9V Shunter
I’m 21 years old! I think. This is not my usual “what if”, but a shunter built after a prototype by a quite known LEGO designer. He works for Star Wars now but used to design for City at some point in his career and he happens to have a bunch of prototypes from that time behind his desk, there are the first literations of the Santa Fe locomotive, his first passenger train, some trucks, and this little gem. All these prototypes are from around 2000-2003 I guess, and I can imagine that this would fit really well into the portfolio back then. There never was a separate 9V locomotive until “My Own Train” was introduced, but even then you couldn’t get a driving train engine just by grabbing a box off the shelf, but had to get a box, a polybag with the color you desired, then the motor and a polybag with a lightbrick.
This one is almost like it was originally designed the only real differences are the engine covers (I simply don’t have these fingerhinge shutters in dark gray), and the roof which I also couldn’t hunt down as one part. The rest is cosmetic changes that improve the stability or the building experience. If this set would have happened, I’m sure at least some things would have been solved in similar fashion. I swapped the yellow jacket train conductor with the two train dudes that seem to have been in every 9 Volt set in the late 90ies, early 2000s… As the prototype uses some painted bits, I figured that the black windows were a concious decision, and didn’t change that. It actually fits within the quite random color palet of the time period when this was originally designed anyway.
9V Shunter
I’m 21 years old! I think. This is not my usual “what if”, but a shunter built after a prototype by a quite known LEGO designer. He works for Star Wars now but used to design for City at some point in his career and he happens to have a bunch of prototypes from that time behind his desk, there are the first literations of the Santa Fe locomotive, his first passenger train, some trucks, and this little gem. All these prototypes are from around 2000-2003 I guess, and I can imagine that this would fit really well into the portfolio back then. There never was a separate 9V locomotive until “My Own Train” was introduced, but even then you couldn’t get a driving train engine just by grabbing a box off the shelf, but had to get a box, a polybag with the color you desired, then the motor and a polybag with a lightbrick.
This one is almost like it was originally designed the only real differences are the engine covers (I simply don’t have these fingerhinge shutters in dark gray), and the roof which I also couldn’t hunt down as one part. The rest is cosmetic changes that improve the stability or the building experience. If this set would have happened, I’m sure at least some things would have been solved in similar fashion. I swapped the yellow jacket train conductor with the two train dudes that seem to have been in every 9 Volt set in the late 90ies, early 2000s… As the prototype uses some painted bits, I figured that the black windows were a concious decision, and didn’t change that. It actually fits within the quite random color palet of the time period when this was originally designed anyway.