Mestari

That is exactly how I did it. Thanks for the tips on L&S. I did use that in two of my earlier builds but were not satisfied much. I may simply have much worn out bulbs. I'll have a second try at them before I go to the dark side :)

Wow, this is great! And a really good video too :)

Thank you :) I have just uploaded a WIP pictures folder: WIP pictures I have uploaded there two pictures specifically that should show you how I did that (sorry for the pony :) ): If you go to the gallery you can access the photos in higher resolution. But in essence the PF module hides all the wires, has the holes for PF lights in it (the one on the side going to the space room shines through a 1x2 technic brick hole, the other 5 through Technic plates 2x8 holes). The lamps in the arcade consist of two parts. Trans clear Minifig, Utensil Goblet fits right under the technic plate around the hole where the source of light is, then I attached 3x3 trans-clear dish at the bottom of it too. I hope that helps :) But I also have to tell you that although I do work with LEGO only lighting so far, it is very frustrating to work with. Apart from the fact, that they can have different colours of white, they also take up a lot of space, are very expensive, are just 2 units per set and the light they give is very, very weak. As a result the effect can only be noticed in a dim room. You can forget to show it during the exhibition. People don't even notice the light is on until you ask them to look at specific places when you switch the light on and off. And that need to be repeated sometimes for them to notice it too. I so hoped that with the next generation they would fix that, but they did that even worse with PU. Same old stuff, but more expensive and unable to stack. So going forward I will resign from using LEGO lighting. And I really wanted not to do that :(

Yes, interesting and unexpected are the words that come to mind :) In real life I am not a fun of such buildings. So, although this is well executed (as always in your case), I can't force myself to like it..

I would like to present to you my biggest modular so far - the Ministry of Brick: This one is from recent exhibition in Pszczyna, Poland: And another one from "the studio": I started working on it about 2 years ago. I wanted to build something in the socialist realism style. Since you don't get much of this style represented in LEGO, and I am a Warsaw citizen where you can find quite a number of examples from it, something had to be done :) The inspiration was the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development that is located on Wspólna street. You can have a look at the pictures here. I started with visiting this place often to get an idea of what I can incorporate into the build and what needs to be changed or done from scratch. It took half a year of thinking how to place the first brick so that I wouldn't have to take it apart in the middle of work. When thinking about it I also posed myself a few challenges and goals: - The building had to me monochromatic (tan only), but at the same time the building had to be interesting - to be achieved by texture and detailing only. I allowed myself for different coloured windows - black in the arcades and white in the rest of the building. - The minifigs had to be able to access all rooms (this is true for all my modulars). - I wanted to include something that moves or at least some lights. I managed to do both. On one side of the building there is an elevator, mechanical. You need to turn the crank at the end of a 32 - long axle, on which a worm gear is sliding taking the elevator with it. The worm gear uses gear racks to climb up and down. The arcades have lights delivered by the lamps (I used points of 5 light from PF lights), in the space room there is one light powering the side generator (for the lack of a better word ;) ) and one going from the top straight to the reactor. The last one is pointed towards the colonnade. - Yet another assumption was that since this is the Ministry of Brick, each room had to be dedicated to a different LEGO Theme. Right next to the building there is a small Brick Square with a accompanying Statue of Brick :P During the photo session (that my friend Jetboy helped me greatly with) I realized that I forgot to produce a sticker for the red sign. At the end I decided to use some chromed plates in that space since a sticker would be in Polish and plates are international :) And I intend to visit Skaerbaek with that build (if they accept it), so maybe this is better idea. OK, so here we go, first with the red, unstickered sign... And with chromed plated (again from the exhibition) And the facade: Now, I would to give you a tip how to build in the room where a two-year old is playing. Have a look at the black poles (is it a proper name in English?). Apart from the obvious (protecting minifigs from cars) their other important function was to take the beating from my son and protect the building this way (he would stop there :) ). He used to pick them up everyday, put them in his cars, loose and find them. Once when he lost them for good, I ordered another bunch from BL. I found them the moment I payed for a new lot... Anyway, allowing the children to open and close the doors hundreds times a day helped to protect the rest of the build too and most of all, having it in the open space for several months finally made them accustomed to it so it wasn't that important to tear it apart anymore. Yes, my lovely wife is a monument of patience. And here are the lights that I was able to capture best in one of the late WIPs: Now, lets have a look at all of the modules together: At the base we have the Brick Square with statue: At the ground floor there are arcades with the cloakroom (City style), on one side Castle room, on the other the Simpsons: On the Simpsons side, there is the office and a public toilet: There is also an elevator shaft: Arcades with the cloakroom can be best seen in the overall ground floor picture, here is the other side: Castle means a throne room and the king. If someone needs to have something done here, one needs to know who's really in charge :) Above the arcades there is the Power Functions lights sections. It contains 3 sets of lights. 5 out of 6 light points are used to light up the arcades. Here is a view of the lamps: The remaining light points is used to power the generator in space room on the first floor: The UFO man is there as well :) Going back to PF section - here is how it looks: As you can see, the right most bigger cog wheel is an ON/OFF switch. We have also the Pirates on the first floor. They used all the budget they could for the interior :) Above the arcades there is a patio for the restaurant run by the monsters from the Monster Fighters and other halloween creatures (but everyone is welcome to come in :) ): And here is the restaurant: On the other side there is Western department: This table can be opened on a hinge so that I can install a PF cable with light coming from the top and lightening the reactor in space room below. Not very convenient, but aesthetics took priority :) Above the restaurant the Lord of the Rings department is located. They have there the right place for Bilbo's book :) And lastly above the Western room there is the "engine room" for the elevator: It is run by the Santa's elves, but not only them. It is Technic after all! This is also the place to turn the second set of lights on. This is the only room (apart from the roof) where a minifig can't enter. The elevator doesn't reach this floor, there are no stairs. But the elves have their ways and maxi fig can climb up :) The roof is socialist realism style as well, of course :) The whole gallery is here: CLICK! I hope you like it :)

