Birth of a new Lego city [UPDATE #24 Overpass completed! ]

[HereWeGoAgain]

Hello,

So as a followup to this topic 

 where I presented my 1st MOC in a very long time, I've had a bit of time since then to work on my Lego City. It's been hard to make time tbh...there's a ton of work to do, but I added 2 other MOCs already: an Octan gas station and a burger joint (used parts from the firetruck and burger joint set). BTW, if anyone has a good suggestion/source for gas price stickers in 1x4 brick/plate format, would love to hear about it because it's pretty much the only thing I'm missing to complete that gas station. Without further due, here are some pictures.

 

I figured the outdoors people pack was a good fit for the wooden post indicating where the mountain and the city were:

I did some tiling of the river that goes along the train tracks. I'll probably detail a camping site here with some trees etc. at some point, don't like just the tent sitting there next to the road.

I'm in need for some 8x16 baseplates to finish of the section with the river though. I've also been using L-Gauge instructions for the curved train tracks to make them look nice.

 

Behind the Gas station, I've tried to make it look like an abandonned alley with a broken bike, some masonry bricks etc.. Need to finish off the other side of the track though:

 

Here's the Octan gas station, you can see where I need those price stickers...

Made use of 4 large clear panel plates to bring in some light:

And we have a small interior with a soda vending machine, some pastry and bread, a large fridge where you can buy milk, cheese etc. as well as a magazine/news paper stand:

 

Next we have the burger shack that is placed right next to the gas station in case you're craving for some fast food (like those angry pirates, I think the chef's a bit scared...). It's got a full interior with the basics and a table outside to sit down:

 

Finally a quick, not really interesting, shot of what is currently "main street" I guess. Just got a bunch of Modulars in there atm:

 

Hope you enjoy. Updates probably won't be very frequent as I'm working on this about an hour a day when I'm lucky :-)

PS: for the keen eye, no, these are indeed not official Lego road plates but chinese knockoffs. I know, I know...I got them for cheap in an auction. it's the only thing I allowed myself to put in the city that wasn't real Lego. I simply can't justify to pay 10-15$ or there-abouts for just 2 road plates. I'd rather buy actual sets.

Cheers and thanks for checking in.

Edited July 29, 2020 by HereWeGoAgain
title update.

[tkatt]

I am using those same knockoff road plates. I had been using paper roads (printed and laminated) as place holders for a couple years. I was waiting until a good deal came around on road plates. I was also hoping Lego would start selling straight road plates individually. Those things never happened. So I spent about $80 for the fake plates instead of $400+ it would have cost to use real Lego plates. 

Keep up the good work on your city. 

[The Brick Boss]

I love that burger bar. The service station too! 

[Littleworlds]

A bustling and charming little city. I really like the good natured fun details everywhere, oh and for some reason that typical "no-mans-land" patch of land next to the train tracks, that always seems to be cluttered with random things. 

[HereWeGoAgain]

Thanks for the feedback guys! I'll try to update as best I can. First objective is to fill this first table. The second table will be in front of the brick bank and placed a few cm below. That's where the beach/ocean will be along with an under water world (one of my favorite themes). There will also be some train/road bridges to cross to the very last table.

Any ideas for the gas price stickers? I've seen some on ebay from Australia. Just feels a bit silly to make a sheet of paper travel around the world just for that...

15 hours ago, tkatt said:

I am using those same knockoff road plates. I had been using paper roads (printed and laminated) as place holders for a couple years. I was waiting until a good deal came around on road plates. I was also hoping Lego would start selling straight road plates individually. Those things never happened. So I spent about $80 for the fake plates instead of $400+ it would have cost to use real Lego plates. 

Keep up the good work on your city. 

Ha! Happy I'm not the only one!

Edited October 18, 2019 by HereWeGoAgain

[LegoDW]

On 10/17/2019 at 9:44 AM, HereWeGoAgain said:

PS: for the keen eye, no, these are indeed not official Lego road plates but chinese knockoffs. I know, I know...I got them for cheap in an auction. it's the only thing I allowed myself to put in the city that wasn't real Lego. I simply can't justify to pay 10-15$ or there-abouts for just 2 road plates. I'd rather buy actual sets.

Cheers and thanks for checking in.

I don't have road plates in my city for this vary reason.  Its your city, do what makes you happy.  Suspect someday you will swap them out with the Lego ones.  It just happens.

If you own the Parisian restaurant, if you reverse build it (steps on the left) would look nice next to your water fall.  

[The Brick Boss]

On 10/17/2019 at 9:44 AM, HereWeGoAgain said:

PS: for the keen eye, no, these are indeed not official Lego road plates but chinese knockoffs. I know, I know...I got them for cheap in an auction. it's the only thing I allowed myself to put in the city that wasn't real Lego. I simply can't justify to pay 10-15$ or there-abouts for just 2 road plates. I'd rather buy actual sets.

Yeah! I do have to admit that baseplates are overpriced. I'd probably try to find some on eBay at least $10 cheaper. 

Edited October 18, 2019 by pooda

[CSW652]

For the gas prices maybe find someone to print your numbers on the bricks or use the numbered 1x1 tiles mounted on the side of a brick with studs on the side.  You could also get a sticker set for set# 7993

Edited October 20, 2019 by CSW652

[HereWeGoAgain]

On 10/18/2019 at 7:44 PM, LegoDW said:

I don't have road plates in my city for this vary reason.  Its your city, do what makes you happy.  Suspect someday you will swap them out with the Lego ones.  It just happens.

If you own the Parisian restaurant, if you reverse build it (steps on the left) would look nice next to your water fall.  

Not a bad idea regarding the PR. I have yet to find the time to build the PR. I will probably build the Ferris Wheel first which is just the right size to fit on the edge of the first table. I'm planning on having it overlook the beach/ocean side. Really looking forward to building that part.

On 10/20/2019 at 1:16 PM, CSW652 said:

For the gas prices maybe find someone to print your numbers on the bricks or use the numbered 1x1 tiles mounted on the side of a brick with studs on the side.  You could also get a sticker set for set# 7993

Thought about custom printing but seems to complicated/costly. Stickers are probably the way to go. I have sent a request to Lego for a sticker sheet for set 7993, I know they replace sticker sheets free of charge. I don't have the set itself, but worth a shot asking.

Anyway, I've had a bit of time to work on the city yesterday. My goal is really to have no "bare studs" on baseplates, or as little as possible. I was wondering what to put in the corner with the curved tracks. I ended up finding that one of the smaller builds of the Temple of Airjitzu (really cool set, although I'm not a big Ninjago fan) fits perfectly in there. I elevated it a bit and added a river that flows underneath it. Sadly I've already ran out of 1x2 clear blue tiles for the water. 

I have also more or less completed 2 tracks with some detailing. I like the idea of sort of abandonned alleys behind the buildings where things are sort of falling appart. The first piece of white fence is not sitting correctly on purpose, as if the wall it sits on has cracked a bit so it sits at an angle:

Finally I have started work on the piece of train tracks at the back of the city where it joins the road. The goal is to create a bridge for the train and a one-way road that will cross over from table 1 to table 3 . Table 2 will sit something like 10-15cms lower and will host the beach/ocean. Essentially like so:

[table 1]                  [table 2]               [table 3]

--------------------                          ---------------------

                         _____________

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

Hi folks,

Time for an update. On the right edge of the first table, I initially thought about putting the Ferris Wheel, but it's too big to fit in there (I have space for some 32x48 stuff only). So I decided I would create my first modular building on a 16x32 baseplate and in front of it, a parking lot on a 32x32 base plate that would then give access to the beach.

Here's the progress on the building itself. I'm about half-way through building it, one hour there, one hour here. The first floor has an ice-cream/backery shop and a clothes shop named "SWAG", the sign for it is placed street-side. I find the ice-cream shop a bit empty, might have to add more details in the future. The second floor is still in progress, it hosts a nice appartement with a bathroom, a kitchen, custom door, place to eat, sofa etc. Still have to incorporate an entertainment system (will be wall-mounted in front of the sofa) and finish the bedroom. No clue if I'll do a 2nd floor and if I do, what it'll host.

 

Here's the front of the ice-cream shop where you can order some yummy cones:

 

On the inside of the shop, you can also purchase a various amount of sweet cakes and stuff. There's a large cake sign hanging on the wall:

 

I was kinda low on these yellow/orange tiles and only had 1x6 ones, so I did what I could. I initially planned a mosaic of colors using LLD for the walls, but don't have enough of the bricks I wanted. Might do it in the future to not have such bland tan and white walls in there:

 

In the middle you can access the 1st floor. There are 4 letter boxes on the right of the entrance, some flowers on the left and a fire extinguisher:

 

Here we have the "SWAG" clothes shop, you can buy some cintage "Mtron" t-shirts, trousers etc.:

 

This side of the building hosts the "SWAG" sign. I needed a short name, easy to write with bricks. Figured it was a good one. The condo has nice large rounded windows on each side for maximum view of the future beach!

