All posts by Chris Stone

OcTRAINber 2022: The Results

November 19, 2022 Chris Stone Leave a comment

After two months of dedicated building, OcTRAINber 2022 saw a somewhat smaller but very high quality set of entries. This year’s challenge was quite a big one, and it’s safe to say that everyone who participated rose to the occasion quite well. Today, I’m quite proud to announce the winners of this year’s OcTRAINber: Rebuilds & Retrofits challenge.

Last weekend, Cale Leiphart, Matt Csenge, and myself were joined in judging by a staple competitor and many-time OcTRAINber winner: Alexander, also known online as “narrow_gauge”. Together, the four of us reviewed these great entries and picked out the winners. Alexander’s got a keen eye for the LEGO train modeling hobby and his contributions, both to the judging and the hobby, are stellar. Many thanks, Alexander, for participating in the judging this year!

Before I get to the winners, let’s take a quick review of what they’ve won this year, shall we?

The Prizes

BrickTracks has contributed several sets of switches for the winners. Each winner of the four main categories will receive one R104 Switch Track Set, while the Grand Prize winner will be getting three!

BMR Gift Card

Each of the four category winners will receive a $30 Gift Card for the BMR shop, and the Grand Prize winner will receive a BMR Gift Card worth $40!

Without further ado, let’s get to the announcements!

This Year’s Winners:

Winner: Buildings and Structures

Gilles Lessard’s “Heavy Hauling Hearts” Flatcar Bridge

Gilles Lessard has brought us the story of a flatcar that was eventually repurposed into a pedestrian bridge at a Golf Course, and has built both an excellent model of the flatcar in its rolling stock days as well as its later life ‘photo stock’ days after being converted into a bridge; including two seasons in his diorama to represent both the wintry weather in which he skied under it as well as a wedding photoshoot he found in his searches for more reference material.

This is both an excellent pair of models, and a great fit into this year’s theme. Congratulations, Gilles!

Winner: Steam Locomotive

Ts__ certainly seems to have been hit heavy with inspiration and drive this year, having built two physical models and digitally designing a third. This odd duck of a locomotive was initially built as a streamlined cab-forward steam locomotive that burned, of all things, coal dust, before later being rebuilt as a more traditional engine to make something useful out of it after its performance proved unsatisfactory.

Ts__ has captured all three time periods of this locomotive in great detail, but furthermore has managed the impressive task of making them actually run; a feat I was quite honestly not expecting from the streamlined engine. It’s crazy to see just how big of a change this steam engine went through!

Winner: Rolling Stock

Denis Garnier’s curious little snowplow started life as both a tender and an unrelated electric locomotive, before the railroad essentially kit-bashed them together into this 3-axle rotary snowplow. Denis has modeled both the tender that provided the frame as well as the snowplow created from it, both with an excellent level of detail and a system to motorize the snowplow’s blower. The shapes and textures of both models are exemplary, and do a great job of representing two pieces of rolling stock that look entirely different at a glance – but have their common components clearly represented to those who give it a closer look.

Winner: Other Locomotive

Scruffulous’s Victorian Railways Rail Tractor

Scruffulous’s Rail Tractor is an incredibly well-realized set of models depicting a very interesting transformation of its constituent parts. Apparently a fan of repurposing the frames of their I Wagons, the Victorian Railways solved a motive power need by installing a tractor onto one of these frames to power it via chain drive, and then built a cab around it.

Scruffulous’ models are all amazingly detailed, the Rail Tractor is motorized, and the 3D printed parts he’s created for the handrails really feel like they add to the model. The detailing of the springs and the bearing boxes is inspired, and the shape of the tractor on the front of the locomotive is unmistakable. Fantastic work!

Winner: Grand Prize

Through both his builds and the WIP story, Hod Carrier has shown an incredibly fine example of what serious LEGO model railroading is all about. Two trains, three units each, and an amazing amount of work to faithfully recreate a multitude of complex and subtle curves and shapes. Not content with that, the models are motorized and the passenger version includes an interior; in addition to the fantastic new method of close-coupled articulation he’s developed to keep the space between the cars to a minimum.

