Gabor

Thanks! I´m glad you like it! Thank you very much! They have it, they have it! Here they are: Flixbus and Milka Truck

Thank you! I´m very happy you like it!

Wow, I really like this building! The windows (the normal ones and the one for the cellar) and the sitting man are awesome details!

I´m happy to present you my newest model, a not exact copy of the ferries on lake Balaton in Hungary. Hope you like it! As I was a small kid we often spent our summer near Balaton. If someone is younger than 6 and lives normally in a small village, it is really impressive to see cars which drive onto a ship and after that they come down on the other side. That´s why it was always a highlight for me to visit and sometimes travel by this ferry. Still nowadays if I´m there I wait the ferry once coming and going away. It´s still the same ferry as 25 years ago, I still find it really cool and it brings back the old memories. It took 9 months from the idea to the final MOC. The building process included some really cool challenges and was one of the most exciting developing projects in my entire MOC-life. The idea was to build a remote controlled ferry which can swim and drive on real water, can catch the coast reliably and my older tiny RC models (Milka truck and Flixbus) have to be able to drive up and down. The last requirement was to make it possible to show the whole setup on exhibitions. At first I searched on the internet for the biggest one-piece plastic box and ordered one of them. It was difficult because most of the big boxes has small bottom wholes to let water out. I needed exactly the opposite of it. Keeping water in the box. The measures of the box decided the measures of the model. On the beginning I tried to experiment with some LEGO boat hulls. The facts that these hulls are not completely closed and the ship is without vehicles already very heavy brought me to the solution to use empty bottles. They are the most reliable things to keep air in and protect the electric parts, like Sbrick from the water. Of course you can say I could put everything to a higher position, not integrated into the deck. But no, if everything would be in the building, everything would be on one side and the ferry would be completely unbalanced. On this side everything would be under water. What I could do was to integrate the motors on the other side into the deck. It was also not enough. I needed counterweights. At first some LEGO keels, but they were not heavy enough (they contain air, too :/). So at the end I used simply some pieces of steel. The real ferry has Voith Schneider propellers. We know that it´s possible to recreate it with LEGO bricks, but not at this small size. And he depth of the box is only 15 cm. That level of reality was also not the goal of the project. The draught of the loaded ferry had to be less than 15 cm, so I decided to use 4 propellers. Of course the available propellers of LEGO are like disasters, if we examine their functionality. If they are not, they are too big. So I built my own version out of Technic pieces. The propulsion uses two channels of the Sbrick, one for each side. You can turn with the ferry that way. I thought you don’t need this feature in this thin box, which is only 10 cm wider, than the ferry. But I was not right. You really need to do turning maneuvers to keep the ferry parallel with the walls. And yes, I hope I will have the chance to drive the ferry in a bigger pool in the future! Next challenge was to catch the coast stable enough for the buses and trucks. Maybe I said earlier that the ferry is everything else than horizontal. The counterweights are good, but not good enough. The proportion of the weights of the vehicles and the real ferry are also different than at the LEGO word. So the LEGO ferry has extremely strong reactions, if the vehicles come. The real ferry has also water tanks to balance itself. The LEGO ferry doesn´t have such a help. So I decided to build the ramp so that it can take part in bringing the ferry into a better position at least near the coast. There is a hook on the ramp (see in the video). It catches the panels of the coast and don´t let the ferry go away. After that it goes down a bit more and forces the whole ferry to raise itself a bit. The coast is horizontal, so this force brings the ferry also closer to the right horizontal position. That is nice, but as the vehicles arrive, it changes. That´s why I had to develop a correct order, position and driving path for the vehicles, too. These small vehicles are not off-roaders. If you can´t follow the instructions, the vehicles stuck on the ramp. But if you do everything well, it works smooth! The most difficult one of the nonfunctional problems was to create the meeting of the deck and the curved walls without gaps. I used for it 1x2x2 panels. The deck goes actually into the wall (under the top of the panels). But the upper end of these panels is not equal high with a whole number of plates, so I had to sink the wall on the sides with a half plate. I did it by using different wholes on the Technic frame, as for the deck. 1 Technic whole is 2,5 plates, so using neighboring wholes gives us the 0,5 plate difference. The ferry had its first appearance on Bricks4Family 2021. It worked surprisingly well during the weekend. After the box was completely horizontal and the exact level of the water was also found. By catching the coast the visitors often thought, it´s enough to turn off the propellers and open the ramp. What they (and I on the beginning) didn´t realise was the fact that if the ferry drives, the water goes in the other direction under it. If the propellers stop, the water brings the ferry slowly back. One method is the perfect timing with opening the ramp. Other method is to keep the propellers on and opening the ramp at the same time. After Bricks4Family I made a few very small changes on the ferry, so on the second exhibition (Ilmbricks 2021) worked everything even better. I put for example a door on the side, so it was possible to switch on and off the battery box, without removing the captain´s deck, the life boat and the whole roof. The deck has also 4 invisible, but removable panels. If they are removed, I can hold the ferry by holding the really strong Technic frame. Now there are small Technic bricks in them. It became much easier to remove the panels with the help of a small bar or an axle. If you really read all of these, a huge thank you for it! Hope you liked the ferry! You can find the pictures in high res in my Photostream! PS.: The next exhibition where I plan to show the ferry is Bricks am Meer 2022 in Bad Zwischenahn, Germany. Hope we can meet there!