On the spot where the left and rightmost columns originally were.

Good idea, but I would prefer it with additional side columns. Right now it looks to me like something is missing.

I have never taken part in kickstarter before. Can someone tell me what happens if the project does not reach the goal - the money is simply not charged from my credit card and that's it?

Thank you :) And I'm sorry for the pictures - not all are clear and containing just the station. But it was too big to fit in any space for photography that I had available and instead I had to make the photos on an exhibition. The C3P0 is an official LEGO build that children are building during the event. It usually takes a day to put it together. And you get a proper LEGO hammer to make sure it stays together (it's rather huge and gives strange satisfaction when you whack those bricks with it...) The SP black widow Alco was a modification of a MOC (but I don't know whose MOC) that was originally narrower and here can be seen in 8-wide version. I simply took two shortest trains my friend had available and took for the exhibition. Length and durability of trains were of most concern to me as we only had standard LEGO curves. Maybe next time we'll try our luck with BrickTracks R104. But we're a small LUG, so it's quite challenging to put such display already. R104 would only force it to be bigger. We'll see...

Thank you all :)

The guy that made the church is Jellyeater :) Here is the link to the folder on his Bricksafe with the church: LINK @ColletArrow: That indeed would be a challenge... I'm not sure if I would be able to reproduce this, although I think I already know which parts I would have to use to do it in a pure mechanical way. We'll see. I have probably too many plans for the 2019 ;) Oh, and by the way - the only pieces of the layout that are mine are: this station with signal box, level crossing, the palm house that can be seen behind the signal box and that big tan Ministry of Brick :) that I still need to find some time to publish... The trains are done by Michał (melerro on flickr). There were 26 contributors to that layout, all from LUGPOL :) And about the operating of the booms. I was giving the phone to children to operate it themselves. That way they had something to touch and interact and he bricks were left alone :) automation wouldn't do the trick.

Thank you both for comments :) Vilhelm22: I would definitely prefer to have those barriers on different sides as that is much more common, but that would mean much more pain in synchronizing and transportation. I decided against it in my first attempt with the crossing. But it is coming in my second for the 2019 layout :) Probably...

