Finally, after having this idea stuck in a drawer for far too long, we would like to introduce the BMR podcast: a fun and entertaining hour with, surprise, surprise, LEGO trains!
Not only was the pilot episode longer, but the amount of podcast guests was a lot more than we were planning for the standard episodes. The builders featured in the pilot episode were:
UrbanErwin
Glenn Holland
Raised
Tijn
Big Daedy
Aloisvanesterhazy
Enrico
Thanks to them the pilot episode was a great success and a fun 1.5 hours, and hopefully the start of a fun new project.
Schedule
The podcast itself will be a hour long. The schedule for the podcast will be the following: 5 minutes of short introduction, 30-40 minutes of discussing certain topics, 10-15 minutes of answering question of our viewers. During the entire podcast there will be a live chat were viewers are able to ask multiple questions they would like to be answered by us. .
We will try to post new podcast episodes on a regular basis, aiming for once monthly. We may need to modify or deviate from this schedule, but for now this is our plan.
New episodes will be announced at least three days in advance along with the date and times for different time zones. This information will also be shared across our social media pages.
The Crew and Guests
The crew will always consist of at least one or two BMR team members. Enrico will always be present as our host, since the podcast is his brain child. However, we will have more BMR members involved to keep a fresh and different cast of for each episode.
We will also be inviting other builders from across the world to join our podcasts and join in the conversation.
Topics
We will try like change the topics around just like the crew members, and will be top priority. Topics of discussion will include BMR specific subjects, but also Lego community and train related items. We don’t want to give away to much, since were currently working on multiple fun and interesting topics.
We are excited to move forward with our podcast an we hope you are excited to watch. Please stay tuned for the notification for the next episode.
BMR: Tell us a little bit about yourself and your MOCs.
My name is Isaac, I live in the UK and have been back-and-fourth with Lego for as long as I can remember! Back when I was 13 I started exploring Stop-Motion Animation, and what better resource could I hope for than the mountain of Lego I’d accumulated as a kid! I must have caught the Lego bug without knowing it, because once out and started University, I realized I was still very much hooked on building Lego.
The MOCs I’ve built are all British locomotives & rolling stock, 6-wide. This is quite an off proportion for a lot of people, but I’ve found it to have become a unique (and slightly cheaper) style that I’m extremely happy with!
BMR: What got you started with LEGO trains?
I went to University in York, where I worked at the National Railway Museum for the best part of a year. Legends such as Mallard and Flying Scotsman were regularly visiting or on display, so it didn’t take long for the railway bug from my childhood to take hold again. By that point I already had a lot of the Lego, so the rest was a no-brainer!
Isaac’s 4468 Mallard speeding on the track.
BMR: What is your build process for making a new MOC?
It can depend on the build. For a lot of my bigger projects, like
Mallard or the Gresley P2, I designed the model on LDraw before printing a
parts list for Bricklink. In other cases I will attempt to engineer a
locomotive with my existing pieces. This is how the LSWR O2, Midland ‘Spinner’
4-2-2 and Class 48 Diesel all came about.
BMR: What is your go-to place for inspiration?
There are many – the museum was certainly a great place – but If I had to name one other, there’s a chap on Youtube called Chris Eden-Green who creates mini-documentary profiles on classes of Steam Locomotive. They’re accessible, well-shot and delight informative, and I’ve got many ideas for locomotives to build from them. I hope you don’t mind the shout-out!
BMR: What are your latest projects?
My builds are on hiatus at the moment as I take on a full-time job and work on several animation projects. By no means am I leaving the hobby, but I do think a break from the same thing can be healty once in a while! That said, I’ve been working on some rather interesting stop-motion puppets using Lego pieces as the base for the skeleton. Purists might not like it though as it involves a lot of snipping and drilling!
Purist might want to close there eyes.
BMR: What is your dream project?
