I just discovered Maciej Drwiega’s flickr gallery today and was really impressed by both the models and photography. This railroad support crane struck as particularly nice due to its use of studes out tiles, plates and wings to create a visually interesting monochrome surface. The windscreen is also particularly nice.

Sometimes a model shows a lot of dedication to a cause that is worthy of blogging. In this case Matt Hamann (jaster) has carefully and cunningly connected every piece of scrap machinery in his gondola and attached it all to the base. He has no bar with clips left. That, dear readers, is dedication to a cause.

The NS 1800 (link in Dutch) is a common sight on railways in the Netherlands and I’ve seen various LEGO versions of it and its predecessor throughout the years. This one by Danden is a particularly fine 6-wide specimen and, even better, beautifully photographed for our viewing pleasure. And I have to give extra credit for managing to line those cheese slopes up so perfectly.

Thanks to Carl Greatrix for pointing me to this beauty.

Esben Kolind shows us how to travel in style with his Intercity Train. On top of its sleek lines and excellent detailing the train features an attractive close-coupling technique.

Mark Sandlin’s Infothingy has the details:

For the graphically challenged (and to help people find this from the interwebs):

1. Catch the Link Light Rail Connector Bus at Bus Bay 2, near Baggage Carousel 1. It will take you to Tukwila International Blvd. Station. This bus is free.
2. Take the Link Light Rail train into Seattle. ($2.50) Stay on the train until you reach Westlake Station, which is the last stop.
3. Go up the escalation and into the Westlake Center mall. Go to the top floor of the mall to the Seattle Monorail station.
4. Take the Seattle Monorail to Seattle Center. ($2.00)

Be sure to click through the graphic to a great discussion of other useful ways to get to BrickCon for cheap — more money for bricks!

Those of us who are into trains know that Anthony Sava has been working on his Pennsylvania Railroad T1 Duplex (4-4-4-4) Steam Engine #5544 for a year and a half. We know this because Tony has been posting work-in-progress pictures, asking for advice and generally running an interactive development system for all this time.

Since many people seemed to enjoy my Anatomy of a Warehouse post where I went through some of my own building stages I think this post should appeal even more. Anthony has documented about 30 images as he has progressed in this project.

Right at the beginning he asked for advice and suggestions on the nose which elicited many responses. As one of the most prominent features of the train it is really important to get this right and I think Tony achieved this admirably in his final version.

Later on Tony used LDraw to mock up various components of the train. I assure you the vanity of the example selection was accidental.

As the train got nearer to completion (this picture is four weeks old as of today) the design began to settle down (note the differences from the CAD image above) and more refined details started to appear.

A final pre-production version was completed a few days ago. Just lacking the stickers and any final tweaks. Tony thanks many people for their help but I’d like to thank him for spending the time on this excellent creation.

And I think we can all agree this train has aged rather well since its inception.

Ronald Vallenduuk (Duq) has recently added a couple of sets of instructions to Flickr and kindly showed me how to get LPub working again. I actually reverse engineered the seat gondola many years back after seeing a picture of it and coveting it so it’s great to see Ronald making it available to all and sundry.

I used to make more instructions but had to stop for a while due to a problem I had with LPub. With Ronald’s fix I’m back and running so did some instructions for my latest.

Esben Kolind introduces non-Londoners to the London Overground. Yes, you read that right. It’s the Bombardier train for the new overground lines built and being built around London. Very slick work on the lights which actually work.

Another entry for the Train-Tech Building Contest.