I’m building a LEGO train station, and I’m trying out different designs. the main building will look something like this LEGO ideas project, but currently I’m test-building the platform section (which is also modular-ish).By using this site you agree to the use of cookies.LEGO activity ideas for museums LEGO can be a great draw for museums looking for new activities to bring in more visitors in quiet periods. Here are some ideas for LEGO events and activities you can use in your museum… North East LEGO events 2017 Looking for LEGO events in the North East of England in 2017? Look no further than this list! How to make your LEGO City more realistic Struggling to make your LEGO city more realistic? Read this article on key changes you can make to your own LEGO city to make improve its realism. A very special LEGO Show: Shildon 2016 November this year saw a great milestone for Brick Alley LUG – our first self-organised LEGO show.
Brick Alley at Shildon NRM 2016 started after the National Railway Museum at Shildon. The show started when the NRM asked us to consider holding a larger scale LEGO event on the success of a longer-term static display… Durham Cathedral – a multi-award winning LEGO model! As a volunteer on the Durham Cathedral LEGO model project for its three year course, it was with great pleasure – though no surprise! – that this fund-raising project has received three awards. Durham Cathedral in LEGO® Durham Cathedral in LEGO was a fund-raising project that ran for three years, from 11th July 2013 – 29th… Best LEGO train videos 2016 A selection of the best LEGO train videos in 2016, for all of you LEGO railway addicts. Brick Show 2016: LEGO Beauty & The Beast’s Castle A huge replicate of the castle featured in Disney’s 1991 film Beauty & The Beast is going to be on display at Brick Show this October in Birmingham. Built by Kevin Hall, the model will contain some 250,000 bricks;
the towers roofs alone required around 20,000 LEGO bricks. The full model weights around 100kg (over… Top tips for finding cheap Lego in the UK LEGO is not a cheap hobby, as I’m sure any AFOL – or parent with a LEGO-addicted child – is well aware of! But, there are some ways to get cheaper LEGO sets and parts. So, here’s my list of tips for finding cheap (well, cheaper!) LEGO in the UK. It’s worth bearing in mind that… The Great AFOL survey 2016 If you’re an Adult Fan of LEGO (AFOL), complete my survey and help define the future of AFOLdom (is that a word? Once I have enough submissions, I’ll release the data (suitably cleansed) and produce a report, published on this blog. AFOL and LEGO events in the UK in 2017 An ever-growing list of LEGO events throughout the UK in 2017. From small local LEGO shows to full scale, commercial exhbitions of LEGO fandom.Final Days: The Art of the Brick Earn 77 Clubcard points Delivery options will be shown at checkout (or enable JavaScript to show on this page).
Order our new book, Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders In so many other situations, an octopus on the train tracks may cause severe alarm. But the cephalopod intruder doesn’t disturb anyone here. Not on this railway line, to Underwater City. More than 50 years since Lego’s founder formed the first bricks, people around the world construct hidden worlds, above and below. The train to Underwater City certainly continues that legacy. On the floor of a pristine swimming pool, that one imagines is attached to a handsome villa, some bright person has put down a lego train track and a platform full of passengers. At least one Stormtrooper and several blokes in scuba gear have a train to catch. The little yellow train zooms along on the edge of the pool. We then see the driver; a man in a tie and a motorcycle helmet. He loves his job! Then the finale, as the locomotive descends into the clear water. With some nifty camera work, we see the train propel itself along to the Underwater City platform to collect its passengers.
Well done, well done indeed. Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email [email protected]/* */. Escape the Beaten Path We'd Like You to Like UsHere are some more advanced ideas for LEGO train layouts, while still keeping consistent with the restrictions of track geometry. While none of these ideas are original to myself (with the possible exception of the yard at the bottom), I hope this explanation will inform and inspire you to build better and hassle-free LEGO layouts.
New as of Jan 7 2008: this page is now available in Italian courtesy of ITLUG, the Italian LEGO® Users Group. You can see the Italian translation on the ITLUG Web site. (EDIT 9/15/2008: updated URL) Note: This page was originally written several years before LEGO switched from powered 9V track to all-plastic track with battery trains. If you are using the all-plastic track you can ignore considerations of short circuits (see the Wye oh Wye? section). Also, the Flex Track piece is not included in this discussion; that makes some track shapes easier to achieve, though trains are more likely to derail on Flex Track than normal track that is assembled according to the principles on this page. The all-plastic Double Crossover track is also not included. LEGO track geometry is very limiting. There are only a handful of available pieces. From left to right, these are: straight, curve, left switch (or point), right switch, and cross track (There is also the newer Flex Track piece, but it is not covered by this document):
Each straight track piece is 16 studs long and 8 wide. The curved pieces produce a 22½° bend, so that 4 of them make a 90° turn. The switches have a different kind of curve in them, and they are meant to be used in conjunction with a curved track to produce parallel tracks. Here are some of the basic track concepts that are valid with LEGO track. Each one preserves perfect alignment with the studs on the large grey baseplate (48×48 studs). Straight track can go anywhere. But in order for the alignment of tracks to be maintained consistently through curves and switches, it is necessary to adopt some standards. The standard that works best is: If you follow these rules, you will never have trouble getting your layout to line up. On first glance you may think this is too limiting, because the following restrictions would seem to be implied by the above rules: However, there are some additional things you can do with LEGO track geometry that do not violate our rules.