The amount of design work and research put into this somewhat obscure bit of rail history is impressive, and the final product seems well-worth the time put into it. Great builds, Hod!

Final Words

As always, thanks to everybody who participated in OcTRAINber this year; be it competitors or those who took the time to encourage the participants. This year’s theme was perhaps a bit daunting, but you all met the challenge well and produced some great models with fascinating histories.

I’d also like to once again thank Narrow_Gauge for joining us in judging these models. I’ve always loved seeing his amazing entries, and it was really cool to have his perspective involved in our review this year.

And, finally, once more, congratulations to all the winners of OcTRAINber 2022!

LEGO® News

OcTRAINber: Polishing the Presentations

October 21, 2022 Chris Stone Leave a comment

With only a week and a half left in OcTRAINber it’s time to make that final push to finish the entries before the deadline. Already the sweet sights of many WIP entries have been coming out to be seen. It’s always so amazing to see the creative and amazing things that people choose to build each year for the competition!

Build competitions are always filled to the brim with very high-quality models, and each year the quality gets better and better and it’s always difficult to choose a winner. Today I’d like to take some time to make my life harder in that regard, and talk about how to make a stronger entry. Some of these things are nearly universal, but I’m also going to have some extra focus on Digital entries.

In this article, I’d like to briefly discuss a few things to help add a little extra polish to your entries, and after that I’ve found a few links to resources that may be of great assistance to digital builders.

Adding Life into a scene

When building structures or scenery, oftentimes just getting the shapes and the details right is hard enough work on its own. Sometimes the subject of your build is something that would be quite pristine in the real world, but oftentimes in both nature and constructed environments life leaves a mark on the world around it.

Be it cups, boxes, old wheels, tramped-down foliage, or just general clutter, making sure to include these sorts of ‘lived in’ details can help make a model feel less like a model and more like a little picture of something real. As you study your real-world inspiration, keep a look out for these sorts of details and see if you can incorporate them into your build.

Breaking up Repetition

Breaking repetition goes quite hand-in-hand with adding life into a scene, but I find it especially important for digital modeling. One of the nice things about building a digital model is that, if you need to build a five-section bridge you can do almost all the work on just a single section and then copy that as many times as needed to create quite a large model quickly.

With a physical build, the sheer size or magnitude of something made this way could well make up for the repetitious nature of it – you know that though the design of the segments is the same, the builder had to procure and assemble every brick of it. Digital builds can lose a lot of ‘oomph’ that a very impressive physical structure can muster; but they don’t have to suffer this lightly.

Whether it be a large bridge, a multiplatform station, or something as small as a fence, adding details and finding ways to break up the visual repetition of the build can bring a very satisfying depth to any model. Sections of damaged fence, station platforms that are under maintenance, or other ways of bringing a used or unique perspective to otherwise identical or repetitive parts of the structure can go a long way towards making something feel more substantial; digital or not!

Showcase your highlights, show off your clever solutions

Whether you’re building digitally or physically, you may find a situation where you end up spending a significant amount of time solving a build problem that ends up being wildly complicated, incredibly tricky, or just needs a really clever solution… but the end results end up being subtle and something that may be missed.

With so many entries of such high complexity and quality, it is of course possible that these sorts of details or features may end up overlooked (Or it could just be hard for someone seeing only the finished product to understand the hidden depths and complexity!). This is where the WIP aspect of OcTRAINber really can help you show off your entries – take good pictures of your tricky or clever solutions and share them! We’ve had quite a few entries over the years that used some pretty mind blowing build techniques that were well-documented by the builder.

Documenting these also helps serve as a ‘proof of concept’ for certain aspects, especially with digital builds. Even if you have a digital entry, if there’s something complicated involved it may be worth it to include a picture of a test build of the clever solution to show it really works!