 

The condo's shower/bathroom. It's a bit cramped, but has everything you need: toilet, shower, a handle for your towel etc.:

 

Then we have the rest of the appartment. I ended up creating a custom door to enter the place. We have a kitchen, a bar/table with some stools, all with a view on the future beach when you take your coffee in the morning (reminds me I need to create a coffee machine...):

 

The other side with the sofa. You can barely see it, but there's a fridge that is made part of the wall next to the shelf with the sword:

 

Next I'll work on the bedroom and I should be able to finish building this 1st floor!

That's it for know guys, hope you enjoyed this small update.

Cheers

[HereWeGoAgain]

The 1st floor of the building above is actually 99% done (missing a few glass windows). Forgot to make pictures.

I've been working on the second floor of my little modular using LDD this time. It's probably a lot more accomplished than the 1st floor and in a very different style. I'll have to see how the two combine once I actually build it. Worst case I'll make a copy of the 2nd floor for the 1st floor.

[Gobias1234]

The burger shack is incredible!! This was fun and inspirational to look though! Thanks for sharing!

[HereWeGoAgain]

On 12/3/2019 at 4:03 AM, Gobias1234 said:

The burger shack is incredible!! This was fun and inspirational to look though! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks man!

I have ordered a bunch of parts through bricklink yesterday to build the 2nd floor of my modular, we'll see how that turns out.

Once that's done and I figure out what the roof will look like, I have a section of train track to complete as well as a parking lot (for the future beach) to finish the 1st table of my Lego display. I say "finish" but we all know a lego city is never finished lol...next I'll have to order my next piece of wood for the second table that will host the beach/ocean area. Lots of cool stuff planned for that with a train bridge and the underwater world!

Edited December 4, 2019 by HereWeGoAgain

[HereWeGoAgain]

So, while I wait for a bricklink order to arrive to complete that 2nd floor, I have started work on beach access by train and by car with a parking lot.

First I created a little train station at the edge of the table where minifigs can get out and go down to the future beach. I sketched it out on LDD and ended up winging it a bit with the parts I had at home. It's really not complete yet. There will be an overpass to get on both sides of the train (2nd platform I didn't have time to build it physically yesterday):

This is honestly my 1st time making a train station, but it has the basics: somewhere to sit on and some trash cans.

Here you can see from the side how it looks like. As I'm building this on a 16x32, I had to widen the platform to 6 studs.

You can see I started creating a parking lot for car access to the beach. Don't mind the yellow 1x8 tiles, they aren't aligned correctly with the station. The idea will be that you can park 2 cars with their hoods going slightly under the station.

I was kinda puzzled what to put on the station's roof. I ended up creating some waves and have like a mini island at the top. I figured since this is the beach's train station, I might as well reflect the theme on it.

 

Hope you enjoyed this mini-update!

Cheers

Edited December 11, 2019 by HereWeGoAgain

[LegoDW]

Thinking a place to park you bike like the bus stop in this set would be nice addition to your beach train stop.  Just a few simply parts, works very well.  Train station looking good.  

 

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

@LegoDW yep I already thought of that, very simple yet effective. Everything in due time :)

I had some time yesterday to work on the station. It did become larger than I initially planned, but I actually find it more interesting now that it spans across 2 16x32 baseplates. There is still a lot of detailing to do and its far from complete, but we now have a nice big plateform with stairs that go across. I don't know yet if I'll keep the station itself with that wavy roof or not as I have to also do one on the other platform which is currently empty. I might also do some changes to the bridge's rails, idk yet. I kinda winged it yesterday. Anyway, some pictures:

Bonus, the mess that my current Office/Lego room is   

 

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

Hello everyone,

First of all, a happy new year to anyone checking out the topic!

I haven't made any major update to my city. I was off work for 2 weeks like a lot of people and spent most of my time with family. My Lego time has been mostly spent on sorting some collections I acquired and building some sets I had purchased (Like the Fairground mixer, got it used a while back, no box, 99.9% complete, with instructions for 50CHF, quite a deal). 

To expand the city I also needed to do fine measurements to order the 2 other tables that will have the city span accross the room. I have decided the middle section for the beach/ocean will be 3 base plates wide and 4 (or 4.5) deep while the right section will be the same as the other one (6.5 base plates long and 4 base plates wide). I will soon place the order for those.

