NELUG recently held an event dedicated to setting the world record for the longest LEGO monorail track. From everything we had seen, the previous record was somewhere around 200-300 linear feet of monorail track, depending on how you counted it, with a few close contenders, such as
the OBB layout, which I believe has happened a few times with similar amounts of track.
We took a tally in the club, and figured out we could easily beat the record if everyone contributed their track towards the common goal. The trickier part was actually finding a venue! So we ended up in a pretty small display place,
the Wenham Museum (not big enough to display ALL our track), but enough to set the record!
When all was said and done, we came up with a loop of track that was 28069.36 studs long (about 736' 8.74", or 224.55m). And if you total up all the track used (but not in the loop), it's about 29769.96 studs long! The tally:
Long: 162 (4 not used in loop)
Short: 180 (1 not used in loop)
Curve: 312 (1 not used in loop)
Stop: 57 (all used)
Ramps: 174 (2 not used in loop)
Half-Curves: 38 (31 not used in loop)
Points as Half-Curves: 5 (all used)
Points as Straights: 31 (all used)
The layout:
http://www.suave.net/~dave/images/nelug/mr730/level01.pnghttp://www.suave.net/~dave/images/nelug/mr730/level02.pnghttp://www.suave.net/~dave/images/nelug/mr730/level03.pnghttp://www.suave.net/~dave/images/nelug/mr730/level11.pngPhotos of the event:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/sets/72157629279039211/with/6859952783/http://www.flickr.com/photos/riplego/sets/72157629284588143/with/6862436943/Videos of the loop:
http://youtu.be/bnUNHYnrj2khttp://youtu.be/6k7iOzm0UWMDaveE
Comments
... Little did we know that they'd be discontinued several months later, and that they'd shoot up in value! I actually cut out early, so I'm not sure exactly, but something like 8 hours or so. It was quite a different experience from our typical train layouts, since it really required building track upwards!
And of course the worst part was that ONE of the tower builders realized on the morning of setup that he had built his tower *ONE STUD* too tall, and had to pretty much spend the whole day (and part of the following morning) rebuilding his tower and adjusting!
DaveE
Great layout, really impressive. I'm a sucker for monorail, and it seems there are more than a couple of fans in your LUG too.
^ One stud too tall?! Maybe it would have been easier to make a hole in the ceiling then repair it later :)
Thanks for the post Davee!
There's also a link to the "train's-eye view", a mini USB camera placed in one of the monorail trains, and the full 16 and a bit minutes it takes to complete a circuit is shown below:
Click to view now!!
Enjoy -- and be amazed and awe-struck!
@davee123 or @andyscouse:
How did you generate the layout images? Every tool that I've tried to use to do Monorail Layouts has been deficient in some major way...
What camera did you use to record the "train's-eye view"?
ILUGNY is in the planning stages (maybe "planning" too strong a word) for an event in Tarrytown NY, and I'd really love to be able to be able to record the train loop like that and put it up on the web.
BlueBrick is probably the most useful track layout program, but I have to say the constantly-being-off-by-1-pixel really annoys me to the point where I don't want to use it for presentation reaons-- only for reference purposes.
I'm not sure about the camera, though-- I don't recall whose it was, I'll ask around in the club and see if I can get any details...
DaveE
And being jealous.
After doing a little research I eventually found this:
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1362692
This thing seems to be popular with RC and hobby train enthusiasts, so I thought I would check it out. $36 shipped from ebay...
It doesn't do "live" video like yours, but it certainly is small and cheap enough to have some fun with.
Looks like the camera you had set up is a small wireless camera, which would be quite useful too.
Once I get this thing in the mail I'll make a post about how it works out. $36 is really quite affordable for a 720p camera!
Hope that helps!