[MOC] The Switcher of Theseus

[Celeste]

The Ship of Theseus is one of my all-time favorite paradoxes (I swear this connects back to Lego trains). For the unfamiliar, it goes like this: Theseus is an ancient Greek hero and he has a ship. As time goes on, parts of his ship begin to wear out and decay and he must replace them one by one. After some time, he has replaced every single part on his ship. The question raised is: Is it still the same ship?. If not, when does it become a new ship? When half of the pieces are replaced? When the final piece is replaced? It's an interesting thought experiment for sure.

So, how does this circle back to Lego trains? I have been building Lego trains since I was little and while most of my old creations are long gone, some survive. Specifically, two small switchers from around 2012/2013. For the sake of this post, I'm just going to focus on the larger and more interesting one. Please excuse the photo quality. This is the best I could find.

I remember being quite proud of this at the time. Funnily enough, it uses my fictional railway's color scheme of blue and white completely on accident. Back then, I built with whatever colors and parts I had on hand, and I chose blue and white at random. I ended up really liking the combo of those colors (As well as the variety and commonality of parts), so when I chose an "official" color scheme a few years later, this was an obvious choice.

Anyway, back to the locomotive itself. It was based on a British Rail Class 04 with side skirts, inspired by a particular TV show and a particular character. At this point, the locomotive was not powered and functioned purely as a "push train". As the years went on and on, I made little tweaks and big redesigns to it. However, I never thought about taking it apart completely, only improving it. I'll skip all of these in between versions for sake of not boring you! Fast forward to today, 12 years later, and I have the latest version of my little switcher. Version number IHaveLostCount.

On the whole, the locomotive is a fair bit shorter and a little bit taller than in its original form. Usually, I am a fan of longer, lower locomotives, but for this switcher, I really do like the current silhouette. 

For some reason, I decided the design directly prior to this one was just too simplistic. So, I started adding details and weird building techniques just because. I never normally build like this, but it was an interesting challenge. In addition, I gave myself the restriction of only using parts I had on-hand, so no Bricklink orders. I got super invested in creating this angle using car doors. The big challenge came when i had to fill in the gap it created at the top.

The solution I went with involved cheese slopes on their side, but just trapped inside, free floating. With techniques like these, the model certainly looked more interesting, but it feels less sturdy than it used to, which I am not a fan of.

There is barely any space in the cab with the electronics, but I wanted to at least fit in a figure and one control panel.

With the roof removed, we can see the recharging port for the Circuit Cube that is powering this little guy. 

The back section also comes off easily to access the power switch. This also reveals the trick that the engineer has no legs! Honestly, ever since the first powered version with Circuit Cubes, I could never figure out how to get the minifig legs to fit in too. So, I always omitted them.

Here I've removed some of the side skirting so you can see the motor mounted below. It just uses one basic circuit cubes motor driving the rear wheels. Maybe one day I'll try making it dual motor or something, but that's a while away.

I did take a video of it briefly running. The top speed is not all that fast, but this thing can crawl quite well (Both shown in the video), which makes sense for a small switcher like this. In terms of pulling power, I haven't tested the limits of it, but it hasn't struggled when I've hooked it up to a handful of cars.

So, with all these changes over many years, is this switcher of Theseus the same switcher I built in 2012? 

I would love to hear your thoughts! Thanks for looking!

[Ts__]

Nice, little shunting locomotive in the pepped-up 80s style.

What surprises me, however, is the position of the engine. The Circuit Cube motor sits too low and is flush with the top edge of the rail in turnouts and level crossings.
In the video you drive over a turnout, but that shouldn't be safe to operate.

I once wanted to install a Circuit Cube motor like this and noticed the problem and turned the motor by 90°. Then you have 1/2 plate space between the rail and the motor.

 

Thomas

 

Edited April 18, 2024 by Ts__

[ivanlan9]

This reminds me of nothing so much as GMD's small steps into the diesel-hydraulic market (very small indeed, at least in the US), the GMDH-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMD_GMDH-3 and its bigger brother, the GMDH-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMD_GMDH-1

Neither was a success, with GMD building only four of the larger units and only a single copy of the the smaller one.  All five were built in the 1956-60 timeframe.

[Celeste]

On 4/18/2024 at 12:46 AM, Ts__ said:

Nice, little shunting locomotive in the pepped-up 80s style.

What surprises me, however, is the position of the engine. The Circuit Cube motor sits too low and is flush with the top edge of the rail in turnouts and level crossings.
In the video you drive over a turnout, but that shouldn't be safe to operate.

I once wanted to install a Circuit Cube motor like this and noticed the problem and turned the motor by 90°. Then you have 1/2 plate space between the rail and the motor.

 

I haven’t noticed issues driving it over switches, but I’ll take your word for it! Next iteration of this will have a new motor position. Did you rotate your motor by twisting it 90 about the output shaft? Or did you move it to be directly above the drive wheels facing down?

 

On 4/18/2024 at 5:53 PM, ivanlan9 said:

This reminds me of nothing so much as GMD's small steps into the diesel-hydraulic market (very small indeed, at least in the US), the GMDH-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMD_GMDH-3 and its bigger brother, the GMDH-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMD_GMDH-1

Neither was a success, with GMD building only four of the larger units and only a single copy of the the smaller one.  All five were built in the 1956-60 timeframe.

Ooh! Those do look similar!! I like those little guys a lot!

[Ts__]

11 hours ago, Legownz said:

Did you rotate your motor by twisting it 90 about the output shaft?

 

This. I need the space above for nice design ;-)

 

Thomas

 

 

Edited April 22, 2024 by Ts__