You can easily fit in powered up with e.g. Lenz) decoders are still very expensive but microcontrollers (I teach embedded systems engineering) are really cheap. Also I don't see the advantages, especially nowadays when DCC (e.g. It does work, but it is not very reliable. I even milled (uh actually a colleague in Engineering school) my own wheels, I can ask them to mill loads of wheels if I like. Of course you can weigh it down, but that will also have other disadvantages including the wear on plastic parts. Have you ever felt a H0 or N locomotive? They are way heavier than a LEGO train. I just finished the new issue of a monthly Dutch model railroad hobby magazine. Has anyone besides coaster mocked up a truck that would hold standard model train wheels and axles? And if metal wheel sets are available, not unlike what coaster has worked on, it becomes less of a problem. Weight is an issue, but Lego trains have been weighted before. Powered Up can still be used with power pickups or a 9v motor drive. Who wouldn’t want a 9v bit of track to charge the batteries so you don’t have to rip the powered up battery pack out? You could do that. Thanks for your supporting words coaster. I believe it has followers still, though, as coaster acknowledged. And maybe that’s where the “just give up and use Powered Up” mentality comes from. I have gained some real insight from your experiences, experiments and investments. So your best option would be to use powered up. I did experiments with DCC but there is an other problem, LEGO trains are not heavy enough: the signals are not really reliable. I just want to know, would you buy it as an option for the 9v track you have? I know you have spent a lot of time energy and money on trying to revive it and now have given up. I’m not arguing that Lego has moved on and modelers have embraced plastic track. If it does, I will restart my power pickups project, which, if you haven't seen it, looks like this: If 9V tracks do come online, then there is a chance. I'm really not kidding when I say you are talking about a quarter-million dollar project, if not half-million. It's a phenomenal idea and exactly what the community needs. I'm not trying to be a downer or discourage anyone from pursuing it. The time to get this done would have been before 9V was discontinued and still ubiquitous in the field. Unfortunately, we're all about 20 years too late to this party. Granted, some LUGs may still have a few ballasted 9V track sections, but overall you'd be asking for them to rip it all up and relay their tracks. It is a new system because it would require everyone to replace all of their PF track. What about the other way around? An O gauge drive to mount Lego on? The two worlds don’t intersect well, but an off the shelf application from the model train world might fit the lego community. The resources are there in the model train world. Want to connect it to a PFx brick, S brick, DCC node, IR receiver or a laser cannon? Probably not a problem. Want to use it as a battery charger? Not a problem.

Want to connect it to a motor? Not a problem.

I don’t see it as a new system per se, more like a supplement to everything else out there. Ok so then you are saying a dummy drive with no motor just metal wheels and pickups in an enclosure would be more desirable? Not to mention, it'd be an entirely new system, so you'd have to convince everyone to effectively start over, which will be a tough sell. You're talking about a huge capital investment without enough of us LEGO train nerds to warrant it. It's a fine idea overall, but there aren't enough of us to make it viable. I hope they do, but we abandoned making them as we just couldn't justify the cost. We would also need Fx Bricks to come through on 9V tracks. We made prototypes of a power pick up wheelset, but it would be costly to tool. A better approach would be a power pickup wheelset that could feed directly to a motor, an IR reciever, or a DCC node. Considering how many builders don't use the normal train motor, this would be a poor venture.

Lego digital designer train wheels