Friday, 27 January 2012
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Lego 3180 Octan Tanker Truck
My favourite small Lego City set in recent years is the Lego 3180 Octan Tanker Truck. Not only does it look good, it also have plenty of potential for altering and conversion.
I have made several of the sets so wanted to make some variations and 3 different tractor units are seen below
In the photo below, the unit at the back is a standard 2 axle unit as supplied. The unit lower right has been converted to a 3 axle unit as they are much more common hauling tanker trailers here in the UK, I like the slightly stockier look to it. The unit lower left is designed to be a narrow cab tug for moving trailers around a yard and was inspired by the unit supplied in the new Maersk container train set. It will have work to do soon as I hope to have an oil depot on my layout, but it may need an extension to accomodate it
In addition to the potential for various different trucks, the trailer components are ripe for conversion into rail wagons. At present I have three 4 wheel tankers and one bogie tanker. The 4 wheel wagons are simply made by mounting on standard 4 wheel chassis (from Toy Story train sets I got for only £20 each from Asda!). They are finished off with colour matched ladders on the end and gauges underneath
They make great companions to the 4 wheel Octan tanker supplied in the Cargo train set and help to add some variety.
My favourite small Lego City set in recent years is the Lego 3180 Octan Tanker Truck. Not only does it look good, it also have plenty of potential for altering and conversion.
I have made several of the sets so wanted to make some variations and 3 different tractor units are seen below
In the photo below, the unit at the back is a standard 2 axle unit as supplied. The unit lower right has been converted to a 3 axle unit as they are much more common hauling tanker trailers here in the UK, I like the slightly stockier look to it. The unit lower left is designed to be a narrow cab tug for moving trailers around a yard and was inspired by the unit supplied in the new Maersk container train set. It will have work to do soon as I hope to have an oil depot on my layout, but it may need an extension to accomodate it
In addition to the potential for various different trucks, the trailer components are ripe for conversion into rail wagons. At present I have three 4 wheel tankers and one bogie tanker. The 4 wheel wagons are simply made by mounting on standard 4 wheel chassis (from Toy Story train sets I got for only £20 each from Asda!). They are finished off with colour matched ladders on the end and gauges underneath
They make great companions to the 4 wheel Octan tanker supplied in the Cargo train set and help to add some variety.
Unfortunately the set is sold out now on the Lego UK site so best buy some soon it your interested. They are still widely available from Amazon etc so they can still be bought for a good price.
Brick on...........................
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
The MOW Engineers wagons
One aspect of real railways that particularly interests me are engineers trains which are used for maintaining the railways and infrastructure. It was therefore a foregone conclusion that space would be found on the layout for a small yard
My favourite aspect to this is the rolling stock and I am particularly pleased with the Catfish Hopper wagons. I got the inspiration from this design on Railbricks but have altered it so that it now has a 7 stud wide hopper rather than 8 stud on the original design. They really capture the character of the real wagons, a credit to the original design. I have made the 3 so far in red, black and grey. The black is correct but the red ones were a darker shade in real life (gulf red). I have not been able to amass enough of the correct type of maroon brick to build one so far but the search continues......................
This wagon was built from the new parts contained in the new Lego 4434 Tipper Truck Lorry. It makes a pretty good representation of a standard metal sided open wagon
One aspect of real railways that particularly interests me are engineers trains which are used for maintaining the railways and infrastructure. It was therefore a foregone conclusion that space would be found on the layout for a small yard
My favourite aspect to this is the rolling stock and I am particularly pleased with the Catfish Hopper wagons. I got the inspiration from this design on Railbricks but have altered it so that it now has a 7 stud wide hopper rather than 8 stud on the original design. They really capture the character of the real wagons, a credit to the original design. I have made the 3 so far in red, black and grey. The black is correct but the red ones were a darker shade in real life (gulf red). I have not been able to amass enough of the correct type of maroon brick to build one so far but the search continues......................
This wagon was built from the new parts contained in the new Lego 4434 Tipper Truck Lorry. It makes a pretty good representation of a standard metal sided open wagon
Finally I have some older style low sided wagons for transporting spent ballast, spoil or waste.
The other aspect to this is the yard and to help fill it I am amassing a range of road/rail vehicles togethr with some construction materieals and track (at least its a use for all the space curved track that I have). The mound of meterial grows as I get inspiration and I am particularly pleased with some pipe crates that I have assembled - (these will be detailed in another update soon)
There's more engineers wagons to come but unfortunately my priority has to be the docks and station on the layout - more progress reports soon
Monday, 23 January 2012
Brickville Town Harbour - The Docks Take Shape
I have made a start on the Harbour which will take up a large portion of the layout. The photo below shows the first two baseplates
As can be seen, the section incorporates the overhead gantry crane supplied in the 7839 train set, shown here transfering a Cargo Train Container from rail to lorry. The dock road plates will be raised up when on display and the plan at present is to use 32 x 8 grey baseplates on their sides as the dock walls. Detail will be added to these
I decided to make use of the Lego flexible tracks and I quite like the result as they appear to have check rails inside of the running rails as often seen on quay sides
The ship moored to the right is the one supplied in Legos rather stupidly designed set 4645. Even my daughter was angry at how rubbish the design of this set is, firstly as the crane pivot is fixed so the boat has to be moved around to unload it and secondly because the quay side is a water level. I got the set half price from Wilkinsons during their Christmas-eve sale so have built the boat and lorry, both of which I quite like, the rest i have put in the parts bin!
This the smaller dock area, the main part will feature a Maersk Container ship - made from 2 Lego 10155 sets combined to make a longer wider ship. Along side this will be a container crane for unloading and transfering to road or rail,
This will feature on one of my next updates, look out for more soon!
I have made a start on the Harbour which will take up a large portion of the layout. The photo below shows the first two baseplates
As can be seen, the section incorporates the overhead gantry crane supplied in the 7839 train set, shown here transfering a Cargo Train Container from rail to lorry. The dock road plates will be raised up when on display and the plan at present is to use 32 x 8 grey baseplates on their sides as the dock walls. Detail will be added to these
I decided to make use of the Lego flexible tracks and I quite like the result as they appear to have check rails inside of the running rails as often seen on quay sides
The ship moored to the right is the one supplied in Legos rather stupidly designed set 4645. Even my daughter was angry at how rubbish the design of this set is, firstly as the crane pivot is fixed so the boat has to be moved around to unload it and secondly because the quay side is a water level. I got the set half price from Wilkinsons during their Christmas-eve sale so have built the boat and lorry, both of which I quite like, the rest i have put in the parts bin!
This the smaller dock area, the main part will feature a Maersk Container ship - made from 2 Lego 10155 sets combined to make a longer wider ship. Along side this will be a container crane for unloading and transfering to road or rail,
This will feature on one of my next updates, look out for more soon!
Motorizing the Lego 4841 Harry Potter Hogwarts Express Engine
My daughter saved up and bought the Lego 4841 set and kept pestering me to motorize it so that it could be run alongside our other PF remote control trains (Maersk, cargo, passenger, emerald night etc). Argos had an offer on the Lego 7938 passenger train set so I got that for the motorizing parts - motor bogie, IR receiver and battery box. I tried to make the conversion as simple as possible so it would be easy to convert back to its original state
Firstly, the tender. The original tender is a perfect size for the PF battery box. The conversion mainly consisted of stripping out the interior & putting new black edging around the top instead of the black door surround. Just need to finish it off with some small black bricks to represent coal.
The motor bogie was simply clipped into the engine in place of the original rear bogie/truck. I decided to route the cable up through one of the holes in the centre of the base plate which meant I had to remove a red plate which was originally above the hole. The cable was then threaded through into the cab.
The final set was to find a home for the IR receiver. It is positioned in the cab, raised up so that the top grey part of the receiver is level with the top of the cab sides. I had to strip out the original cab interior to make room & a new roof was necessary with a hole in to allow the IR detector part to be exposed. Finally the excess wiring was tucked in the space under the raised receiver. Although the receiver is a little low it still works well and semms to resond better than the yellow cargo train engine which often seems to ignore speed change commands.
More updates soon - the start of the Docks and how work is progressing on other goods facilities
My daughter saved up and bought the Lego 4841 set and kept pestering me to motorize it so that it could be run alongside our other PF remote control trains (Maersk, cargo, passenger, emerald night etc). Argos had an offer on the Lego 7938 passenger train set so I got that for the motorizing parts - motor bogie, IR receiver and battery box. I tried to make the conversion as simple as possible so it would be easy to convert back to its original state
Firstly, the tender. The original tender is a perfect size for the PF battery box. The conversion mainly consisted of stripping out the interior & putting new black edging around the top instead of the black door surround. Just need to finish it off with some small black bricks to represent coal.