Some kind of representation of Dawlish, but in Lego. A mainline running along a sea-wall beneath dramatic cliffs, then entering a small seaside town with a station before disappearing into a tunnel. Maybe throw in a castle on the clifftop for good measure. Probably impractical and definitely heavy on the wallet, but… What a sight it would be!
BMR: You have a lot of cool and interesting YouTube video’s about your MOCs. What inspired you to make these?
Thank you very much! I’ve been making YouTube videos for about 10 years now, so when the Lego Trains came along it was by far the best way for me to share them with people. Film/video making has always been in competition with Lego for my greatest passion, so combining the two was always going to be inevitable.
BMR: What is your favorite show that you have attended with your MOCs so far?
Shildon Brick Show (At NRM Locomotion, Shildon) was where I met the
wonderful fellas at the LNUR. I’ve been to many shows with them since and it’s
always been a wonderful time, but it doesn’t beat where it all began.
A few of Isaac builds at the Yorkshire Brick Show 2018.
If you want to see more of Isaac builds check out the following links:
De Nederlandse Modelspoordagen (Dutch Model Railway Days) is one of the biggest model railway events in The Netherlands. It has more than 150 participants, ranging from small sellers to huge model displays. The event attracts thousands of visitors each year. I have been a regular at this show since 2018. Around August every year I tend to get get a few phone calls from the organizers of the event asking me if I’m able to participate again, which I of course do! The organizers of this event feel, like us, that LEGO is also a real model railway scale (and we all know that they’re right!) and a hot topic to attract youngsters into the hobby of scale railroading.
The Setup:
This year Raised and a few other builders tagged along for the ride, which was very convenient because we were given a quiet big space in the venue. The setup this year contained 2 layouts and a TrixBrix stand. The two layouts consisted of a 6-wide LEGO scale layout, and a 8 wide 1:45 scaled layout. The 6-wide layout consisted of Gerard Salden his LWR (Locomotive Workshop Rotterdam) and Station Zwolle by Victor and Fred Beijert. Both showed that you can build incredible and very large models in ‘official’ LEGO scale. The 8-wide layout consisted of Bahnbetriebswerk Neukirche (its final convention before being torn down) and Raised’s Dutch landscape layout.
Raised his layout from above.
The TrixBrix stand had a demonstration layout for there new automation project and a couple of TV screens showing videos of Bananenbuurman. He was also responsible for handing out flyers and giving more information to the visitors. Lastly, during the entire weekend Tamas de Groot was there to help out with our trains and to run around a couple of his 6-wide MOCs.
TrixBrix stand. One of Tamas de Groot his models, a BR 44.
The tables were inconveniently deep, but that was mostly because they are normally used as market tables for the sales people (none of us have any modular tables as of yet… we should really do something about that). So we had to had climb on the tables to get to a train, which of course always stopped somewhere which you just can’t reach from the front of the layout. If you’re just as flexible as me, it’s a really fun thing to do every two hours.
Backdrop:
Just like we discussed in our LegoWorld 2019 report we used a backdrop for our layout again. We normally use white foamboards. However at this event our layout was positioned in such a way that a few black curtains gave a nice clean black background. We of course took advantage of this by organizing a few photoshoots. Everything went well until Enrico pulled a little to hard on the curtains and almost killed Raised. But hey, that could happen to everyone, right?
One of the many photoshoots we organised during that event.Those large inconveniently deep tables did gave you the ability to have a birds-eye view of the layout.
Running trains?
Tradition stipulates there has to be one or two accidents at the show. My TEE showed a couple of design problems which have been fixed by now. One was that the streamlining of the motor unit would fall off and land right underneath the train, which resulted in several derailments. UrbanErwin’s mat 64 liked to lose at least 1 part for every lap that it ran. Oh, and we have to mention Raised his amazing magic trick with his NS 6400. 1 second it was on a siding, the next second it was just gone. At the exact same time, at the floor next to the layout a big pile of red and white bricks did appear. I’m still figuring out how it managed to do that.
