Building Techniques, Inspiration, Model Design

Building an European Railcar Part 3 – The Build(s)

March 30, 2019 raised 1 Comment

About two year ago, I started a three-parter series about designing and building an European railcar, more specifically the SDGGMRS type of trailer railcars, meant to transport trailers over rail. Due to reasons like “life”, “work” and “priorities”, I never got around finishing part three of that story. However, today I will finally do so.

First of all, a short recall of part one and part two. In part one we looked for a prototype and some drawings, in part two we actually tried to build and go through several iterations before finally settling for a design. In part three, we will look at the finished product (which has been finished for some time now, to be honest…), but also about the best part of this whole series: The inspiration it gave to others to build their own versions!

The Final Build

As promised two years ago, the final part of this three-parters would be known as The Bragging (also known as “Hey, I actually finished something again!”) and even though this isn’t the official title, I think the pictures below do pay hommage to this:

3/4th view. As you can see, the sleek design I was going for did work out in the end

Without trailers it’s indeed a bit boring…

Less than 1 plate of clearance. That’s the beauty of building with Legos!

These pictures have been taken about two years ago now, and since then have run hunderds of very reliable rounds on the layouts I was part of. At first, I wanted to have them close-coupled with elastic bands, but due to reliability issues I in the end decided against this, so nowadays they are just hard-coupled on the Jacobs Bogies in the middle with two 2×2 turntables. Nowadays I have 3 sets, one of them empty, one with trailers, and one with three TEU containers.

LegoWorld 2018 — My SDGGMRS wagons running together with UrbanErwin’s container wagons (link = video)

Inspiring Others

As said, it turns out that since my initial posts, several of our readers got very excited and decided to give it a try themselves. Something I really like seeing (Just give credit where credit is due), this is exactly the reason why I made these posts to begin with!

Version 1: Dennis.P

First up is Dennis.P aka TECHNO, a German builder who not only was inspired, but also decided to add some extra details, and decided to change the way how the couplings work; where I had them directly connected to the trucks, has Dennis.P decided to attach them onto the frame itself.

Topview. The 1×2 technic brick at the end of the carriage shows the different way how Dennis.P attached the couplings

Details. Dennis.P added some pretty nifty little details that really give some extra character

A rake of six (6!) SDGGRMS. A beauty, beyond doubt.

Version 2: Pehter Abrahamsson

About a year ago, I was browsing online and by accident came across an event by SWEBRICK, the Swedish LUG. It turns out that Pehter Abrahamsson read the post as well, and decided to try to build the SDGRMRS for himself as well. Since he never saw the final product, he decided to change several little parts to create a subtle different model. As he said it himself: “I passed the train station when these wagons passed by and remembered seeing something simular in Lego earlier, after some digging I found your posts but no finished result. You saved me some trial and error 🙂 “

The sheer beauty of absolute grey boredom!

The sleek design fits perfectly in the yard of SWEBRICK

Version 3: Peter Schmid and Michael Katzmann

The third one is the newest. This one is build by German AFOLS Peter Schmid and Michael Katzmann, who run a Flickr account together. The nice part of their design is that they actually took their cues from both the models of Dennis.P and myself!

As you can see, they actually decided to use Dennis.P’s design for the couplings and details.

Conclusion

Two years later than planned, but I can finally say I finished this this threeparter. When I wrote the first part two years ago, I never in my wildest dreams had expected that anyone would actually try to copy or redesign my carriages. Yes, my intention was to inspire people to build their own goods waggons, but I had never expected that my own model would be perceived as such a beauty that they actually decided to copy it, instead of designing their own… But hey, everybody knows that copying is the most sincere form of flattery. So thank you all, I’m honored!

Events, Layout Design, Models

Legoworld 2018 Train Layout (1:45) Report

March 18, 2019 raised Leave a comment

As some of you might know by now, I’m one of the few Contributors (the only?) of BMR that lives on the other side of the pond, ie. in Europe and more specifically in The Netherlands. Compared to the US, some things in Europe are a bit different structured when it comes to running a Lego Train Club. For one, there are no such things as LTC’s in Europe. Second, instead of organizing in regions, we tend to organize ourselves per country. This means that most of our LUGs are bigger and more diverse than in the US, with builders doing Space, Castle, City and all others in one club. Third, since train builders are a minority in most of these clubs to begin with, we tend to not do big layouts like the US-based LTC’s. Fourth, most of our exhebitions are part of bigger Lego festivals, but almost never part of a Model Railroaders event. This means that one a whole, most of the European train layouts are or one-off builds by 1 or maximum 2 builders, or are static displays on a kid-centered event that don’t really give the love that our scale-craziness “deserves”. Deserves obviously in quotation marks because indeed, we do get credits for our trains, but on a different level than US LTC’s that might show off at the NMRA for example.

Trains at Legoworld

The standard pre-show day at Legoworld in Utrecht, NL. Tables with shrouding, supplied by TLC.

However, that all doesn’t mean we don’t build elaborate layouts. It just means we do it a little bit less often, and when we do it, it’s mostly because of some huge show that wants to show off the best there is when it comes to AFOL building. For us in The Netherlands this typically means Legoworld, a yearly one week event that is held by TLC in Utrecht, the so-called center of our little country. Legoworld actually used to be organized by one of the local LUGs, De Bouwsteen, in Zwolle, but at one point after some intense co-operation with TLC, it was decided to hand over the organization to our favorite commercial plastic bricks producing company.

Anyway, in the last several years there always have been some kind of group train layouts, most of them organized on an ad-hoc basis (which is partly also due to the way my own LUG, Lowlug, is organized) but with some standard rules, the major being the use of MILS and the Lowlug Lego Train Standard for connecting track between modules. In the previous years this was a six-wide style layout, but for 2018 we as members of Lowlug decided there should be a layout specifically for eight-widers as well, and the rest is history.

I can now ofcourse keep on telling how this all came to fruition, but to be honest, one of your fellow members is currently writing something like that, so I’m just going to leave you with one fact: Before setting up the layout at the show, we had never tested if everything fit together. It actually did really well, proving once and for all that the internet has some great promises for us in the future.

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Building Techniques, Model Design, Products

DelTang: An Alternative to Standard LEGO Control Systems

March 7, 2019 StreamlinedBricks 5 Comments

This article was submitted to BMR by our good friend Gareth Ellis, who discusses his experience with DelTang control systems in his models. Thanks Gareth!

Introduction

DelTang RC Control systems is a well-designed radio control platform, with many benefits for a growing LEGO® model train community. The system comprises of a transmitter and receiver, bound with each other for discrete, individual and reliable control.

The basic principles of DelTang radio control for battery locos, in its simplest form are a transmitter and a receiver that has an integrated Electronic Speed Control unit which in turn is connected to batteries and a motor. When the throttle knob on the paired transmitter is moved the motor increases or decreases in speed accordingly.

DelTang currently produce many transmitters and receivers for a wide range of model control, we will focus on Model Train specific variants of the transmitters and receivers. As there is such a wide range we will cover the TX22 Transmitter and the Rx-65 (22) specifically. At the time of writing this, the TX2 was on V207, and the Rx-65c (22) was on V611.