126 replies to this topic

[alex54]

Layout

Here it is my city story. I have already told it in my presentation topic, but here it is better to show the evolution of my town :

___________________________________________

The beginning (see below)

My first roads: (see below)

The non independent period (see below)

The arrival of the trains (see below)

In 2007-2008, a new layout is coming

In 2009-2010, the expension of my layout

2011 the rebirth, in modular size
___________________________________________

Modular building n°01

Modular building n°02

Modular building n°03

Modular building n°04

Inside my Café Corner
___________________________________________


The beginning:
Far, far away, with my city sets and an extra large grey base plate, I decided to make a small town centre. But I have no pics of this period.

My first roads:

But the extra large base plate didn't give my town a town look, so I decided to buy some roads.
You can see the pic below.

The non independent period:

My collection grew up, like for my small brother, who wants to do like me (he bought some other city sets and roads too). He lent me his roads to make my town bigger.

The arrival of the trains:
But I would have my independence, so I decided to buy some new roads, even if they had changed. It was also the time for me to show some city sets that I never put in my town, like my police centre or the ResQ one. And when I discovered that TLC would sell a new train line, I decided to buy it! In fact, I remembered that I always want a train, but my father didn't because he has trains but not in LEGO, so he didn't see the interest to have a LEGO one if I could play with his train. But I was major (hey I became a city Afol!) when the new line came out, so all the sets have been bought (green and with ICE, green cargo train, the crane, the train station, the crossroad, the big garage and some tracks.). My city was bigger than ever!

Here a map of the city of this period.
I organise my city with a town centre in the train tracks, and the suburb out, with the security area.


In 2004:
After, I continued to buy some sets for my town. I made some houses that I destroyed regularly to build new ones. And I discovered the LEGO web community with all those so beautiful city with awesome buildings! But they don't have the same spirit than mine. In fact, I would give my town a LEGO spirit, with building which respect the minifigs scales and not the human scales, with its default, like no upstairs to go to the upper floor. I would like a city like we can see in the 80's lists.
Each year, I change my LEGO unofficial houses, added some new roads and the city sets of the year

Here a general view of my city in 2004. The rest of the pics are here.

In 2005:

Here a general view of my town in 2005, with new sets like the fire fighters. The rest of the pics are here.

[b]In 2006, my town is still growing :
These year, all the new city sets are in my town, except to the new airport, because the planes are oversized for me. I decided to buy some new tracks to make my train bigger and introduce the new cargo train with an "old" 9V motor, which will come very soon!
I decided to buy sets like Arkam Asilum and the tunner garage to integrate them after some modification.

For this year, I try to work on the well integration of all the elements and particularly the road parts. I didn't want some roads opened on nothing, I would have a closed layout, which you can see here:

With the time and the fact to build, break and rebuild houses, and with some new ideas seen on the web, my houses are more "adult": more realists, with more details like those big beautiful ones seen on Brickshelf, but with the LEGO spirit. For the houses which are in the suburb, I take my inspiration on the old houses, it gives to my town an authentic LEGO touch. This is what I think and what I hope to have and show with my city.
And for the centre houses, I want them to be bigger with more detailed frontages. I make the park bigger too, and a central places with sites for the pedestrians. I try to work on some details like fountains and the inside of the houses, and made my first modern building just behind the train station. This city gives me a real satisfaction result.

Here a general view of my town in 2006. The rest of the pics are here.
I really wanted to take more pics to show the mini scenery I created and the houses indoor, but I made my town in my garage, so I didn't have enough light to take some good pics. But I'm working on a system to have more light, for my 2007 city pics with, I hope some new good sets.

[Hobbes]

There's not much to add to what you said: it has the 80s/early 90s feel, hence I like it :-)

I think I have to get me some of those green/dark grey road plates, they look way better than I thought at first. I only have the old light grey ones and some of the old airport tarmac plates which ain't really road plates.

Looks great :-)

Edit: I like how you used the baseplate from the new police station for your construction site. Good idea!

[UltraPrime]

Wow, that's great. My town is getting there, slowly. Just spent last few days clearing out the store room to set it up - will take pics this week, when kids are at school.

[phoinix]

its lovely to watch your town grow alex! it makes me wish i had taken pictures of my old layouts!

with your pictures we can also see the color change through the years..from the classic to the modern times! :-)

[Asuka]

That´s great, Alex54, and i´m sure you deserved yourself a break....  ;-)

[Brick Miner]

8-°  really nice set up !!!  and that first map you made is fantastic !!!  the coast line and terrain aspects really add a cool dimension to your set up !!!  reminds me of SimCity.  i love that game, but didn't like the most recent instalement of it very much  >:-(

how did you make your map ???  id really like to see other town builders do this !!!  but that is the graphic designer in me talking  :-D

some day i want to take a massive photo of a complete western town...  that'd be pretty sweet  *sweet*  but first i want to have a train depot, which i haven't even started yet.  im actually waiting to see what this new "hobby train" line looks like next year.

to be honest, your maps (of all things) have inspired me  X-D

- BrickMiner

[alex54]

Thanks for your comments.
I find interested the fact to see the evolution with the time, and see how the new official LEGO sets could be integrated with old designed ones.

