I have been recently thinking about building a layout in “L-gauge” (lego). Has anyone ever attempted anything like this before? If so, what happened.
I know of several people that have, my brother in law had one that was probably 4’ by 16’ on two sheets of plywood.
He had three sets he combined, along with buying more track. It’s kind of a novelty, but it isn’t set up to do much except run loops, so it got boring pretty quick.
I bet you could operate… be a rebel!! I’m 100% behind you. (lovin those legos)
Did it when I was eight years old then graduated to HO. Legos are great things but not very “realistic”. I literally had thousands of pieces and managed to not loose about half of them. Now I play with legos with the grandson.
If I remember correctly, the lego track at that time was approx O gauge, I used the standard lego motor with loco wheels and battery power pack and there were never derailments. I had turnouts and a crossing. It was a long time ago [sigh]
I remember the older Lego trains. All I had was the pull train…later motorized. Lego’s enlarged their trains a bit–the old cars I have look tiny behind one of their F units.
Well my sister has an older “3” rail set (the contact’s ran down the middle and all the track was for was traction). I liked it. Couldn’t build much beyond small switch engines or small 2-6-2’s. But when it came to diesels and electrics, look out. They had instructions on how to build a Crocodile, after i saw that whenever my sister rebuilt it into the DB-9 I would rebuild it into the Croc…until mom yelled. The Croc looked a lot better…
Thier not bad. I keep looking on ebay for sets for her, and of course the rolling stock is interchangeable with the newer stuff, but that old 3 rail stuff was the best. Turnouts, Switch’s, tips, dumps, coupling, uncoupling. We had a lot of fun. Hers got tobe 5"x12" with a 8 foot passing siding, coal loading facility, passenger facility and frieght depot.
You can do some awesome things with Legos…[:D] I haven’t played with them in a while.
The Super Chief F unit is a great unit. I have one, and motorized it. Good looking Lego train.[tup][tup]
I would say GO FOR IT. It’ll be cool to see the kind of stuff that you come up with.
The San Diego Model Railroad Museum has a Lego layout. Interesting stuff.
Actually they don’t or they don’t anymore. I was just there and didn’t see one.
I still have all the parts to the old Lego train that they first had. It’s in a box in my storage unit, just sitting there waiting for my son to get older. I still have all my legos that my brother and I played with. I have about 6 plasic bins full. I couldn’t throw them away when I knew that someday I will have a son.
You should probably google up LEGO and see what they have to offer. I’ve seen some pretty cool setups at shows out here in the Pacific NW and was impressed with the novelty and play value. The younger kids 4-12 just love em.
Bummer, they had one a the last time I was there, probably 2 years ago. I have some pictures of it here somewhere…
Here’s a great link for some Lego Trains. There are so many possibilities with Legos! It’s the easiest form of scratchbuilding!
I have a 4x5 LEGO model railroad that depicts Harry Potter, the Super Chief and a BNSF GP38-2, haven’t used it in a while… it’s great I’m sure you’ll LOVE lego trains(check out ebay for the electric ones and the Super Chief, I think all they have now is RC, but they still carry the GP38-2 and the intermodal cars . I’m trying to operate my trains.
there’s a book, getting started with lego trains, that you might find interesting, search on amazon, it comes with instructions for building a gp38-2, an intermodal car and a reefer car. I think you’d like it! also check out this website, www.trains.com they have info about lego trains as well as MR.
There was a HUGE Lego layout at the NMRA convention. This is from the 2005 show. check link: http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y47/tigercraft/dscn5744.jpg
bump
There is a Lego Train Club in the Atlanta, Georgia area. They show a layout that appears to be about 12’ x 12’ at model railroad show and sales on a regular basis so it’s obviously an adult club. It actually sounds like fun.
I got a Lego Shinkansen from the Lego website, it looks great and I have an oval of track for it but it currently just sits on top of my entertainment center in my living room. There were rumors of a guy trying to build a DCC machine from Lego Mindstorms computers for his layout, quite a feat. I was thinking about building a Japanese Lego layout for my Shinkansen but never got around to it and the costs were downright prohibitive, even compaired to my HO-Scale layout. It’s not the trains that get you in L-Scale it’s the buildings! Cheers! ~METRO
there are alot of lego train clubs, look around in you area