If you follow Brickmania on their social media outlets, you probably already know what this is about.

Almost two weeks ago now, Cale and Glenn where invited to attend the NILTC show in Cantigny Park. You can read Cale’s report on that awesome event here. We attended the show as guests of Brickmania to be a part of some of the final steps leading up to the release of a locomotive kit designed by us. We’ll be shedding some light on the details of this epic collaboration in this article.

Brickmania

Firstly, you may be wondering what Brickmania is. 
Founded in 1999 by Dan Siskind, Brickmania specializes in high-end custom model kits made with re-purposed LEGO bricks. Their focus is mostly within a military theme, but have ventured outside of this norm to produce space race, sci-fi and fantasy, and pop culture kits as well. They release one new kit every week on Friday morning while restocking older kits and also producing other custom products like books, minifigures, their own table-top game, and a lot more. All production is done in-house at their headquarters in Minneapolis. You can read the full history on their website. Brickmania continues to drive the hobby in many ways and always raises the standard for custom model kits.

This whole venture really began in late 2017, as we were gearing up to release our American Car & Foundry Type 27 Tank Car Premium Instructions. Without going into too many details, we (Cale and Glenn) began talking with Dan Siskind, founder of Brickmania. The short term was that we started having all of our instruction books printed by them. We also discussed possible collaborative projects, with several paths and opportunities brought up.

It took several months to coordinate, but we finally settled on the U.S. Army Transportation Corps S160 steam locomotive, a 2-8-0 “consolidation” type of which over 2,000 were built with many surviving and operating examples still around. The S160’s operated in every continent except Australia and Antarctica, making them a prime choice for a locomotive to be released by Brickmania on a world-wide scale, not to mention the fact that it’s a pure military locomotive from the start.

The original S160’s came about out of necessity during World War II as many allied nations needed more locomotives to support the war effort. The S160 was designed by the Railway Branch of the Corps of Engineers intended for fast construction and deployment. In a sense, they were really the “Sherman tank” of steam locomotives. While not designed for longevity, they certainly became a mainstay of British railways during the war and European railways afterwards, during the rebuilding.

Several S160’s were imported back into England in later years, and many of them are operating on heritage railroads. There are a few in the United States, notable survivors include US Army #612 located in Sugar Creek, Ohio in the Age of Steam Roundhouse collection, currently undergoing a cosmetic restoration.

Another survives in Maryland, and is the only surviving locomotive with a Franklin cam valve gear.

Two more survive on the Alaska Railroad, and one, #557, is currently undergoing a restoration to operating condition.

Once this work is complete, it will be the second operating S160 in the United States, the other being #1702 on the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad.

The Model

Our model is an expansion upon a robust drive train engineered by Cale for a few previous models. It features one L motor geared directly to LEGO’s steam drivers, equivalent to Big Ben’s “L” size. Happily enough, this wheel size perfectly scales to the S160’s 57″ driver diameter using the 8 stud / 10 foot rule, or about 1:46 scale. After some discussion, we decided to move ahead with the locomotive using our own familiar scale rather than Brickmania’s standard of 1:35. Part of this reason was to keep the locomotive in-line with a large percentage of custom models being made by the community, but also because a 1:35 scale locomotive (Brickmania’s standard sscale) would be too large to comfortably use on stock LEGO track, therefore forcing consumers to purchase larger radii track as well. 

Our original prototype was a co-effort by Cale and me from the very start. As with any good steam locomotive, we started with the powertrain and chassis, and moved on from there, making sure the engine could negotiate any given track geometry, which it will, with one exception. Due to the way a guard rail is molded onto  9V switch, it will sometimes derail if the locomotive is going through the curved portion of a switch. The same guard rail is included on the plastic track variant but is much more forgiving and we have had no derailments from using those.

Once we had finished the majority of the model, we turned our focus to the details. Since the S160’s were used in so many countried during their lifetime, they could be seen in many different specifications. We designed a generic US, UK, and European version to fill this criteria and represent the locomotive more thoroughly. Finally, the engine was brought to my apartment for a final in-person review. During this time, I went over the model with a fine attention for detail and added in the nit-picky stuff. After some discussion, we decided that we would send what we had to Brickmania and allow them to remove as much or as little detail as they saw fit to be able to produce the kit within reason. As you can tell by the prototype photo and the final model photo, most if not all of the detail remains, with some minor changes for the sake of production.

The prototype model will be placed in the BMR archives as-is, for it remains unchanged since it left my apartment. There were some final modifications made to our LDraw model, but these were never applied to the prototype, making it a true one-off.

It should be mentioned here that after assembling the powertrain, it was never touched. We have had absolutely no mechanical issues such as slipping gears or faulty design. Obviously this design represents a large investment in time and resources to attain this “bomb-proof-ness”, and I feel it necessary to say that this design, as well as the rest of the S160, is property of BMR and Brickmania, and shall not be reproduced in any way, in whole or in part, for commercial purposes.

Since sending Brickmania the final LDraw file with part files for the connecting rods and valve gear, the locomotive has been refined for production and build-tested multiple times by Dan Siskind himself and Adam Stasiek, a Brickmania employee and member of NILTC. The former model, Dan’s was a true test build, while Adam’s was the first to be built to the instructions. Errors were found and fixed during this process, and all three test locomotives: the prototype, Dan’s test, and Adam’s test, ran flawlessly on the NILTC layout during the Cantigny Show.

