IDEAS River Steamboat - set 21356 - revealed (with accompanying Gift With Purchase!) - discussion thread

[Murdoch17]

Western fans rejoice! The River steamboat has just rounded the bend in the river and is pulling up to the dock!

21356 River Steamboat
Rated 18+, 4,090 pieces
$329.99 / £289.99 / €329.99
Available at LEGO.com from 7th April

The ship's display stand is removable, and the paddlewheel apparently rotates when the vessel is pushed on a flat surface.

More pictures are visible at Brickset. Additionally, there will be a GWP:

5009157 Amelia Ticket Booth will be available exclusively with the River Steamboat between the 7th and 13th of April (or while supplies last)

What are you thoughts on this new set and it's GWP? Leave them below!

Edited March 8 by Murdoch17

[karrit]

I like it.  Don't know if it will be a day one purchase to get the Ticket Booth GWP though.  It's looking like April is shaping up to be an expensive month.

[idlemarvel]

I recently purchased this set as my 70th birthday treat. I'm enjoying building it but only on bag 6 of 32 at the moment so a long way to go!

For those not familiar with the set, one of the features is a rubber tyre underneath the hull designed so that when you push the boat along the floor the paddle wheel will turn. Otherwise you have to operate the paddle wheel manually. I decided early on that at my age I'm not pushing this thing along the floor to see the paddle wheel move, so I planned to motorize it.

The picture below shows a small Technic Angular Motor fitted in the well where the rubber wheel goes. I had to make the well one stud wider and had to adjust the axles that turn the rudder as the joining piece was catching on the motor. Currently my plan is to have the battery box/hub outside the model, as an extension to the stand. The advantage of the Technic Angular Motor is a) it's small and b) it is very slow which fits with the speed required by the paddle wheel. I hope it has enough torque to drive the paddle wheel and the dummy engines, we'll see. I can also thread some Powered Up Lights through the well so I could have some internal illumination.

This is all hidden beneath the deck so nothing is visible from above. The motor is held in place with 4 stud pins on top of the motor which fit in the bottom of a few cross beams (white in the picture). Only new parts were the motor, a few axles and a 1x6 brown plate instead of the supplied 2x6 (above the motor).

I did try a WeDo 2.0 Medium motor which is also quite small but I couldn't fit it in without losing the rudder control mechanism so I abandoned that idea.

I did have a quick look on You Tube etc but I couldn't find anyone else who's tried to motorise this model. There are probably better ways but I was trying to minimise any change to the build.