elleana

Not really, the bike shop isn't a true modular (at least, how I understand it to be, 16 x 32 with sidewalk)

But uh, where do you have your dinner then??

Oh myyyy

My Dark Ages.

Thank you for the kind words everyone I forget the math, but I made it such that the interior floor area was some sort of regular number. And also typically the standard one-sided modulars are not built all the way to the end (though I realise the corner ones are). I am going to rebuild my entire town with brick-built roads, and shift my modulars over to plates instead of baseplates. I'll figure out what to do once I'm ready to move this over. This is 32 x 48 studs, I was considering 32 x 64 but it will probably become too big. As it is I ran out of LBG bricks twice, had to wait for more from BL before I could continue. To have an atrium on one side with rooms on the other would make it asymmetrical though, not sure if I could live with that. I thought about that but I concluded that having other things on the roof would make it too 'busy'. I think I like how the roof how it is. A diorama would be cool - I'm thinking Hoth! - but I ran out of space real fast! Maybe I should consider 32 x 64. I do have Palace Cinema, but am not quite a fan of custom stickers Again, no space :( That is cool idea! An X Wing mounted vertically on the facade! I might do that.

If you lengthen the land rover / range rover a bit and make it black with black windows, you get a Chevy Suburban :)

Eww, but looks like 8865, just missing the seats.

With all the speculation going on in the Modular rumors thread, one thing that keeps popping up is a museum. Which I agree would be a very good modular. Egyptian, etc had all been done though, and one day I was staring at my Advent Calendar bits and bobs when the idea hit me - why not do a Star Wars themed museum? I had the further 'brilliant' idea of basing the idea on the Museum of Natural History building in NYC, which looks something like this. Enough backstory, presenting... The Rebel Alliance on one side, and the Galactic Empire on the other, with Yoda welcoming visitors and the Death Star looming over everything. Front Door. Birds' eye view of the ground floor. The Rebel half - Millennium Falcon, and you can't really make them out but that's Han and Leia The Empire half - Star Destroyer and a mini Imperial shuttle Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. The Emperor is not pleased... Han Solo hanging in Carbonite on the way upstairs Upstairs, the Rebel half These are not the droids you are looking for.. It's a trap! X-Wing and pilot Tie Fighter and pilot AT-AT, Snowtrooper and Darth Maul Somewhat out of place in between the Grand Emporium and the Green Grocer. It needs a town square of its own to lord over. [Apologies for somewhat out of focus photos. I didn't quite realize how hard it would be to photograph inside the walls once everything was up. And of course I was too lazy to take down some walls just to take photos..] Comments and critiques welcome please. Always looking to improve!

This is a very random comment and its more idle curiosity than anything, but I've noticed a very odd trend among sellers from the Czech Republic. I've placed Briclink orders from quite a large number of countries - mainly the US and Germany but a whole bunch of others as well including Italy, Denmark, Slovakia, Portugal, Canada, the UK, Hong Kong, the list goes on... and most sellers ship in an envelope or a nondescript brown / USPS box, depending on the size of the order. The odd thing is, in three separate orders from three separate sellers all from the Czech Republic, orders have arrived in old set boxes with tape or opaque plastic over. Parts were bagged up in the same way as well. Is there some Code of Practice Among Bricklink Sellers in the Czech Republic that instructs sellers to package in the same way, or is this completely random and I should worry about more important things in life, like for example sorting out my thousands upon thousands of loose pieces?

My favorite detail is the paint buckets and using a 1 x 1 round plate to show paint color!

This is very very nice. Been meaning to modularize my police stations (have one each of this one as well as 7498) but my build backlog is looooong.

Yeah, I think I'm drawing the line at SNOT roads, thats just far too parts intensive. Leaning torwards brick built roads though, sounds like lots and lots of possibilities.

