Tag Archives: 2021

OcTRAINber 2021 “Critters”

Hello train builders. October is here and you may have noticed that we’ve been a bit quiet on our annual OcTRAINber build challenge event this year. Life as, it sometime does, has kept us busy with things other than LEGO® trains. However, we didn’t want the community to miss this years OcTRAINber. So, we decided that for the fifth year in a row, OcTRAINber must go on!

Last years OcTRAINber, “Dioramas, Dioramas Everywhere”, was a big one. Both in scope, and work for builders and us judging. Since we have not had the big pre announcement of theme, and run up to October allowing builders to plan big projects ahead of time, we have decided this year to head in the opposite direction and pick a theme much smaller in scope.

This years theme will be “Critters”.

“Sweet Toot” a critter style locomotive built by Plymouth for the Domino Sugar co. Now preserved at the B&O Railroad Museum.

Loosely defined, a critter is a light-duty or industrial switching locomotive between 300 to 1000 h.p. weighing less than 100 tons, although most tip the scales at less than half that weight. These small locomotives are usually built to fill a specific need for each customer. This results in these tiny engines often having an odd look about them. They can be found in most industrial settings, such as a steel mill, but can be seen hauling coal at a power plant, clay at a brick factory, as well as junk yards and lumber mills. Some are used by the railroads as shop switchers to move dead locomotives around for maintenance or repair. Critters have been manufactured in standard or narrow gauge. Critters can be diesel electric like their “big brothers”, some are pure electric running on trolly poles or even battery power, and others are gas mechanical with a transmission.

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Reading shop switcher 1251 certainly fits the spirit of the critter locomotive.

While smaller steam locomotives are not typically thought of as “Critters”, there are abundant examples throughout the steam era that fit the critter mold perfectly, so we’re going to throw them in as well.

A battery-powered shop switcher at the Chessie System/C&O terminal in Huntington, West Virginia is seen here during May of 1984. The little critter was built by General Electric in 1917 for the Chesapeake & Ohio and today resides at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum. Rob Kitchen photo.

But wait, there is more. Locomotives are fun, but rolling stock can be great too. And what use is a locomotive if you have nothing to pull with it? So we adding small rolling stock categories in as well. This can be anything from a mine cart, to a small caboose. Any type of rolling stock that is a bit smaller than usual.

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Lehigh Valley 2606 is a classic “Bobber” style caboose. Short in length and with only for wheels. These cabooses were not the best riding cars, but they are iconic of early 20th century railroading.

Like the previous installments of OcTRAINber, the idea of this building challenge is to actually challenge builders. To get us out of our comfort zones. We Trainheads build a lot of trains, but we too often focus on the big fancy trains. The big freight locomotives and the first class passenger trains. But there is a whole world of interesting railroad subjects that while smaller in stature, are just as hard working and important. This is your mission, to build the little unsung heroes of the train world. Unleash the Critters!

Rules

Ok, we do have some rules to go over first. Our intent is to keep things simple here and let you have as much creative freedom as possible, but do have to keep things orderly and fair, so bear with us.

  • 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 2021 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 do not count as entries! These threads will open on October 1st.
  • We will be accepting entries from Midnight on October 1st to Midnight on November 15th (meaning November 14th, at 23:59 PDT). That’s right, you have six weeks of OcTRAINber. Why the late deadline? Well in the past we’ve announced the theme ahead of time, giving builders time to plan and order parts if needed. Since we did not have a pre announcement this year, were giving you all an extra two weeks bast the end of October to get your entries in.
  • Digital entries are allowed. Keep in mind though that digital entries are competing in the same categories as real physical models. So to be fair we will be looking at digital models as if they are genuine physical models. Ask yourself, can this be built in real life? If not, then it may not fair well in judging. This is where showing your “work in progress” will really be important.

Categories

This year there will be six categories you can enter in. Three for locomotives, and three for rolling stock.

Locomotives

Any locomotive weighing less than 100 tons and producing less than 1,000hp, not typically used in main line revenue service. Think industrial, mining, shop switcher. Think small.

