LEGO Transformer commuter train / KTM Komuter

 

This is the spiritual successor to one of my older LEGO creation and I'm sure you will fail to guess correctly which one!

PROLOGUE

Many, many years ago... I made a custom triple changer Transformer character called Railrazor... and he turned into a bullet train and also a space shuttle (video below)

And about 2 years ago,  I took the creation above out from my storage and prepared video about it. Oh boy.. what a taxing experience ! I remembered enjoying building it years before! On retrospect.... it was a fragile train wreck when handled as a "fully built toy".   Despite many requests from my youtube viewers for building instructions for Railrazor.. it's simply unredeemable nor worthy of that. 

After finally completed the video above , I'd thought..... "perhaps having just one mode would make things much, much easier" . So, I decided to start this commuter train Transformer project.

And nope...  this new project is not the spiritual successor to Railrazor.

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

KTM Komuter is one of the major commuter train service in my home country , Malaysia. So I paid homage to it by applying it's train livery , white body  with yellow, blue and red accents.

One of the major challenges for this project is to ensure symmetry on both ends of the train mode, especially the roof 

Don't rub your eyes... the wheels on the middle coach are indeed shinier than the other two. I don't have many dark gray round plates lying about (I used to assume I have tons of them )

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Project was started around the 3rd quarter of 2022, and was cast aside due to me being finicky yet again on the color scheme of the robot mode. And it's been about 1.5 years since! 

Initially I planned to have darker tinted windows but I found out I don't have enough of such parts to proceed! 

Dark blue was chosen in favor of classic blue  due to a simple fact that certain parts in classic blue are scarce and hard to acquire in my area!

Note the gaps between the coaches . It was designed in such a way that so that I can pry the panels out when transforming to robot mode. 

The biggest challenge faced by me is probably finding ways to conceal the robot head inside a tightly packed train mode.

TRANSFORM!

Note the blue c-clip below the neck. That will be connected to the flank on the right to secure it.

At this point, I discovered I rotated the knee joints facing the wrong direction. Simply rotate them back 180 degrees and  he's done!

ROBOT MODE

At this point I discovered that I must ditch a bunch of photos of bot mode taken in brown background , and redo them in green instead.

There are many robot parts  concealed in the train mode, like the forearms and legs. And it's a "curse" of sorts knowing I can apply any color I wanted to decorate them, leading to me dragging the project longer from indecisiveness!

 

 

The dark gray thighs are designed /curved in such a way that they can provide clearance in knee bending poses.

 

One of the final enhancements to this creation was applying the kneepads on his legs.

MORE ACTION POSES

 

 

Below are some of the brown background photos worth salvaging to be shown here.

Big feet means excellent stability, even standing on one foot!

  

WITH TITANICUS

In terms of engineering... this project took many inspiration from my Titanic Transformer I made about 4 years ago (video below). 

The core transformation between this and Titanic TF are very similar  , where big chunk /both ends of the alternate mode becoming the robot legs.    

I started the project by revisting my Titanic TF robot body's engineering and simply  followed it.  So shall dare say, this train TF is a worthy successor to my Titanic TF above!

They're almost the same height, with one having the advantage of zero-kibble on his back.

 

FINALLY

As always, thank you for reaching this far and hope you guys enjoy my writesups on this project. Click  here to view more LEGO Transformers I made !