I just got interested in Lego trains this year, I needed to get a train to put around the tree, and I thought I try making my own train. I bought a 4565 Freight & Crane Railway, a 4561 Railway Express, and some extra track, and put together a reasonable engine, gondola, boxcar, flatcar, and caboose, and put it around the tree. I liked what I saw. Pics are here
Now we had our own house and I began to see a grand vision of the train starting out in one room, going around the tree, climbing the stairs, passing through the dining room, into the hallway, and turning around again in the library and heading back. I got a copy of Track Designer and speced out a track layout.
Design in hand I started to order what I needed, first some of the new Train stuff from Lego. (Got a free t-shirt.)
 | |
| Full Image | Medium Image |
I later ordered many pieces of track. Thant done I just need to figure out how to wire up my Mindstorms kits to do the auto voltage switching on the mainline. I ended up building some Lego relays, and setting up light detectors at both ends. It was an easy design to get correct, most of the easy mechanisms didn't work (having the Mindstorms RCX power the mainline, putting a RCX brick at both ends and signaling using the mainline of track when the the train had passed by). The only solution I could get to work required running Lego wires the length of the track to put a Lego light sensor at the far switch. After some fine tuning, we had the train running successfully. It was a bit noisy some I put some effort into tweaking the approach and departure of the large hill so I could minimize the power levels the train was run at.
Starting out going around the tree.
 | |
| Full Image | Medium Image |
We have gone up most of the hill to get up the stairs while tunneling behind the couch.
 | |
| Full Image | Medium Image |
Past the stairs and through the dining room, onto the library.
 | |
| Full Image | Medium Image |
On the library turnaround, note the large green and blue bricks on the left, those are the Lego brick based relays. The red building is an attempt to use 1x2 bricks improperly, I like what it looks like but I can't figure out how to make a roof that looks nice.
 | |
| Full Image | Medium Image |
