is because of the high quality of all of the entries. Therefore, we would like to thank all our contestants, because without you, OcTRAINber wouldn’t have been the succes it has been!

Now, let’s move on to the award ceremony!

Judgement Rules

For judging, we have set up a couple of rules to give every creation the best chances of winning.  We decided on 3 categories on which we would assign points:

• Credibility
  (does the model look like it’s real counterpart, or could it be a viable design in real life for fantasy models?)
• Swoosh
  (which swoosh was the most hilarious, the best looking, the most ingenious… you get the point)
• Length
  (which entry was the longest, both in absolute number of studs and in design; did the ammount of studs make ‘sense’)

Every of the three categories were assigned points between 0 and 10 by our 4 judges, independent from each other.

Prize Categories

The points of all four judges were added up so that we would have a winner for Length, Swoosh, Credibility and a Grand Prize (scores of all three categories aggregated). For the Digital Entries, we decided only on a Grand Prize.

To give contestants the biggest chance to actually win, we decided that every contestant could only win once, even if this person had several entries. Were there was a tie, the judges in four had to decide who would be the winner.

This meant that in total there were five categories in which somebody could win, and as we had communicated in the begin, we would put emphasis on Real Life entries, meaning that four out of five prizes are for the Real Life categories.

1. Real Life Entries – Grand Prize

2. Digital Entries – Grand Prize

3. Real Life Entries – Swoosh*
3. Real Life Entries – Credibility*
3. Real Life Entries – Length*

*The order of these three last categories will be decided on the number of points.

Dividing of prizes

Since we had in total 7 prizes and only 5 prize-winning categories, and since not everybody might be looking for the same prize, we have decided to give the winners the chance to themselves choose which prize they want. The number 1 has first pick, the number 2nd has second pick, the numer 3 has third… etc. There is one exception; the winners of both the Real Life and Digital Grand Prizes will get a pack of straights, hopefully just long enough to actually place their award winning models on!

Now, it’s time to move on to the actual judging!

Honorable Mentions

First of all, we would like to share with you some of the entries that just fell short of winning. These are designs that we really loved, in categories where sometimes there were some though nuts to crack. these entries thus deserver an honorable mention in our opinion.

Digital Entries:

• ÖBB 4020 by ScotNick. A last-minute entry, but still a great one. Runner-up in the Digital Entries Grand Prize with 84 points!
• TTX Wellcars by Dan-147. Sleek design, great greebles, attractive colors. Who says freight cars can just be boring?
• ALP-45DP by Beck_. Everything is bigger in America, even electrics. Too bad the swoosh was missing!
• Rhodesia Railways 15th Class Garratt by Miracle_Boy. An unique building style, blending Brick Model Railroading with the toy that Lego in the end is. Also, one of the best presentations.

Real Life Entries:

• 188 studs flatcar by eagleeyebricks. As Cale put it: “a truly dangerous car to bystanders”. ‘Nuff said.
• The Moving Platform by TheBricksmith. Hilarious out of the box thinking, we loved it. Next time a trainstation on wheels?
• Fyra by HodCarrier. Thinking out of the box, we love it. Did we already mention that? Anyways, 4 wide and thanks to the narrow gauge tracks still very silly, that is an impressive feat.
• Big Boy by Jayhurst. We had several Big Boy / Mallet-type entries, and this one was the best looking, and best engineered.
• Victorian Railways AE Passenger Car by scruffulous. Great looking passenger car and as runner-up for credibility it was beaten by just 2 points! Oh, and flags.
• Double Deck Passenger Cars and EU07 locomotive by melerro. We don’t see Double Deckers every day at BMR. Also, this one has interiors!
• BR05-003 by Lego Train 12 Volts. Geat rendition of this German steam engine. And did we mention the Duplo Train he did as a surprise?

The Winners

And now, time for the winners!

Real Life Entries – Length:
Wind Turbine Blade Train – TheBrickFiles
With 32 points, the winner in this category is TheBrickFiles with his Wind Turbine Blade Train. Articulated, genious construction for the blade, both semi-coupled and one unit in one… It’s everything that we expected from a winner in the Length-category!

Real Life Entries – Credibility
Flexible Boiler Mallet with Bellows – Narmot
With 37 points, this entry is a great feat of engineering. Not only did Narmot find a highly intruiging prototype, he also managed to engineer as credible as you can with Legos. Long Mallet style steam engines normally look absolutely silly in R40 corners, but thanks to the bending in the boiler, it looks maybe even more silly. Well played sir, well played.

Real Life Entries – Swoosh
Metroliner-Chord – Bob Hayes
The Swoosh category was thought up to make sure the absolute sillyness of R40 curves is being shown to the max. Bob Hayes managed to do this perfectly with his extended Metroliner that got a total of 38 points. The builder managed to turn the Poster Boy of the 9V line into the ugly stepchild of the whole Lego Trains line in just 55 hilarious seconds of video. We are not lying if we tell you that all four judges coudn’t stop laughing when they saw the video the first, second and third time.

Digital Entries – Grand Prize
Network Rail Plasser & Theurer RM900-RT High Output Ballast Cleaner – HodCarrier
Not only does Hot Carrier qualify for the longest title of all entries, but he also found a prototype that is just as long as an EMU, but has 4 totally diferent cars, all with their own functions, and still making sure it goes very well through a R40 curve. Everything on this design is spot-on, including all of the technical parts for the ballast cleaning, the double articulated wheelsets and the very little blue accents. Oh, and with 266 studs, its also the longest. A true winner for the Grand Prize in the Digital Entries category!

Real Life Entries – Grand Prize
NSW AD60 class Garratt – narrow_gauge
This was the most difficult and closest call of all. In fact, narrow_gauge wins the grand prize by a margin of a mere 2 points ahead of TheBrickFiles, with 102 vs 100 points, and, to make matters even more difficult for us judges: In total the numbers 1, 2 and 3 and 4 were just 5 points apart! However, we all think that narrow_gauge deserves this prize the most. He managed to build a model that truely shows the beliefs that we at BMR hold towards Lego Trains, blending a toy with a true scale model. The stickers were a great addition, and the addition of realistic lights really shows the effort narrow_gauge went through during the build. By using the Garrat-type, he also found a way around (pun intended) the sillyness of the R40 curve. Even though it wasn’t the longest of all entries, the ammount of studs made a lot of sense and wasn’t artificially inflated. To top this op, the presentation was superb as well. A true winner for the first OcTRAINber contest.

Recap

We cannot say this enough, but we would really like to thank all contestants. We as BMR had a blast seeing all those entries, and we as judges (Glenn, Matt, Cale and myself) were actually happy that with many of the entries and categories it was such a close call.

We are very gratefull for our two sponsors, BrickTracks and The Lego Company. Without them this would have been a contest without prizes, and what’s a contest without prizes?!

Last of all, we would like to congratulate all the winners of OcTRAINber. Also, we will contact you on short notice on picking your prize and shipping it to you.