Thanks! Thank you!

Hi everyone! I´m happy that I can present my newest creation! It´s the next piece of my minifig scaled RC collection. This time I decided to build a Flixbus. After Flixbus bought the rivalry Eurolines, it became maybe the cheapest way for poor students from Hungary (or not only from Hungary) to travel across Europe. At least for me it was the perfect method at that time! Hope you like it! Unfortunately the last time I travelled somewhere by a Flixbus was in August 2019. But hopefully it will change in the near future! Flixbus came often in the middle of the night, just as the Knight Bus did in Harry Potter. That´s why it stands on the destination screen Before you start reading about the boring technical facts and irritating things during the building period, please watch the video! It took approx 4 months long to build the bus. It´s not the first tiny RC I build. Despite of it I can´t say it didn´t challenge me. Yes, I´m speaking about the lettering and arrows on the sides. Maybe you still remember of the Milka Truck. That lettering has only vertical or horizontal building techniques. That´s why it was possible to do the lettering on each side only 1 stud deep. It was important, because it allowed to put the battery box (the biggest and most inflexible element) between the two walls and staying with the width in 6 studs at the same time. But “FLIXBUS” is more difficult. It is also not always possible to have stud connections (for example letter X, or the diagonal arrows). In this case the letters have to have inside some bigger parts on them, which simply doesn’t allow them to fall out. It means it stays only a two-stud wide space in the middle. That’s enough for the technic chassis, but not for the batteries. And also not for the motors… So only the half of the lengths stayed for the functional parts. For the steering and propulsion I stole the method from the Milka truck (with vertical motors), where they´ve already proven, that they work really well. The only possible (long enough) space for the battery box was at the back. Fortunately right above the driven wheels. They need the weight on them to increase the friction between the tires and the street. Another positive feature is, that the Sbrick is small enough to be above the letters, so I didn´t have to make the whole bus longer. Another part of the challenge was to create the diagonal white lines on the front. There was almost nothing inside, which they could be attached to. The reason is, that the moving parts of the steering are there, so it´s simply impossible to put there any other parts without disablement of the steering. Other reason is, that the upside-down parts of the front have already used the space there. At the end I decided to use the rubber bands, without being irritated by the fact, that it´s possible to see them outside, too. The bus has three axles. The third one is again an axle with some kind of fake suspension. It is just hanging there and doesn´t hold anything, so in theory it can never happen, that the driven wheels leave the ground. Please notice the detail that there are brackets instead of plates on the top of the third mudguards. It creates a bit bigger space in the mudguard for the wheels with the fake suspension. It means, that the bus can win against bigger obstructions. All in all I really enjoyed working on the bus. Hope you like the result, too! Thanks for watching and reading! Feel free to visit my Photostream on Flickr, to see some of my other creations: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gabor_horvath/

Thank you! Thanks! We will see in the future, how the roads work, if it gets some modulad editions. The first intersection will be exciting! Thanks! Thank you! I know that there are some Lidl stores in the US as well. Are they very different? Thanks! Thanks! I´m glad you still have the Milka truck in mind!

