Tag Archives: 2022

OcTRAINber 2022: The Results

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__’s BR05-003

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’s Pontarlier Rotary Snow Plough

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

Hod Carrier’s Articulated Railcar

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!

OcTRAINber 2022 — Rebuilds & Retrofits

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