LEGO Hogwarts Express 8 Wide Refine Update 3a

Over the last few days I've been trying to utilise every bit of space to make the chassis as structurally sound as possible, this involved redesigning the area under the cab which was just a solid block and was wasted space.

 

So just like I did with the earliest unpowered chassis block and tender I used this space properly to reinforce the powered chassis for a much stronger overall connection between the chassis and cab/boiler.

 

I also have managed to get the chassis to be nearly the perfect height so the connecting rods now almost completely center themselves with the slide rails of the cylinder just like the real loco. So now instead of being a plate and a quarter too low it is just a quarter of a plate too low, but at speed this will be barely noticeable.

 

The cylinder block was also shortened in length from its old design and lowered half a stud to make the chassis a plate lower overall as the chassis block was risen by half a plate, this is what created the full plate raise of the connecting rods giving this very close representation of the rod positioning of the real loco.

 

You'll notice that there are flanged wheels in the center, this was a test to see how the loco would look and I personally think it looks absolutely amazing with all flanged wheels, so this design was made in mind with having flanged center wheels which can be swapped out for blinds on official track, but honestly I like this look so much I may get some custom large radius track to run this loco on which hopefully should work with the spacing of the wheels and them all being flanged.

 

As you can see I finally got Stud.io to cooperate and show the BBB XL and bogie wheels so now I can make renders rather than take screenshots.

Done