UrbanErwin his Mat 64 resting after a long day at the event.
And, gone was Raised his NS 6400
And there was the pile of red-white bricks
Recognizability
We did learn a very important lesson this event. During this 2 day long event we handed out hundreds of business cards and flyers. We had to restock our BMR business cards once every hour. The reason behind this is quit simple: model railroad fans want to look up more information at home, they want to find more information about layouts, products etc. Besides the fact that we had LEGO and a few flyers and business cards, they didn’t really have a clue what we do in the hobby. The amount of questions we had to answer for visitors was just staggering, but a lot of fun to do.
We feel the solution for this problem is adding more information about ourselves to the overall layout, like most of the old-school model railroaders already do, we found out. We do always have some information boards at our LegoWorld layout but those are always provided by the organization. Adding those on a regular base to the layout and maybe even a BMR banner gives visitors a lot more information and, hopefully turn more people towards the dark side, which is also known as LEGO trains!
More trains!
But the wait is over, here are some pictures and a
video of our trains in action.
I would like to thank UrbanErwin for trusting us with his mat 64, which is still being held hostage at Raised’s house. It does seem to enjoy itself quite a lot there. Oh, and a thanks to the amazing organization for having us, we can’t wait until next year!
The Trans Europ Express, or TEE, is a magical name when it comes to railroading and pioneer in high speed, and international and luxury travel. Today we dive into the history around this concept and the train which made this concept a reality. We’ll look at not one but two LEGO versions of the TEE, in this collaboration article between Holger Matthes and myself.
VT 11.5 – A star is born.
In the
mid-1950s, the European economy picked up speed again, and the western European
countries began to establish new relationships after the devastation of the
Second World War. In this context, eight European rail companies decided to
introduce a joint train offer: the Trans-Europ-Express, TEE for short. The
modern express train network was intended to connect the European metropolises
with one another and, in particular, offer the wealthy business travelers of
the economic miracle an alternative to car and air transport. For this new type
of traffic system, the Deutsche Bundesbahn procured several multiple units with
type VT 11.5 railcars, which were put into operation in June 1957, later also
locomotive-covered trains were used. With this decision, DB made history. For
15 years the German diesel multiple units were used as TEE and shaped the image
of international express train traffic like no other train set.
601 001 in Friedrichshafen Stadt, 24.04.1983 . Foto credits go to ( Thomas Reincke )
Symbol of a Europe without borders
Close
cooperation with its European neighbors was of great importance to the Deutsche
Bundesbahn right from the start. An example of this is the European freight
wagon community “EUROP”, which was initially founded in 1951 with the
French State Railways, creating an extensive, freely available European freight
wagon pool. Three years later, the DB agreed with most of the European railway
companies that in future only two wagon classes would be used, which would be
comfortably adjusted.
Another
result of the growing (western) European cooperation was the establishment of
the European express train network TEE. Development began in 1954 with the
founding of the Trans-Europ-Express Commission based in The Hague. The founding
members were the State Railways of Belgium (NMBS / SNCB), the Netherlands (NS),
the Federal Republic of Germany (DB), France (SNCF), Italy (FS), Luxembourg
(CFL) and Switzerland (SBB); later the Spanish State Railways (RENFE) also
joined.
Since the
railway administrations were unable to agree on the introduction of a standard
vehicle, they were limited to introducing the trains under the common name and
logo TEE and defining several binding criteria:
Due
to the low degree of electrification in the individual countries, the TEE
trains should initially run as diesel multiple units.
They
should reach a top speed of 140 km/h.
Only
the 1st car class should be offered (at least 120 seats and no more than three
seats per row).
The
trains should have exclusive on-board catering.
There
should be spaces for passport and customs control while driving.
The
trains should be painted uniformly in a wine red / beige color dress (in
Germany RAL 3005 / RAL 1001).
Some countries did not have their own vehicles built for TEE traffic. In DB’s opinion, the requirements set by the TEE Commission could only be met with a new development. That was the birth of one of the most striking rail vehicles of its time, the VT 11.5.
