Hi everyone, this is Balazs from RacingBrick! This is my third video about the brand new
LEGO Ideas 21344 Orient Express. Today we're going to move this huge set under
its own power, mainly trying to do it with as few modifications as possible and using
standard LEGO electronics, but in the end we'll give it some extra juice with this BuWizz
unit so make sure to stick around! My first video was released at the unveiling. I had the opportunity to talk to the LEGO
Ideas team about the set, and in that video there is a lot of background information,
the reasons for the changes and so on. The second video was my detailed building
review, showing all the interesting aspects of the build process, highlighting all the
cool techniques, intersting parts used, but also some issues, like the misprinted stickers
and tiles with the city names. If you haven't seen these videos yet, I recommend
to watch them first. As always, the link is in the top right corner. There's also something I'd like to ask - we're
getting closer and closer to 200.000 subscribers and it would be amazing if we hit that mark
before the end of the year! If you haven't subscribed yet, please smash
that button, I would really appreciate it! ,you will find detailed set reviews and other
LEGO videos around here every week! So, if you've seen my videos about the set,
then you probably know that one of the biggest disappointments - besides the locomotive change,
of course - was the lack of official motorization. According to the LEGO Ideas team, they really
tried every power source and motor combination and tested them for months, but they couldn't
find a satisfactory solution to make the train move. As they said, the 2 wagons and the locomotive
are just too heavy, twice as heavy as a regular powered City train. The lead designer of the set really wanted
the motorization to happen, but they had to give up the idea. Today we will try out some solutions and combinations
and try to repeat those tests and their results. At the end of my review, I gave you a sneak
peek of the City Freight train and I have to admit that I deliberately chose a very
poor configuration. The locomotive was trying to push the whole
train on a layout where the Orient Express was mostly on a curve, so it was no surprise
that the wheels were slipping. Despite the setup, the train started moving
after a while, even speeding up on the straight section, but slowing down again and even stopping
on the curves. So before trying anything meaningful today,
let's see the weight results first! The locomotive and the tender of the Orient
Express together weigh 577 g. Dining car 623 g, sleeping car 664, a total
of 1864 g. Let's see the City Freight train, locomotive
473g, all cars together 639g, 1112 in total. As you can see, the Orient Express does not
weigh twice as much as the freight train as a whole, but if we check the weight of the
cars to be pulled, it is almost exactly twice as much. You've seen that it's not a good idea to push
the whole Orient Express. What if we put the locomotive between the
wagons and the tender? We still have a lot of slipping, the train
eventually moves,but there's another problem: the tender won't stay on the track. It is hollow and light, and the city locomotive
pushes it from behind, so that's kind of logical. Back to basics: the wagons weigh twice as
much as the city train, so can the city locomotive pull the two Orient Express wagons at all? Well, without any effort! It runs almost as fast as the original City
configuration, zero slipping, and a pretty frightening speed actually! Here's another test with the tender added
as well. As you can see, it's pretty stable and runs
just as fast as before! If the locomotive can be powered, there shouldn't
be many problems. Time to see the cars with the Crocodile locomotive
- they run together beautifully and look great. I mean, I like the color scheme of the Orient
Express locomotive, but maybe a different color could have been even better. Now let's try the first modification, and
this will be the easiest. This is not my idea, I saw it in a video by
Stud City, you can find the link in the top right corner. He used a Power Functions configuration, we
will use Powered Up. I take the train motor from the freight locomotive,
remove one of the bogies from this car, yes, that piece wants to stay there, and just attach
the motor, like a direct swap. This is probably not the most stable and secure
solution, but it should work for the test. The City hub slides into the tender, as you
could see in my previous video, and since the door for the cable is in the front, I'll
do a simple trick and turn the tender around, otherwise the cable would be too short. Now everything is connected, let's see how
it works! This happened in the Stud City video too,
although not as often as here, but he had more straight sections between the curves. As the motor and the wagon is pushing the
tender despite the weight of the hub, it derails quite often and it is practically pushed off
the rails by the powered car. This was a simple solution, but perhaps not
the best. Let's try powering that locomotive instead. There are already several solutions posted
by train enthusiasts in the corresponding Eurobricks forum. Some people have used the Medium Linear motor,
others the Large motor. I opted for the Large motor because it has
more power, more torque and I can use the Crocodile control profile directly in the
Powered Up app. I didn't stick strictly to one of the solutions,
but took what I found, since I don't have that many non-Technic LEGO pieces. This may not be the most sturdy or magnificent