For the baseplate of the police station, it reminds me of more a quarry than a base for a building.

Brick Miner, I made the old map with photoshop when I had a website on my town (this is why there is some numbers on it!). I will make my new layout with this style, because it looks better, but I don't take the time to do it already... And I'm happy to have inspired you! Just wait and see your work!

Hobbes, for the new roads, I really hesitated to buy some of them, but when I decided to buy those kind of roads, I didn't know briklink and other ways to buy some old ones. But I don't regrate that, they don't look so bad, just the difference between light and dark grey roads is not so well, but... I have to do with that (I tell me that in real, the roads are not so uniform. But I dislike the all dark grey ones :-X !

It would be nice to have an index to see the cities of all the Eurobrickers who have one...

[natelite]

you are one heck of a towner and a serious inspiration to all. i dont think there are that many dedicated lego fans as you. how do you find the space? it seems you kept everything on the kitchen floor or something. :-P

[AFOL12v]

It's always nice to see how layouts grow.

[xwingyoda]

Great History of a city layout Alex  ;-)

Its fun to notice the evolution with time !! One reason I don't start one is place !! I need like a whole room since city are a never ending growing story !! Sure you start small, but the urge to make it better and bigger is quick  :-D

One question: why did you use those crappy elevated baseplates ? (like the newer police station and hospital) ?

alex54, on Sep 5 2006, 02:17 PM, said:

It would be nice to have an index to see the cities of all the Eurobrickers who have one...

If there are enough threads, I will create a City Index  ;-)

I am sure you await the '07 line  ;-)

Build On !!

*yoda*

[SalvoBrick]

Building and unbuilding a city on the floor should be a pain... Have you ever thought to build your town on a support (a large table, etc.) and leave it there permanently or semi-permanently?
Not mentioning the problem of dust...

[alex54]

natelite, on Sep 5 2006, 02:29 PM, said:

you are one heck of a towner and a serious inspiration to all. i dont think there are that many dedicated lego fans as you. how do you find the space? it seems you kept everything on the kitchen floor or something. :-P

Sorry, but I don't understand the world "heck" (I see it two times todays, and it's not in my dictionary!)
I don't think that there is so many dedicated lego fans, just look, you're on a lego fans forum :-D
And I don't build my town in my kitchen, it is in my subsoil garage.

xwingyoda, on Sep 5 2006, 05:08 PM, said:

One question: why did you use those crappy elevated baseplates ? (like the newer police station and hospital) ?

For the hospital, I used it because I try to keep the original sets like they are. For the police station, I bought this set like a parts pack. And yes, I hope that the '07 will be great for city production...

SalvoBrick, on Sep 6 2006, 11:10 AM, said:

Building and unbuilding a city on the floor should be a pain... Have you ever thought to build your town on a support (a large table, etc.) and leave it there permanently or semi-permanently?
Not mentioning the problem of dust...

The fact to build and unbuild my city is a pain when you do that more than twice, but I don't have the choice. A support would be great, but I will make one when I will have my own home...

Oh, and why on earth, I choose the more cumbrous theme :-|

[Hobbes]

alex54, on Sep 6 2006, 09:47 PM, said:

natelite, on Sep 5 2006, 02:29 PM, said:

you are one heck of a towner and a serious inspiration to all. i dont think there are that many dedicated lego fans as you. how do you find the space? it seems you kept everything on the kitchen floor or something. :-P

Sorry, but I don't understand the world "heck" (I see it two times todays, and it's not in my dictionary!)

heck /hek/  
-noun
something remarkable of its kind (usually used in the phrase heck of a): That was a heck of an impressive speech. Have one heck of a good time.  

In short, it was a compliment ;-)

More here.

Quote

Oh, and why on earth, I choose the more cumbrous theme

Now, that's one heck of a rare word... ;-)

[alex54]

Thanks for your light Hobbes! :-P
For the cumbrous world, I have 3 posibilities and I chose the second one :-D
I can tell you that this forum is a very good way to do some english works, a better way than with some teachers I've already had at school!

[natelite]

actually i think city is a good size theme. you can keep it small or you can make it grand. unlike star wars or mechs, you need to have an extremely large scale setting to fit everything you want in it.

