Emerald Night Connecting Rods

The Emerald Night, LEGO® CREATOR Expert set 10194, is a favorite among LEGO Train fans… definitely in the top ten and maybe even the all time favorite to date as a set. There are a few minor flaws that have been discovered in this sets design, including the piston push rod support, the rear floating wheel set and the motor gear support; these were listed in the excellent magazine RailBricks.

As our club uses many of our locomotives at Train Shows where we run through other people’s displays, we have a standard that trains are to be less than ten studs wide. The Emerald Night is exactly ten studs wide, but when station platforms have a ten stud gap, there is not sufficient tolerance for the trains to pass through the station reliably. Additionally, the Emerald Night looks bulky with traditional Technic based connecting rods.

With advances in 3D printing, we took it upon ourselves as a club to come up with a push rod design that we could 3D print. Information can be found on Thingiverse. We are very pleased with how this turned out and are looking foreward to post COVID-19 where we can try it out at a Train Show.