Category Archives: Building Techniques

Building Techniques and How To

Building Techniques, History, Inspiration, Model Design

Can I have Instructions?

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Lately on Social Media platforms, there has been an uptick in “Can I have building instructions for…” type requests. While some of these requests are very specific, and the answer from other builders is usually “You’ll have to design it yourself,” there are sources available for a number of train related building instructions.

Following other designer’s instructions is a great way to learn different building techniques and trends. While it’s sometimes frustrating to see an amazing build and immediately want to build one yourself, it’s often better to step back, assess your skills, and start small. I’d wager to guess that most of us who currently design our own models started by following official LEGO instructions. After a while, we would modify those builds, adding our own touches (my first “designed” train was a modification of the My Own Train line from back in 2001). After modifying official models for a bit, we’d start experimenting with the techniques we’d learned, and we’d begin designing our own builds.

The following are some sources (other than buying sets) of train related building instructions that may help builders get started. Some of these are older resources, but the techniques displayed are as valid today as they were when they were originally assembled.

First print of BMR’s PS-1 Boxcar Premium Instructions.

First, of course, is our own Brick Model Railroader Premium Instructions. Designed by Cale Leiphart and Glenn Holland, these models are in the 8-wide scale, designed specifically for builders looking for prototype realism in their models. Instructions are printed in book form, and include any custom parts needed for the builds.

Next, The LEGO Group, on their Customer Service website, offer Downloadable Instructions for official sets. Not all sets are available, but this is a great resource if you are looking for just the instructions for current or recently retired sets. Some older sets are also available, but again, not everything is there. Instructions are provided as downloadable PDF files.

Two other sites also offer instructions of official LEGO models. These sites include some of the company’s older sets, which may be of interest to builders wishing to delve into the history of LEGO trains and building techniques. Brick Instructions.com includes downloadable PDF files of instructions, or onscreen image files that a builder can scroll through.

The second site, Peeron.com has scans of instructions from as far back as 1955. Peeron was THE fan-created database of LEGO sets twenty years ago, and still contains a huge amount of information, including set inventories and catalog scans.

On the fan side of things, there are a number of resources for building instructions.

Jake McKee’s Getting Started With LEGO Trains.

Back in 2004, Jake McKee, who used to liaison between the LEGO Group and the fan community, wrote Getting Started with LEGO Trains. Published by No Starch Press, the book included a history of LEGO Trains, as well as building instructions for a diesel locomotive and a number of freight cars. Though out of print, Getting Started with LEGO Trains can still be found at a number of used booksellers.

No Starch Press also publishes a number of other LEGO related books, including the new The LEGO Trains Book by Holger Matthes. Available in both print and PDF form, the book includes tips for different building techniques, as well as some step-by-step instructions. Glenn Holland reviewed the book for Brick Model Railroader back in October.

RAILBRICKS Issue #1

A third publication, this time in magazine form, was started back in 2007 by Jeremy Spurgeon. RAILBRICKS published 6 issues, in PDF and Print On Demand format, through August of 2009. In 2010 the magazine was revived with Jeremy passing editorial duties to Elroy Davis. The volunteer team of authors and content creators that made up the RAILBRICKS team published another 9 issues, ending publication in July of 2014. Each issue of the magazine included building instructions for things like locomotives, rolling stock, or scenery.  An archive of the RAILBRICKS magazines is available here on the BMR website where each issue can be downloaded in PDF format. Print issues of the magazine can also still be purchased from MagCloud.

In addition to publications, a number of builders offer instructions of their designs via their BrickLink shops.

A search for “Custom Instructions” on BrickLink turned up shops selling instructions for locomotives, rolling stock, scenery, and modular buildings.

BrickLink Online Marketplace

One of the largest offerings of instructions is Anthony Sava’s SRW Locomotive Works. His designs includes steam and diesel locomotives, as well as passenger and freight cars. I just recently finished building his Light Mikado, and can recommend his instructions as clear and easy to follow.

Bricks Northwest offers a number of diesel locomotives, including CSX, Canadian National, and Conrail liveries.

For the fans of the Emerald Night set, Zac’s Brick Place sells instruction sets for custom coaches in the Emerald Night color scheme.

For those who like high speed rail, LT12V in Italy sells instructions for three different passenger trains.

Next, Brick City Depot has a nice offering of rail buildings, trains, and maintenance of way equipment.

The BrickLink shops listed above are by no means the complete list. They are just a few of the instructions available from fans that I found with a little searching.

Brick Instructions Website

Finally, there are a number of fan sites out there that offer instructions as well.

