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@rcgrier3406 I am happy to update the layout to match what we ended up with and document it.
Thanks @jupdyke. Here’s my mark-up. I’ll add a few notes shortly to help.
1. On the outer loop, we eliminated a “half” (5″) track section on each side, which let us keep the 5″ open space on all 4 sides of the layout.
2. I like how you were able to show the LUG double track segments in a different color than say the long radius curve segments and would like to continue that so they’re easier to identify.
3. The center double track loop was pulled up tight to the outer loop, leaving a 5″ space for 9v speed controllers next to the open (blue) space, and we built it with room for 6 modulars and 6 road segments.
4. On the (2) side single 9v loops, we built them identical with room for 4 modulars and 4 road segments each. We used Phil’s 90 degree single track curves for these, and they’re actually MILS’d in an “L” shape, so that’s why the 16×32 filler is shown on each.
5. On the left side single loop where the Incline was, just show space for 3 modulars.
6. On the right side single loop, we were actually able to put 4 road segments in between the inner and outer loops by rotating the inside corner 16×32 segment of the long radius curve package 90 degrees. These pieces barely touched the R104 long radius curve, and Glenn had no problem with it.
7. For the rail yard, we used (2) of Phil’s right-hand turnouts, which are 15″ x 10″, so that’s what the “half” (5″) track notes are about to get us to the next even 10″ segment. For the (2) outer tracks, I’d show them as all LUG double straight tracks (except by the turnouts) even though we used some of Phil’s single tracks to fill in. The goal is to have enough LUG double straight track segments to finish the both the outer double loop and the center double loop, so that where I came up with a count of (40) even though we don’t have that many made up yet.
8. Where there are 16×32 of 32×32 open spaces, we filled those with plain MILS’d green baseplates, so if you can somehow show those differently from the track sections that would be helpful in knowing how many of each size we need.Hope that helps. Fire away if you have questions, and thanks again for doing this.
One of the things that Tim and I talked about is doing a “lessons learned” from this event to capture what went well, what didn’t
Josh said: “that certainly is something we should do. Discord seems like a great platform for that, too. Anyone who can’t make the designated time can post in this thread, but then it just takes someone to lead and collate the responses and summarize the discussion. Any one up for that?
and yeah, I think the inventory sheet should be where we keep it all. We can add columns if needed.”
I’ll take the lead in organizing the Discord session for lessons learned on this event and path forward for the MILS’d stuff. Once we get the as-built Bluebrick and the inventory on what we have, I’ll propose some dates and times (probably next week). Fair warning, I’ve used Discord before but I may need help from @mitchsbricks to set it up!
Since it was proposed to have lessons learned, I’m throwing out an idea here: what about building some sort of LEGO frame or trim to go around the outside of the MIL’s plate?
Of course there probably wouldn’t be space for anything around the baseplates when LUG tables are being used, so its not a versatile solution, but I think covering the red bricks that are visible on the edges would be a good idea.
On the list @greg. We actually talked about replacing the red brick and filling in the open spaces with all black on one side of the MILS plates themselves but decided to focus on what we needed to get ready for this event first. Phil has done this with his MILS’d track sections using all DBG and it looks good. Up for discussion.
I didn’t have a sign for mine, but I had about 8 squirrels hidden. Figured we ordered enough right?
I pointed it out to some visitors to see what they could find. Always another option for our hundreds of squirrels!
Here are two of @amplef0rth”s squirrel hunters!!
I also like the “I Spy” kit idea. On a side note, did you know the USS Requin has (12) rubber ducks hidden throughout the submarine, and that when school groups go through they challenge them to see how many they can find? Same idea!
I’ll propose some dates and times (probably next week). Fair warning, I’ve used Discord before but I may need help from @mitchsbricks to set it up!
Date and time is all we’ll need, the server is constantly up and ready at any point for something like this. I am happy to help walk through discord some if you wanted (maybe show you how to share your screen because that would likely be useful). Other than that there is nothing to do for discord, we all just show up and discuss 🙂
@joshhall I am happy to lead the I Spy kit. I will create a new forum thread regarding it and get the ball rolling.
@rcgrier3406 I will work on updating the bluebrick layout as soon as my kids give me a break. This weekend at the latests. Just depends if I can get them to sit and calmly watch a movie or not before the weekend.Mac
Keep us posted on the discord meeting. If I can’t attend, I’ll be happy to read the summary.
On my end as a train operator, I have nothing but praise for the MILS modules. Even the slight variances in height were handled well because of the wide radii used.
Some key takeaways I noticed were that the crowd really did like seeing a back table of stationary trains and rolling stock. They were exceptionally eager to see us fiddling with the train repairs and I had quite a few eyes on me as I installed rubber bands and serviced the trains. So perhaps plan on having that display back table with service zone as part of future layouts. Everyone wanted to know how the trains worked so an excellent opportunity to teach future engineers.
I think also having some R40 (standard) curves incorporated into the general MILS module collection will help in future layouts where space is critical. I heard the March Home and Garden show layout may be more city buildings than trains so R40 corners may help keep space tight. I’ll have my P.R.R. Mountain 4-8-2 ready by then (with the lessons learned from this weekend) and like my Big Boy 4-8-8-4 and Challenger 4-6-6-4, she’ll also be R40 compliant for that kind of situation, thankfully with far less overhang than the Big Boy on R40, LOL.
1) We’ve done I Spy from time to time dating the whole way back to 2013, and it regularly appears at conventions, and it’s generally popular with the public. The problem that I’ve seen is that often the details of larger displays are improvised during setup, which means that the I Spy list is improvised at the last minute, which means it’s hand-written, sometimes with the crappiest pen and paper you’ve ever seen. The hand-written ones are usually done by people with questionable penmanship, and they never look good.
A better way to do it would be to print them from a computer, which means, of course, that you need to know what’s going to be on the list when you have access to a computer with a printer. I’m guessing somebody handy with Word could come up with a nice template that includes things like the Steel City LUG logo and website. For added presentation, and durability, we can laminate them. You can get a laminator for less than $30, and you can get laminator sheets in bulk cheap on Amazon. I can certainly do it, assuming it’s an event that I’m going to and somebody sends me the list. Then we can lay the list on the table, or we can get a little easel to prop them up.
The other thing I’ve discovered about I Spy is that they can be surprisingly difficult. Or maybe I’m just really bad at them. But I especially remember doing one with Rachel at BWC, on a display that wasn’t huge, and although our effort doubled as chat time with the builder, we spent something like 30 minutes on it and got less than half the list, and I started wondering what the crap was wrong with me. The display you guys had this past weekend was huge compared to that one. I also saw an I Spy where they divided the items to be found into three lists: Easy, Medium, and Hard. I’m going to recommend that we do that, although it does create extra work in terms of hiding everything appropriately.
2) I agree with Greg that the exposed MILS connections are a problem. He also pointed out that building a frame creates its own problems, and I’m going to advise against doing it that way. Instead, I’m going to suggest simply replacing the MILS bricks on the exposed sides with solid brick that matches the landscape above it. I did it this way using green for the city park and tan for the space plants build, and it looks great, especially if it also matches (or closely matches) the baseplates underneath, which you can still see the edges of. I even did it for the back, because unless you’re up against a wall, if somebody walks around to the other side of the display, they’re gonna see it.
The drawback to this system of course is that you lose flexibility in your arrangement of the plates, which is one of the main purposes of MILS. But really, that argument cuts both ways: if you put solid brick on one side of a plate, you can no longer expand in that direction, but if you put MILS brick on one side of a plate, you’re forced to continue in that direction. For my park, I lined the front and back with green bricks, but had MILS bricks on the sides, because I was expecting to have other people’s builds on both sides (which also means I couldn’t go in a corner). At Greenberg and the Trolley Museum, and I was MILSed in and it looked good, but at Philly Brickfest, there was inadequate MILSing on both sides, and you could see it.
So then you have to start evaluating what resources you have, and how you think the displays are most likely to change and/or expand. Do you have enough parts to make two versions (one with solid brick and one without) of what are otherwise the same baseplate builds, keeping in mind that as far as I know, the plan already calls for doing this with green and white landscaping. For the corners, where you’d have solid green (or white) on two sides, you’d only need four of them as long as you have a rectangular display, but you’d need five for an L-shape. You’d never need a corner plate with straight track on it, and you wouldn’t have curved track on them either if you’re using the larger radii.
Now that I think about, the one big question is, if you have two sets of straight track on a baseplate, what’s the likelihood that that track will be going around the perimeter of the display, and therefore need solid brick on one side? The easy answer would be ‘pretty likely’, but Glenn and Cale came up with a train standard, which I’ve seen used at events, where the double track is set one baseplate back from the edge. Such a display does require extra space, which at major conventions is not an issue, but which at some place like Greenberg would be. The other question would be how to line the open space in the interior, because…
3) You’ve created a display with little room to sit in the center, and no way in or out. To expand that interior space, you can add to the amount of straight track on the sides, although I don’t know what our straight track inventory is looking like. I’m a big fan of having people inside the display. Besides the fact that you feel extra super important sitting in there, it’s the easiest way to monitor the displays and it’s the easiest way to interact with the public when they have comments and questions.
Getting in and out is trickier. In the past, especially at Greenberg, we’ve had an opening in the tables so that we could just walk right in. But this forces the trains to turn around when they reach the opening, and part of the motivation for making the LUG tables was to create enough space for such a turnaround. It also means you only have one loop of track instead of two. The way I’ve seen it done at conventions is somebody builds a bridge that’s hinged on one end, so that people can lift it up, enter or leave the space, and put it back down easily, so that the trains can continue to pass over it without issue. Unfortunately, I don’t think I am the person to build such a bridge. But despite my suggesting it for years, we have yet to have one in the LUG. It also requires your table layout to be such you can create a gap small enough (typically less than three feet) that the bridge can reach across, which actually is not an easy problem to solve if you only have one type of table.
I think that’s all I got, I’m hanging up now.
>> I’m biased, but the last video in the album is my favorite, for obvious reasons when you see it!!
That video really is awesome though. I actually didn’t pick up on what was going on there until you zoomed in. I told Rachel about it, and I need to send her the link still because she is looking forward to seeing it.
The whole display came out great, and it looks like it was another successful event.
Anyone else feeling a bit under the weather after the event? I think I may have picked up something from being around so many people all day.
Anyone else feeling a bit under the weather after the event? I think I may have picked up something from being around so many people all day.
Sorry to hear that @mitchsbricks. So far I’m not having any issues. Hope you feel better soon!
Once we set the Discord session for Lesson’s Learned, I’ll take you up on your offer to show me how to share my screen, etc. I’ve used Discord as our audio for Family Game Night, and sometimes for video, but nothing beyond that.
@bengood921, couple of comments to your comments:
>> I agree with Greg that the exposed MILS connections are a problem.
Phil has done his MILS’d track bases using DBG brick on the outer layer (see below), and I think it looks pretty good. He’s also included the 1×4 Technic bricks so that you can pin to the adjacent base if you’re not on the outside. We discussed using black bricks (since we have a bunch of it for brick-built roads that we haven’t used yet) for this outer layer before the event, but we had our hands full finishing what we did and still had to rely on using a lot of Phil’s MILS’d track to finish the layout, so we pushed it to the back burner. In reality when you’re there, your eyes are drawn to all the motion we had going, and those exposed MILS’d sides are less noticible.
For future layouts, if we’re using the long radius curves, they definitely need to be on the outside. Those trains need the most attention and maintenance, and we need to be able to get to them easily. Once we set that as the perimeter, the rest of it fell into place fairly easily. So, whatever we decide, the MILS’d baseplates on the outside loop should be the ones we focus on finishing first.
>> You’ve created a display with little room to sit in the center, and no way in or out.
For this particular event, we were one of around 6 different groups displaying, and we were limited in terms of the space they would give us. Plus, it was all we could do to finish what we did to make things look as good as they did, so expanding the layout wasn’t really an option this time.
If we needed to get into the open space in the middle during set-up or to do some maintenance, we crawled under the back center table. We used the venue’s tables for this event (which had their own issues with uneven surfaces and the need for leveling), but even if we had used LUG tables and had built a hinged bridge I think it would have been problematic because of all the track connections that would have had to be broken and then reattached every time you used the bridge.
We were able to get 2 back tables set up against the wall behind our space for us to display rolling stock not in use, and to provide space to for train maintenance, tree building, etc. so that’s where we spent the bulk of our time. As @playingwithechoes said earlier, we had a lot of interest in people looking at those and watching Glenn and Michael fiddle with their trains.
One of the things that Tim and I talked about is doing a “lessons learned” from this event to capture what went well, what didn’t, and where we can make improvements to the MILS’d components before the next time.
One thing that stood out is that when we constructed the MILS track, we forgot to leave a small opening for the 9v wire which needs to pass under the track to get the other side (for those unfamiliar, the 9v must be connected on both rails – the 9v track actually has a small notch in the bottom of the plastic portion of the track to allow for the cord to nestle in there). So for the tracks running 9v, we had to remove a few of the MILS pieces. It was done rather hastily and a more elegant solution should be devised. We would only need one piece of straight track per loop of 9v, so if we have 6 dedicated 9v pieces of MILS straight, that should be sufficient.
I have entered the redemption lists for display and staffing. Please let me know if anyone was missed or if anything is incorrect. Thank you.
This looks like it was a really good event. The big trains are the highlight, but it was also nice to see the incline running reliably using Powered Up components on Pybricks.
I agree that the colorful edges are not ideal, but how distracting they are depends on the person. I am easily bothered by such things, likely more so than most people. At trolley, the sneeze guard covered the edges. Having something to hide the edges, even if not Lego, for events that don’t use the sneeze guards would be a good idea.
I think the LUG having enough MILS stuff to do large displays is a good goal, but I am fine with my stuff being used as needed to supplement until we get there.
Tim, to your point about electric hookup, I was thinking about trying to use solder or some other means to connect the wires directly to the underside of the track. I don’t know if something like that is feasible, but it could move us away from expensive, brittle wires. Does anyone know if that could be done, taking into consideration the track material (perhaps Ni-Be-Cu according to a web search) and low melting point of the ABS?
Anyone else feeling a bit under the weather after the event? I think I may have picked up something from being around so many people all day.
I haven’t suffered any ill affects.
This was a fantastic event! Didn’t see many problems despite the lack of stanchions and sneeze guards. I vote to include tree building at all future displays. 😉
For the 9v track wire connector pieces, I found it easier to just disassemble the three parts, remove the old wires and then carefully solder on some new third party wire before snapping the parts back together. I used a low temp solder and carefully drip the solder onto the wires over contacts on the parts. Trick is to not use too much solder but only add as required after each cooling phase to avoid warping the plastic. A tiny flathead screwdriver (as used in watchmaking) helps pop the taps on the parts.
We will do the Lessons Learned session for the Locomotion Weekend event on Thursday, January 26th at 7 pm. As you know, this was the first time we’ve used the MILS’d Baseplates and Ballasted Track components that were generated from Project Support, and this layout was one of the more ambitious layouts we’ve done as a LUG. The discussion will be focused on what issues we had, what we learned, what improvements we can make going forward when using these components.
We’ll be using Discord, which if you’re not familiar with it will work very similar to a Zoom meeting. I’ll post an Agenda in this thread the day before. To join the conversation, click on the “Discord” group link on the right panel of any LUG page, and then once in Discord, click on the “Lessons-Learned” voice channel on the left panel of that page. If you haven’t joined the Steel City LUG group in Discord yet, click on the link sometime between now and then, and @mitchsbricks will verify that you’re a LUG member and accept you into the group.
If you’re not able to join us and have comments or suggestions, just continue to post them on this forum page and I’ll make sure they get added to the agenda. After the meeting, I’ll publish a set of meeting notes.
Attached is the Agenda for the Lessons Learned session, as well as the MILS’d Inventory as it currently stands.
The call starts at 7 pm on Thursday, January 26th, and is on Discord. Instructions to access the call are in the post above, but if you have trouble, you can call my cell at 724-841-6085 and I’ll try to help you out.
Since I had to unexpectedly miss the call last evening, I was wondering if there is a debrief available as to the discussion.
Since I had to unexpectedly miss the call last evening, I was wondering if there is a debrief available as to the discussion.
Thought my ears were burning!! I just finished these meeting notes up from the call.
For those who were on the call, let me know if I missed anything, or if you have any suggested edits. Thanks!
I’m going to place this here too – https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/190360-the-last-guide-you-will-need-to-repair-lego-train-9v-connectors/
Great to see the follow up notes, Bob. And a pleasure meeting Josh.
I look forward to a switch yard, whether in R40 or R56. All my stuff is engineered to work on standard Lego curve and switch track, in either event. Even the Big Boy and Challenger handle R40 with ease but they do look better in larger curves. 😉
I’m not sure if it can be tacked onto the MILS building MOC inventory spreadsheet but I’m wondering if we should have a spread sheet for everyone’s personal trains that we can sort by Steam/Diesel/Elec, 9v/PF/PU, MOC/MOD/SET and if it works on R40 standard or custom radii requirement.
Also, I’m wrapping up the P.R.R. Mountain 4-8-2 project that I would love to see running for the Home and Garden show layout. After so many man hours in design, development, and revisions over the past year, it’s running great with the same minor adjustments used on the trains at CSC. Just waiting on custom printed Pennsylvania livery. XD
I’m not sure if it can be tacked onto the MILS building MOC inventory spreadsheet but I’m wondering if we should have a spread sheet for everyone’s personal trains that we can sort by Steam/Diesel/Elec, 9v/PF/PU, MOC/MOD/SET and if it works on R40 standard or custom radii requirement.
@playingwithechoes, I’m sure we can either tack it on, maybe as a separate tab to the spreadsheet to keep the rolling stock separate. We use Google Sheets for these. Since you have some ideas on what categories of information you would want to see and to be able to sort on, how about starting a spreadsheet with the columns you want and enter data for a couple of your pieces as examples. Since we can interchange engines with a variety of rolling stock, I assume we would want to have line items per piece. Also, keep in mind that some members have engines that aren’t powered, so we should have a way to differentiate those. Once the format is set up, we can merge it into either the MILS Inventory or the MOC Database and then put it out there for members to input their data. If you need help, let me know.
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