westracing01

This has been a work in progress for years. It started as just a race track on a 4x8 sheet of plywood in my parents basement 20 years ago.When I went away to college the track was torn down and stowed away. Fast forward 7 years and it was resurrected when my girlfriend and I moved to our then new to us condo that had a basement. Around this same time Cafe Corner and Market Street came out and I knew that they would be excellent additions to the race track. So I picked those up, torn down what I had, laid out something new and dialed up Bricklink for the things I didn't already have. This is roughly where we began. My original plan was a city oval with lights. This is a shot of the original front stretch grandstand that was an import from my original track from back in the day. Here we can see Cafe Corner, the Tower Crane, some vehicles (tow truck and safety truck) along with the big Ferrari Hauler. Here's an example of the runoff, the corner marshals, the Goodyear building and catch fencing. So, I don't seem to have any pictures of the middle between then and what I have now. Things were changed along the way as they always are, Green Grocer was added, the plywood was covered and it was just generally made to look like something more complete. At this point, if you haven't noticed, I want to say that this is not for a purist. I did cut some of the road plates to achieve the angles I wanted since building the track with 90 degree corners was realistic. It was also originally designed, and it still is designed, for 4 wide vehicles. The tow trucks and ambulances are 6 wide and the Ferrari Hauler is 8 wide but the rest was to be 4 stud. Now, on to the pics of where this currently resides... These are in no particular order... That's where we stand at the moment with the track. When these were taken it included all Modulars that had been released. I currently have Assembly Square sitting in the hall and of course the Downtown Diner just arrived. I do plan to include these, however, I have decided that the cars, vehicles and indeed the track itself no longer suit my vision, so changes are coming. For starters, the track will be disassembled and a new table built. After that, the track surface, pits and garages will be converted to brick built roads. The issue I always had with this were curves. Since I finally saw the Lego Monaco Hairpin model I took a Saturday and figured out how to build brick built corners. Armed with that, I sat down at work and designed the brick built straight away pieces along with new a new Indycar prototype. My favorite racing series is Indycar so it made sense to use that as the template. I also really loved early 90's F1 so the new car incorporates design elements of both of those. Pictures of the new car and brick built straightaway to follow. The corners I only have he test model I built but seeing as how I know the technique works, that will be an issue I tackle once the new track table is built. My thinking is to get the curves right I will first lay down all the straights and then build the corners to suit. Picture of the new Indycar Prototype. Picture of the new car on it's brick built road surface. The grand plan for this is a combination of what you see and the outer portion (through the woods) of the Linas-Monthelry Circuit in France. I'm not going to attempt to build the oval portion of that but, in my imagination, this city portion is built within the big oval and connects the two parts of the outer circuit. To do this, I will need much more space than a spare bedroom can offer and it will be a few years before it happens. The plan is to build a garage (in real life, I have other expensive hobbies) with a loft and the track will go in the loft portion. Until then, the new table will hopefully be built over the winter and the new brick built track constructed. Once that is complete, the cars, safety vehicles, ambulances, tow trucks, etc. will be converted to 6 stud width and the sand traps will be converted to all Lego. My plan is to a completely Lego track with the exception of the signage and the railroad grass where bricks won't be used. Anyway, there it is. Comment away and let me know what you think. I can take closer pictures of anything you might want to see better. I apologize for the blurry nature of some of them. Lighting is not great in this bedroom and my phones camera is probably dirty. Thank you for reading and looking!

Did some re-working on the pits. The larger 8 stud, now basically 9 stud with the new BMW set, continues to cause relative havoc with the width of the track and pits. I moved the pits back as far as possible and added 5 brick heights of width to the pit surface. Now the cars can be parked at an angle on pit road while allowing other cars to pass. Also completed the addition of 3 additional pit boxes for a total of 10. Garages don't extend that far, but I was able to do this with parts I had laying around... Basically every one of them. LOL. I also rebuilt the last corner/pit entry/gravel trap. The long version of the track, which will remain in imagination only, has a chicane at the pit entry that brings the track down by the Brick Bank. This construction seen below is part of what that would be. It allowed for the inside to be opened up and gravel trap expanded so that I could complete the pit expansion. The Museum was moved to the front straight and the Corner Gas Station moved back 18 studs to accommodate the extra track needed. The next Modular (hoping now for a 10x10) will go next to the Gas Station to complete that street.

Amazing work. Looks better than the real racecar.

