Alan's Lego® MOC's



This page contains a few of my Lego® "MOCs" (My Own Creations"). The picture above is of a prototypical German Tenderlok and cars I've built (the train in the background is the well-known set 7740, with a 7815 and 7819 added).

Tenderlok

The locomotive above is modelled after Baureihe 99 der DRB (Series 99 of the Deutsche Reichsbahn). The locomotives in Series 99 are narrow-gauge locomotives, and also are tender locomotives (that is, the coal tender is on the locomotive instead of being pulled as a separate wagon). Click here for some pics of some Series 99 locs (warning: the page is in German). To navigate to the pics, click "Lokomotiven" at the top, then "8 Lokomotiven...", then the last entry under the list "aktuelles" towards the upper left of the screen. The picture you'll see is of a locomotive built in 1955 in the former East Germany using the original Reichsbahn Series 99 trains as patterns. The locomotives are still used on a stretch of narrow-gauge track in the former East Germany.

My locomotive was built using the train doors, windows, stickers and wheels from from a 7722 locomotive, two 5071 parts packs (which contain large red locomotive wheels like those in the 7750 steam loc), and of course various other parts.

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Getting the locomotive to articulate smoothly around curves was a bit of a challenge (as is usual with any large Lego steam loc). My first attempt made the train look like a drunk snake when I took it off the tracks. I finally gained inspiration from the 7750 rebuild found in the 7777 idea book, although my final setup is a little different that that found in the 7777. I used two trucks, each of which contains 2 large wheelsets attached together and one small wheelset which articulates from the larger wheelsets.

Notice that all of the detail work under the locomotive is contained on the trucks (and sorry, details are a little hard to pick out in this picture). If you can't tell from the picture, the pins on the bogey plates on both trucks are located between the outside large wheelset and the small wheelset. Further shots of the loc articulating are below.
One final interesting note about going around curves: I had to put a weight brick over the front bogey to get it to articulate smoothly!

Postwagen

The locomotive has no motor, so I also wanted to build a prototypical car to power the train. I settled on a "Posti" (post wagon) which I saw in a Marklin catalog.

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Since green Lego® windows aren't available, I decided to build with green bricks and doors and white train windows. This is actually fairly prototypical for modern German train cars, although the original Lego train windows from the 70's pictured below are much more prototypical.
If you look through the "Wagen" sections of the web page with locomotive pictures which is linked to above, you'll see real-life examples if green train cars with white windows. The prototype for the mail wagon also only has 2 axles, whereas my version has 4 (and of course the trucks articulate). The "sliding door" toward the back of the wagon is built of green corrugated bricks, and protrudes 1/4 stud on either side of the wagon. The wagon does a decent job of powering the train, although I've decided I need to add a weight brick over the motor to give it a little better traction.

Passenger cars

The passenger cars are also fairly protopical, with of course some modification.
The first is a restaurant car, and the other two are more or less identical passenger cars. The main design challenge in building these cars was preventing the wagon bases from bowing. The base of the restaurant car, which is 36 studs long, consists of a 6x24 train wagonplate plus 2 2x6 Technic plates (and various other black plates, of course), while the bases of the passenger cars consist completely of basic and Technic plates. The other large challenge in building these cars was collecting the 6 pairs of green train doors, 26 white train windows, 200 gray 1x1x1-1/3 gray round-top bricks, and many gray tiles required!

I also built another passenger car which is actually more protypical for the locomotive. This is a salon-type wagon modeled after one used on the shorter narrow-gauge stretch the locomotive is run on.

Box Cars

Finally, I have a couple shots of freight cars which I've built. One is a moderately prototypical European refrigerator wagon with brakehouse, while the other is a cute little boxcar which appears to be owned and operated by Bumblebee Freight Lines.




Questions or comments? Mail me at demlow@lightlink.com.

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