I think in traditional minifig-land, everyone is yellow, which IMO doesn't quite correspond to any particular racial group so you could say minifigs are of generic race. Like others have pointed out, other licensed themes are a different matter, with skin color determined by character, and most minifigs being flesh-colored.

Wow - that's pretty close to what I was considering. Could you let me know how many plates thick is your base (I probably don't need it to be as strong as I don't intend to move it around) and the size of the various plates you used? Thanks!

I recently moved and am fortunate enough to have half a room dedicated to Lego to set up a town layout (mainly modulars). I've been collecting / building them for a while now (have all except Market Street and Fire Brigade which I do not care for) which have all been built according to the instructions. The relevant part about that particular point is that they have all been built to sit exactly on a 32 x 32 baseplate (or 2 16 x 32 baseplates, in the case of the Pet Shop). Now that I'm in the process of setting up my town layout though, I have reached a fairly significant decision point, which will greatly affect how I setup my town. As mentioned in the title - road baseplates or brick built roads? I've done quite a fair bit of reading up other threads and am still no nearer to making a decision. Whichever way I go, it looks like I'll most probably have to tear down the first level of each modular I currently have and either relocate it so the sidewalks are on the road baseplates (I do realize I'll run into alignment issues but I am not particular concerned as it may allow me to create alleys) or raise them a plate or two higher than the brick built roads which sit on baseplates. I prefer the look of brick built roads and like that they also offer additional variety in doing things like road markings and slopes, as well as allowing for a variety of road widths, but road baseplates look pretty decent as well, and there is a somewhat greater contrast between sidewalk and road. On the question of cost - I, like many others, find it somewhat annoying that TLG sells road baseplates in 2 packs, so one is compelled to buy a cross junction and a straight at the same time when one is mostly interested only in the straight. That being said, however, in the grand scheme of things it still works out to be a lot cheaper than having to buy plates. I've determined that 4 x 6 dark bley plates are the cheapest for raising buildings one or two plates higher, and 1 x 4 dark bley tiles are the way to go for the roads, but a mindbogglingly large quantity is still necessary for even a smallish town layout. That being said, however, I'm fortunate enough to have a day job that pays very well and still leaves a reasonable amount of time for personal pursuits, so cost isn't that big a factor, though of course if I didn't have to spend on this I could probably buy a large set or two with the money saved! I am interested to hear from those with similar layouts and who went through a similar decision why they did what they did, and why. Road baseplates to save on cost plus they look pretty good anyway, or brick built roads cause only the best will do for your Lego town?

love the backstory!

How does that work? The cross junctions don't have the same markings as the straights..

Was trying to give my town layout a bit more organisation by adding proper roads.. until I saw the prices of roadplates!!! Why doesn't Lego sell the straight ones on their own but instead forces people to buy a two pack including a cross junction? I fear I will wind up with many spare cross junctions once I'm done.

that rug!!! the fireplace is pretty nifty though

Next to XL Town Hall and Parisian Restaurant, it doesn't look quite so big..

Missing Market Street and Fire Brigade (didn't care enough for the design of either to buy / bricklink)

The pictures are illuminating and interesting in historical terms, but having been raised on more 'modern' Lego I see little appeal in them beyond historical value. To each his own I guess but even were all the vehicles displayed were available at retail price today I wouldn't buy them.. And the buildings just show how far we've coming in terms of building techniques, but then even before and after my Dark Ages things are so different. Edit: I would add though, that the HO 1:87 scale has lots of possibilities for building town layouts, I quite like what Lego Historian himself has done in his last few pictures. The problem then though is that minifgs wouldn't fit in, and whats a town without the hustle and bustle of its citizens?

Bricklinking it is nowhere near as expensive as you may think, most of the parts are pretty common and you can sub out the rarer parts.

Ohhh I wish I had a Lego room in my apartment like that.

Theres already a thread for that. http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=84574 Spoiler - the conclusion is, no one can really tell for sure until it disappears off the shelves and from Shop@Home