I thought about it a bit and decided trying to stuff a 9v motor in the locomotive was a fools errand.  However, adding one to the tender looked pretty straight forward.  I decided to poke around a bit and there is thread on LUGNET and a number of blog posts that describe various solutions to the problem.  The LUGNET thread in particular is pretty involved and uses a gutted 9v motor along with Power Functions.  A bit more than I am willing to take on right now although I do have several dead 9v motors.  From further searching it appears there are a number of solutions depending on how close you want it the train to look compared to standard instrcutions.  I am not too picky, I just want it work and not look awkward.

There was an NCLUG meeting this past Sunday afternoon and I decided to take a loop of 9v track and the Emerald Night along with some parts with me to see if I could make it run.  The key to my idea was to add a single wheel set and a 9v motor to the tender.  Doing this meant tweaking the chassis design of the tender a bit to account for the pin on the 9v motor.  The modification is pretty simple and makes use of some standard size black plates.   I have documented the changes to the tender chassis and produced instructions using Lpub.  The instructions for the tender are not complete – they just replace steps 1-5 and eliminate steps 16-18 in the official instructions.

So does it work?  Sort of.  I say sort of because the modifications to the tender work fine however the tender struggles to push the locomotive through the curves on the small loop.  I think this is due to the large train wheels on the locomotive which are linked together via Technic axels to bind up.

Unfortunately I didn’t have any parts with me that I could use to swap out the axels for simple pins which I hope will solve the problem.  I hope to try this in the next day or two as I want to run the Emerald Night at LEGOPalooza.

Instructions

9v 10194 Tender 2010-01-25 - downloaded 357 times My take on converting the 10194 to 9v by motorizing the tender.

It turns out you can download instructions from LEGO.com to modify the tender with the 9v motor.  I found this information in this long thread discussing the Holiday Train on LUGNET.

Part of the announcement talks about a new LEGO Power System.  It will be interesting to see what comes from this.  Right now it looks like the current IR trains may be short lived as well.  Only time will tell.

Dear Sirs,

Which Lego sets are better to buy for a Lego loving kid who currently has no Lego train set.

RC or 9 volt?

The Lego.com people say to get the RC since 9 volt is going away.

Thank you,

Confused
[Name Withheld]

The following is a paraphrased version of my response to this question.

What the LEGO.com people is sort of true, sort of not. LEGO is indeed focusing their internal design and marketing on the new RC trains. They have also stated that 9v trains components will be available through LEGO Factory. How long the 9v trains components continue to be available is unknown. There will be a new 9v train set available in the spring but it will be sold via the LEGO Factory as opposed to a traditional set. I would expect the LEGO Train items you will find in the catalog to be mostly RC train sets as the existing 9v sets come to the end of their production life. The 10173 Holiday Train which LEGO has just released is a 9v train although it doesn’t come with a motor, track, or speed regulartor. It can be purchased along with a motor and rail kit for about $175.

There is some information in this LUGNET thread regarding the future of 9v trains from BrickFest this past August.

This question is hard for me to answer as I personally am a fan of the 9v system but I am also highly invested in it. I have 4 children myself all of whom play with LEGO quite a bit. We have also had our share of battery operated toys. There are pros and cons to the 9v and RC systems but for me, the biggest question is around power. The 9v electric system requires a child to plug the unit in the wall. I would have no problem allowing my 11, 9, or 7 year old to do that but every parent is different as are children. One 9 year old is not the same as another.

• Do you expect your child to build a train collection? If so, the 9v may be a better choice as pulling a long train is reportedly difficult with the RC motor.
• Do you expect your child to have a layout set up for an extended period of time? If not, the ease of snapping together the RC track and getting a train running may appeal to you.
• Do you want to run more than one train at a time? This is easy to do with RC (assuming you have 2 RC trains), harder with 9v.
• Battery powered toys require batteries. Do you expect to run the train for long periods of time? If not, the RC train is probably just fine. If you want it to run for hours around the Christmas tree during the holiday season, replacing the batteries (even rechargables) every few hours will get old quickly. On the flip side, the RC train definitely provides the child (or adult) much more feeling of control. The LEGO 9v speed controller is pretty simple – you plug it in and you have a speed dial. The direction it points and how far dictates how fast the train moves and in what direction.

There is a Review of one of the RC trains on the ILTCO web site. LUGNET is also a good place to solicit an opinion on this subject.

I hope this information is helpful.