But times change and Cary has phased out of the LEGO hobby and TrackDraw, while it still works, hasn’t been updated in years.  At one point I could build it from source myself but about a year ago I tried to build it and was unable to.  So the version I have running is from the RailBricks site and includes some custom parts in the library.  TrackDraw still has some oddities and will crash from time to time.

Recently while working on the 2010 LEGOPalooza track plan I couldn’t get text to work correctly so on a whim I decided to try BlueBrick.  I had looked at BlueBrick about a year ago and dismissed it as it had some real limitations.  However when I looked at it again, most of my issues had been addressed and it works pretty well.

I have not tried to create my own parts yet but probably will soon but I do like the layering model in particular.  I recaptured the NCLTC layout I am doing for 2010 LEGOPalooza in BlueBrick and did a couple more iterations using it.  I really wish the layout area had scroll bars and I really miss the TrackDraw feature to add a bunch of elements using the numbers on the keyboard followed by clicking on the part you want to place but other than that, I don’t have any real complaints.

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.

Exhibit of the Week — “LEGO-palooza 2009,” UNC, 1 pm.: There will be robots, castles, and spaceships. The Blacktron and M:Tron galactic armies even agreed to a ceasefire in order to take part in the exhibit.

I’m interested in trying to get various blurbs and news articles relevant to LEGO fans in North Carolina onto this site. You can send any tips you have on that front to 316danny@gmail.com

Monday morning’s (2/2) edition of the N&O didn’t have an article but did have this picture from the show.  As you can see in the picture, the crowd was pretty heavy.  Unfortunately the image didn’t appear on the N&O web site so the best available is a newspaper scan.

Photos

• Gareth Bowler’s photos on Brickshelf
• Joe Meno’s photos on Flickr
• Mike Walsh’s photos on Flickr (set #1)
• Mike Walsh’s photos on Flickr (set #2)
• Dan Larson’s photos (some good set up photos)
• Will Stroh’s photos (also has some setup photos)
• Richard Bryan’s photos on Flickr
• David Eash’s photos on Picasa
• Thomas Main’s photos on Brickshelf

Videos

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IT9sYBOwpg
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N03RfzQ2qKY
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KIIKRH_k7c
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PHQYkjKs8k
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-24bwXDxbEo

We were also covered by some traditional media outlets.
Daily Tarheel’s report