Everybody who exhibits at a convention or show with their LEGO models is probably asked this question multiple times: “How do you get your trains running so good?” There are multiple answers to this question, and it’s difficult and annoying to summarize them all. At conventions, I probably answered this question 10 times an hour, so I decided to compile it into an article: a small list with tips and tricks to make your trains run better.
Control Systems
There multiple control systems in for LEGO trains. For the sake of this article I will skip the old 12V system. The 9V system is one of the most reliable in the LEGO world. Plug them in, turn the dial, and it goes. The biggest problem with the system is that it’s been decommissioned around 15 years ago. So, the prices are getting quite high and parts are difficult to come by. Beside that, it’s one of the most reliable and easiest to use.
The Power Function system was introduced back around 2007. Let’s not get into the complicated history, but in short, the system used a receiver and a remote. The first version of the receiver had a very complicated fail system intended to make sure no child (or adult) was able to overload the train. By having that fail system, the older PF receivers aren’t that useful for powering trains. Newer versions of the PF receiver’s including the V2 version could handle more power. The biggest problem of PF is that it uses infra-red, which has only got a range of around 3-4 meters.
Using a different receiver isn’t the only option you have when using the PF system. There are multiple third-party options. Including Sbrick and PFx brick. These third-party options give the option to drive your train by using Bluetooth instead of infra-red (with PFx offering both). Therefore, you have more range than the 3-4 meters infrared has. Secondly, there are more options for setting up the drive abilities to achieve greater realism for your trains. It’s difficult to describe that in one article, so I’ll leave a couple of links down below to websites that provide more information.
Powered Up is the newest option for powering your models. I don’t have a lot of specific tips and tricks for this system but I highly recommend using the “The Lego Train Project” control software.
Ball Bearings
Ball bearings are small metal rings that make your trains wheels roll with almost negligible friction. Because of this, the wagons ride smoother and don’t put up as much resistance behind your locomotive. Therefore, your locomotive can pull more wagons at a higher speed.
I personally use the MR52ZZ ball bearing. There easy to come by ad specialize stores and online website. If you want to safe time and energy. BMR provides fully assembled sets.
Weight
One of the biggest problems that train builders face is that trains have problems with friction. A good example is the official Lego Christmas Train (10254), the trains looks beautiful but the train can’t run at high speed. The reason for this is quite simple, the engine itself is light so it’s not able to grip the rails and get enough traction.
A simple solution for this is making your locomotive heavier. For this there are multiple solutions. Here are some that I know off and have used in the past:
Battery box: One of the easiest options is placing the battery box on top of the motor. This provides enough weight for the motor to get enough traction, biggest problem is that most of the locomotives don’t have enough room for the battery box to be on top of the motor. This usually works best with a PF train motor or similar setup.
Boat weights: LEGO has made a couple of weights in the past for their boats, one of the best to use for trains is part 73843.
Spare change: Tape some rolls of spare change together and place them on top of the motor.
Weights for fishing rods: These are small and easy to come by.
Gerard Salden rebuilding his “FLying Dutchman” Vectron. This model is a great example that even in small moc’s you can use weights.
The finished model, the model uses multiple weights for fishing rods and it’s thereby able to pull rater large trains compared to it size.
Rubber Bands
The second method for gaining traction is using small rubber bands. By placing small and thin rubber band around BBB (Big Ben Brick) wheels, for example, give the wheels more grip with the track. There are different rubber bands you can use. I personally use old bicycle tires (since I live in The Netherlands they’re are easy to come by here). I cut them in small pieces which can be easily placed around a BBB wheel.
The inside of old bicycle tires create more traction for your models who use BBB wheels.
Illegal Tricks
Reader be warned: unconventional techniques lie ahead. The main reason I call these techniques “illegal” is that there is possibility to damage your LEGO.
