Subject:
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monorail follies
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Sun, 1 Oct 2000 02:22:45 GMT
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Highlighted:
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(details)
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Viewed:
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1196 times
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Inspired by Mike Walsh and others, I decided to make a four car monorail. I
left my Airport Shuttle alone -- which turned out to be a really good
idea -- and created a clone in black with a yellow stripe, dictated mostly
by the color of my available battery boxes.
Putting the cars together was straightforward and took very little time. I
looked at the built Airport Shuttle and copied it. I tried to figure out the
extra car connections on my own, came up with a way-too-complicated method
using towbars and 2x2 turntables, and discovered that the cars never pulled
straight after coming around a corner. I took a quick look at what Mike did
then copied it.
I think I have a pretty good spare parts collection, but this small project
humbled me. I ran out of panels, car roofs w/sunroofs, and windows pretty
quick. I needed three more soccer buses than I already had, but S@H speedily
got those to me; going through some eBay junk and Brickbay got me the rest.
Here's the result:
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=16055
(no digital camera yet, so this is one of those silly scanner images)
I'm somewhat proud of the battery box cover, even though it is slightly off
center. It has the right proportions and the original Airport Shuttle cover
is darned hard to copy with standard Lego parts. (But I'd love to see
others' efforts.) Let me know if you're interested in the construction. The
downside is it's really hard to get together (although once it's on, it is
not all that fragile).
You may recall that when Mike first built his (and used a less flexible
connector) Frank Filz asked, what about hills? Here's an equally interesting
question. What about turnouts?
The first time I tried to turn it through a turnout all four cars fell off
the track. I thought that maybe a wheelset had been misaligned, and then I
thought that the turnout switch was stuck. But the problem is that the motor
is pushing two cars in front of it instead of one. The piece before my
turnout happened to be a curve, and that's it, I'm doomed. The motor is 90
degrees away from the first car when it hits the switch so it pushes the
second car right off the track. I can redesign my layout to put a straight
in front of a straight turnout switch, but not for the curved portion of the
turnout. The only piece that will mate to the curved portion is a short
curve, and that guarantees that the motor will be pushing at the wrong
angle, derailing the cars. I think.
Is this old news? Has anyone figured out a way around this? Or maybe this is
why Lego never offered expansion cars for its monorails.
Cary
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: monorail follies
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| In lugnet.trains, Cary Clark writes: <snipped construction comments> (...) I really like your idea of the hinge-panels to cover the monorail motor. Coverings to the monorail motor are a very challenging task. Good idea. I'd never thought of turning (...) (24 years ago, 1-Oct-00, to lugnet.trains)
| | | Re: monorail follies
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| (...) If you are willing to only run the train in one direction, the trick would be to push one car and tow three. Of course it puts the motor off center which will look funny (but then, to some extent, in any more than two car train, the motor will (...) (24 years ago, 1-Oct-00, to lugnet.trains)
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