Subject:
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Re: 9V Train Motor Being Discontinued?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Wed, 5 Apr 2006 02:06:18 GMT
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Viewed:
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3998 times
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In lugnet.trains, Rafe Donahue wrote:
> Eric Kingsley wrote:
>
> > Sure post anything that you feel would be helpful.
>
> Ok, I'll add my $0.02 to the pile.
Hey, I have $0.02 here is my take.
> Summary: Lego trains are the reason there are now 100,000 Lego bricks in
> my Lego room upstairs.
I’m with you here. In 2002 I went to my first Brickfest. At that point I had
just about no bricks and no Lego room. After that I started with castle but
still did not have much in the way of bricks or a need for a Lego room. I was
avoiding the Lego trains because I knew all about the train bug. But in 2004 I
bought my first train and set up a Xmas display at home. The bug bit me… Since
then I have spent so much money on Lego that I stopped keeping track because I
did not like the numbers. You know, what you don’t know won’t hurt you. Any way
I now have a Lego room.
> Details: When I was a little kid in Wisconsin in the 1970s, we had HO
> trains in the basement (didn't everybody?).
I to had trains in our house when I was a kid. My dad had Lionel, my brother had
American Flyer and they gave me HO. My first town was made from paper that I
folded into buildings. We never had bricks in my house. I would only get to
build with Lego when I visited friends who had them. I thought Lego was the
coolest of all building sets. As far as hobby trains go I made layouts at Xmas
time some of them were more then 20 feet long. In fact, one year I talked my
parents into letting me take down the wall between our living room and dining
room so I could build the mega layout. Once I left home I never did a layout
again until my Lego 2004 Xmas layout.
> And then one day the Great American Train Show came to Raleigh. We had
> an open Saturday and some time and a dollar-off coupon. So we went.
> And we saw the train clubs and the N gauge layouts and HO layouts and
> such. Fun layouts, saw mills and trestles, brocolli trees, plaster
> landscaping. Dirty and gritty, just like real railroads.
In fact all my old trains are still in the attic but I like Lego much better
as a product. Sure you can get much more realistic with HO or N gauge but using
Lego is much more of a challenge. When your HO layout gets old and dirty or you
want to change it you have to trash it and buy new supplies to build again where
as with Lego you can take it apart and make something else with the bricks.
> And I kept thinking as I watched a train tumble to the edge of the table
> and fall to the ground and break and hear the Lego train guys *laugh*:
> "Wait a minute, if it breaks, you ... just ... put ... it ... back ...
> together!" Whoa, dude. NOW I CAN GET BACK INTO TRAINS!
The first Lego train show I participated in, my train hit the concrete floor
from three feet up. In less then ten minutes it was back together and running in
the display.
> And then I find out about Mindstorms and get me one of those and find
> out the train controller plugs into the RCX so I don't need batteries
> and then the kids build a combination Star Wars Police Johnny Thunder
> Fort Legorado Train and we run it with the RCX and IT ALL WORKS
> TOGETHER! And if it breaks, we just put is back together!
I see Mindstorms as my next step in the Lego train seen.
> And I'm buying Lego train stuff and other Lego stuff and finding stuff
> on the internet and I find Lugnet and NCLUG and NCLTC and am having more
> fun as an adult than I ever had with HO trains as a kid and I play with
> the kids together.
Yes I buy second hand and new parts from the Internet but I spend just as much
on Lego retail. I think that even the second hand market helps sell Lego
products for two reasons. First some people buy new products knowing they can
sell the parts they don’t want. Also things that I build with second hand parts
make MOCs that are displayed in public. Then little Johnny sees them and is
getting Mom to buy him Lego kits.
> Ok, so they changed the grays and brown. I'll survive. I think it was
> unbelievably stupid, but I'll survive.
Well at least this gives us a larger color pallet to build from. Even my “old
light gray” collection has many shades of discoloring. Just one more challenge
in building.
> The way I see it, there's not much that really needs to be kept: train
> motors, track with metal rails, the controller, the wires, and the
> wheels. If we never get new sets, I'd be fine with that; please,
> please, please don't make regret playing with my trains because I'll
> risk wearing out the motors. And please let me still buy more track (in
> a color that will match what I have!).
Amen
> Look at how people still love the monorail years after it is gone.
> Don't make that mistake again.
I saw my first monorail last year at Brickfest. I love it. If Lego was making it
now I would be buying it. It seems so strange that monorail that is so
futuristic is now gone by the way side. At least someone in the club has
monorail so we can have it in our displays from time to time.
I just did a display at the “The Great Scale Model Train Show” last weekend.
There is a vendor that sells Lego train at the show. The bigger the display we
have the more he sells. Fathers bring their family to the show to see the
displays while dad shops for his hobby trains. The kids see the Lego layout and
go wild. Then they get mom or dad to buy them Lego trains at the show. The
parent will ask us where they can find Lego trains so we send them over to the
Lego vendor. The next thing you see is the family come back and the kid has a
bag of Lego sets they just bought. A train hobbyist asked me where he can get
Lego trains because he wants to run a Lego set around the edge of his layout so
the kids can play with them and not be playing with his trains. The best part of
doing a Lego train display is the kids.
Rafe, I’m with you.
Ed.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: 9V Train Motor Being Discontinued?
|
| (...) Ok, I'll add my $0.02 to the pile. Summary: Lego trains are the reason there are now 100,000 Lego bricks in my Lego room upstairs. Details: When I was a little kid in Wisconsin in the 1970s, we had HO trains in the basement (didn't (...) (18 years ago, 4-Apr-06, to lugnet.trains)
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