  • Steam – 0-6-0 or smaller. Usually a tank style locomotive. Sometimes fireless. We are also accepting compressed air powered locomotives here.
  • Internal Combustion – Anything using an internal combustion’s engine for power. This can be gasoline, diesel, propane, distillate, etc.
  • Electric – Any locomotive using straight electric power, either from 3rd rail, overhead wire, or by on board batteries.
0-4-0 No. 1 is a compressed air locomotive built by the H.K. Porter co. of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Rolling Stock

Any non mainline revenue equipment, typically shorter than 30ft in length, and often running on less than 8 wheels. If it’s big and carries freight or passengers, then it’s not what we’re looking for.

  • Bobber Caboose – Bobber cabooses were short 4 wheel cabooses.
  • MOW – Maintenance of Way equipment. The rolling stock used to maintain the railroad. And yes we know some MOW equipment can be huge, but that’s not what we’re looking for. Think speeder car, track tamper, dump cart, tie crane, etc.
  • Industrial – Any car used in an industrial setting such as a factory, mill, ship yard, mine, etc.
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Used in Maintenance of Way “MOW” service, this Central New Jersey speeder car would transport work crews around the railroad to help maintain track, signals, and other line side items.
This industrial style car was used to transfer coal to coke ovens in a Coke Plant.

Best Motorized Model

We will have a special award for best motorized model. This can can be from any one of the above categories (we can’t wait to see how you try to motorize a bobber caboose), so all entries are automatically entered for this. Assuming of corse you have some type of motorization. Motorization is not a requirement though for the main six categories.

Some Notes on Entries

Keep in mind that OcTRAINber is a ‘quality over quantity’-building event. This means that we rather encourage you to build one amazing build than several sub-par ones. Build your best, not the most.

We’ve also tried to give you a wide berth in the definitions for each category. We want to encourage you to explore as much as possible and come up with some really interesting stuff. But we also know that it could be easy to stretch those definitions into something not really in the spirit of the theme. Sure an EMD SW1 could technically fit the letter of the rules, but is it in the spirit of the theme. Remember to think small. The theme is critters, and we want to see your best, small modeling.

Just like previous years, we want to encourage you to show off your Work in Progress or “WIPs”, so we can make OcTRAINber a month that is all about trains within the Lego community. Therefore, extra credit will be given to the best WIP stories and/or pictures during the event.

Points

Points will be awarded in three categories: Credibility, WIP Story, and Build.

First of all, credibility of the prototype. This means we will be looking at how much the build represents the real life prototype. If you are sending in a fantasy model, we will look at how credible the build is; would it fit in, does the backstory make sense?

Second of all, the WIP story. This refers to both showing off your building process, but also to how and why you decided to model a certain prototype. The better the story and the more updates you give and the more elaborate your building story is, the better.

Third and last but no less important, the build itself. How detailed is it, how accurate is it, does it look like what it is intended to look like. Does it use pieces in a clever way. Does it use clever build techniques. Does it make every ones jaw drop in amazement.

Prizes & Winners

We haven’t finalized on prizes yet, but since this is a building challenge, we will for sure have some, just like in previous years.

We will pick the winners after we have announced the official close of the competition and have stopped accepting new entries, which will be some time after November 15th. Once the judges (who, just like last year, will be announced in an upcoming article) have come to a sound conclusion regarding the winners, we will post one final article announcing them, and then we will be in contact with those winners regarding their prizes.

Final Words

For the past four years, OcTRAINber has been organized by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, a.k.a. Raised. Unfortunately due to a growing family life and career commitments Gerbrand felt the need to step down from organizing this year’s event. We are extremely grateful here at BMR for all the hard work Gerbrand has put into OcTRAINber and we will miss his presence in this year’s challenge. With out him, OcTRAINber would not be what it is today. So let’s all give Gerbrand a big thank you making OcTRAINber the event we all know and love.

Thank you Gerbrand, and we hope some day you find the time to once again have a hand in this challenge. Until then, we will do our best to continue what you started and keep it awesome.

