Building my first city, need some advice please.

[murtaughf3]

I'm looking to build my first city and here's what I'm thinking. I'm looking for input as to if it makes since to do what I want to do or the scale of the various builds would be way off ( scale a little off is ok). 

I'm wanting to do a small island/beach town using both current sets and mocs with a layout something similar to listed below. 

Houses along the beach both moc and something like the seaside house and friends beach house. 

I really like the modulars so I'm thinking a block inland to do something like the brick bank, assembly square, detectives office, and maybe a couple more, mainly going for like the historic downtown feel. 

Across the street from the beach I'm thinking mocs like sea food restaurant, dive shop, bike shop, tackle shop, fish market, and similar. 

A small marina with various boats and coupe sea planes. 

Small first responders units, police, fire, medic, coast guard.

Maybe an airport for like 2 planes, cargo and passenger

Most cars in town will be smaller version of the large vw bus, vw bug, mini cooper, maybe some speed champions, and mocs

I also really like the Maersk line of sets, so I was thinking maybe using the train to represent goods coming into the town and a ship yard with the container type ships to represent goods coming in from the sea. 

I also really like the pirate ships like black seas barracuda, black pearl and others. So I'm thinking have one or two docked and turn it into a pirate museum, and using some of the pirate fort sets as like a mini pirate amusement park attraction.

Anyway that should give you and idea of the direction I'd like to go. This build will most likely take a long time, especially since I have almost zero display space but will be moving and would be setting it up once we move. I know projects like this are truly never ending so I figure why wait to start. 

So what do you think, am I on the right track? Does it seem like to much? How off would the scale of the various sets be? 

I appreciate your time and input, thank you. 

[tkatt]

These sound like great ideas. Expensive and space consuming ideas though.  Your docked Pirate ship is a cool idea, but you'll need at least two 32x32 baseplates to fit it. Airports take up even more room. Train tracks require a lot of space too. I try not to worry about scale too much as Lego Minifig proportions are not to scale with actual people. Build what you think looks good, take it apart and start over if it seems too out of whack compared to the other builds in your town. If you try to make everything to scale you'll need a massive amount of space. Take a look at other Eurobrick users cities to get an idea of just how much space you'll need. If you don't know Jangbricks, check out his stuff.  

My advice is start with a focus on a particular part of your town and grow it from there. Also buy the older modulars, Palace cinema and Parisian Restaurant, as soon as you can. Also you mentioned some retired creator and friends sets, Lego keeps making new versions of these type of sets. You'll get a lot more for your money buying currently available sets than if you seek out retired ones. If you really like the style of those builds find the instructions online and use them as a starting point for MOC's with your own bricks.

 

Good luck. And definitely read the older posts in the town forum, you'll find that many of your questions have been asked and answered over the years. You'll also see some amazing and inspiring builds.

[tmctiger]

Hi,

your plan sounds quit good, but as @tkatt already said, you will need a lot of space (unfortunately LEGO is quite space consuming, especially when it comes to trains).

I overcame the problem (I also do not have that much space for my layout) with a multilevel layout, where the train loops are spread over two different connected levels and also the city is spread over two levels and aground level with train station and freight terminal.

If you are interested on how I did it, you can find my WIP thread of my layout here on Eurobricks and here on Youtube.

So have fun planning your city and keep us up to date with what you came up.

BR, Guenther

[Vindicare]

@tkatt put it perfectly, start with one section & go from there. I started out with a very condensed city. I had the Modulars as downtown, some Creator houses for residential, and even a beach area with the recent Marina set. I'm much happier with the focus being on a downtown setting & just planning other areas as space permits. 

I always add this for people starting a city, YouTube. Search "Lego towns" and take some mental notes on building placements and extras. And if course the Town Index here. 

Edited June 22, 2017 by Vindicare

[Admiral Quackbar]

I agree with tkatt and think that you should focus on one of the things you listed earlier such as modular builds and grow your city from there simply because otherwise I suspect that it could cost you a heck of a lot of money. A city of that scale will cost you somewhere around £2000. If you already own most of the sets you talked about then don't worry but if not it seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to.