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Hey,
My latest creation is the new Danish IC4 intercity train. The Danish State
Railways (DSB) has ordered 84 train units from Italian company Ansaldo Breda,
but so far the delivery has been delayed by more than a year for various
reasons. This delay, along with poorly maintained tracks, outdated signalling
systems and old rolling stock, turned 2005 into a disaster for the railway
authorities and operators. The government has promised to increase funds
dramatically, but you can’t really make up for 20 years of neglect over night.
It can only get better in 2006 and we hope to see the IC4 up and running
sometimes later this year.
Anyway, so much for the update on Danish railways, back to the model which is my
first 8-wide in a long time. It features four cars (one low floor), two 9V
engines and closed couplings. The total length is 150 studs (4 feet or 120 cm).
Click the image to go to the
Brickshelf folder.
Details on the construction of the front can be seen
here. It’s really
quite simple, so is the rest of the design. The
tilted roof is
kept in position by rubber bands, it works fine.
The design of the closed coupling is very simple and ordinary using rubber bands and a “moving”
pivot point. I’ve rounded the ends of the cars to make the “interaction” between
the cars more smooth in curves, it works well in practice, see this
movie. More
pictures of the coupling and movies of the train running in the
folder.
Reference pictures of the first IC4 train doing test runs in Denmark can be
found in this folder
(which doesn’t seem to get moderated ever...). Older reference pictures
here
That’s all. Please let me know what you think!
See you,
Esben
Copenhagen, Denmark
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In lugnet.trains, Esben Kolind wrote:
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Hey,
My latest creation is the new Danish IC4 intercity train. • --SNIP--
That’s all. Please let me know what you think!
See you,
Esben
Copenhagen, Denmark
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Hi Esben,
Once again you have demonstrated your mastery of curved shapes. It is a
particularly difficult nose shape to represent in Lego (typical of Italian high
speed trains I think) but you have managed it very well. I particularly love
your mixing of curved slopes and inverse slopes which I first saw done by you in
the Qld Tilt Train (my favourite of yours). The close-coupling technique reminds
me of Jason Allemann’s O-train solution which is my personal favourite.
While I really like this train though, I can’t help but feel that using the same
techniques etc. you could actually have made a more succesful seven-wide train.
This is not just my width preference talking but it seems to me that the curved
nose would have better ratios at seven-wide (or even six) and would thus show
off your curves more succesfully.
Overall though, width aside, this is an excellent design of a very difficult
prototype. I’d love to see what you make of a
Virgin Pendolino.
Tim
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Esben Kolind wrote:
> My latest creation is the new Danish IC4 intercity train.
Nice model. I'll have to get around to build couplings like the one you use
here.
Play well,
Jacob
--
Getting started with LEGO CAD on Linux:
http://www.ldraw.org/download/start/linux/
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