Brick.ie The Irish Association for Adult Fans of LEGO®

LEGO has had a number of rail systems over the years. While the track gauge hasn't changed in the past few decades the power source has. The 12V system had a powered third rail in the centre of the tracks. The popular 9V system which was only discontinued a few years ago carried the current via a metal strip in the rails. The LEGO 9V motors picked up power from the tracks and were controlled, not by remote control, but by a single controller connected to the tracks. These are the tracks you saw in Dun Laoghaire and Blackrock. One drawback with 9V systems is that as the equipment has been discontinued, tracks, motors and controllers need to be acquired in the secondary markets, e.g. ebay or bricklink.com. These are not cheap. There is a (US) company starting to make fully compatiblle aluminium tracks again and an internet search should find this.

The more recent sets as you've noted used batteries and there is a LEGO rechargeable battery pack available.

Thought you might be interested in the DART I'm working on for the model railway show in a couple of weeks.

Lego DART by LostCarPark, on Flickr

This is the older DART livery. I hope to do the new one some day, but the colours are kinda tricky (there is a Lego colour that's just right for the middle stripe, but there are very few parts available).

Lego DART by LostCarPark, on Flickr

Comments and suggestions appreciated.

James

Given the interest by the model building community into the latest Irish rail locomotive to be produced, the 201 I decided to reproduce the early livery version of this locomotive

http://www.flickr.com/photos/66136586@N04/6090157383/in/photostream

I've also added it to the image gallery.

This MOC is inspired by the Land Rover Tangis used by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Although I haven’t tried to copy the exact positioning of aspects of the armoured vehicles, (for example the lights, wing mirrors, signage) I hoped to capture a decent enough reflection of the real thing, keeping in mind it had to be 4-studs wide.

The backgr

Someone pointed me at this video of a very clever construction for a sliding puzzle game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UvkaHcOxSI

The same guy makes amazing technic machines. Genius.

James

You've probably already seen the pictures on Flickr and/or Eurobricks. My latest MOC is another German steam engine, a class 65 this time. It's a big tank-engine that's fully PF-powered; battery, receiver, M-motor and two sets of lights all fit within the boiler and coal bunker.

I've been working on a new project for a while already, and after a lot of thinking, testing, building, rebuilding and even more testing, building and some more rebuilding, I'm getting to the point where things start functioning and working. The factory will be on public display for the first time at LegoWorld Zwolle 2010.

Short explanation of the project:
The goal of this project is to build a lego factory totally different from the ones you can see here:

• Lego car factory
• Lego aircraft factory

• Compact, this means that I'm building a more compact factory then the given examples of projects done by others. In my opinion those factories are despite their perfect functionality to large to what would be absolutely needed.

I've updated my Irish rail 071 locomotive to better incorporate the old CIE/Irish rail colour scheme. Still not perfect but a bit better than the previous version which was perhaps a bit too streamlined and better suited to other more modern looking locomotives. Both versions in the image gallery.

I built this bridge for the Technic Challenge over on Lego.com. Turns out I quite like building bridges; I've built four in two weeks!
This one I thought wasn't good enough to enter so I'm posting it now.

I'll post my other designs here later.
Is anyone else here entering this competition?

Here's my follow-up to Ernie and Bert, as seen at yesterday's meet-up: