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A Siemens Vectron electric locomotive and three Bombardier doubledeck carriages (one with the streamlined end cap) make my LEGO Regional-Express. The Regional-Express is a very common regional type of train which can be found everywhere in Germany.
My model is build in 7-wide and is powered by Power Functions and two train motors in the bogies of the locomotive, so it will be able to run on all kinds of LEGO Train Systems.
The most challenging part was in fact the end cap of one of the doubledeck carriages. Using various curved slopes I ended up in a result which is not perfect, but close to the original shape (see it on Flickr).
At least I've avoided the non-curved 75° slope bricks which would have been to square-edged for the latest version of the end cap.
The doors at the end cap are lower and allow direct access to the lower level. As the real one, my end cab has room for some bicycles.
You can easily recognize the 1st class by the typical yellow striping.
The display on each side of the carriages between the lower and upper deck has an offset of 1/2 a plate height and again the thin part of a bracket was used to cover the small gap which is left over when a 1-stud-wide subgroup is build in SNOT wise.
One of the waggons has a removable roof. It allows to look inside …
… to see the narrow stairs which lead from the entrance doors to the upper level.
The Deutsche Bahn company does not use the Vectron locomotive to push or pull regional trains like this one but I felt that the "grill" structure on the head of the Vectron engine is a nice challenge to be captured in LEGO bricks.
See the real Vectron on Flickr
Here you get an excellent view of the 7-wide design of the locomotive. This width is great for the lower part of the front. A bit more complex was the front window. The middle part of the frame build using a 2x2 flag – but you only see the thin black edge. The inside looks more chaotic …
The most iconic part of a Vectron locomotive is the "grill" structure on the front.
At the bottom of the locomotive you can spot the boogies with the train motors and the polarity switch in the middle. The switch is needed to let one of the motors run "backwards". If both motors are connected to the same output on the receiver both of them will go "forward", which does not work well ;-]
In the middle part of the locomotive you can see the battery box and the receiver.
The design phase started with the windows of the upper level. They have a very iconic bend in the lower half of the window. And I also wanted to have a complete brick-build red-colored frame around the window.
The lower part of the window are transparent cheese-corners with the higher side facing outside. The bended part of the window is a SNOT transprent panel which is attached to a Technic hole somewhere inside the carriages. The upper red window frame is build using the thin part of a 1x2 - 2x4 bracket element. Unfortunatelly the 1x2 plate of this bracket is facing right inside the interior so I had to modify the minifigs a little bit.
Test ride of the Regional-Express – YouTube video „LEGO Regional-Express with Vectron locomotive on ME-Models R88 curves (pull)“
| Drive: | 2x Power Functions train motors in the Vectron loco |
| Type: | 7-wide, Bo'Bo' electric locomotive with 3 doubledeck carriages |
| Train Wheels: | Train wheel with Technic hole |
| Length locomotive: | ~32 cm (~40 studs) |
| Length carriages: | ~38,5 cm (~48 studs) |
| Total Length: | ~1,50 m |
| Year of Construction: | 2015 |
Building instructions and part lists
There are no building instructions und part lists available for the models shown on this web site. There are no engineering drawings available. To build the LEGO models only photographs from the real prototypes were used. All models are unique and not for sale.