One of my favorites is the L-Guage wiki. Instructions for ballasted track, roads, viaducts and more are available as downloadable PDF files.

A similarly named site, LGauge, offers a large amount of instructions for freight cars, as well as few diesel locomotives and small scenery pieces. The instructions can be followed online in HTML format, or downloaded as PDF files.

Michael Gale, of the L-Guage wiki, also has custom instructions for sale on his Brick Dimensions website. These include both passenger and freight models.

Like BrickLink, this small list of sites was found with just a quick search on Google. I’m sure there are other sites out there with similar offerings

Instructions are awesome, and while there are many available, nothing really beats just sitting down and experimenting. Don’t be discouraged if your initial builds don’t work out they way you think they should, and don’t compare yourself to builders who have a couple of decades of experience. Remember that we all started at the same point. Follow the instructions for a while, then have fun striking out on your own design path!

Building Techniques, Models

Make way for Maintenance of Way!

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Flickr user de-marco has created an amazing little railroad maintenance vehicle.  In particular, the detail of the cab is stunning and uses an interesting offsetting technique.

Want to build this for yourself? de-marco was kind enough to share building instructions via this YouTube video! You can even find the parts list on Rebrickable.

It turns out that de-marco is skilled at making other LEGO vehicles. Visit his flickr account for a world of automotive excitement!

 

Building Techniques, Decals

StickyLife – A Review

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In the brick-built train hobby, one of the often asked questions revolves around how or where to create custom decals for decorating our models with our favorite railroad liveries. Many options exist, including using traditional O scale decals, printing your own on decal paper using a home ink-jet printer, or, like we do for the BMR Premium Instruction sets, use a 3rd party printer like OKBrickWorks.

One difficulty that I’ve had over the years is finding proper decals with white lettering for the cars that I build. I’m a fan of the fallen-flag Rutland Railroad, which operated in Vermont and New York until the early 1960s. Many of their cars, and almost all of their steam locomotives, were lettered in silver or white paint on black backgrounds. While modeling decals for the locomotives are commercially available in compatible sizes for my LEGO trains, I’ve always had trouble finding decent freight car decals.

A few weeks ago, I came across the website StickyLife.com. StickyLife allows you to create a variety of customized items, including bumper stickers, magnets, and vinyl decals. Originally I had thought to use the site to create lettering for my 1:8 scale Live Steam flatcar, but then I wondered if it would be possible to create decals for my LEGO cars as well.

The following is a walk through of the process, and a review of the final product.

Continue reading StickyLife – A Review →

Building Techniques, Model Design

When is a LEGO® Train Not A LEGO® Train Anymore?

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Crossing The Purity Line.

If you you’ve been following the LEGO Train Fan Club Facebook group recently you probably have seen the ongoing discussion on Mike Moon’s 3D printed car bodies for LEGO trains. If you haven’t, take a read through here.

Mike’s original post presented his 3D printed trolley car body designed to fit on a LEGO brick built train base. It has since ignited a discussion about what is and is not a LEGO train, and what techniques are acceptable to the community and what ones are a step too far.

Brick Model Railroader’s own ball bearing equipped wheel sets, are certainly not pure LEGO. But are they acceptable in the LEGO train hobby?

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Building Techniques, Model Design

Magnets and Electricity.. That’s a Power Couple

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Today I’m bringing you some sweet new prototype technology from our good friends at 4DBrix. Tom Lowa was at Brickworld recently to show off something he’s been cooking up, and I have to say, it’s a pretty sweet idea. I’ve been emailing Tom about the concept and here is the information they gave me.

4DBrix has engineered a way to transmit power via the magnetic couplings on train cars. A short video is posted below:

It’s a pretty ingenious idea. For those that enjoy building passenger trains with detailed interiors (and lights) this is a great way to eliminate those ugly wires between the ends of cars. It also eliminates the need for bulky connectors between cars, which can be difficult to plug in and are also unsightly.

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Building Techniques, Model Design

Supercapacitor Power Packs

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As an electrical engineer, I have always found lithium batteries to be…. amusing. They’re extremely volatile; if overcharged, they explode. If over-discharged, they explode. If charged too quickly, they explode. If discharged too quickly, they explode. If punctured, they explode. If they get too hot, they explode. If they get too cold, they simply don’t work. Think back to the recent debacle of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 battery woes. But yet, these are the best batteries that are currently mass produced. Almost everyone carries one in their pocket and frequently holds it close to their face. For applications where the energy density (energy stored per volume) or the total energy stored (in Watt-hours) isn’t important, there is an alternative storage media that might be of interest to my fellow model train fans. Enter supercapacitors.