Glue: Yes, glue might be one of the most hated things to use with LEGO. It has pros and cons, but sometimes LEGO itself does not have enough clutch power. So, glue may be a good option.
Silicone spray: silicone spray is corrosive to Lego so it’s dangerous to use with Lego. But if you use caution you can use it as lubricated with Technic gears and make them run smoother.
Editor recommendation: I prefer Labelle 107 lubricating oil, which is safe for plastic. – Glenn
For more information, I redirect you to the following websites:
The date is February 2019. I was become a bit bored with building landscapes and infrastructure for my Bahnbetriebswerk [https://brickmodelrailroader.com/index.php/2019/06/06/the-design-of-bhw-neukirche-by-enrico-lussi/]. I wanted to build something different, a locomotive that would be a real “working horse”. It took me three weeks from the design to the building of not just one but a total of three locomotives. In this article I will take you readers into the design process and how I was able to design and build in such a short time.
I was spending every “Lego building”
time that I had into my Bahnbetriebswerk. Which is something that isn’t that
unusual when you build such a huge layout. The problem was that I was getting
bored with the Bahnbetriebswerk. To get some renewed energy back into the hobby
I decided that I would spend all my free time for three weeks in building a
locomotive. By doing this I would get new inspiration and energy for the
Bahnbetriebswerk.
But how do you decide which
engine is best to build?
I decided to separate the three weeks into three phases (each week one phase). The first would be the research, the second the design, and the third the actual building. But first, a bit of history.
The “workshop” table with a couple of my MOC’s during trains day at Brick King. From left to right: ICM 4001 “Koploper” NS2454, NS 2459, NS 2412. That workshop became the inspiration for this article.
History
The NS 2400 [WIKI LINKJE] was
a diesel electric series locomotive built for the Dutch Railways in the 1950’s.
They were used from 1954 until 1991. They were designed and build by Alsthom in
France. The first 16 engines where painted light blue, the rest of the series
was brown and from 1971 they got the famous Dutch yellow and gray color scheme.
In 1991 all of them were either sold or scraped.
Several of them ended up in Belgium, Saudi Arabia, France and Italy. After
their service abroad, several came back home again. In total there a 6 still in
the Netherlands, they are owned and used by Dutch Railway museums . The numbers
of those 6 are as follows: 2412, 2424, 2454, 2459, 2498, 2530.
The light blue NS 2412, the blue colors is really discolored by the son in this picture, yes the son doesn’t only discolor Lego, but trains to. Beside the NS 2412 is the NS 2019 a locomotive which is imported from the USA to the Netherlands.
The Research Process
The “normal” research process that I do for a train takes around a month. The reason that this time I was able to do the research in just one week was the fact that I already had accumulated information for a long time. I already had a lot of detail pictures on my hard drive, and a few books with Technic information about the locomotives. And to top it all Raised was able to provide me with a scaled drawing that I was able to get to the scale I built (1:45 for the win!!!). Also, since several of these loco’s are currently used in a lot of Railway museums in the Netherlands the ability of seeing these locomotives in acting is just an hour drive from my home for me.
Since I already had a lot of the information I needed at hand, I was able to start the project quick and with ease. For the readers that are wondering, “why do you need all that research for a Lego train?”, the answer is quite easy, I try to build a “copy” of the real-life version in Lego. Because you’re building a copy you need to transfer each detail into Lego, if you miss a detail, it won’t become an exact copy. And beside that people like Raised and my other fellow LUG members won’t stop criticizing my locomotives if they miss a detail 😉
This picture really shows how the squire looking design has some strange and unique curves.
So, 1 week down, 2 to go.
The Design Process
My normal design progress contains a lot of trial and error in LDD (Lego digital designer). For a change however I wanted to use a different design process, something Raised and UrbanErwin swore by. By getting designs of the original locomotive in scale 1:45 I was able to work out the sizes and scale of the locomotives. Besides that, it provides a perfect “blueprint”. The original design plan was in scale 1:400, Raised was kind enough to scale them to 1:45 by using Photoshop and then I was able to print them out on A3 paper.
