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The Tips & Tricks Issue
Issue 3 - Spring 2008
TM
r
A peak inside FreeLUG
- the French Enthusiasts LEGO© User Group
INSIDE:
The Diesels of Dara Norman (aka Swooty)
Building Realisic Wooden Trestles
PBricks and Pushing the 9v Limits
Power Funcions Train Tricks
And Much More!
Next Stop…
Chicago!
June 19-22, 2008 • Chicago,Illinois
www.Brickworld.us
CONTENTS
Issue 3 - SPRING 2008
The Whistle Stop.....................................................................4
LEGO Factory Update...............................................................5
Blue Brick Review.....................................................................6
Breaking the Code...................................................................8
Club Spotlight: FreeLUG..........................................................9
Flashback Review: 7760.......................................................10
Builder Spotlight: Swooty....................................................12
Reverse Engineering Challenge............................................16
Power Funcions + 9v Train Tricks........................................19
Keeping 9v Alive....................................................................20
Advanced 9v Track Modiicaion..........................................22
Use the World as Your Inspiraion.......................................26
A Bridge Too Far.....................................................................27
Selecive Compression..........................................................34
Instrucions: Horse Stock Car................................................36
Trainspoing....................................................................43
LEGO Trains and LEGO PBricks..............................................44
FRED’s View...........................................................................63
© Copyright 2007-2008 RAILBRICKS.
LEGO® is a registered trademark of the LEGO Company, which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this publication.
All other trademarks, service marks, and copyrights are property of their respective owners.
  All Aboard!
The RAILBRICKS Team
Senior Editor:
Jeramy Spurgeon
Welcome back! Issue 3 has been dubbed the ‘Tips & Tricks’ issue
because we wanted to give you all as much inspiration as possible
while working on your layouts. I think we have something in this is-
sue for everyone, whether you are just getting into the hobby and
looking for some ideas on how to integrate some of your 9v and RC
track for interesting effects, or the advanced hobbyist looking to
push the limits of your old RCXs.
Staf Editors and Writers -
The “Think Tank”:
Erik Amzallag
Steve Barile
Mat Bieda
Benn Coifman
Tim David
Didier Enjary
Holger Mathes
John Neal
Mark Peterson
Larry Pieniazek
Jordan Schwarz
Since our last issue, the RAILBRICKS website opened up a building
instructions section. So far, we have had some great submissions,
but we need your help in making it the one stop place for fan built
train models. After inish-
ing reading through this
issue, head over to the
website and either grab
a few instructions for in-
spiration, or submit a few
for others to share in your
creativity.
Content Contributors:
Thorsten Benter
Jan van Dijken
Ondrew Harigan
Alban Nanty
Xavier Viallefont
Thanks again for read-
ing and supporting RAIL-
BRICKS. I hope you have as
much fun perusing these
pages as we had putting
them together!
Copy Ediing/Prooing:
Chris Spurgeon
Jeramy and IFoL (Infant Fan of LEGO) Elora
As always, this is a community built around sharing ideas, so if you have
an idea for an aricle, submit it to
Copyright © 2007-2008 RAILBRICKS
Permission is granted to copy, distrib-
ute and/or modify this document un-
der the terms of the GNU Free Docu-
mentaion License, Version 1.2 or any
later version published by the Free
Sotware Foundaion; with no Invariant
Secions, no Front-Cover Texts, and no
Back-Cover Texts.
Play Well!
-
Jeramy Spurgeon
Printed issues of RAILBRICKS will be available at
Instrucions and Tips & Tricks aricles within RAILBRICKS fall into one of
three categories and are labeled with the following icons:
B
I
Intermediate
A
Advanced
Beginner
NEWS
bate and speculaion since their arrival in the palete.
The swiveling magnet has been replaced with a per-
manently-atached magnet, fully enclosed in a plasic
case. Examinaion in LDD shows that these magnets
are ariculated to allow side-to-side rotaion, but the
magnets themselves do not appear to spin as their pre-
decessors did.
A recent communicaion from Jan Beyer of LEGO
answered the wave of speculaion regarding these new
LEGO Factory Update
by Jordan Schwarz
If you’re a regular visitor of the various LEGO-related
news sites, you’ve probably heard some of the rum-
blings regarding the latest update to the LEGO Factory
palete. The brick assortment governs the models that
can be built in LEGO Digital Designer (LDD) sotware
and then ordered online. It undergoes periodic revi-
sions and the most recent, issued in April, has some
implicaions for train fans.
The Factory palete gained some novel elements
from the new LEGO Factory Space-themed sets. It saw
the addiion of new pieces in most brick categories
and now contains a substanial assortment of pieces
in light blue, dark blue, lime green, and orange. There
are more miniigures to choose from, and windows are
being updated to the style seen in newer sets such as
Green Grocer. However, astute train fans were quick
to noice what was missing, as opposed to what had
been added.
Image courtesy of the LEGO© Group
Image courtesy of the LEGO© Group
train bufers. The new bufers are designed to prevent
children from swallowing magneic parts. Swallowing
two magnets at separate imes can create (and, in fact,
has lead to) potenially lethal complicaions. Surely,
consuming magnets is not a habit of most adult LEGO
train fans, however LEGO has made this change in con-
sideraion of the safety of children and the possibility
of future laws banning the distribuion of swallowable
magnets, such as those found in LEGO train bufers.
The communicaion from LEGO indicates that these
new couplers will be magneically compaible with the
old ones. This is made possible via a fully enclosed mag-
net which spins in its enclosure to achieve the proper
polarity for coupling.
One possible concern of train builders is that the
new magnets, by design, cannot be detached from the
bufer beams. This will make it more diicult to incor-
porate couplers into designs where a standard bufer
is not desired; the front coupler of the 10020 Santa Fe
Super Chief locomoive is just one example. As always,
creaive train fans will surely ind a way to circumvent
this issue, although it will require more efort with this
new coupler design.
You can sill purchase wheel sets for train building,
but the 9V elements have been removed from LEGO
Factory. This doesn’t come as too great of a surprise,
since these elements are slowly being disconinued
from LEGO Shop At Home in advance of the 2009 re-
lease of the Power Funcions-based trains. Unexpect-
edly, a new type of train bufer beam has been added,
and the old, familiar model has disappeared. The Fac-
tory palete now contains a black plow-style bufer and
a standard model in both black and (new) light grey.
These new bufers have sparked considerable de-
ISSUE 3 - SPRING 2008
5
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