Digital Resources:

It’s no secret that digital builders do often feel like it’s hard to get the same attention for their builds that physical builders do. It’s something that we judges work hard to keep in mind, but the fact of the matter is that we can only judge based on the things we see. We have seen many absolutely incredible digital entries over the years, but a lot of otherwise amazing builds end up missing the same level of finesse.

A high-quality LEGO train build, or indeed build in general, can very often be found to have all sorts of extras. Just like a traditional model railroader, LEGO train models tend to go very cross-disciplinary: Well-made decals, custom wheels, custom rods, and other ways of adding those perfect finishing touches. Learning how to add these sorts of finishing touches into a digital model takes both skills and resources that may not be readily available to most people, so one of the things I’d like to do is help provide links to places where people have made these sorts of things available to the community.

LDraw/Stud.io Compatible Parts

There are many digital building programs available, and quite a few which make use of the LDraw Parts Library. If you are using one of these programs, such as Stud.io or LDCad, you can add custom parts to the program using appropriately created files.

BMR Knuckle Couplers

For those of you who want to model your trains with the Kadee Knuckle Couplers offered by BMR, we have the digital parts files available for free in the shop:

https://brickmodelrailroader.shop/products/knuuckle-coupler-ldraw-studio-cad-files

Big Ben Bricks Drivers

Big Ben Bricks has offered a great selection of wheels for a long time, and they offer downloads for the LDraw Parts files for the majority of these wheels. These files can be added to Stud.io as well, though if you want connectivity functionality you will need to add it yourself in the Parts Designer. They are still quite usable without, however.

http://www.bigbenbricks.com/ldraw/ldraw.html

HA Bricks Drivers

In advance of plans to sell injection molded drivers of their own, HA Bricks has made Stud.io files available for a very wide variety of train wheels. These can be found at the link below, and each download has a text file with instructions for how to import the parts into Stud.io using the Parts Designer tool.

https://www.habricks.com/product-categorie/wheels/

Custom Locomotive Rods

While there’s nothing wrong with sticking to standard LEGO liftarms for the rods on your engines, I very often see an array of these liftarms used on a model with a note or comment that they are stand-ins for custom rods that the designer hopes to add in later. Trained Bricks is probably the most popular supplier of well-functioning custom rods for LEGO trains, and conveniently also offers a download pack for the digital files for these rods.

https://trainedbricks.square.site/digital-resources

I hope the digital resources come in handy for you! It’s been very amazing to see the WIP builds posted so far, and I’m quite excited to see what else shows up as we approach the final deadline.

Please remember to have everything submitted in the proper entry threads on our Flickr page no later than October 31, 11:59 PDT!! At that point entries will be closed.

Happy building!

LEGO® News

OcTRAINber 2022 — Rebuilds & Retrofits

August 26, 2022 Chris Stone 1 Comment

Hello again, everybody! October isn’t quite here yet, but it’s just about time to get rolling for this year’s OcTRAINber. We’re going to be making a couple tweaks to the format this year that I’ll explain later in the post, but for now let’s get into the rundown on this year’s theme: “Rebuilds & Retrofits“.

Railroads have had a long history of taking old cars or engines and trying to use them for as long as possible. Railroad equipment is expensive, after all. Old equipment is kept repaired and patched up as best as it can be, but sometimes these old pieces of stock end up being changed for something very different. Locomotives may be altered significantly to help them better fit in a different role, such as a tank engine having its tanks removed and replaced with a tender. Sometimes old passenger cars end up heavily rebuilt for a non-revenue role and go on to serve as Maintenance-of-Way equipment. Some freight cars end up rebuilt as passenger service cars, or stripped down and turned into a bridge.

That, ultimately, is what this year’s OcTRAINber is all about. We’re looking for models of Railroad equipment that has been rebuilt or retrofitted to serve a different or altered function from its original intent. In addition, we’d like to see two LEGO models, one of both the before AND after – show us how the subject has changed!