version, but as a proof of concept it should work perfectly. I'm sure there will be several tutorials on
rebrickable after the set is released. So the cable runs through the cab it is long
enough to reach the hub in the tender. We need to fire up the Corodile profile and
off we go! So, it still not good, the locomotive runs
in place, it doesn't have enough traction. We need to borrow something else from the
Corocodile train, namely the red rubber bands on the wheels. And that's it, problem solved, the train is
running! No obvious slippage, the speed is fine, I
think it's a bit slower than the City loco, but it's perfectly fine for me. It's worth noting that I run the train on
rechargeable AAA batteries, so a fresh pack of alkalines or special 1.5V lithium-ion rechargeables
would make the train even faster. Now let's try it in reverse! It's a bit slower, because pushing is not
as good as pulling as we saw earlier, but it runs ok. I did multiple tests, it did run for minutes
without any issue, and it the tender only derailed once. I tried to capture it later with different
camera angles, but couldn't replicate it, so it is not a very frequent problem. So, as a proof of concept, I think we can
agree that the train can be motorized with a small City hub and a Large motor and probably
with other combinations as well. It's not perfect and might have some rare
issues reversing, but I'm sure the train community will come up with something reliable very
soon after release. If the only thing holding you back from buying
it is the lack of motorization option, then it's definitely possible. Additional parts will be needed though besides
the motor and the hub, that's for sure. And here's another obligatory test: how does
it work with a BuWizz 3.0 unit? It fits into the tender, although some modifications
would be necessary because of the connections on the top. This is the speed with more than 11V powering
the motor, I think that's pretty impressive. And it can reliably run in reverse too, so
I don't see why you wouldn't try powering this train, it is way more fun than a static
model. So here's the big question - why did LEGO
decide to leave this feature out? Why did they say the train is too heavy even
though it clearly runs? Well, since we don't know their testing methods
and especially the targets of these tests, we can't be sure. I assume there are certain criteria that need
to be met, and given the ridiculous speed and performance of the City trains or the
Corcodile locomotive, anything LEGO releases seems far too overpowered, so maybe their
targets to reach are too high. Or perhaps the small anomaly with the tender
in reverse also has something to do with it, but it only occurred once. Or maybe moving parts or wheels wear out faster
due to the extra weight of the wagons. That's a possibility, but I'm not sure how
we could test that compared to a regular City train. Other than this, I just have far wilder guesses. Let's pull out our tinfoil hat, it is speculation
time! So why didn't we get a motorized set by default? After all, it wouldn't be the first Ideas
set with Powered Up parts, the Motorized Lighthouse had a dumb battery box and the simple medium
linear motor, the Piano had the same City hub as this one, a simple medium linear motor
and even a sensor. But the Lighthouse also cost $300 with fewer
parts, the Piano was already $400 with slightly more pieces. If this set included the hub and the motor,
the price could have easily been $350 or even $400. I'm not sure many people would have liked
that. Aside from the potential challenges we've
seen here, why isn't there a motorization option? The availability of Powered Up components
is very rhapsodic on lego.com. The hub and large motor are now available
in the US, although on back order. The hub is out of stock in Europe, and the
motor isn't even on the site. LEGO often plays this silly game: instead
of labeling electrical components as out of stock, they simply pull the product page regionally. Why is that? I've no idea. Maybe they don't want us to buy the Powered
Up parts individually, only in sets. But then it would have gotten too expensive
with these included, so... maybe it was easier to drop the whole idea. Or maybe the future of Powered Up isn't so
bright. Some motors have been retired, Mindstorms
has been discontinued, it doesn't look very promising... but that's going too far, maybe
we'll talk about it in another video. This is what we get for 300 EUR / USD. 2 nice, detailed and heavy wagons, a simpler
but still pretty nice locomotive, though not comparable to the original submission, and
a hopefully not too difficult motorization option, but not officially. Oh, and a whole bunch of quality issues I
mentioned in my review with the stickers, printed city names, bent rails and so on. So is it worth the price? To be honest, I'm not sure. We'll see how much demand there will be upon
release, which is December 1 by the way, but if I were you I'd wait a few more months until
the set is available at other retailers. By then there will be solid motorization options
and plenty of modifications developed by the community, so it's probably worth the wait,
and hopefully later releases will fix the quality issues as well. Let me know folks what you think of this set,
if you're going to buy it, if you're buying it just for the cars, or if you want to motorize
it - let's talk about it in the comments section! If you enjoyed this video, then please give
it a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe with notifications as there will be more exciting
LEGO videos coming soon. See you next time, bye bye!