The motor bogie was simply clipped into the engine in place of the original rear bogie/truck. I decided to route the cable up through one of the holes in the centre of the base plate which meant I had to remove a red plate which was originally above the hole. The cable was then threaded through into the cab.
The final set was to find a home for the IR receiver. It is positioned in the cab, raised up so that the top grey part of the receiver is level with the top of the cab sides. I had to strip out the original cab interior to make room & a new roof was necessary with a hole in to allow the IR detector part to be exposed. Finally the excess wiring was tucked in the space under the raised receiver. Although the receiver is a little low it still works well and semms to resond better than the yellow cargo train engine which often seems to ignore speed change commands.
More updates soon - the start of the Docks and how work is progressing on other goods facilities
Sunday, 22 January 2012
Brickville - the Hogwarts Connection
The building of Brickville is being done with the help of my 8 year old daughter, a massive Harry Potter fan. It was therefore enevitable that Harry would feature on the layout.
It was decided that in the back left hand corner of the layout we would construct a tunnel on top of which we would put a model of Hogwarts school.
The area covers 4 x 48 stud square grey baseplates arranged in a square. It is fortunate that we live near a Lego shops so we can buy lots of grey bricks from the 'pick-a-brick' wall to build the rock faces. The photo above shows 2 of the 48 stud plates together with some of the baseplates which will site along side
Hagrids hut can be seen, it sits in one corner slightly lower than the rest of the Castle will site. The castle comprises Lego sets 4842 and battle for Hogwarts set 4867 (seen in the photo but not in its proper position) and together look quite grand in the elevated position
In the above photo further Harry Potter influencies can be seen, Howarts Extress (recently motorised) is leaving the tunnel over a level crossing and Gringotts bank is on the corner of the high street
Work continues on adding the necessary little details & street furniture to help the scene come alive
More updates soon - motorizing Hogwarts express and a look at how the docks are progressing
The building of Brickville is being done with the help of my 8 year old daughter, a massive Harry Potter fan. It was therefore enevitable that Harry would feature on the layout.
It was decided that in the back left hand corner of the layout we would construct a tunnel on top of which we would put a model of Hogwarts school.
The area covers 4 x 48 stud square grey baseplates arranged in a square. It is fortunate that we live near a Lego shops so we can buy lots of grey bricks from the 'pick-a-brick' wall to build the rock faces. The photo above shows 2 of the 48 stud plates together with some of the baseplates which will site along side
Hagrids hut can be seen, it sits in one corner slightly lower than the rest of the Castle will site. The castle comprises Lego sets 4842 and battle for Hogwarts set 4867 (seen in the photo but not in its proper position) and together look quite grand in the elevated position
In the above photo further Harry Potter influencies can be seen, Howarts Extress (recently motorised) is leaving the tunnel over a level crossing and Gringotts bank is on the corner of the high street
Work continues on adding the necessary little details & street furniture to help the scene come alive
More updates soon - motorizing Hogwarts express and a look at how the docks are progressing
Introducing Brickville Town Harbour
- a Lego trains model railway layout which I am continuing to develop.
I built a small layout for the Milton Keynes Model Railway Society annual show Febuary 2011 as someone else had to pull out at short notice.
This has spurred me on to build a larger more detailed layout It is appearing at the MKMRS 2012 show at Bletchley which has focused my attention on getting it finished to a presentable standard (details here).My plans are to continue developing the layout and adding more MOC's, lights, motorised points, and working container crane as time (and money!) permits
As an introduction to brickville, the layout features a beach and harbour along the front with the main part of the layout raised up behind. Buildings along the front include a Lego Creator 5770 lighthouse and a Lifeboat station. This was mostly built from parts from a 7208 Firestation set I got half price from Argos. The lighthouse will be raised up from its current position as I feel its too low at the nmoment but otherwise I think its coming on quite well
I am building the layout in sections, most being on standard 32 stud square baseplates which simply clip together with Technic pins
Lots more photos to come!
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