andythenorth

Significantly faster for me.

Yup. It's on carpet, it detaches from the track easily. On a solid floor it will stand up better, but on solid floor the track slides as the train goes round...

Good set, my kid likes it. One serious flaw - the conveyor falls over. It needs a substantial baseplate. One should have been included. My kid wants to play with the conveyor but it's useless until I buy a baseplate. Lame. One nitpick - the chassis of the boxcar is overbuilt, it's heavy and stronger than it needs to be. The equivalent red boxcar from cargo train deluxe is more lightly built and is strong enough. Not a big deal.

He's right about the physics though - I should have said weight not mass.

Effectively it reduces the mass of the plane.

Pros My 22 month-old toddler *loves* this set (supervised play). Turning the conveyor tests his dexterity. He likes the mouse (rat), the fish, the figs, the truck and the crane. The colour scheme is awesome. The set uses a wide range of colours, but each major item uses colour carefully. It's retro. My first proper lego set was a blue-yellow garage in similar style. http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6363-1 Lots of play value. My toddler moves the grain pieces from truck to boat to conveyor and round again. Crane is good + plays well. Better than crane in 7994 which breaks constantly. Nice truck. Cons Red + white harbour light. Breaks a lot. Pointless street lamp. Doesn't add much. Weird unused space at the back of the ship. Should have moved the house back and had three holds, or put something in the space - either a dinghy or some cheap greeble parts (tools and such). No anchor on the ship. Would rather have had a little more ship greeble and a little less dock greeble. Grain sticks under the lip of the first hold. Meh / neutral elements Too expensive at full retail price. I got it for about £54 on sale. Very happy at that price. If the set was a bit more polished (see above), would have paid ~£65 happily. The 'flat' dock doesn't bother me. The dock parts in 7994 aren't as playable as these ground level parts. My toddler can drag this one around the carpet without bits falling off. Would have been nice to have a way to load the ship. Maybe a bin to dump the truck into, then use the crane. Think this will play nicely with the red cargo train - my toddler will love that on Christmas day.

[speculation - Rock Crawler] 1 high torque (XL) motor driving both axles: high torque load on drivetrain - likely to break gears; requires an additional centre-diff - or axle windup will eventually shear axles. 2 lower torque (M?) motors, one per axle: lower torque load on drivetrain - less likely to break gears; no centre-diff needed. M motor will stall out before breaking gears - as shown by 8043 where TLG are happy to stall the M motor that switches gears. XL motor will happily split gears before the tyres slip. I built this 8x4 truck driven by a single XL motor. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=307640 Most of the reduction is at the hubs (reduces stress on first stage of drive train). With diffs locked, it will climb over a vertical obstacle of several inches. It also breaks the gears nearest the motor very easily.

The summer sets all look great. The gold mine looks awesome, my toddler will love it (he just got the harbour with crane + truck and we have a lot of fun with it together).

Nice Working suspension - I couldn't figure out how to fit that into my fastrac http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=310890

Try this part for the front grille...(between the headlights). http://www.bricklink.com/search.asp?itemID=418&colorID=3

No, it's smart. They got my money for both The red one is different enough to the yellow one to make it compelling, and it doesn't come with too much extra stuff I don't want. If Maersk train is around for a while longer, I'll buy two...it's a natural for doubling up. So far I've bought none :P

26 new boxes to open with my kid? I'd be happy with that.

The small sets are great and have some of the most intricate and interesting building techniques. Often these techniques would simply fail on larger sets due to issues of strength and robustness. Plus: cheap Give me 26 small sets all with 2-3 functions for about than £15 each, I'd buy them all in a year.

Interesting....no diffs. :) I'm planning to build an 8x8 truck with power puller wheels and XL motors. I want to do it without diffs, but I'm worried about axle windup / broken cogs. Basically when turning, unless one tyre can slide a bit, there'll be windup in the axle somewhere. The lime tyres look like they might slide a bit when turning, which would reduce windup? Also if there's a lot of reduction in the hub, the torque on the rest of the gear chain is relatively low, so less windup? I'm planning to use one XL motor for each pair of wheels (4 motors in total), but I can't decide whether to do one motor for each axle (driving a wheel on each side), or use one motor for two wheels on the same side. Here's the inspiration: http://www.nov.com/Brands/Rolligon/Body_Load_Units/Rolligon_8X8_Model_Brute.aspx

DSC01416 by andythenorth, on Flickr P7250910 by andythenorth, on Flickr

One of the most playable Technic sets. Everything about it is just right.

Maximum possible speed at all times. "If I can keep it on the ground when I let that hammer down - I'll be Texas bound and flying"

I've put LEDs in PF and RC trains - cutting cables and wiring them into screw-connector blocks. It's worth tinning the ends of the wires with solder if you have a soldering iron. I used bright white LEDs. In my test, they didn't explode without resistors, but I've seen LEDs explode before from 9v, so I've wired resistors in. There's lots of electronics theory about LEDS in parallel or series, and calculations you can do, but I just wire a resistor to each LED. II had to file down the plastic collar on the LED to get them to fit into technic bushes - clamp it in an electric drill and use a micro file.

"I'm disappointed too. With these pieces, Lego have rendered all my investment to date useless. I feel personally let down by Lego over this and I'll certainly be buying less of your product in future" Sorry, perhaps that's unfair in this case - just reminded me of http://news.lugnet.com/general/?n=43860

to 2012 sets, especially the log loader. to single rear wheels though - lame.

2012 sets: Nostalgia is a stupid, backwards-looking emotion, but it makes me want to buy Lego anyway The ambulance, the bike truck and the camper are 80s classics updated. :) The recycling truck, off-road fire truck and the tipper truck all look like nice toys, my toddler will enjoy destroying them. Bin truck is nice too.

The box art for the small tow truck has a nice witty little touch. The graphic designer was on good form that day

A twin-motored RC train works great, especially with the newest PF wheels which have thicker bands. It is though hard to build anything around the RC baseplate.

They have some nice applications :) P7250910 by andythenorth, on Flickr

What's to be furious about? It's lego. It's a TLG set. You have instructions. If it comes to pieces, you put it back together again. If she loses the pieces, you go to Bricklink and buy more. If she eats the pieces - well that's something else, good luck watching for those coming out