[Landlubber]

alex54, on Sep 7 2006, 07:14 AM, said:

Thanks for your light Hobbes! :-P
For the cumbrous world, I have 3 posibilities and I chose the second one :-D
I can tell you that this forum is a very good way to do some english works, a better way than with some teachers I've already had at school!

Is cumbersome the word you were after? As in "big, bulky, hard to move".

[Section8]

natelite, on Sep 6 2006, 04:17 PM, said:

actually i think city is a good size theme. you can keep it small or you can make it grand. unlike star wars or mechs, you need to have an extremely large scale setting to fit everything you want in it.

an excellent point.  I'd love to build a big sprawling city, but that's not going to happen in my tiny college apartment.  So I've taken to building skyscrapers, which fit maximum space into a minimum of (desk) space.

[alex54]

Landlubber, on Sep 9 2006, 01:20 AM, said:

Is cumbersome the word you were after? As in "big, bulky, hard to move".

Yes it is that.

It's a good way to build skycrapers Section8, but I don't like those building so much (maybe because they are not in the european culture...)

[Hobbes]

I don't really have a City Story, more like an unfinished-layout story.

This is what I grew up with:



Just this bag, and a few baseplates not on the picture. I didn't have many sets, just a wild imagination.

Then some time during the mid 1980s, in school, the dark ages hit me, and LEGO wasn't interesting anymore.

Much later, in 1999 or so, I did buy one or two sets, when the first wave of SW sets hit the market. I had seen Episode I before and was surprised that LEGO had sets. Out of curiosity I even bought a small Ninja set, some guy with wings. But those two sets didn't wake me up from my dark ages.

I didn't catch fire again until some time early 2004, when I found a 7725 on a local online auction site for quite little money. I won the auction and that was it. I was in it again. I surfed the net, found out that ebay had a pretty big LEGO marked and started to buy, buy, buy. My collection started to grow, from this:



to this:



Then my g/f (who unselfishly supports my hobby) and I moved to a bigger apartment where I got my own room *sweet* Thanks to ebay and the newly won space the collection continued to grow:



Around that time I found out about the LEGO online community and in May 2005 I found EB - and got stuck here.

Meanwhile, in real life, building on the floor wasn't that much fun, so I decided I needed some sort of tables. I roamed local home depot and furniture stores and found something to my liking that was sturdy, but at the same time left me enough flexibility if I wanted to rearrange - which I did want, more than once...

At first I set them up for "easy access" from all sides:



Somehow that wasn't satisfying, though. Mostly because I couldn't really build a track layout I liked, and I needed more space for the stuff from ebay and bricklink. So I decided to rearrange the tables:



That gave me more space for sort of a city center but I wasn't really satisfied, either, because it turned out that again I couldn't build a decent track layout. And ebay and bricklink were pretty demanding space-wise. So, more rearranging:



This actually pleased me more, but I just didn't find time to actually build something and arrange my layout. Ebay just kept me too busy.

When I finally decided that it was time to actually work on my layout I also found out that the only way to build a decent track layout was to rearrange the tables once more. So I did:



And this is were I am today. On the wall I mounted some shelves for my display models and the rest of my stuff is under the tables, all over the place. And I still haven't gotten around to set up a layout  :'-(

But some day I will...

[alex54]

It's nice Hobbes to tell us your story! It's hard to finish a layout! In fact there are some new sets to integrate, a new disposition, and more... So, to have a "finished" work, I decided to stop adding some new sets and keep a layout, even if I have some new ideas. And when I have finished this work, I can work all a year adding news for the next layout!

[Bonaparte]

Well, i really like your town.
It nice to see how it grows every year.
The train really adds a lot to it.

[TheBrickster]

Great story Hobbes.  I like watching the city grow from a few trains to you most recent photo.

[UltraPrime]

Took some pics of my town setup. It's a continuing WIP, the story of which can be seen in my ongoing Bricks and the City strip.

Brickshelf Gallery

I'm hoping to expand the rail network to link to airport, and get a passenger train, and also create a housing district.

[alex54]

You've got a modern city (with the new sets). and the train addition gives it a very good touch ( like in all the city I think). It's the firts time I saw a town with all grey roads, and personnaly, I find them too grey, I prefer the grey-green one, even if they are more expensive. The green shield in the middle gives that "touch of green". A good base to make your town bigger!

[Hobbes]

UltraPrime, on Sep 21 2006, 01:23 PM, said:

Took some pics of my town setup. It's a continuing WIP, the story of which can be seen in my ongoing Bricks and the City strip.

I agree with Alex, it's interesting to see an (almost) complete new layout. It doesn't look all too bad. It is a good start for more, indeed. But a LEGO town/city does need some older sets, too, you just can't do without ;-)