Well, too long as usual since I updated this, but with a new Modular just a month away, time came to see where it would go. With the size of it, it presented problems. I had also had some issues with the table itself and while not fully fixed, they're better. To fix it right I'd have to take the entire thing down and rebuild the table. I thought about it... Then thought I didn't want to do that much work, so I braced it as best I could without going nuts and also added an additional 16" of table... Why? So I could swap the front straight and the pit area/garages of course... This change, while a lot of work, really gives me two things... 1) The interior portion is all city. So, in imagination land, the town decided they wanted a race so they built a dedicated garage/pit lane/grandstand complex to accommodate this. A lot of real F1 tracks have done this. 2) I was hesitant to put the grandstands on the pit garages but I really like how it came out. To me, that big grandstand and pit area have a combination look of Le Mans, Suzuka and the Moto GP track in Thailand. I was pleased with how that came out. As for the new Modular... I had intended to slot the Museum in between Boutique Hotel and Assembly Square, with the Diner, Jazz Club and Theatre across the street. However, with that Tour building as well (https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-162743/Brick Artisan/souvenirs-tours-compatible-with-set-10326/#comments), that adds another possibility for placement that might be better actually which would be down at the entry to T1. I feel like the Museum would be a show piece for a city and I don't know if sticking it off on a side street is a good idea, which is where I plan to put it now. There's more to do but it's back in a useable state. The Corner Garage and Assembly Square have to be moved down, the barriers over there will have to be adjusted and I want to expand that gravel track at T6 a bit while not screwing up the pit area. I have an idea for that. Also have to get A LOT more road bricks to finish off the areas adjacent to the new pit lane/garages.

I quite like the Museum. The size of it caused me to rethink it's placement... That in turn caused a rather large rebuild of over half of the layout so I could free up room for future Modulars (my thread will be updated momentarily.) December 1st is a Friday... If I'm working at home that Friday I may take my lunch break and run down to the Lego Store to get that day 1.

I doubt a train station. All of them so far have been all encompassing and unless they want to give you a train along with the building, that's out in my opinion. School/University, Hospital, Museum and Apartments are all very plausible. I would like a hospital myself, but since I'm rebuilding the layout over the winter and a large hospital actually won't fit, I'll throw shade on that and go with a museum or apartments.

Speechless.

Sigh... I had so looked forward to this when I first heard of it. I'd have gladly slapped down the money had it met reasonable expectations of scale and looks. Unfortunately, what we've been given fails miserably in comparison with the real thing...

If I was to sell my setup, $10K is around what I'd ask. I actually do have all the modulars though, right up to this years Jazz club. 18 Modulars at an average price of $150 USD brings the total for just the modulars to $2700 retail, give or take. Then vehicles, minifigs, spare parts, etc. Judging by the list given... I'd say maybe $5500-$6000 USD is what it's actually worth, but that could be off wildly. I'm unfamiliar with a lot of the actual collectible minifigs value.

I will wait for the real images for judgement on purchasing... I'm skeptical what I see in this image is at all legit.

Nicely done!

Been many years since I ventured into Technic land and I had intended to get this set... That intent is definitely being rethought if these leaks are true. $680 is an awful lot of money for not that much of a set. We shall see I guess.

Ferrari lost a left rear tire entering T1 and had a rather sizeable off. Marshalls are quickly responding. The other Ferrari panicked when he saw his teammate try to knock the wall down, locking up the fronts and sliding off into the gravel (which actually works quite well to stop the car as I just lightly pushed it straight in and the "gravel" really stopped it.) Where all the tires and gravel landed is exactly where they landed when I played the wreck out, so that part is 100% organic to the scene. Debris placement is somewhat where it landed, but mostly where I assumed the trajectory after impact would take them. Fireman in the above image is leaping the wall to assist, one in the background has the longest to go bringing both extinguishers with him. I like the plume of fire extinguisher, though I admit it's hard to get smoke/vapor to match ones imagination in reality, even if you're imagining in lego. This is reasonably close for the first attempt and it gives it a little bit of extra reality that the action is "happening" as it's presented. That's something that can be hard to get across in still shots.

