Hoexbroe

Hi! First off; sorry for the late answer. I havent really been much active in the Lego Online Community lately. Second; Thanks to LegoModularFan for the mention. Such an honour :-) Third; My contributuon to this thread: Well, I´m not really a fan of the standard modular houses that TLC is pumping out. SURE they are incredibly nice and extremely well done, but personally I have grown SO tired of seeing them in the Lego Expo´s that we do here in Spain. In CITY-realated displays the amount of MOCs are going down, while the number of repeated and/or (slightly) modified TLC modulars are going up. Okay,sorry for that rant, but I had to get it out... ;-) Building in a modular manner is simply a MUST if you intent to travel with your creations.This is easiest done trying to adhere to the Lego 32x32 baseplate format.Normally I let the standard meassurements dictate my creativity, and simply try to work within the system, instead of complicating things by straying off the grid. (so to speak...) This works very well for any modular-based CITY scale display, like my own "MegaMOCs" series. But what happens when you want to recreate an important historical building? -These things rarely come in square cuadratic modules! As the only thing I have been building on for the last 2 years is my Magdalena Palace diorama, I will of course use that as a reference to what I say here; PLAN AHEAD! -Use paper and pen or a computer design program to lay out the modules; If the thing has to be transported it is essential that it can be separated into handy sub-modules. If you are building in minifig scale, you have SOME space to move around. I aim for 1:50, but can accept 1:45 to 1:60; Just find the scale that makes the 32x32 studs resolution fit the best! Personally I also allow for "best fit" decisions and changes to the original prototype design. If cutting or adding a couple of studs in lenght makes the thing FIT into the grid, I try to go with that. After all I am only interessted in that the whole general aspect of the creations allows the viewer to recognize the building. I´m not a "nietenzähler"! (A derrogative german term of a person (train-enthusiast usually) who cant accept even a single rivet out of place...) Once you have decided on the lines of division into modules, STAY with them, But DONT allow them to force you to change the positions or looks of important details; In those cases you must shift the division-lines to one or the other side, and make it so that the modules can be PUSHED into each other. Like, well... Lego blocks. ;-) Lately I have grown quite fond of Hispabrick Magazines MILS dioramas. Check it out here: http://www.abellon.net/MILS/ -which allows for a more textured surface. It is especially suited for layouts that include both land AND water. I hope that this text can help somebody...

Hi everybody, A simulated train ride; A couple of years ago I saw a TV program about NEW and HOT gadgets in Japan. Among those were a cheap plastic box where you could insert your mobile telephone and download videos of different train travels from around the country. Supposedly it allows the user to experience a train travel even if you haven´t the time, money or friends to make it in real life. I immediatly wanted to re-create it in Lego! Since then it has been one of my trusty companions travelling to LEGO expo´s in Spain. I must say that it has a certain hypnotic effect on people when they see it... In the original japanese version, there is only ONE traveller in the compartment. (The girl. I dont know if other versions exist) As I havent seen the toy here in Europe, and I havent seen any other Lego version of it, I take it that it wasn´t a success. But as a Lego creation it works surprisingly well! I want to stress that the build tries to recreate the interior of a train compartment, and it really isnt much to look at from the outside... Here´s a video of the thing running; Ciao!

Excellent 5-wide constructions!

Thanks. I am sorry for posting in the wrong fórum. -But to move it to a "LEGO Technic, Mindstorms & Model Team" subforum reallyu makes just NO sense at all to me. I could have understood the TOWN forum. Actually I was close to post it there myself.

