Lego City - Mixing the Past and Present?

[The_YongGrand]

Hello there,

As I've gotten an entire Lego City from my relative, I'm planning to mix it with some of my newer Lego sets.

However, I felt that there's a proportion problem in some of the vehicles. The newer vehicles are much bigger than the ones in the 80s. The example would be the Police Helicopter in 2010 - I can't put it in the 1987's Police Station helipad because the thing is so much bigger than the helipad itself.

If you have city sets in the 80s, what would you do with the modern sets? "Seperate" them or just place them together?

In my case, I place all of them together. :)

[Ferrik]

I wouldn't mind placing them together if the scale is only slightly different, but if the scale is very noticeable then it would definitely look a bit strange.

[dr_spock]

I have some sets from the 80s. When my family got me some more recent sets, I opted to rebuild some vehicles to 4 wide.

[The_YongGrand]

Due to the lack of extra bricks, I can't modify much of the Legos provided.

However, without the modification, the 80s set looks... vintage. There's that kind of feel that I won't get on the new 2011/12 sets I have. Example like the Police Bikes in the 90s - it definitely look like a modified Vespa. The new ones look nice too - a much realistic feel on it.

Needless to say I'm itching to add mini "LCD screens" on the old police station instead of the casual "telephone" and stuff. I will get some bricks on that too.

[LEGO Guy Bri]

I had a large city layout that comprised mostly 90's to early 2000's sets. After I came back to Lego in '09, I added whatever modern building that would fit quite a few modern vehicles. The newer, open-back buildings didn't look out of place, and the vehicles worked well too, IMO. If you'd like to see classic city/town with a touch of modern, click this! For my new city project, I plan to separate some of the vehicles, like the motorcycles. The classic vs. new don't really look right together. Same will go for certain vehicles (i.e. tow trucks 4W vs. 6W), would not be parked next to each other

[SalvoBrick]

My only suggestion is: do not mix city "open back" buildings to "closed back" buildings, like creator or modulars. The scale of vehicles isn't a problem to me: even in reality vehicles has grown bigger in the latest decades.

[The_YongGrand]

My only suggestion is: do not mix city "open back" buildings to "closed back" buildings, like creator or modulars. The scale of vehicles isn't a problem to me: even in reality vehicles has grown bigger in the latest decades.

Thanks for the suggestion. Luckily I do not have those "closed back" modular buildings as I do not have much cash to buy all of these.

I will add some newer Lego sets like the "recycling center" and the "dirt bike transporter" in the city. :)

[LAKAbricks]

I would not mind to mix 80's LEGO with LEGO of today. It will in fact happen when I get space for my city.

There is one thing, though, and that is the size difference between old and new trucks, I think. For example, I am the happy owner of both the 1984 Shell tanker truck (6695) and the 2012 Octan tank truck (3180). The latter one being more than double the length of the former one. And of course also 2 studs wider. Well, I'm planning to remove 1/3 of the length of the tank to make it shorter and more mobile on the street. Otherwise, I think it's ok with 4 studs cars and 6 studs trucks and busses.

Regarding aircraft and helicopters, I prefer the four stud wide ones of the 80s and 90s. I have one of the big widebody aircraft, but I'm not planning to mix that with my fleet of smaller aircraft. And the helicopter of the new hospital, I am thinking what to do...

But in general, I think the buildings more or less fit each other. But as SalvoBrick suggests, it might not be a good idea to mix the modular buildings with classic style (and sized) buildings. But I cannot rule out that some of the classic sized buildings will grow a little bit - so the cars are not too big compared to the buildings

[djanscak]

I don't have anything enlightened to add but I thought I'd point out that many recent sets also have smaller, classic-sized cars eg Parking Garage, yellow Cargo Train, 2012 Hospital, 2007 Service Station...

[SalvoBrick]

Uh, another suggestion: use grey road baseplates, possibly the old light-grey type: your town will look _much_ better

[bzcat]

This bothered me when I came out of my LEGO dark age... the modern 6 stud wide vehicles look like giants next to classic Town era 4 stud vehicles. And also, the fact that Modular buildings are so much bigger than both Town and City buildings. After many sleepless nights, I decided I was being silly and just let it be. When you combine your collections, you will end up with larger and more fancy cars and buildings on one side, and smaller and more simple cars and building on the other side. I imagine this is what Berlin looked like right after unification.