Hammond Lumber Co.’s 2-6-6-2t #6 was later converted to a tender engine and sold to Southwest Lumber, where it was re-numbered to #12

The Challenge

Ultimately, we’re looking for major changes in the modeled subjects. While a boxcar with friction-bearing trucks getting an upgrade to roller-bearing trucks does indeed count as a retrofit, it’s not a very large change and won’t score many points. What we’re really looking for is something that has been changed to operate in a significantly different way, or something that has been altered to look drastically different.

We realize that this year’s theme requires building two models – but we’re very open to options. There are several acceptable ways to reach this criteria:

1. Build both versions of the model in LEGO Bricks.
2. Build both versions of the model digitally
3. Build one version in LEGO, and one version digitally
4. Build and photograph one version in LEGO bricks, then actually alter it to the second version and photograph that. Both versions need not exist simultaneously; they just need to be photographed and submitted together in a single entry

Southern Pacific removed the engine components from 9010 and rebuilt the nose, turning it into a camera car and re-numbering it to 8799

Rules

Entries must be original models. No stealing. This also means no Mods (thus also no sets), only original MOCs.
One entry per person, per category. You can enter as many categories as you like, but you can only enter one model in each category. We want quality over quantity. So pick your best model and make it shine.
Third party parts are allowed, clone bricks aren’t. We know this can be a thin line, just walk it wisely, and we’ll do our best to judge fairly on this.
We are making no rules for the scale you choose to model in. We are welcoming models of 6, 7, and 8 studs, and anything in between or beyond! However, we appreciate detail and accuracy. Reasonably sized models are usually better for that, but we don’t knock anything or anyone with serious skill.
NEW BUILDS ONLY. We are willing to accept anything unpublished or anything that was not published before August 1st 2022 as new. We want to inspire and promote a challenging build, entering an old model doesn’t quite work in that regard.
Entries MUST be made on our Flickr group in the appropriate thread. This is the ONLY place we will be looking for entries, nowhere else. Sending photos to us on social media or showing us in person does not count as entries! These threads will open on September 1st.
We will be accepting entries from Midnight on September 1st to Midnight on November 1st (meaning October 31st, at 23:59 PDT). Due to the scale of the competition as well as helping efforts to expedite the judging, we’ve opted to start OcTRAINber early instead of having it run long into the holiday season. This also means there will be no extensions this year, so make sure you’re all ready by the end of October!
Digital entries are allowed, and will be competing in the same categories as the physical models. As mentioned before, we are accepting “mixed-media” entries due to requiring two models, so you are welcome to submit one Physical and one Digital model to complete an entry.

A second deck has been added to this New Haven flatcar to facilitate maintenance on the electrified lines

Categories

There will be four categories to enter this year, with a winner for each. There will also be an extra Grand Prize winner, as we’ve done in some previous years, for a total of five prizes.

The Categories are as follows:

1. Steam Locomotives

2. Other Locomotives (E.G. Diesels, Electrics, Rail buses, anything that provides its own motive power)

3. Rolling Stock (E.G. Freight, Passenger, MOW, etc)

4. Buildings and Structures (E.G. repurposed stations, rail cars that have been repurposed as bridges.)

If you are building something that could go in multiple categories, for example a flatcar (rolling stock) that has been repurposed into a bridge (structure), then we’d recommend entering it in the category that best fits what it has been adapted into. In this example the flatcar has been turned into a bridge, and should be entered as a structure.

This ATSF Boxcar was converted into a bridge over a canal

Judging and Scoring

Entries will be judged primarily on these three criteria:

1. Accuracy to Prototype — How well do your models represent their real-life counterparts? Proportions, detailing, and functionality all help out here.

2. WIP Story — Include pictures and information on the real-life counterparts to your build, show the build process, and highlight the differences between the ‘Before’ and ‘After’ versions of your model.

