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Steve Jackson Shows Off the Texas Brick Railroad (Video)
Imagine game designer Steve Jackson and a bunch of friends building Lego trains and tracks and scenery, including buildings and other props. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? The group calls itself the Texas Brick Railroad. A lot of members have children, so their meetings tend to be family affairs. Plus, as they're doing here, they often display their train sets at public events where -- yes -- their trains attract children like crazy. This video shows off both current Lego trains and some of the classic, no-longer-sold Lego trains that members have collected over the years, including the highly-prized monorails. There's a transcript, but face it: This is basically visual material, and worth checking out on a computer or handheld that runs Flash if your normal one doesn't. (We've requested an upgrade from Flash-only video, but don't hold your breath. It might be a good while before we get it.)
This comment has been censored at the request of Bureau 23.
Dear Slashdot, it would be nice if you could provide flash video in a format that would run on the open source Gnash player or that could be downloaded using a script like youtube-dl. Please do not use ooyala.com to host videos. I am unable to watch them.
I remember Steve Jackson's "Paranoia" and got all nostalgic about it, which in turn caused me to go to wikipedia. The description of the Computer Phreak society seems very pertinent today amid all the TPB and 'leaks situations in the press: "The line between 'hacker extraordinaire' and 'terminated traitor' is a fine one". Haha, I would like to get his opinion on what is coming next in the world of computers.
It's a play table for GURPS: Railroad!
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Its good to be a geek to be honest, look at all the fun their having.
If you want to meet the man in person, he'll be at DEXCON in Morristown, NJ from July 3-7. dexposure.com
THIS is a LEGO monorail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn5Wb88qnRs
You can do it yourself. 'mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy -o video.avi video.flv' Then post a plain old download link.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
ho scale lay outs are cool and DCC tech does a lot.
I have to say, at least for the mono-rail track, 3-D printing seems the clear way to avoid prowling E-Bay for hard to find and expensive pieces.
I wonder if owners would consent to have their pieces scanned to produce a blue-print.
(Of course, then we'd see whether Lego wants to dare the bad publicity of preventing a trade in replica pieces that Lego no longer sells.)
3-D printing doesn't have any where near the accuracy needed for copying Lego pieces. A traditional CAM machines might work, but I guess that's not the "in" technology here.
I have some of those old monorail pieces (I had no idea they were valuable - should probably did them out), and I doubt that you could 3D print them at the moment. The key part of the centre rail is that it's toothed, with the train itself being driven by a vertically mounted motor in the centre power unit, engaging the fine-toothed track with a metal cog.
I just don't think that a 3D printer can produce the level of accuracy needed for that sort of track with enough strength to withstand the metal traction cog.
I'm confused. Is this the same Steve Jackson who created the Fighting Fantasy books, together with Ian Livingstone?
Who said you have to copy LEGO's design?
I remember seeing a monorail built by a kid and his dad at a local fair where the train itself was LEGO but everything else was hand fabricated. The rail and supports were made from wood and they'd built his own steamer box to make the curved sections. There was a copper wire glued to each side of the rail for electrical transmission which was controlled by a regular train transformer. The top of the rail had 120 grit sandpaper glued to it for the steep grade section where extra traction was needed. The train itself had two drive cars; one at each end and used elastic bands as spring to hold the horizontal clamping wheels.
Who says you need money or high technology to have fun?
YES, we got our idiot pluggin in some 3d printing shit for no good reason...
Compared to the size of the layouts the WA Brick Society (that's Western Australia, not Washington State btw) has displayed over the last few years, that layout is tiny.
And I bet there are clubs out there doing even bigger layouts.
I only ask because I'm having trouble picturing him as the gigantic loser in the video showing off a toy train.
Yes, this is flamebait. That fact, however, doesn't negate the point nor make the weird-o in the video any less awkward.
Required reading for internet skeptics
While that layout is nice it isn't as impressive as the ones up at Brickmania Toyworks in Minneapolis, MN. Housed there is the Greater Midwest Lego Train Club's layout as well as the Twin Cities Lego Train Club's layout. I highly suggest checking out the things in the base of the layout as well as looking carefully around the layout as there are some quite funny things (can you find tiger getting clubbed). They also have some large stand alone scenes they created like a WWII German town under siege, a Vietnam War Battle, and a Pacific amphibious assault from WWII which are all mostly to scale with numerous other models they created elsewhere. They even let you play with their Legos, have a ramp to race Lego vehicles down, and will let you run your own Lego train on their layouts. Kids love it, hell even adults like it and find humor there, plus it doesn't cost anything but donations are welcome and I always toss some money in the bin as it is great wholesome fun for a few hours.
Time to offend someone