Train Archives - Calgary LEGO Train Club

September 17, 2023September 25, 2023

Heritage Park Railway Days 2023

The Calgary LEGO Train Club was thrilled to partner again with Heritage Park and celebrate Railway Days. An excellent weekend with beautiful weather to be thankful for trains, which played a significant part in bringing unity to our wonderful country.

We were fortunate to have an entire celebration tent for our layout, which was our biggest yet for length of track. Thought not as tightly filled in as past shows have been, the long track allowed for many trains to be running simultaneously.

The airport by Amir was outstanding and a crowd favourite, with exceptional attention paid to the detail in the Airport Terminal. Rudy brought his treasured 1980’s vintage locomotive, set 7715 and put it on display beside the commemorative 7810 / 40370 set. Adam has posted some great video’s on Adam’s Brick Junction. We made excellent use of FX Bricks large radius curved track so that the track looked real and the trains ran smooth at quick speeds. Peter did a wonderful job building Alcatraz with functioning jail doors.

A great weekend!

January 4, 2023

LEGO SeaCans

Mike and others in our group have created a number of very interesting SeaCans. Much of this is based off of the SeaCans that came with the Lego Maersk Train (10219). This train was a “six stud” wide train design, which is the most popular train width, and therefore the SeaCans are also “six studs” wide.

SeaCan with Lego Shaft and Lego Hand as Handle

December 18, 2021December 18, 2021

FX Bricks – R72 & R88 Curved Track

It is difficult to contain our excitement. We took the plunge and purchased some excellent quality metal clad LEGO compatible track from Michael Gale at FX Bricks. As a club, we have enough for a complete circle and this will greatly improve our show layouts, for two reasons:
– The trains will be able to operate more smoothly through the larger radius turns, both in that they have less drag for longer trains and can run at higher speeds.
– The layout looks more realistic. Two concentric turns, one R72 and one R88, looks better than two R40 curves side by side.

As a side note, for those that are not familiar with the curved track nomenclature, the R stands for radius and the number is the number of studs from the centre point of the circle to the centre of the track. The following image from FX Bricks clearly shows the various possibilities, noting that the standard R40 track from LEGO is not shown. Also, it is standard practice to offset the edge of the track four (4) studs from the edge of the base plate.