3. Transformation Factor — This is focused on how significant of a change took place. Something like changing the trucks out to reflect a bearing type upgrade will score much lower than something that has been changed to operate or be used in a significantly different or unique way; or has been altered to look drastically different.

As always, keep in mind that OcTRAINber is a ‘quality over quantity’ building event. This means that we encourage (and give higher scores for) higher-quality entries as opposed to several sub-par ones. Build your best, and don’t rush yourself to try to hit something in every category.

While we’ve tried to give several examples for things that will fit into the theme, the examples listed are not exhaustive. We encourage you to explore and find some really amazing things to enter, so if you find something that you feel really grabs the spirit of the theme then go ahead. If it’s something really out there that won’t fit into one of the listed categories, feel free to ask for clarification.

Final Words

The last couple years, the judging for OcTRAINber hasn’t exactly been the quickest, and that’s something we would really like to change this year. November and December are filled with Holidays and train shows, and mixed with the growing number of entries it’s been getting quite difficult to find a good time to get through everything once Thanksgiving starts to hit.

To help alleviate that, for all of you as well as for the judges, instead of extending OcTRAINber into November, we are going to start it earlier this year and will work to have the judging taken care of before the big holiday season starts up. Starting September 1st is certainly change, but we still end it in October, so it totally counts, right?

We will have more articles posted in the coming months with more information as needed.

OcTRAINber has always been fun for us, and we’re excited to see what you all come up with to enter this year. Thank you for reading, and we hope you have as much fun with the event as we do.

Happy building!

NYC’s #5344 Hudson has run both with and without the streamlined panels

About BMR, Contests

OcTRAINber 2021: The Results

March 10, 2022 Chris Stone Leave a comment

Every year, OcTRAINber gets bigger and bigger, with ever more participants entering models of increasingly high quality. It’s been amazing to see all the creative, well-executed models each year, and boy did 2021 bring a LOT of good stuff to look at.

It’s been a busy season for those of us here at BMR, but at last we’ve finally got the results for all of you. Your judges for this year were Cale Leiphart, Chris Stone, and Matt Csenge from the BMR team. There were a lot of very cool Critters to look through, and I’m excited to share which ones have won. Before that, though…

The Prizes

The prizes this year are as follows:

Each of the main category will receive a Circuit Cubes Bluetooth Upgrade+ Kit plus an OcTRAINber Printed Brick printed by BrickForge.

The winner for Best Motorization will be receiving a Studly Trains Tiny Train IR Control Kit donated by LifeLites, plus an OcTRAINber Printed Brick printed by BrickForge..

https://lifelites.com/studly-trains/tiny-train-control-kit

Winner: Bobber Caboose

Trained Bricks: “Katy Caboose”

Cartoon designs do not generally transfer easily into a medium as ‘square’ as LEGO, but Katy Caboose was realized very well. Good work on the shaping of the roof and steps stand out the quickest, but the solid effort put into the rest of the texture detailing is impressive; as is the way Katy’s “mouth” is represented on the doors. Great work, Trained Bricks, and hats off as well for meeting our somewhat tongue-in-cheek challenge to motorize a bobber caboose!

Honorable Mention

The Brick Files: “Proto-Freelance Caboose”

What we loved the most about this little bobber caboose is the amount of texture and detail packed into a small space. This bobber features a full interior that is quite clever. It was certainly a close second for our favorite bobber.

Winner: MOW Rolling Stock

Asperka: “RhB Baudiensttraktor Tm2/2 – 2”

This impressively executed Critter somehow managed to get better each time we looked at it. Asperka managed to fit a Circuit Cubes battery and motor into a small cabin, powering a narrow-gauge drive, and still leave plenty of space in and around the model for all the appropriate detailing. The amount of open space left in the model for tools, and the fact that the cab windows are very minimally obscured, is amazing. Very well done!

Honourable Mentions

MOW turned out to be one of the most creative categories this year. We really sweated the voting on this one, and so we have three models we felt worthy of Honorable Mention.