I would like to present my latest railway station with signal box and level crossing: It does not have the interior (only the signal box does) although I did plan to do it at the beginning, hence all the double walls with different colours on the inside. The station is based on the station in Siedlisko Czarnkowskie located in the west of Poland. It is of course modified and was just the inspiration, but still - was recognized by the locals, so I guess it is similar enough :) The main objective that I had when building this was to have some comfortable place for 8-wide trains to stop by. I hope I this was achieved :) Some of you may know that I focus mainly on modulars and I try to mix them with a little bit of technic. So far I was able to incorporate 9V and PF lights into my builds, some PF motors and pneumatics. Now, it was time for an SBrick and technic flex system :) It was one of my favorite systems back then. And now that I had this opportunity to control boom barriers with it, I couldn't help myself :) So, we've got and SBrick, which controls M-motor, which in turn operates small linear actuator which pulls or pushes out the technic flex system cables. Those are connected to the boom barriers. Here you can see how it looked like during construction: The whole system was not so easy to calibrate at the beginning, but once done it worked seamlessly during exhibitions. It is also easy to dismantle for transportation. However it did took me two months to figure this system out. Maybe the easiest solutions are the hardest to invent... The track layout is a little bit different to the usual one. This was forced by the planned commodity station of my friend from the LUG, but that was never built... Here you can see it in more detail as well as how the station was placed in the town I made with my LUG: And last but not least, interior of the signal box and a video of operating the boom barriers: LINK to the video (I don't know how to embed...) Here's the link to the gallery on BrickSafe.

15 : 10 8 : 6 3 : 4 24 : 3 25 : 2 1 : 1

I have several ways of "dealing" with MOCing. First of all I have a notepad where I put all my random ideas. Whenever I think of something, I make a note of it there (it's in my mobile phone). It's usually something like "garage with pneumatics" or "house of Moniuszko", to remind me what I was thinking about and wanted to build. Those builds are planned to be made within several years from now, but I keep that in mind to properly build my stock of bricks. I use bricklink for small orders mostly and utilise LUG BULK and support for the big ones, again planning not just for the nearest exhibition but for future ones too. This planning years ahead is important for financial reasons, obviously. I do not use LDD at all, MLCad only once so far to help myself with the mosaic on the wall of my Palm House. Other than that I always build with real bricks from the start. But before I do that I have much of the building "ready" in my mind already. This conceptual phase can take a lot of time. My current WIP modular (The Ministry of Brick :) ) took more than half a year of thinking before placing the first brick on a baseplate. This is also the reason why I build from the ground up, just like I would have if I had building instructions for my MOC. I simply know how to solve much of the problems before the start. Now, it doesn't mean there are no prolems as I build, far from it, especially in case of said ministry... When I start thinking about my next MOC I start with what makes it distinctive. I usually also build that first to make sure I have it nailed. In my Ice cream parlor, it was the prototype of ice cream rotation mechanism. For my garage - the pneumatic lift and compressor. For the jewellery - the right part with the arched entrance and front of the building. For train station - the windows. And so on. When building, one of the most important thing for me is to build it in such a way that I would want to live or spend time in that building myself. This means I always thought do interiors, which all have communication done for all floors, minifig have a place to sleep etc. I try to make them as nice a place to live as I can. My inspiration comes either from real life (this is rather rare) or I put something together from my imagination, based of course on many examples of architecture we all see everyday. We all stand on a shoulder of giants, don't we? ;) My Ministry is different in that it is inspired by one particular building. Here that real life structure was the stating point and the design done by me focused on making something that would work in modular scale. That process is not simple so I'll dive into it when I publish this MOC. I hope this to happen in may this year at the latest. Great topic, by the way :) Edit: One more thing regarding source of inspiration and ideas. I love Technic as well, so I have this idea to incorporate every technic system made to date to my builds. Power Functions motor and light were in Ice cream parlor. Pneumatics were in Garage. 9V and PF lights were in Railway station with warehouse. Flex system was in my railway control room with level crossing (not yet published, includes Sbrick) Fibre optics will be in... you'll see ;) I have at least 2 ideas for it. And it still has chancesto be in the Ministry. This is fun :D And one day I'll put all of them in one creation with control panel from the technic command centre set, but this won't be modular, so no more info about it ;)