"Wait a minute, why do you want that beer so bad?" "'Cause he's thirsty, dummy." I love that movie. AMAZING job on the car @firefabric

Rebuilt the pit box gantries. I find these are more accurate and they also allow a lot better access to each pit box. In the WAY back you can see where the Jazz Club wound up. Closeup of the gantry. This is the only one I built the impact guns for but that'll change. Going to start working on the pit tools and the pit boxes in general. I ordered the Ford crew guys since those minifigures seem to be hard to get ahold of. Building out all the Indy/F1 cars is going to take a while and will have to wait. Since Speed Champions is doing a bang up job with the GT cars, that's where we'll be really starting. So far, we have the following: Ford - x 1 Corvette - x 2 Ferrari - x 2 (Kind of. These are different teams so I need to rework the cars a little and bring them together.) Porsche - x 1 (Waiting to see if Lego redoes the Porsche GT car in 8 wide.) Aston Martin - x 1 I need to get 2 of the Lambo's and I do hope that Lego comes back to re-do the previous 6-wide Mercedes Benz in 8-Wide... Or we get an updated Audi or the Acura NSX. There are 7 pit boxes so what will eventually happen is there will be 2 Factory GT cars per pit box pitting in a style similar to F1. It's not realistic, but you have to work with what you have and to double the length of the pit road to accommodate 14 cars, while awesome, is simply beyond what is feasible. It would basically require doubling the length of the front straight and that's room that I do not possess... Unless I moved the whole thing to the garage and took up a bay, but that's not happening.

About 1/3 of the way through the Jazz Club... I actually like the building better than I thought I would, but I find that it's not a that well thought out. There are elements that have no origin. Bottles and glasses on the tables, but no bar for instance. I think this would have been served better to be the entire plate instead of 2/3 of it.

Hospital...

Very nicely done. I love the rake. Going to have to incorporate that into my Indy/F1 car.

All depends on the layout. I had the perfect spot for the BH, but everyone doesn't have a 45 degree angle baked into their layout. I believe the Jazz Club will slot in next between the Detectives Office and Police Station in my layout. Ideally I wanted to put it near the BH because I think the themes go together, but at the same time the Jazz Club next to a Pool Hall seems to make some sense. Birch Books and The Pet Store/Brown Stone will move next to the Town Hall and Grand Emporium and Green Grocer respectively. This is certainly not my favorite, but it's not terrifying. I stand by my "Eh" from earlier. I doesn't really matter though. Once you get locked into a collection like many of us have, where we have all of them (yes, even Market Street) you're going to buy this regardless. It would've had to have been something truly awful for me to not consider getting it. Is the Jan 1 for VIP's in-store or online only? Like others, I usually head down to the Lego Store on New Years Day to pick mine up.

Very eh... Will buy it of course, because I've bought them all so far... But this one is the least excited I've been for in a long, long time.

Longest running Lego Theme? Has to be Town/City no?

^^ That's a good idea! I also like the placement there. A Hotel next to the Parisian Restaurant always struck me as the right location.

The wedge filled in with a "poured concrete slab". The wedge with as many tiles as I had available to complete the look. I have parts in my bricklink cart to finish it off. New catch fencing to protect the Art Gallery instead of the bill boards. Those bill boards were moved down toward T2/T3 in front of the stairs to the top of the garages. And just a shot of the 8 wide Supra Medical Car #2 on it's side of the road to show more correctly the scale of width of the 8 wide cars on the road.

Yeah, the 8-wides I wasn't thrilled with when they went there. That's what sort of forced me to expand the garages and open the apex of the corners up. I have room to widen the streets but that would be a massive undertaking and I'm not sure I want to deal with that. But, you never know. The rollback has a 10 wide flatbed portion and it basically takes up a whole lane. We'll see how it shakes out. Despite the American flare of the buildings (and the palm trees), the track/town has in my mind always been somewhere in Europe. They do tend to have narrower roads in places so it's not totally out of whack although I do agree with the general assessment. I think the compact nature of the circuit also hurts the perception of scale but that's not something I can do much about. If I ever widen the roads, it'll be one brick height (turned on its side) on either side. Right now, the roads are 8 bricks high (a little more than 8 studs) laid flat, so any expansion to include a road "shoulder" would up that to 10 and probably be about the right width. I think Green Grocer is staying where it is, for now. It depends on what the next modulars are. If something comes along I think works better there then I will move it. I have room planned for the next 5 years of modulars starting in 2023. 2 spaces you see here and there is room for 3 more where the grandstand is across from the Palace Cinema. After that, it's going to get tricky. As for that wedge... Not sure the solution there yet but I was just thinking about that whole corner and it's something I will start playing around with. Probably copy what I did on the other end of the back stretch but I'm not sure I have any of the parts I need. If I can find another couple of angled parts then I can lay down the framework of what I need and head off to bricklink to order parts as I'm totally out of pieces in dark bluish gray for the roads.

I noticed that too. I only had one of two that were really just resting there, the rest of them more or less were secure.