Monorail Record

davee123

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.png
http://www.suave.net/~dave/images/nelug/mr730/level02.png
http://www.suave.net/~dave/images/nelug/mr730/level03.png
http://www.suave.net/~dave/images/nelug/mr730/level11.png

Photos 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/bnUNHYnrj2k
http://youtu.be/6k7iOzm0UWM

DaveE

trypticon

That is fantastic!

Dougout

Wow!! That is amazing! I love how the monorail curves around the tall buildings and follows them all the way up. Immense detail was put into this layout and it looks awesome!! This really makes me wish lego will bring back the monorail. :-(

sidersdd

Awesome. Looks like a few hundred dollars worth of cypress trees in there too. :) How long did it take to set it all up?

davee123

Awesome. Looks like a few hundred dollars worth of cypress trees in there too. :)

Yeah, the cypress trees were luck on our part. Our club was *just* starting to buy its own materials back in 2001 when they came out with the cypress tree accessory pack. So we ordered a few dozen with club funds so that we'd have trees to populate our layout.

... Little did we know that they'd be discontinued several months later, and that they'd shoot up in value!

How long did it take to set it all up?

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

Si_UKNZ

Wow, those cypress trees are £8 each! They're nice though.
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 :)

bmwlego

Now this is what being in a LUG is all about! From one LUG to another (I LUG NY to NELUG) congratulations!
Thanks for the post Davee!

MinifigsMe

amazeballs!

andyscouse

As a recent and proud member of NELUG myself (an ex-pat Brit, no less, 16 years in America), although I didn't assist in the layout, setup or breakdown, I was there for about 4 hours on the Saturday, and this layout was indeed superb! Technically, visually and monumentally.

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!

romdam

Just me, but why does it look like there is no rhyme or reason to this other than to just throw out a ton of track for display. Ok, so there is a "pattern" of curves and what not but I was expecting to see some cool awesome classic town layout. I guess I don't get it.

jwsmart

That's simply amazing.

@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.

davee123

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...

I agree. So I made the image from scratch with MS-Paint and a separate program that I wrote for building random track layouts.

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

MrBerre

I cannot believe I'm watching an 18 minute video of a LEGO monorail.

And being jealous.

jwsmart

@davee123 Thanks.
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!

andyscouse

That's simply amazing.

@davee123 or @andyscouse:

What camera did you use to record the "train's-eye view"?

The camera was a standard wireless USB one that one can get at BestBuy or similar ... simply links to the laptop to record and then posted online. These kinds of cameras tend to come with software, or you can use your own decent software if you have it.

Hope that helps!

mathew

Just me, but why does it look like there is no rhyme or reason to this other than to just throw out a ton of track for display. Ok, so there is a "pattern" of curves and what not but I was expecting to see some cool awesome classic town layout. I guess I don't get it.

I agree what a terrible setup. I effin hate it. No creativity and where oh where are the Ninjango Fett figures? Could an official Lego designer please chime in why this sucks so bad?!? It makes my eyes hurt. Make it stop. Kids are going to bored senseless by it.