Not quite the same thing.

What follows isn’t for the electronically faint of heart. Accidentally short circuiting an alkaline battery or similar for a few seconds isn’t going to cause much harm. Short circuiting a bank of supercapacitors will melt wires and turn your supercapacitors into charcoal in no time. Be smart.

A supercapacitor is different than a battery in several important but sometimes subtle ways. For a model train, some of these differences are to our advantage, others are not. First off, when a battery is discharged from 100% to 0%, the voltage is fairly consistent. The difference between the full and empty voltages and the rate at which it falls depends on the type of battery. For example, a NiMh battery is about 1.45V full, and 1.2V empty. A capacitor is different; when empty, it is 0V. The “full” voltage is whatever you charge it to. Different capacitors have different maximum voltage ratings. When discharged, the voltage falls from the charge voltage to 0V. Most supercapacitors are rated for either 2.5V or 2.7V. Similar to batteries, putting multiple capacitors in series is how you get the desired voltage capacity. For example, a 9V system would need 4 2.5V/2.7V supercapacitors in series. When the system is charged up to 9V, the voltage will be split evenly with 2.25V each on the 4 capacitors.

The second major difference between the two technologies is the speed at which they can be charged. NiMh and LiPo batteries are usually limited to some fraction of their amp-hour capacity for their charge rate. Meaning, a 2000mAh NiMh battery can be safely charged at 1-2A. Of course, this varies based on manufacturer specs, and charging them faster will degrade their capacity faster, but that is neither here nor there. A supercapacitor has a much higher safe charge/discharge rate. The small ones I like to use in my locomotives are safe up to 3.3A! Much higher rated ones exist too, I built an experimental system that used 100F supercaps rated up to 35A. Additionally, a rechargeable battery typically is only rated for a few thousand charge cycles. A supercap can be charged several hundred thousand times.

The major downside to supercapacitors is energy density, or how much power you can store per volume. My choice supercaps are 4mWh/cm^3 whereas a 2000mAh NiMh battery is about 350mWh/cm^3. So they’re less dense by about a factor of 100, useless, right? No! If all we need to do is get over an unpowered track section, for example an unpowered ME Models R104 180 degree curve, we only need about 10 seconds of run time. So if we have an equal volume of supercaps to AA batteries, our run length will be 1/100th: an AA battery set lasts several hours, call it 2h on the conservative side. That means an equally sized supercap bank will run for 1.2 minutes, plenty of time for zipping through a short unpowered track section!

Some of the difficulty in implementing a supercap bank is limiting the charge current. From the perspective of your power supply, capacitors are more or less a 0 ohm short circuit which means the theoretical charge current will be infinite. You can limit this with a resistor, but realistically this is unfeasible. A resistor spec’ed correctly would have to be very physically large to allow for high heat dissipation. It’d get hot enough to melt LEGO (ask me how I know)! Additionally, as the capacitors charge, the charge rate slows down exponentially. Luckily, there are other methods available to limit the current. I found a cheap, small product on eBay that fits the bill perfectly: a CC/CV regulator. Not only can this thing limit the voltage to the bank, but it can also limit the current.

With a CC/CV regulator set to never charge past the supercap’s rated voltage and current, the next step is regulating the output of the supercaps. Because we don’t want our train to slow down as the supercap bank discharges, we need a DC/DC regulator. There are some nice cheap ones on eBay for about $1.50 that just so happen to be exactly 3 studs wide.

Above is my Amtrak B32-8WH being retrofitted with 10x 15F 2.7V supercaps. The small circuit board on the left is the CC/CV charger. The wires going down through the center lead to the fuel tank, which is where the DC-DC regulator, bridge rectifier, and bluetooth motor controller all live.
Complete circuit diagram of my supercap system. The bypass diode on the CC/CV charger was later removed.

I’ve also made a system with 10x 100F supercaps. The added capacity doesn’t really add any utility over 10F-20F supercaps, so all of my recent systems are 15F. One of the downsides to charging the supercaps as quickly as possible is the sizing of the power supply required to handle the peak current, especially when you have multiple locomotives on the same circuit. Luckily for me, my work has stacks of 24V 6.5A power supplies lying around. Unfortunately for you, they are not cheap new. A used PC power supply can be rigged up to perform similarly, but as always, the exercise is left to the reader…

Building Techniques, Model Design

Building a Steam Locomotive in LEGO Part 3 – Scale and Non-LEGO Elements

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This is the third installment of a continuing series detailing my progress on modelling the Union Pacific’s 9000 class locomotive in LEGO.