Hi everyone! What you can see on the pictures is the end of a story, which began in 2017. At that time I studied on a university in Hungary. All in all that was a horrible time, but it had also some advantages. One of them was, that in Hungary it is really easy to find a job as a student. The companies need always people, and of course the students need always money. That’s why there is a very good system there for finding a job or finding employees. In my current place in Austria, the marketplace for jobs is completely different. As far as I experienced, people don´t need so much money and companies also don´t really need employees. That´s strange… (Maybe it´s necessary to add, that these jobs I´m speaking about - in both countries -, are bad jobs, like cleaning, working on the fields, factory jobs, etc. So jobs you can calmly do parallel to the university and don´t need your whole brain capacity.) It doesn´t matter. Much more important is the story. Because of the facts above I could try during the school years more that 15 different workplaces. Including better ones, like being a guide in a very old monastery. And including Lidl. Actually Lidl was a better one, too! It was also interesting. So I decided to build an exact model of it. I started to build the model immediately, but after that a lot of things happened. I went to Germany for a year, after that I came to Austria, I always found something more interesting to build, etc. So the model was always at the background. But now, finally it became ready! Before I started working in Lidl I had to read the product placing strategy. This is something you never forget. That´s why the interior is completely detailed. Because of scale reasons it has not so many things in it, as a real store, but the different groups of products are exactly there, where they have to be. After the entrance there are chips and stuff like that, after them the fresh things, like bakery products and vegetables. At the back there is the non-food part and the refrigerators (mopro). On the way back to the cashdesks are the drinks for example. Notice the two different sizes of the pallets. The 3x4 stud variation is the Euro pallet, the other one which´ size is the half of the Euro pallet is the Düsseldorf pallet. It is also very important in Lidl. It was also said to me, that there are only shopping carts and no baskets, because the parents always allowed the kids to sit in the baskets. And it´s not hygienic. Well, the kids are sitting in the shopping carts as well. And not on the seat, actually in the cart. Another things you never forget are also on the model. For example a student, who is cleaning the floor with a pushbroom. In Lidl it is really taught you, ho you have to use the pushbroom. Let´s see what a customer doesn´t see. The warehouse and the offices. The machine near the garage door is for the empty paper boxes. It presses them, you put cables aroud them to keep it together and after that you can bring the package out on a pallet. That´s a cool thing. Which is not cool is that there are no place in the warehouse. If you want to bring out pallet “A”, you often have to bring out pallet “B”, “C” and “D” before. After that you can bring out pallet “A”. After that you have to bring back pallet “B”, “C” and “D”. After that you can start to fill the shelves from pallet “A”. That is also a mission impossible scene about it in the warehouse with a pallet jack and an employee. The most interesting thing outside is maybe the big Lidl sign. It contains more that 100 parts and is of course completely without glue and stickers! You can read the word “Lidl” on both sides. Another thing is the parking spot for disabled people, which I posted a bit earlier. Here you can find details about that. What I like on the building is the roof. I guess it turned out great with the angles. The different chimneys and the parts of the ventillation systems are also designed after the real ones. Hope you like the model! Thanks for watching and reading! You can find more MOCs from me on my Flickr page!

Thank you! I´m glad you like it!

Thanks everyone! I´m really happy you like it!

Hi everyone! It happened to me earlier as well, that I worked on a part of a MOC so much, as on the MOC. In such a case this part deserves an own picture! So here it is, the parking spot for disabled people. Downtowns are problematic places. At the city where I spent most of my time during the school years (Győr, Hungary), these spots were only signed by a road sign. But it was often not clear, which spot, or how many spots are actually for disabled people. And the downtown has in general too many sings with too many information on them. So it happened often, that people parked their cars not on purpose there. A few years ago the city decided to paint the whole spots blue to make it easier to realise them. It looks really cool! So I decided I recreate it with Lego bricks. I build the first version in 2018 I guess. I didn´t published it because it looked like a man sitting on a toilet and not on a wheelchair. A few month later I went back to the model and changed it a bit. A few month ago I could travel back to Hungary despite of the COVID-rules. And I took the BIG Brother picture. Hope you like it! The MOC in which it is will come a bit later! Thank for watching!

Thank you very much! Thanks again, Ashi to draw my attention to Brick Train Awards!

The Age of Normal Trains is over. The Time of Dancing Trains has come. :D

Thank you! Because of the length of the train another small extension wire would be needed, if not a pole reverser switch. I used this, because I prefer using only one port for motors, which have to wirk really together. Thanks! I´m so happy, that it was successful!

Hi everyone! I just wanted to share with you a small update in connection with this MOC. Since posting it I got all wires, the Sbrick and time to do a test. I was a bit stressed, how these extremely heavy and extremely long cars can drive on the very unfriendly Lego train tracks. The result is in the video: It works quite well, but of course the ~80° is not so nice between the cars in the curves. The curves are at first the normal Lego curves. After that straight, curve, straight, curve, etc. In the last scene the radius is 107 cm. I used two normal train motors in the bogies under the phantographs. There are two 50 cm long extension wires and a switch with pole reverser going through the train to the Sbrick, which is in one of the middle cars, together with a small extension wire and the batteries. Thanks for visiting!