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| Legends say that Rayque is still pressing these two buttons, to this very day... |
They don't make 'm like these anymore, as they would say. Old but gold, I guess.
If you are familiar with my preferences in LEGO products, I'm always interested in their niche offerings. That can range into themes like Bionicle or Galidor, set designs that are remarkable and boundary pushing, or toy peripherals where LEGO develops an entire new system that ends up with a short shelf life because it failed to sell enough copies.
Having experienced pretty much every track or pipe system that LEGO has produced, including trains from DUPLO, 4,5V and the Monorail, their modern roller coaster sets, all generations of pneumatics and even solar panels - I was bound to inevitable go down the rabbit hole of what is LEGO's most ambitious train system: 12V track, the Gray Era.
Basically, during the golden age of railway modelling, LEGO sought to participate in an over-saturated market with their own expansions to their already existing 4,5V train system. Unfortunately, this was during the 1970 to 1980s, so LEGO was still a small toy company at the time. Expensive LEGO sets that do not have a broad appeal, contain many specialized parts that are exclusive to these few add-on sets, released almost forty years too early, and was also only available in Europe. The perfect recipe to create a niche line-up of sets, and that's everything I could ever ask for.
While my earliest hands-on experience with 12V as a system was when I was a child, I've never really owned any of the 12V sets until today. And in typical Rayque fashion, my entry set to the 12V system isn't even a train, but one of the track peripherals that LEGO offered to expand your layout. You see, what makes 12V stand out from LEGO's other train systems is that the emphasis of 12V isn't on the trains themselves, but the ability to add all kinds of gimmicks to your track, such as the set that I bought: #7866, from 1983. And personally, as an engineer and LEGO enthusiast, I'm far more interested in the inner workings of these add-ons and its system, rather than the set designs themselves.
The 12V system has a good selection of add-ons, including railroad switches, some street lights, a switch to turn off specific sections of track so that trains that drive over it will stop, and even a module that allows you to separate your wagons from each other. All of these modules are connected to a separate two-button controller, which you can stack onto each other to build a large keyboard, so that you can control your train layout from a distance. It's simple and charming, yet an effective system that was ahead of its time. LEGO has never truly recreated something similar since.
And with good reason, because 12V didn't sell well enough. Not to mention that all of these electric components and specialized pieces are very delicate; handle them with care. LEGO has tried many other train systems after 12V, for them to realize that keeping it to simple plastic railroad sets tends to sell better. While I'm not planning to go bankrupt now by purchasing more add-ons for a future LEGO project, I will continue my 12V scavenger hunt another day.
Now certainly, with modern LEGO peripherals such as Mindstorms, you could build far more advanced custom add-ons to your tracks. But where's the fun in that? If you really want to do it right, build a dedicated 12V layout, then use Mindstorms to automate it all. Now that would be cool thing to see. So many things to build and collect, so little time...
That's it for today - I'll see you guys again next post!