I decided to build a prototype by using the scaled designs of the locomotive and all the bricks I had in storage, colors I had in storage were mostly black, dark bluish grey (DBG) and Light Bluish Grey (LBG). Because I wasn’t restricted to colors I could experiment as much as I wanted until I finally had a design I was satisfied with. Rainbow designs are the best. The best thing about this is that you can get a quick 3D model which shows how the engine is going to look. I really recommend doing this! You get a quick good look at how your model is going to look and it definitely helps with the Bricklink part later.
The difficult thing about the
design of the NS 2400 is that it looks really squire, but it has a lot of
strange and unique curves and beside that in scale both “noses” are 5 width and
believe me that is not a fun with to build (more about that later).
But there was one problem. It
took me around 4 days the design the locomotive. However I wasn’t satisfied
with the nose; it looks like a simple design, but it truly isn’t. The nose has
4 lights in it that all have a size that’s difficult to build in Lego if you
try to build exactly to scale. Second was the height; the nose is now 6 bricks
high but in 1:45 scale it should be around 5 bricks, but the amazing Martijn
decided to help me out by quickly designing a prototype nose in LDD. He couldn’t
change the height of the nose, but he was able to help with the difficult
shape.
The real life version and the Lego model, there a couple of details that don’t match. And I promise I will change that…. one day.
I still had 8 days left for the building progress, building itself wasn’t the problem, but the shipping time however, was.
Building progress.
I decided to build 3 different
locomotives. They each are based on a locomotive that is preserved in a museum
in the Netherlands and by building 3 I was able to build one in each color scheme
that the locomotives had, being light blue, brown and dark gray-yellow.
I won’t take you through the entire Brick Link progress, but I got to mention that I was fortunate enough that I was able to purchase all the parts from Brick Link stores which shipped quickly. After 3 days of waiting patiently the first orders started to arrive, but there was a problem, something little called college… I had a very important week of exams, so I couldn’t build for most of the 8 days that I had left, losing most of the days. I only was able to start Friday 16:00, (meaning I had until Monday evening to finish 3 locomotives), after I finished my exam and rushed to the metro to get to the closest train station. After watching the trains arriving and departing, I got on my train that would take me home. 18:00. Let’s get this party started.
In just 3 hours I was able to get 80% done of the brown version(2459) but I was still missing a Bricklink order. Luckily the last final and very important order arrived Saturday morning. And then the marathon really began. The reason I started with the brown version is simple: The parts of the brown version arrived first.
For power there was a big problem. There wasn’t a lot of room inside the engine to place an IR receiver and a battery box. Placing the battery box was already tricky, however, I was able to hide the battery box by using a clever trick and thus placing most of the battery box inside the cabin. So, I had 2 options, Powered Up or SBrick (there are more options out there, but I don’t use/have the laying around). A difficult decision to make, but why make the decision to go for only one? Since I was making 3 locomotives, way not use both! So, the brown one (2459) has 2 pf train motors a reachable battery box and a SBrick. The blue (2412) and yellow-gray (2454) have 2 powered up motors and battery box.
This picture shows how much “space” there really is in my NS 2400 design. And yes that’s a rubber band holding the pf wires together.
And then, finally, Monday evening!
Did I make it? Yes, I did. But was I completely satisfied with the result? Not
totally: The undersides use simple parts, and really miss a lot of details. I
still haven’t got around to finish it. But I promise, one day I will get to it
and I will let you guys know!
So, that’s it for now. Three weeks and three new locomotives later I was finished. But it was a great journey and I hope that I was able to take you to the journey and hopefully inspire you to build! Because that’s the goal of this article, to tell you that you don’t need that months and months or even years and years before you finish your MOC; just three weeks is enough to have a great time!
Three weeks, three locomotives, do I need to say more?
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