Laura Beinbrech

Nice to see some neo-Futuron stuff. I like how you kinda stick to the original design style while also incorporating some Star Wars into it.

I love the "Spirit of St. Louis" vibes the first version of the airplane gives off. Definitely fits for the late 1920's early 1930's.

So, I decided to dust off a project that had been set aside for quite some time, due to how the first version had some major design flaws (IMO) that I just couldn't seem to work out. Well, after going to BrickFair last month, I decided to take another crack at it (in between various RL stuff that has been keeping me constantly busy), and after tinkering around with a few ideas (one of which, even though I initially liked it best, I had to discard due to two of the key parts being discontinued & never publicly released in red), I finally came up with this. I figured that I should post it here, rather than in the Sci-Fi forum, because it's about as much inspired by the Atlantis & Aquazone themes as it is RL Navy stuff, so without further ado: EDIT: Last week, after almost 9 years since I first started messing around with this design, I finally finished building this thing in actual bricks! Behold, the Federal Navy Ship Black Pearl, Black Seas Barracuda-class fusion-powered fast attack submarine for my crazy crossover sci-fi/fantasy LEGO setting. It is the third ship of the Black Seas Barracuda class SSF (Fusion-powered Fast-attack Submarines), the first two being the Black Seas Barracuda and the Jolly Roger (wonder if anyone will get the references), and all ships in the class are named after infamous pirate vessels. This one just happens to have the commander of its namesake vessel for its CO.... The FNS Black Pearl is mostly deployed as part of the Federal Republic of America Navy's Caribbean Squadron, patrolling the mostly lawless waters of the Caribbean League for pirates (conventional & submarine), hunting down notorious sea monsters and giving Neo-Confederate commercial shipping & commerce raiders nightmares. Armed with four twin-laser cannon turrets (for engaging airborne targets & smaller surface vessels while surfaced & close-by underwater threats when submerged), dual axially-mounted torpedo tubes (each can carry two Mk 56 supercavitating homing torpedoes each), as well as a semi autonomous drone (also serves as a remote active sonar platform) and sometimes Federal Special Operations Command Underwater Demolition Team members, these medium subs pack a mean punch for their size. As is typical of most submarines, the interior is cramped, but provides adequate living for its crew. The forward-most compartment houses most of the air cylinders as well as an airlock for UDT divers & the remote probe to be deployed or retrieved. This sub's fusion power plant, in addition to providing electricity for propulsion & equipment, also is used to separate hydrogen & oxygen from water, thus the sub can remain submerged indefinitely, crew provisions being the only limiting factor (although some enterprising crews have been known to deploy their SOCOM UDT teams and/or remote drones to harvest seafood to extend their time below the surface when trying to remain undetected deep in enemy territory) The relatively minimalist bridge, where the captain & duty helmsman take the sub where it needs to go. The FNS Black Pearl's brave, but somewhat rowdy crew Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this LDD project. I DO fully intend to build this thing for real (and bring it to at least one Lego show), but unfortunately, my budget is such that I've only got the barest bit of the bottom section done as of yet. This build clocks in at over 860 pieces, most of which are rather small, so you can see how it could be a bit on the expensive side, however, it is getting my top priority for my LEGO budget from now until I have it finished. EDIT: I hope you all enjoy seeing the completely final version, and I know it took me long enough to finish this, but I've been going through some serious stuff in RL over the past 4 years that has kind of gotten in the way of many of my more ambitious LEGO projects, and finishing this one has been a huge confidence booster, let me tell you...

Glad you like it! And funny you should mention this, but I do have plans on re-visiting the Mobile Bay class of Neo-Confederate battlecruisers in the near-ish future. The main issue is I basically need to acquire, at minimum, a complete second set of black hull components from the 2011 Black Pearl set (part ids 64645, 64651 & 95277 in black) to make this thing look reasonably proportional. I did work on re-organizing my LEGO ship bins, including adding a new extra-large storage bin for the bigger ships, so I can get back to work on that project though (I have a partially built old, short version that just doesn't look that great that needs to be tore down & rebuilt using the new hull base, once I acquire the parts I need). I DO more or less have all the hull parts to build the Federal Republic of America Navy's rough counterpart, the Philadelphia class heavy guided missile cruiser (basically by taking the white versions of the aforementioned parts from two Dolphin Cruiser sets), but I need to work on designing the actual build... I will see about trying to design both of those in BL Studio, due to the fact that even a significantly shorter version of the CSS Baton Rouge tended to give LDD a fit due to its size... I also have the rough beginnings of one of the first boats for the Grand Ducal Navy, which will be a guided missile sub (so it will be a bit bigger than this bad boy.... Especially since I finally figured out what I want to use for the Grand Duchy of New York's naval uniforms (the old Aquashark or Aquaraiders II torsos would be perfect, and I have like one or two).

Just bumping this to let everyone know that I've finally finished actually building this thing in real life & have edited the first post with the new pics & descriptions! :D

I love this concept! I am presently toying around with some similar ideas for retro-futuristic trains for my dieselpunk post-apocalyptic setting, and am always happy to see people with similar ideas out there.

That's pretty interesting, Sergio. You might find it kinda interesting that a railway preservation group in Pennsylvania has a piece of Portuguese equipment that it runs: The Rockhill Trolley Museum has one of the original Porto street trams that was built by CCFP(STCP) in 1929 and acquired by the museum when STCP was modernizing its tram fleet back in the 1980's, IIRC...

