Legoless

This is great- there is something wonderful about Victorian railway engineering- electical switches just don't have the magic of a well-oiled lever attached to cables or rods. I guess that's why I much prefer a manual gearbox to an automatic- its just more tactile and involving. So adding such a structure can only add to the sense of atmosphere on your layout. Its a simple model beautifully done.

I used to have a mixture of 12v grey and 4.5v blue when I was a kid. I didn't have enough 12v to motorise more than a small section of temporary layout so I pretty much resorted to building push trains. I only had one motor and transformer also- my points were 4.5 volts and I had none of the other accessories. But 12v really does have a sense of magic for me- I remember the sheer quality of the engineering- even the cardboard boxes were well made! 9v seems to have been a little bit of a step backwards in regard to playability. And from what I can tell from forum posts, TLG don't appear to have made it particularly easy to motorise 9v and later points, which seems a shame. My fantasy Lego train layout (to go in my fantasy Lego house!) would probably be a hybrid 9v-PF DCC system- assuming its possible to kit-bash some kind of pickup system. 12v though- back in the day this system was far and above anything else in the toyshop in terms of desirability and quality as far as I was concerned. Apart from playability everything else looked cheap and tacky by comparison- a bit like comparing a 1980s Mercedes S Class (back when Mercedes quality was unimpeachable) to a Russian Lada!

I do like that- interesting prototype by British standards as we've never had any electric loco here that looks anything like that (although there are a few obsolete diesels). Nice build. I notice the PF lead coming out of the back- I wonder if it would be possible to power a pf loco of that size by using an internal PP3 9v battery (or is the battery box interlinked with the IR controller)? Obviously, if you were able to go down that route, it wouldn't run very long or with many carriages with such a small battery!

It never ceases to amaze me how a toy building system originating in Denmark in the 1950's has evolved to such an extent that it can be used to model buildings of absolutely any culture so beautifully. This model is outstanding- makes me wish I could shrink myself to minifig size and walk around it. Love the details- such as the lighter and darker browns used on the fishing jetty to suggest wet wood. Very clever. The other colours work really well too- that yellow would ordinarily be too 'loud' to be used for a building but it really works well here.

Absolutely love this! Clever use of angles- I really like the floor tiles in the courtyard- very imaginative and great techniques on display. What really impresses is that it is very well 'layered'- even the grass isn't flat. This adds greatly to the sense of texture and realism.