Hi all, A long time has passed since I last posted something here, but I have been busy preparing this Project, which I will now present. It is still slightly WIP, but has already been to one exposition (Close to Bilbao, Spain) Also be warned that this post holds a lot of big pictures. I tried to link to smaller versions of the pics, but it seems that the forum software maximizes them anyway... Royal Spanish Palace Completed in 1912, in the city of Santander (Northern Spain). Build by the Cantabrian government, as a residence for the royal family of Spain. It was a present. Today a meeting place for conferences and meetings. A protected historical monument since 1982. My Lego version (minifig scale) is aimed at 1913, fitting the time-period of the popular spanish TV-series "Gran Hotel". The LEGO-project is on-going, with numerous improvements to be done (especially the roofing) and will be given a fully detailed interior decoration; A few interior photos has been included in this presentation, although there is still a LOOONG way to go on that part... The pohotos showed here are reduced versions of the full-resolution potos hosted on Flickr. Just click on each pic to Access it on Flickr. The South Entrance in all its splendor; The small white window-panes are 1mm wide stickers cut from the left-overs of hundreds of original Lego stickers. Each "glass" uses 4 strips, and there are around 200 Windows of that type. All was done by hand. The vehicles included, in order to help pin-point the 1913 epoch; All the vehicles are free fantasy. -Sorry for the people who are looking for exact miniature scale models ;-) Now a few detail-views; ...Notice the guy in the white suit removing his glove before saluting... ;-) An areal view of the palace; A view of the setup for the photo-session; Now some pictures and plans of the REAL palace. First, the arquitects vision, before actual construction began in 1908; One of the many scheamtic drawings one can find on the web. I relied heavily on these, as they present the information "better" than real-life photos; But of course a recent photo of the real thing should not be left out. I really think I nailed it, despite of the slightly "chibi" quality of the Lego build; As I mentioned in the beginning; the Project is on-going. The part of the building I am making holds around 50 rooms/halls. And already more than 10 of these are done. -But I will present it once I finish. In any event here are a few pre-views; Well, that is about it! Thank you for reading this far, and coping with the many large photos. (There are even more pics of this build in Flickr) Well, actually. In my opinion there can never be TOO MANY photos, so here´s a last one as a farewell pic; Ciao!

@SpaceMonkey; Very nice cars. Your MacLaren looks very smooth and clean. Still, I miss some texture on the side of the doors... Thanks a lot for the mention! :-)

I simply love it. Very smooth thanks to the sideways building!

Still a lovely and masterful build. Nice new photo!

Is this part of a professional/commercial venture? -In that case you would use PLC´s (Industrial computers) to tie everything together, and have it keep working automatically and flawlessly for years. PLC modules with digital inputs and outputs for stops and start. You can also use analog output moduels to control lighting and speeds. To control these things, you have scada software, which lets you control everything from a computer. If your part of the world is North America, you would probably look into Allen-Bradley og General Electrics PLC and software equipment, while here in Europe I would look into Schneider and Siemens product suites... (Mainly, although everything is available in both places...) All this stuff is very expensive, and not for the average hobbyist, though. -So if your project is "just for fun" in your own home, you can forget what I´ve just said... ;-)

Nice and funny (scary!) idea!

Amazing the functionality that you have managed to implement! Congratz! ;-)

Excellent cars. I could easily use the Masserati. I dont know if it would be too long. My own longest car for the racing-diorama is 18 studs long... I like the rims on the super-mini-van!

Looks very good. I especially like how you did the platform roof.

Hi all, When I originally made the MegaMOC 2014 Le Mans Series Racing diorama, I would have liked to do it with CLASSIC (1960-70) cars. But I simply didnt dare to do it; The cars seems extremely complex! But lately, other builders have turned out some pretty impressive classic racecars. Here´s some "tests" of mine, to see what could have been, had I dared to go down this route; First off, a Ford GT40, inspired a lot by GallardoLU´s do; Okay; so the car is held deliberatly in a single tone. Lovely racing colours and stickers are not done for this "what-if" builds... The car has taken quite some time to do, but -curiosly enough- the finished result does not use particulary complex constructions. Nothing illegal, and the car roll really well. One of the important point of a GT40, is it´s height; This car is a stunning 3 plates lower than f.x. my McLaren F1 GTR! (No, I doesnt fit a whole minifig...) Second up, I tried to cram M.Cara´s fantastic Prosche 917K down to 6(7) wide. Here is the result; Of course, no minifig can be seated here... Car rolls very well, and construction is not illegal, although highly unorthodox (I mean; just look at some of the pieces used...) The idea to use the white teeth, which curves exactly like a curved slope 1x4, comes from M.Cars´s car! (It´s the only place I´ve seen that used) Needless to remind you all, that a heavy set of Martini Racing stickers REALLY does this construction a huge favour!!! A last farewell photo of some of my latest cars together; Ciao!

Wow, that´s a lot of cars. Some of them are extremely innovative and inspiring, for their imaginative use of pieces. -Also, it´s the second mention I see today, so I am realyl thrilled; Thanks for the mention! Keep posting your designs to this thread!