Alex T: “High Rail Ladder”

MoW equipment in use — It’s silly, it’s tiny, and it’s based on a real prototype. You have to love this absurd little model.

Ewout Rohling: “NSWGR Inspection Bike”

OcTRAINber 2021: NSWGR inspection trike — Such a small model, yet so perfectly captures the details of the real prototype.

Hod Carrier: “The Honey Bucket”

OcTRAINber MOW 08 — Quite possibly the crappiest model in the OcTRAINber competition. The jokes write themselves with this one, and we could not stop laughing. Well played Hod Carrier.

Winner: Industrial Rolling Stock

BigZ31: “21T Coal Wagons”

OcTRAINber 2021 - 21T Powered Mineral Wagon #4

OcTRAINber 2021 - Andrew Barclay Fireless with 21T Wagons

These little 2 axle coal wagons have a huge amount of detail. But what impressed us even more was the motor, battery, and Power Functions receiver used to power the train they make up are so perfectly hidden with them. You would be hard pressed to tell where the mechanical/electronic magic is in the train. Well done.

Honorable Mention

BrickTheBrick: “Wagon with Excavator”

This model would have maybe been a better fit in the MOW category, but we still thought it was great. The wagon is well done, and mini excavator is on point for scale and detail.

Winner: Electric Locomotive

Thomas Reincke: “Ka 4015”

Thomas’ Ka 4015 is deceptively small. It rides low enough to the rails that the buffers are nearly halfway up the locomotive’s body, with great shaping, and also powered by Circuit Cubes – we’re seeing little bit of a trend! We were very impressed by how compact the motorization solution was. The engine sitting so low leaves little room to fit the electronics, but Thomas pulled it off with a very good amount of space left for his cab and crew.

Honorable Mention

Tenderlok: “Coke Quenching Locomotive”

LEGO® Coke Quenching Locomotive (1/33 scale) - 01

Sven aka Tenderlok took the bold step to build a critter in a scale larger than the default mini fig scale we are all used to and the result is a wonderful little electric critter.

Winner: Internal Combustion Locomotive

Ts__/ Thomas: “Köf II DB 322 607-3”

The KöF is perhaps among the most-often built LEGO locomotives, and it’s not hard to see why – it’s a very nice looking engine, and the fact that LEGO themselves own one for shunting work makes it a fun subject to model. With all the many, many KöF out there, it’s hard think of one catching attention the same way something a little more novel might.

With that said, Ts__/ Thomas’s KöF caught all of our attention immediately. The shaping, proportions, detailing, and texturing are all masterfully executed. The engine hood is a nice and slim 3 studs in width, features a tapered nose, and captures the complex yet subtle shapes of the side panels. On top of all of that, it’s powered as well. This model has certainly raised the bar for LEGO KöF builds, and it’s raised it quite high.

Winner: Steam Locomotive

Ewoutro: “Guinness Brewery No. 13”

The Guinness Brewery No. 13 feels just about as “Critter” as a steam engine gets. A narrow-gauge steam engine with the pistons mounted atop the boiler like a steam tractor, it also had special haulage carts it could be lowered into to do shunting work on the broad-gauge rail.

Ewoutro’s rendition of the locomotive is very well done, built to run on narrow gauge track as well as standard LEGO track through the use of a haulage cart, just like the real engine. This dual-mode operation is a very cool detail to see realized in a tiny LEGO model, and though it’s not powered, the execution and engineering put into it is impressive all the same.

Honorable Mention

BritishBricks: “The Bundaberg Fowler”

What a great model. The colors grab your attention right away, but dig deeper and this is a solid locomotive. A unique, inside frame, narrow gauge locomotive with plenty of character and detail, this is a very well presented model.

Winner: Best Motorized Model

Brett Wiebold: “Plymouth DLH 8 Ton #3 ‘PeeWee'”

We had a lot of submissions this year with very impressive and creative motorization implementations. It was very tough to choose a winner.