 

Part 1

Part 2

In this installment, we will discuss the scale my model will use, and why I use it, as well as custom and aftermarket steam locomotive parts.

First, the issue of scale. Model train hobbyists tend to consider scale before anything else because, in general, scale is rigidly established for most model railroads. Most people are familiar with the common model railroad scales, such as HO, O or N. There are countless others,  but they generally have one thing in common – their scale is fixed based upon the track gauge. That is, the distance between the inside edges of the top of the rails. In the LEGO train world, that scale is not so rigidly fixed. LEGO never intended their trains to be part of a model railroad system, so they did not design their track and trains to be in the same scale. The first LEGO train system (not considering earlier wooden and plastic trains without a track system or power) was introduced in 1966. The rails were blue, and the ties white, but the gauge has remained the same in all subsequent LEGO train systems, roughly 38mm. between the inside of the rails. The locomotives and rolling stock were 6 studs wide, roughly 6 feet wide if we considered the rails to be standard gauge. That is obviously not a realistic scale for width but that does not make it somehow ‘wrong’ of course. Many locomotives in the real world are more like 11 feet in width, about 11 studs in LEGO in a strict track gauge equation. There are many excellent models out there in this scale, but it is not typical for a LEGO train layout, and it is not the scale we use in my club.

Continue reading Building a Steam Locomotive in LEGO Part 3 – Scale and Non-LEGO Elements →

Building Techniques, Layout Design

Curved Track – What’s available, and what to Expect

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I was recently contacted by a newer member of the LEGO Train community asking for information on the various types of curve tracks used in PennLUG. My response was a lengthy email, which has been adapted to fit an article format, and will be the content of this article.

Before I begin, I should briefly touch on some of the standards for LEGO track configurations. More information can be found on Michael Gale’s L-Gauge.org. Standard spacing practices for most layouts (including my own PennLUG) use a 16-stud spacing between the centerlines of two parallel tracks. There are two main reasons for this standard. One, it was set by LEGO, when they produced the 9-volt switch tracks. Using a turnout, a return curve, and an extra length of straight track, you get two even and parallel tracks. Two, this yields a convenient way to build track: two lines evenly spaced on one baseplate.

Two parallel tracks and a standard LEGO turnout demonstrating the 16 stud centerline distance.
Every LEGO train enthusiast has probably, at some point, owned a loop of standard LEGO track. Any number of straight sections closed off by the small curve tracks you’d find in any 9-volt of Power Functions set. These tracks are known as “R40”,  as they have a radius of 40 studs.

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Building Techniques, Model Design

Decals For LEGO Trains: The Vinyl Option

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In my first article in my series on decals for LEGO® trains, I covered some popular model RR manufacturer’s who make decals suitable for use with LEGO trains. This time I want to highlight one of the options for making your own custom decals for LEGO trains, vinyl decals. This is a newer option that I’ve come across but it offers some great possibilities.

The story of how Maci’s Monograms got side tracked into LEGO decals.

This all started some time ago when I came across a post on Facebook about some decals that LOLUG – Lincoln/Omaha LEGO User Group had made using cut vinyl. My friend and fellow train builder Nate Flood is a member of LOLUG and he quickly brought me up to speed on them. As it turns out, Nate’s daughter Maci is the one who produced the decals, and she has started her own business for the purpose.

When you order vinyl decals from Maci’s Monograms, you get the decals, a nice printed instruction sheet showing you how to apply them, and a little thank you note. It makes for a great presentation when you open the package. Locomotive NOT included.

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Building Techniques, Inspiration, Model Design

Building an European Railcar Part 2 – The Design

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Last time, I spoke about how to start modeling a typical European style goods railcar. I have been speaking at length about all kind of fancy ways of making sure you understand your prototype. I hope you have been making notes because today we will immediately dive into the fun part: Building! Let’s just take off where we left now, shall we?

Step 4. Choosing your materials

After the scale has been set, it’s time to decide which part will be essential for your design. This might sound silly, but in my opinion every train model has 1 defining part (or technique, meaning several parts combined) around which the whole model is being build. In this case, I settled on the Lego Chair in brown, since I had a lot of them and wanted to get rid of them without selling. Also, the idea was that brown would nicely mimick the rust on the prototype (And trust me, some of them were far worse off than the one you just saw). Turning them into a railcar seemed to be the right solution. It didn’t work out as planned however…

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