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Hello, fellow Eurobrickers! Warning: This is a picture heavy post - and there's a lot of text as well :) I've been much less active over the past months here on the forums than I used to be. The main reason for that is that I've been very, very active in the real world of LEGO fans, having visited nine LEGO events in the last thirteen months. Part of the time, I've also been busy building - mainly for the LEGO Adventure Book, Volume 2. I was very honoured to be asked to participate in Megan Rothrock's first book, which turned out great - I'm very proud of having been a part of that, although my chapter is a little, tiny one with only six pages. It has taken me to events in Germany, Portugal, the UK and the Netherlands that I probably wouldn't have been to - at least not this early in my MOCing days - if it hadn't been for the book, and I have met so many great people (many of whom are active Eurobricks members) as a result of that. So when Megan asked me if I wanted to build something for the second book, I knew I would be stupid not to say yes. But I had to approach the challenge differently than with the first book, because the stuff that ended up in Volume 1 was all stuff that had already been published on my Flickr (apart for the Ace of Spades building instructions, which I made specifically for the book). For Volume 2, Megan wanted me to build something new. And obviously, if you're building something that goes into a book, you want to do your best. I couldn't just repeat what I did for the first book and build some cars. I needed to do something bigger, and that's why I decided to pursue an idea I'd had for a while, but didn't expect to actually be able to turn into reality for a while yet. I had toyed with the idea of building a gas station that would fit into a modular street, but I also wanted it to feature a (removable) parking deck on top and a ramp leading up to it. So I started out in MLCad with a 32x64 stud footprint. Not a good idea. After having built the entire ground floor and the ramp, it looked like this: I was quite happy with it - but then I thought it might be clever to check how it would look with some cars on it. And they didn't fit - they wouldn't be able to make the turn on the ramp, and they wouldn't really be able to get to the pumps. So it was back to the drawing board... This was so much better. I had another idea all along as well - a pet project of mine is, as some of you might know, updating the classic Town sets from the eighties and nineties, and a favourite set of mine from that era (that I didn't have as a kid, but bought right after coming out of my Dark Ages) is 6561, Hot Rod Club. My contribution to book 1 had a strong flavour of hot rods, so it made sense to just let that evolve into book 2 - and therefore I wanted to make an updated Hot Rod Clubhouse to go on top of the parking deck. I also wanted it to be removable so it could stand alone as a separate building, like the old one. And this is what I ended up with. Note that all stickers are official LEGO stickers. Here's a demonstration of the removable floors. The roof of the clubhouse also comes off (not visible in this picture): Some of my favourite details of the gas station: And the clubhouse: That last one is a respectful nod to the old set - the idea is that the hot rod club grew out of their old clubhouse... So, a gas station and a hot rod clubhouse. That's all good and well, but there needs to be some cars to go with it. First, the Gas Guzzler, a hot rod tanker truck. The idea came from those dark blue curved double slopes. I was able to pick up four of them from some building bins at an event in November, and I thought this would be a good way to use them. You can find complete instructions for the Guzzler in book 2. Add to this the hot rods that go with the updated clubhouse - two from set 6561 and, for good measure, set 6538, from the same year. Sweet Yello: Hot Howler: Rebel Roadster: And, for good measure, throw in a vintage car that I did earlier, the Blue Eagle, to be the gas station owner's daily driver (his name is Gus Gazzler, by the way): Complete instructions for this car can also be found in book 2. So there you have it: A modular gas station with a removable parking deck and a hot rod clubhouse, with three hot rods, a vintage car and a hot rod tanker truck - Chapter 3 of the LEGO Adventure Book, Volume 2, coming out in late November. Hope you like it - I'm certainly looking forward to getting my hands on the book to have a closer look at what the other contributors have built. There are some fantastic builders in there that I'm - again - honoured to be allowed to share space with in a book. And, personally, I feel this is my best build ever. Which is of course a very gratifying feeling when that was what I set out to do - and I was rewarded with a lot more pages in the second book :) More pictures of these MOCs can be found in my Service with a Smile photoset on Flickr. Thanks for stopping by! Are / L@go