Brett’s “PeeWee” isn’t the model with the most motors, or the most functions, but it is a very well-executed Critter with a very unique feature: The drive train contains a 2-speed transmission. This transmission understandably means the engine is chock-full of gears and drive axles, in addition to a motor and power solution by Lifelite’s “Studly Trains”. Somehow Brett has managed to incorporate these into the engine detailing so that when you open the hood doors, it feels like you see an engine and not just a cluster of gears. On top of that, behind the front radiator grille he’s included a spinning radiator fan.

This blending of the motorization feature into the aesthetics of the build represents a very smooth and well-realized combination of both function and form, while delivering something novel in a small package. It was a hard-won victory, but “PeeWee” managed to win it.

Final Words

Firstly, we would like to thank you all for participating in OcTRAINber again this year. It’s always great to see how inspired everyone gets, and you too inspire us in turn.

We’d also like to thank you for your patience with the results. OcTRAINber’s been getting a little slower every year – and this year was no exception. It almost didn’t happen this year; with Gerbrand stepping away after OcTRAINber 2020 it took a little bit to find a balance with it again. OcTRAINber is very special to us all, and we wanted to make sure to keep the tradition going.

Looking forward towards OcTRAINber 2022, we are hoping to have this one run much smoother overall and we are also hoping to get the judging finished in a much more timely fashion. We’ve already picked out a theme (Which I for one am quite excited for, look for an announcement in September), and we’ve got ideas for how to get the schedule a little tighter so we can get the judging wrapped up before the mass of Holidays and Shows that eat up the end of the year. We understand that a wait this long is difficult to endure, and it’s on our minds.

Congratulations once more to all the Winners of OcTRAINber 2021. We will be contacting you soon regarding the Prizes.

Building Techniques, Inspiration, Model Design, Models

Getting Started on Scale Model LEGO Trains

October 18, 2020 Chris Stone Leave a comment

Traditional Model Railroading has been called by some the “World’s Greatest Hobby” – and not necessarily out of the normal sort of pride that one tends to have towards their passions. Model Railroading encompasses a very large amount of skills and interests, even beyond just scale modeling – electrical work, carpentry, machining and fabrication, paint, plastic and foam sculpting, and more. A lot has been done in the hobby to help make it easier to get into and make some truly impressive things without requiring an in-depth knowledge or steep learning curve to be learned by a single person, but it can still be very daunting for a person to pick up once they start looking into everything involved.

LEGO Model Railroading is similar to this in a lot of ways. Beyond just building a model that looks good, if you want to design and run a LEGO locomotive you will need to learn a lot more than just good building practices. There’s some dabbling in Technic, learning about gearing, learning about articulation and swing clearances – and that’s just for the locomotives! The amount of topics to learn grows greatly as you expand into a full layout.

People looking to get into LEGO Trains as a modeling hobby have a bit more of a challenge than they would going into something like HO or O Scale stuff – you have to build everything yourself, and LEGO doesn’t sell true Scale model kits. This leaves a bit of a gap for where to start – how can someone just coming in get to a point where they can have and run models that look as good as the custom stuff that caught their eye? This generally seems to be the point where people realize that there is a lot more to learn than there seemed.

Of course, there are always options outside of the LEGO company. There are a lot of great builders in the train community who have been sharing huge amounts of resources and information for years. Custom instructions for LEGO Trains and train-related models are becoming easier to find and many very-high quality ones are available as well, which can also help more with teaching techniques and getting people started with nice detailed models.

Even with these available, there’s always going to be the desire to do something yourself. Maybe what you want isn’t available, maybe you just want to have the satisfaction or the skills to be able to do something like that on your own – and of course, there’s also those who love to learn new things for its own sake.

