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.

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 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 😉

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.

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.

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!