Hi All, My daughter and I just posted a new video update for our basement lego city. A few of the latest updates include Haunted house, Brickcitydepot's consulate, maersk train, emerald night, diagon alley. hit the subscribe button if you want to be notified of updates. still lots of work to do but it is getting there. Hope you like it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fq6Megdvcs&feature=youtu.be

Looking good my friend!! One of these days I'll get a video of my town/train layout posted. Also let me know how your Emerald Night runs once you power it up with power functions. Sometimes Emerald Nights have friction issues and lock up when using power functions. There are various threads on other Lego train websites explaining how to fix the friction issues. It can be quite a headache though. I have instead changed my Emerald Night back to non-powered for the time being. Anyhow let me know if you have any issues with it, I may be able to help you if you experience this issue.

good point. Maybe I'll go with a 9v motor in the tender instead. This evening I experimented with taking one out of my diesal CN locamotive and putting it in the tender of the emerald night. I had to add a bunch of weight to it but it did manage to move the emerald night through the layout. I think to remove some more friction points I'll disengage the gears inside the locomotive too.

I've never tried the 9v with the Emerald Night. Adding weight does help as you said. The Emerald Night just isn't as forgiving as say the Maersk Train when it comes to friction, or unlevel train track. The Maersk Train runs smooth with power functions, but the Emerald Night is much slower (as I guess it should be since it's a steam engine) and more fickle when it comes to friction or train track that isn't perfectly level. I plan to buy a Horizon Express soon, maybe even two so I can connect them and build one long train. I'm curious whether I'll need two PF motors or if just one will handle pulling two connected sets? I'm also curious to see how smooth it runs, hopefully it runs smooth like the Maersk Train does. Do you have a Horizon Express yet, or plan to get one in the future?

Two Horizon Express trains are in our future too. Being in canada they are $200 a pop up here so I'm going to wait for one of our trips to the states to pick them up. Maybe waiting for them to be an Amazon sale item might be worth while too. we will see if I have that kind of patience. My plan is to power them with 9v motors. I have a 9v in the maersk and it works great, nice to be able to preserve the engine detail on that one too be eliminating the need for a battery box. All my rail is 9v so I can go with either at this point. my only powerfunction train is the white passenger train in my first video all the rest are 9v. I'm debating picking up some more passenger cars for my emerald night before the sets get even more cost prohibitive.

A big box from Germany arrived today with lots of black, white and yellow bricks in it. Guess we will be getting started on our road construction soon! wont be long before we can post update video 3!

Yeah I like your black and yellow roads. I just use the grey road base plates Lego sells for my city layout. I'm trying to be patient and wait for a discount on the Horizon Express too, but who knows when that will be. Waiting is hard, believe I know haha. Good luck building those roads, I can't wait to see your next video. Your city is coming along nice.