Meet Arjen Hartsuiker and his wonderful LEGO® Train World
13 November 2018
LEGO® trains are among the most popular LEGO® sets. Not only standard LEGO® train sets are very popular, but also MOC trains are really liked among MOC builders. Via online media such as YouTube, you can find particularly clever and ingenious LEGO® train projects, such as via the YouTube channel of AlmightyArjen. We recently had the pleasure to speak with Arjen Hartsuiker, the creator of this YouTube channel. We talked to him about his passion for LEGO® and his beautiful projects.
ToyPro: how and when did your passion for LEGO® start?
Arjen: the love for LEGO® started in my youth, first with DUPLO and then with normal LEGO®. On my sixth birthday I got a LEGO® train and I was very happy with it. I can still remember it as the day of yesterday! My parents told me that while I was eating, I used to look at my LEGO® buildings on the floor and that during dinner I was already thinking about what I was going to build. I still have that a little bit now and I can hardly get to sleep if I have a problem with one of my LEGO® automation projects that is really difficult to solve. I then have to try some things first before I can go to bed quietly.
In the Arjen train world you can also find LEGO® winter villages.
ToyPro: what makes LEGO® trains so fun for you?
Arjen: LEGO® trains are moving! LEGO® is quite static, but trains move and that has always attracted me. In addition, I think trains are also a special means of transport. You can also make nice videos with LEGO® trains.
ToyPro: what was your first major project?
Arjen: the first really big LEGO® trains automation project was an automated container terminal. In this project trains stopped and via a robotic arm the containers were put on the train or taken off, all fully automated.
A brilliant video of a LEGO® train project in the snow.
ToyPro: is there a project that really stands out for you?
Arjen: the project that really stands out for me is the automated coal terminal. That has really become a fine piece of technology! It was a large terminal where the coal was unloaded from the wagons. A gate valve in the bottom of the wagon was opened so that the coals fell out. There were also two silos where coal could be loaded into the wagons. The unloaded coal returned to the silos via conveyor belts and an excavator, allowing the system to continue without stops. The system consisted of multiple controllers which all communicated with each other.
View the automated coal terminal in the next video.
ToyPro: what project are you currently working on?
Arjen: I am now working on container terminal 2.0. This will be much larger and more advanced than my previous container terminal. The containers are unloaded by a gantry crane, after which they are transported to another crane via a monorail. This will eventually give the containers a place in the container park. The second crane also sends containers through a monorail to the first crane, so that it can put them back on the train. The project is still in full development. You can follow the progress of this project on my Work In Progress channel.
You can view his current projects at Arjen's Work in Progress YouTube channel.
In addition, I am working on a small in-between project: a LEGO® train that attacks a high building. Crash videos always do well on Youtube, lol!
It is above all the technical challenge that I seek every time to make it interesting again for my regular followers. In addition to technical challenges, I have also increasingly introduced story lines in my newer videos. I've tried that before by making a story with my animated series of four episodes, but that was not really a success compared to my train videos. I always add funny scenes to my videos with certain fixed LEGO® characters. For my regular followers there are always moments of recognition.
Arjen has also produced some LEGO® animation series.
ToyPro: do you only use LEGO® parts or non-LEGO® parts as well?
Arjen: I am pretty purist about LEGO®. However, I build my electronics myself and do not use NXT / EV3 sensors and / or the EV3 programming block. This is purely because of the high cost of the sensors (I use dozens in a project) and the limited possibilities of the EV3 programming block. But in terms of blocks only LEGO®: other brands do not come to me, never!
ToyPro: do you have tips for our readers for building train MOCs or for building a LEGO® train track?
Arjen: Tricky question! I do not actually build MOC trains (except functional wagons) and I am not good at that either, because I have too little attention to detail for this. However, I can give tips about creating a train track. If you want to make something complex, it can be useful to work it out first in a digital environment (for example BlueBrick, but LDD could also work) to see if it all fits. I always find a bridge very beautiful, but it does cost a lot of space and components. When making a bridge you have to take into account the maximum steepness of the track which goes up and down. For this I keep 1 block height per track section and this is absolutely the most steep what is possible. In addition, you have to make sure that you round off the slope slightly at the horizontal part of the bridge, otherwise the train can derail there if the angle is too sharp.
ToyPro: Arjen thank you very much for your time and inspiration. You can find Arjen's work on his YouTube channel AlmightyArjen. Do you want to build a LEGO® train world yourself? On ToyPro you can find more than 17,000 unique LEGO® parts, including loose LEGO® train parts, electric LEGO® parts and technical LEGO® parts.
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