Sergio, I really like your ever growing collection of Portugese locomotives, especially since it gives a lot of interesting insight into the extreme diversity of sources for said locomotives. Like I never knew that they had British designs or even a North American one (As soon as I saw the Takargo 1565, I thought it looked like the type of old Alco road-switcher/general purpose locomotive that was popular in the US from the 1950's to the 1980's, and sure enough, MLW was a division of Alco). Still it was rather interesting seeing something that looked so familiar running on European rails.

I'll definitely do that, especially since Odense is fairly close to a castle (Egeskov Slot) that's near the top of my list of points of interest to visit in Denmark.

Well there's a good reason one of the railroader terms (at least one of the printable ones) for this type of caboose is "Crummy Wagon" or just "Crummy". Still, excellent work on this model.

I really love this MOC, and I have to echo that 8-wide seems to be a really good scale for LEGO trains (at least for standard-gauge anyways, I use 6-wide for my narrow-gauge stuff). I also have always been a fan of the DSB locomotives ever since seeing the MX & MY, and this one is no exception. I'm hoping to make a trip to Denmark sometime in the next couple of years and plan on hitting up some of the Danish railroad museums/heritage railroads when I'm there.

In early 2078, several months after the final battle of the Final War triggered massive temporal storms that ravaged the earth, the survivors began to try rebuilding civilization. One such group were survivors of the old North American Union military on the East Coast who founded what would in a few years become the Federal Republic of America, a bastion of hope & freedom in the post-war world. Of course, they soon found themselves beset by enemies on all sides: The authoritarian Grand Duchy of New York and Hordes of Chaos to the north, the fascist, human centric New Confederate States of America to the south, vicious bands of raiders in the arid lands west of the Mississippi and pirates & sea monsters in the Atlantic Ocean to the East. Thus the new nation found itself at war & in need of ways to defend itself because war, war never changes.... One of the earliest efforts by the Federal Republic to defend its coastal waters was the conversion of abandoned cabin cruisers & other boats into ad-hoc patrol boats, one of which was the one that would eventually become the FNS Inferno. After several years (and once the Republic's naval shipbuilding program got off the ground), the Inferno was taken in, stripped down to its bare hull, and rebuilt from the main deck up. The hastily mounted twin .50 caliber machineguns on the front of the vessel were replaced with a 37mm manually-operated light auto-cannon mount and the aft single .50 cal was replaced with a 7.62mm minigun. The overall shape of the superstructure was rebuilt similarly to how the old Higgs PT-boats from World War II were designed, and eventually the forward 37mm cannon was replaced by a DARDO dual-purpose twin auto-cannon turret (this particular choice of armament was heavily influenced by some of the orc technicians who had sought asylum in the Republic, citing "more dakka" as their reasoning for adding such firepower to a vessel of this class). Thus the Inferno Class general purpose patrol craft were born: Captain One-Eyed Willie at the master plot in the crew cabin of the Inferno (yes this is one big Goonies reference): The business end of the Inferno featuring the DARDO 40mm mount & MK 51 heavy sonar guided torpedoes: The Inferno's Brave Crew: Anyways, I was up until 5am last night getting the forward gun mount to look right, and I hope you like it.

I served in the US Navy for 6 years, and I can appreciate that. :)

Man, I love these ships! And the background stories you give for all of them are excellent.

I would be absolutely over the moon if they came out with a remake of the El Dorado Fortress, considering that not being able to afford the original El Dorado Fortress when I was a kid was my second biggest Lego regret, right after not being able to get the original Black Seas Barracuda for similar financial reasons.

I think Lego severely underestimated the demand for this thing... It's only been out for like a week or two & it's been listed as "out of stock" on the US webpage for a week... I just hope they at least make it available for backorder soon.

Love it! Reminds me: I should see about cleaning out my fridge sometime this week.....

Something similar to LegoTrain12v's MOC is along the lines of what I was thinking.

This is a cool idea, Zephyr. @SteamSewnEmpire, I've given some thought to how to have all the drivers coupled, but the one solution I came up with (based on the GG-1 instructions I found on BrickLink, and I need to look up whose those were again so I can give credit) would not work with the current motorization scheme, but I might be able to make something work using a (or two) PuP train motors, but we'll see. I was mostly thinking of modding it into an American style "Steeple Cab" anyways, which has a simpler wheel arrangement, so it might be a moot point anyways.

Ok, definitely going to be getting this thing when it comes out, that's for sure! Might make some modifications, but overall, I love how it looks.

That looks almost exactly like the Armored Train behemoth vehicle that shows up on some maps in Battlefield 1.

Not gonna lie, but if they do make the Miracle express, I will totally buy it because I happen to be BOTH a Queen fan AND a train enthusiast. ;)

I always love seeing your Adventurers theme designs, and this is no exception. Definitely a private train worthy of Sam Sinister & perfect for hauling his ill-gained loot back to his evil lair.

I wish we had some more actual confirmed info on this set, because the Crocodile locomotives, along with the GG-1 are some of my favorite electric locomotives, and all this speculation is kinda driving me batty... Still, I have a feeling I will be doing some heavy customization to my own copy of the set once I get it.

I'm definitely going to see about ordering this as soon as it becomes available. I've always loved steeplecab/crocodile type locomotives for some reason.