The S160 kit is pretty much why we were at the Cantigny Show a couple weeks ago. With every new kit released, Brickmania will film a video installment of their “Brickmania TV” series for their YouTube channel. In essence, each episode is a full, in-depth review of the new model, going over the history of the real thing and features incorporated into the model. Brickmania sponsored our trip to meet them at the show, and we recorded the video in the dining room of the guest house the Saturday evening of the event weekend. This video will premiere first on the Brickmania website and will be available on YouTube on Saturday, December 22, 2018.

The Kit

This is the first product of it’s kind to be offered in recent time, so you may be wondering what all the kit will include.

Brickmania specializes in full kits. As such, the S160 will be no different – you’ll get exactly everything you need to build the locomotive right out of the box and run it on your layout. Please note that track is not included nor are the AAA batteries required. Here’s a list of the contents:

• All standard LEGO bricks
• All custom parts
• 3D printed connecting rods and valve gear, designed by BMR and Brickmania. There will be double what you’ll need, so you’ll have some spares if you need them. Brickmania is honing in the settings for it’s new resin printer, and we definitely think it makes good parts which can be comfortably used on steam locomotives. (Two complete sets of 3D parts are included… just in cast something gets broken during assembly)
• Two custom printed minifigures
• All electronics, including one PF L motor, one IR receiver, one PF AAA battery box, and one PF train remote. The rechargeable box was not cost effective for this set but can be substituted.

Quite literally a ready-to-run locomotive kit, some assembly required. *wink* There will be 25 S160 kits available. More info on the release below, see “The Game Plan“.

The Bonus Items

The good news doesn’t stop there. As a bit of a surprise to Cale and me, Brickstuff is putting together a special lighting kit just for our S160 model. The lights will operate off of the spare port on the IR receiver (opposite the motor) for independent light control.

To go along with the S160, Dan has produced a 40′ flatcar influenced by BMR’s own AAR 53′ flatcar model, done with permission. This is also going to be available alongside the S160, with 50 copies available initially.

To add to all of that, Dan has even gone the extra mile to make a 1:48 scale Sherman tank to sit atop the flatcar. 200 M4A1 Sherman kits have been made. These will surely be popular with military modelers too.

The Game Plan

When will you be able to get all of this awesome stuff?

Friday, December 21st, at 8 AM Central Standard time.  The kits will be available both online at Brickmania’s store and in both of their retail locations: in the Mall of America and in the Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois. 

I mentioned the Brickmania TV episode featuring the S160 (and the flatcar and Sherman) above. To reiterate, it will be watchable FIRST on the Brickmania website, and then available on the Brickmania YouTube channel on this coming Saturday.

Brickmania also uploads a “sitrep” video every Friday morning, in which they discuss new kits, restocks, and some future plans (as well as a sweet giveaway). There will be a “sitrep” video featuring the S160 kit uploaded the same day as its release: Friday, December 21, 2018. Be sure and check out both this video and the “Brickmania TV” episode for all of the information regarding the kit.

As mentioned above, there will be 25 S160 locomotive kits, 50 flatcar kits, and 200 Sherman tank kits available at the same time. We have been asked not to publicly share the prices, but that information will be available on their website on Friday.

We will provide links to the videos and the store pages for all of the products mentioned in this article as soon as we can.

Is this the BMR Locomotive?

In a word, no. The S160 project is completely separate from our own BMR locomotive. The BMR locomotive will also be a full kit, but will not be available from Brickmania; just us. As we’ve mentioned before, we’ll have a formal announcement and detailed information regarding that project soon after our second birthday (woo-hoo!).

The Future?

This is certainly a huge opportunity for Brick Model Railroader. We would like to extend our most sincere gratitude to Dan, Adam, Landon, Cody, Austin, and the rest of the team at Brickmania for working with us on this awesome project.

While they are in limited supply initially, there is a possibility that each of these kits will be restocked after they sell out. However, this decision is the sole discretion of Brickmania. Please don’t ask us when the S160, flatcar, or Sherman will be restocked. When we know, we’ll let you know if we can.

Of course, this is really a test. Both Cale and I, as well as Brickmania obviously, are interested to see how this new kit will do. If everything goes well, there may be a possibility for more stuff like it in the future. However, we can say with 100% certainty that we don’t know what will happen. Regardless, that’s not the point. Brickmania has put enough faith in us to produce a model, and we fully believe that we have delivered an outstanding locomotive. Whether the kit does well or not is out of our hands, and we can now say that we did it. 

On behalf of myself and Cale, thank you again to Brickmania, and to NILTC for being incredible hosts during the Cantigny Show and making us feel welcome and right at home. Lastly, thank you to all of our fans and supporters. The S160 project has taken a lot of time and resources to complete, which could very well have been spent on our own Premium Instructions coming up. We apologize for the delays, but we hope you’ll understand the reasons for that now.

Thanks for reading. This will likely be our last post for the year until we post our second year-in-review article, with our formal announcement on our own locomotive kit not too far behind.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays. And, of course, play well.

Glenn Holland and Cale Leiphart