This is because in the real world, there is a little bit of slack in the connections, and the studs can still be made to line up with certain alternate configurations. A crossover is where you have two parallel tracks with a line connecting them. The standard way is to take the switch geometry described above, and create a crossover where the two switches line up with a pair of curved tracks in between. But look at the right hand crossover: it also lines up, only instead of the two curves there is a single straight piece: How does this work? Well, it turns out that 2 curved track pieces, when positioned at 22½° from horizontal, have the same amount of vertical distance between start and end as a single straight at that angle. Also, the horizontal distance is almost exactly double that of a straight. But what if you put nothing in between? Then the tracks don’t line up right:The areas circled in red are not lined up properly. If you want these tracks to line up elsewhere on your layout you will run into problems.
Just add a straight or two curves (or two curves and several straights, to make a parallel track in between). Remember, a switch is NOT the same as a curve! It’s not just crossovers that let you replace two curves with a straight. Here are some other situations where this trick can help avoid unnecessary zigzagging of your trains. A standard "S" curve (left) is made with eight curves. But replace the two middle curves with a straight (right) for a smoother shape that uses less space. A branch line coming off a switch can be given a gentler curve, and take up less real estate, with the same technique. You can loop back on yourself by replacing 2 curves with a straight. A crossover requires extra space between the parallel tracks. Here’s one way, using both types of "S" curves, to separate them enough for a crossover without interfering with spacing on the rest of the main line. A wye (named for the letter Y) is one of the most common ways for trains to turn around, and it allows you to connect the loops of your layout in different ways for interesting variations.
Caution: a wye made of powered LEGO (or any DC model train) track will have a short circuit! You will need to electrically isolate the track segments in at least one spot in order to make it work. You can do this by inserting paper between the track pieces before connecting them, and then cutting away the excess. Of course, if you are using plastic track that consideration does not apply. The wye on the left uses standard LEGO geometry, with 4 curved tracks in each 90° turn. In the one on the right, the double curves (3 sets of them) are replaced by straights. This shrinks the size and produces more reasonable curves. Another convenient coincidence that comes in handy when designing layouts involves a straight track running at a 22½° angle. If you use 12 straight tracks with a curve at either end, you can still line up your track at both ends while having a more unusual track angle. This works because of the magic of Pythagorean triples. Like the well-known 3-4-5 triangle, you can make a perfect right triangle using dimensions of 5, 12, and 13.
In such a case, the angle is 22.62°, which is close enough to 22½ that it works. Thanks to Jason Railton for pointing this out. But why is it 12, and not 13, you ask? Remember above where you can replace 2 curves with a straight? The 13th straight is replaced by the curves at either end of the 12. Note that a horizontal track of 12 units will line up nicely with the end of the diagonal track. This trick only works if the begin and end of the turn are parallel. If you want to have the begin and end be perpendicular, you need an extra straight. There are no Pythagorean triples that produce anything close enough to a 45° angle, but we can use math to derive a result anyway. Trigonometry tells us that the distance traveled horizontally or vertically for each unit of diagonal movement is the sine of 45° (or cosine if you prefer; they’re equal for a 45° angle), or 0.7071. This is also half of the square root of 2 (1.4142). So we need a number that, when multiplied by 0.7071, produces something close enough to an integer that it will work with LEGO track.
1 x 0.7071 = 2 x 0.7071 = 3 x 0.7071 = 4 x 0.7071 = 5 x 0.7071 = 6 x 0.7071 = 7 x 0.7071 = 8 x 0.7071 = 9 x 0.7071 = 10 x 0.7071 = 11 x 0.7071 = 12 x 0.7071 = 13 x 0.7071 = 14 x 0.7071 = 15 x 0.7071 = 16 x 0.7071 = 17 x 0.7071 = 18 x 0.7071 = 19 x 0.7071 = 20 x 0.7071 = The best choice is 17 straights, but you should be able make 10 work also. Thanks to Larry Pieniazek, David Koudys, and Jeff Van Winden for their postings in a thread about this topic on LUGNET. Note: this requires that the beginning and end be perpendicular to line up properly. If you need the beginning and end to be parallel, add a right angle turn (four curves) to the above. You can simplify it by replacing two of the curves with a straight, but you will still need to go the “wrong way” with one curve track in order for it to line up: You can add a switch and curve to each end, or replace the two resulting curves with a straight, just like we did in the earlier crossover: