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Converting the Emerald Night to 9v

Mike Walsh — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:44:16 +0000

I built the Emerald Night a while ago and it has sat in the box down in my basement ever since. It is a beautiful train although it really does need additional passenger cars. A month ago when I had the e-mail dialog with my Dad about the Emerald Night, he asked me how it be converted to use a 9v motor (since he has several of them). I know the Emerald Night comes with instructions on how to add a Power Function motor but (a) neither of us have the right motor and (b) neither of us feel like buying more motors when we already have 9v motors on hand.

I thought about it a bit and decided trying to stuff a 9v motor in the locomotive was a fools errand. However, adding one to the tender looked pretty straight forward. I decided to poke around a bit and there is thread on LUGNET and a number of blog posts that describe various solutions to the problem. The LUGNET thread in particular is pretty involved and uses a gutted 9v motor along with Power Functions. A bit more than I am willing to take on right now although I do have several dead 9v motors. From further searching it appears there are a number of solutions depending on how close you want it the train to look compared to standard instrcutions. I am not too picky, I just want it work and not look awkward.

There was an NCLUG meeting this past Sunday afternoon and I decided to take a loop of 9v track and the Emerald Night along with some parts with me to see if I could make it run. The key to my idea was to add a single wheel set and a 9v motor to the tender. Doing this meant tweaking the chassis design of the tender a bit to account for the pin on the 9v motor. The modification is pretty simple and makes use of some standard size black plates. I have documented the changes to the tender chassis and produced instructions using Lpub. The instructions for the tender are not complete – they just replace steps 1-5 and eliminate steps 16-18 in the official instructions.

So does it work? Sort of. I say sort of because the modifications to the tender work fine however the tender struggles to push the locomotive through the curves on the small loop. I think this is due to the large train wheels on the locomotive which are linked together via Technic axels to bind up.

Unfortunately I didn’t have any parts with me that I could use to swap out the axels for simple pins which I hope will solve the problem. I hope to try this in the next day or two as I want to run the Emerald Night at LEGOPalooza.

Instructions

9v 10194 Tender
2010-01-25 - downloaded 269 times
My take on converting the 10194 to 9v by motorizing the tender.

NanoRex?

Joe Meno — Tue, 19 May 2009 12:37:08 +0000

I was able to visit the MINDSTORMS Celebration in Billund in 2008. One of the things that took place was a meeting of MINDSTORMS Community Partners (MCP), where there was a display of models they made using the MINDSTORMS NXT sets.

I was there as a reporter and a curious NXT user - I have a few sets and am now starting to explore them in terms of programming. Being with the MCP group was a bit overwhelming, but still a lot of fun.

The funniest thing, though, was when I built this with some parts laying around. I asked for some more parts, and in Billund, more parts is not just a couple, it's more like a hundred! I decided to build some of these for the MCP, so I got the pile of parts and then built them one at a time...but soon some of the MCP members joined in and helped build them, so before long, there was a small army of them!

Well, now I have instructions for the model available - All of 24 parts, this little guy is perfect as a desk decoration! He's posable too! And what do you need to get instructions? Not much really - the link is here!

And there's a bonus - one of the parts is a 1 x 2 x 2 brick (the chest piece). Send me a note at admin@brickjournal.com with your address and I will send you a promotional NXT version of the brick! I have about 75-100 of these, so send me a note soon!

Categories: BrickJournal Exclusive building community instructions LEGO LEGO MINDSTORMS Public
Tags: 2009 joe meno nxt

Attachments

nanrexfinalinstr.pdf (361.2 KB)

NanoRex?

Joe Meno — Tue, 19 May 2009 12:37:08 +0000

Categories: BrickJournal Exclusive building community instructions LEGO LEGO MINDSTORMS Public
Tags: 2009 joe meno nxt

Attachments

nanrexfinalinstr.pdf (361.2 KB)

LEGO Christmas Ornaments

NCLUG Admin — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:08:38 +0000

Interested in building some of the ornaments found on the NCLUG/NCLTC Christmas tree? Instructions for several of the ornaments are now available for download in PDF format.

Download instrucitons for Santa.
Download instructions for the Snowman.
Download instructions for the Red Christmas Ball.
Download instructions for the Blue and Yellow Christmas Ball.

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