I did complete the second floor of my modular above. I really like how it looks, but it's just way too different from the 1st floor to have them together. I will probably redesign that 1st floor in the future so that project it on hold. I'll probably rearrange the buildings on the 1st table and have another official modular next to the pet shop to replace my modular MOC.

Finally, I have started to design the bridge portion for the train to go over the ocean using LDD. Here's a sneak peak of how one end looks like:

For the bridges middle section, I will probably take some inspiration from the Spider-man bridge attack set.

Cheers

 

[HereWeGoAgain]

Hello folks,

No I have not abandonned the build of my city. Just had little time to spend on Lego latelly, and when I did, I spent it sorting bricks and tidying things up more than anything else. Also there was a delay and the pieces of wood I ordered to finish off my tables, I'll be able to pick them up next Saturday after waiting for a month. As the 1st table was full, I couldn't do much on the city.

I also had to order quite a lot of bricks for my bridge. I ended up getting a lot of them directly from Lego. I think sometimes, when you take into account that shipping is free for large orders and taxes are already included, it's not necesserally more expensive.

In any case, I have started to build the bridge. The final build will be three 32x32 baseplates long. The part for the train tracks is largely inspired by the spiderman bridge attack set. I've designed it in a modular fashion. Enjoy the pics.

[HereWeGoAgain]

Hello fans of the brick,

Over the last few days I was able to complete all 6 sections of the train tracks and assemble the bridge. Here's the final result. I had to move the build on top of the freezer in the cellar to take good pictures of it.

As I mentionned previously, this will span accross the middle table where the ocean and the beach will reside and connect to the other table where the city will expand. Tomorrow I'll go pick up my tables, finally!

[Maple]

I like the train bridge and the use of the railing pieces.

Also using knock offs is fine, LEGO doesn't make the + piece of train track anymore. If I didn't have the 9V one I'd buy the knock of for that too. Road plates are so expensive that I either don't use them (black paper works) or would buy knockoffs.

[nwbricks]

Great work on the bridge, looks fantastic! 

[HereWeGoAgain]

On 2/28/2020 at 7:36 PM, Maple said:

I like the train bridge and the use of the railing pieces.

Also using knock offs is fine, LEGO doesn't make the + piece of train track anymore. If I didn't have the 9V one I'd buy the knock of for that too. Road plates are so expensive that I either don't use them (black paper works) or would buy knockoffs.

 

On 2/28/2020 at 8:16 PM, electropie said:

Great work on the bridge, looks fantastic! 

Thanks for the feedback guys!

Yeah I understand people building their own brick-made roads, maybe I'll get to that one day myself as it gives you the opportunity to create physical roadwork etc.. I wish Lego made narrower street baseplates (like without the "sidewalks"). Not sure how that would look though, but the one annoying thing about road plates is the building space it takes away from you.

Anyway, I finally got the 2 pieces of wood needed to build my tables. I'll probably try to at least set up the middle one for the train bridge tonight and the larger one this weekend. Until then I probably won't do much custom building as I need to see how the bridge fits with the rail layout above since the radiator on the wall is going to slightly offset that middle table. I'm really eager to start working on the beach/ocean side for which I have big plans.

I'll also have to adjust my mountain tunnel slightly as I have noticed that the non-cargo trains that have longer noses scrape on the entrances of the tunnels with the turn. sigh! When I test fitted I used the locomotive from set 7939.

Cheers

[HereWeGoAgain]

Hello again brick fans,

Small update, I was able to put up the middle table and test fit my bridge. I use the Olov ikea ajustable table feet, it's about the only one I found with like 30cm of ajustability. The large tables are at max settings, so I had to find the right height for the middle one. The Olovs are a bit of a pain to adjust correctly, but here we go. The table is a perfect 3 baseplates width, don't let the 1st picture fool you.

Behind the bridge we'll have more water, then the beach with the Old Fishing store and at the back, I'll have to figure out a way to get cars and trains to pass through as I won't be able to use a road base plate. 

Also all around this middle table there will be rock work and a large ramp/stair for vehicles and minifigs to come from the city to the beach.

And finally, under this middle table, we'll have an underwater scene. 

This is all going to take me a lot of time to build...lol

'Till next time.

[Man with a hat]

Oh, now it gets impressive with that bridge.

Great job.

[HereWeGoAgain]

6 hours ago, Man with a hat said:

Oh, now it gets impressive with that bridge.

Great job.

Thank you!