To help with this, I’d like to do a series covering how to build Scale Model LEGO trains – just the good, fundamental basics. A lot of this information may be common knowledge to more experienced builders, but my hope is to create a good starting point for new people coming into the hobby. By taking the many stages of good design in small, focused chunks we can examine each stage and learn some good practices and methods for dealing with the different phases of the design process. These are good starting points, but they are not necessarily definitive or even the best way to do it – They should let you get some good starting fundamentals. When building a model from instructions or mimicking techniques from more experienced builders, it can be relatively simple to see how something was built, but it’s good to know why it was done that way. Learning the fundamentals behind each of the design choices is a great way to get started towards great models.

That said, let’s cover the first, most fundamental topic of Scale Modeling.

Continue reading →

Models

Gruppo R.202 by Sven Jansen

April 9, 2020 Chris Stone Leave a comment

In the world of LEGO Trains, there are many fantastic models in a wide range of scales. Everything between 1/45-1/55 are common, and the amount of detail to be found in the best of these really can make you wonder if there would be any point, from a detailing perspective, of going to a larger scale than those.

Building scale models with LEGO certainly is a challenge, but as you move up to larger and larger scales it can bring along extra problems, and potentially exacerbate existing issues. I personally tend to look at larger models with a more critical eye than I do smaller ones, as all too often you find that once you get past the spectacle-inspired reaction of “Wow, that model is so big!” you find that there’s not enough detail to really make that model really satiating, or that the shape of the thing feels underdeveloped and doesn’t make good use of the large scale.

The biggest question in my mind when I see a LEGO train (Or anything else, really) built to a larger scale is “Does this model actually need to be this big?”. That is to say, does it make good use of the size? Imagine if you took the design of a stock 6-wide LEGO train and simply built it 50% bigger. The scale has gone up, sure, but if nothing about the quality or depth of detail goes up, it would not be satisfying.

This is where I’d like to bring your attention to a new model by Sven Jansen, also known as Tenderlok, a very talented LEGO train builder who just so happens to build for LGB track instead of the usual LEGO track. This new model is of an old Italian shunting engine, the R.202, in 1/22.5 scale. As with his previous builds, this model truly does make excellent use of the scale it’s built in.

Underneath the fantastic detail work, even just the basic shapes and silhouette of the build feel just right, and especially impressive is the half-plate drop in radius for the smokebox. Another feature that stands out, once you notice it, is the cowling around the front cab windows.

Sven’s model also brings with it many other very interesting features, including independent light control and a working smoke unit. Smoke units in model trains aren’t everybody’s thing, of course, but they are always fun to watch and I really enjoy seeing it here.

This model, like Sven’s other locomotives, really does make excellent use of the scale it’s built in. Yes, this engine could conceivably be modeled in a smaller scale, and perhaps in the right hands even have a comparable number of details included. However, Sven has used the larger size to increase the depth of detail. The mechanisms are, where appropriate, more intricate, better proportioned, and overall more accurate than could be achieved if built smaller.

To me, the most satisfying aspects of this build are in the valve gear and the cab detailing. Both of these are things that are hard to get right in a 1/48 LEGO train – the intricacy of the mechanisms and the fine granularity of the parts involved on the ‘real’ locomotives mean that in 1/48 LEGO, even the best attempts to model these are close approximations and often out of scale. It would be easy to take the level of detail found in a 1/48, 8-wide LEGO train and just make it larger, but Sven’s model has gone a step above that and used the larger scale to achieve a more nicely detailed engine.

The parts of the valve gear near the piston are very similar to what can be done in 1/48 models, but what caught my eye was the detail surrounding the rocker bar and the reversing gear. These parts are very difficult to do as anything more than a loose approximation in a smaller scale, especially once you start dealing with things like Technic axles, pins, and the 3mm rigid hose eating up much more real estate than would be ideal. What a good sight it is to see these features modeled more accurately on Sven’s R.202!

I would highly recommend checking out more of Sven’s work. Each model has been very well detailed and engineered, and I always look forward to seeing them. For me the only problem I have with them is that they always make me think that perhaps I, too, should try to start building locomotives for G-scale track; and I hope that others end up having this same problem as well.

Sven’s Flickr Page
Sven’s YouTube Channel