So, that’s it for now. OcTRAINber has officially started. Now the only thing you have to do is start building, and unleash the critters! Happy OcTRAINber!

Gerbrand on the left , and Cale Leiphart on the right, visiting the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in 2019.

LEGO® FAN EVENTS ARE COMING BACK AND LGMS NOW HAS A WEBSITE

Hello everyone. The world has spent the last year in lockdowns and isolation while we’ve been fighting a global pandemic. All our favorite LEGO® Fan Events have either been postponed or moved online. And while we have made the best of the situation and persevered, we are happy to say that in the United State at least, public evens are starting to return. Today we’re going to highlight a few of those coming in the next few weeks.

L Gauge Modular System

New official LGMS logo.

Before we get into the events, we wanted to make a quick note of what is going on with the L-Gauge Modular System, LGMS for short, since the standard will be featured in several of the events coming up.

LGMS now has a dedicated website!

https://lgms.org

On the LGMS website you will find the latest updates to the standard, information on upcoming events where an LGMS layout is being organized, links to various LGMS resources, and articles on LGMS. Of course we will still cover important LGMS info here on Brick Model Railroader as well, but the LGMS website will be a great tool as the standard continues to grow.

Nebraska Brick Days-Omaha 2021

Brick Days – Omaha is a family friendly event featuring 15,000 square feet of amazing custom creations, games, and interactive activities, all built from LEGO bricks by LEGO enthusiasts from across the Midwest. With this being our flagship event, Brick Days holds nothing back. You will see the newest creations from many different builders, the best prizes, and the newest up-to-date swag from the most popular vendors within LEGO® community. 

https://brickdays.com

This year Brick Days-Omaha will be held on July 24th & 25th, at the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs, IA.

Photo from the 2019 Brick Days event.

BMR attended this even in 2019 and had a really great time. I will be raveling back there again this year, though I will not have the PennLUG layout coming with me. I still very much look forward to seeing the event, catching up with old friends, and meeting new train fans. Look for me to be hanging around the Northern Illinois LEGO Train Club layout with a few models to show off.

BrickFair Virginia 2021

BrickFair Viginia is one of the premier LEGO® fan events in North America, bringing together hundred of LEGO builders and their creations. Held every year in Chantilly, Virginia, the event returns this year on July 28th to August 1st.

https://www.brickfair.com/VA/

Monty’s Trains layout from Brickfair 2019

This year will be the first time an L-Gauge Modular Standard (LGMS) collaborative layout make an appearance at the event.

Final LGMS Layout Plan for BrickFair 2021.

Several clubs and individuals will be participating in this layout, including myself with my Red Lion Station layout. A big shout out goes to Monty Smith for organizing this for the 2021 event. I’m really looking forward to running some trains on this.

Brick Slopes 2021

BrickSlopes is proud to return to the Mountain America Expo Center for their 2021 EVENT. After being forced to cancel the 2020 event, they hope you are too. The event will be held on August 26th- 28th 2021.

http://blog.brickslopes.com

Brick Slopes is excited to announce that it is putting on its first LGMS train display this year. Don’t have a train? No worries, buildings, scenery, and just about anything city can be displayed next to some train tracks! Just as long as its made to the LGMS standard.

HOW DO YOU JOIN IN THE FUN!

When you register your MOCs on the BrickSlopes website, select city and train as the theme. Then feel free to reach out to Brad Rowley so they can find the best place to put your layout on the loop! If you have any ideas, suggestions, or just want to share, send Brad a PM! The time is closing fast, so get those MOCs ready!

BMR Store Shipping

One final note. As the BMR Store shipping department (that would be me) is going to be on the road the next two weeks attending Nebraska Brick Days and Brickfair Virginia, I will not be shipping orders until I return. The store will remain open so you can place orders, and download our Knuckle Coupler Cad Models and Knuckle Coupler Conversion Instructions, but any orders requiring shipping will not be shipped until I return on August 2nd.

Thank You, and I hope to see you at Nebraska Brick Days or BrickFair.

Cale Leiphart

BMR