MusicaRibelle

It's all a matter of perspectives and trade-offs between space, price, and last but not least, time. The DO is the first modular I bought -- the Simpsons House has similar complexity but it's not a modular -- and I think it's really good. I have a display space that includes trains, so real estate space is truly precious to me. A 64-wide modular would dominate the entire layout, so if it was on the market, I'd never buy it. While sometimes frustrating, I consider it a plus that even the most "advanced" set can be seen as a "starter" set to be expanded upon. If you just build it following instructions and just display, where's the fun? what did you add on top of the designer's work? :)

@Kvasir: I want to see more of the modular Simpsons house, please! :) A few months ago, somebody else built an awesome 32x32 modular with a store at the bottom called Matt's Masks. Very nice. Inspired by that, I decided to rebuild the Simpsons house as modular, with less flair and by using as much as possible only the existing pieces. I didn't like the result at all: it looked too "plain" and yet too "big" next to other modulars. I'd really like to see what you've done... I can really echo the posts about diving directly into the building without LDD and rebuilding a few times. It's fun -- although at times it can be frustrating -- and I already spend most of my waking hours at a computer anyways. I am still pretty bad at capturing the right level of details for the facades and interiors -- it's hard to get to the quality of recent official sets. Interestingly, Café Corner provides a good way to learn techniques for the exterior, but the interior is pretty bare. Anyhow, this is a great thread, keep your thoughts coming, I enjoyed very much reading all the posts so far..

Cool little station, Murdoch. Sometimes designs in LDD look a bit sterile, but once the platform is filled with minifigures carring luggage, bikes, trolleys, I can imagine this would look pretty good. Maybe the inside could use something different than the same set of brown seats -- a two-side bench, perhaps, a small newsstand or ATM. Five tracks is also pretty long, but if you have the space, go for it.. ..the outside could then use some other details like lampposts or some other source of lighting. Perhaps loudspeakers (3963) + lights on the same pole, or attached to the main station building. Since the inside of the station is too small to have a food court or stand, maybe a food cart can be placed on the platform. Looking forward to seeing it built one day..

You make some wonderful creations with a great vintage lego feel, not just the crane but what we can glance of the layout, boats, and the trains in your brickshelf. Nice job! More pictures, please? :)

I am in awe of this work, and I can't really comment on the mechanics, except that I totally admire it. What color will the body be in? I had a Corgi model in blue as a kid, loved it.

If certain battery research projects go well (for real cars and bikes, not lego..), maybe this is the future: a plug-in, rapid charging station for electric cars and bikes, which would fit well in a normal city block. And you can bet that Shell, BP, Chevron will all jump on the bandwagon and offer those. So, rather than early XX century, this scene could become late XXI century :) ..but no, still no individual flying DeLorean cars, sorry.

@Inzane: well, the point is that the new passenger trains are not a great value for the money, imho. TLG made a deliberate choice of making the passenger set the starter / cheaper one, and the cargo set the more complex / advanced / expensive. In doing that, they have kept the passenger trains a bit less interesting for my taste. I'm sure they made the right choice, since they repeated the same pattern a few times and sales continue to go up. Imho, the cargo set just seems to have more potential for modding and moc-ing -- one could ignore completely the car and loco designs and just use the basic train components.

Update: I've experimented with building a small yard. It's not great, given the space available, but it's interesting in that I can now fit three trains on the layout while another one runs on either of the two loops, leaving space for a fifth, in case there is a 2015 train... ;) Yard Now I need to finish the fourth train, since I only have the engine and tender..

Yes, I saw that, it's a bit weird. Maybe it's just supply / factory problems, i.e. maybe they're changing supplier for the transformer, which has nothing to do with lego material and parts, and can easily be replaced by a standard transformer and one of the standard dc plugs.

Humble suggestion: see if you can find the older cargo train 7939, at a discount price, then build your own passenger cars instead of the cargo ones. You'll get lots of track pieces, a loco that could look good for both passenger and cargo trains, and your own fantasy plus inspiration from the train registry here to build what you want. Since the 'current' lego city trains no longer have special train doors and train windows, it's easy to do a better job than the 60051.

I picked up mine last night, looking forward to the start of a busy weekend ;) They're temporarily sold out online in US, but local Lego stores have plenty. Ironically what they had trouble with last night was PAB Wall, with several empty slots. But they did have 'basic' 2x4 bricks in a new shade of blue.

Pretty nice, you should definitely design more trains :)

Thanks, Exa. I'd be happy with more track, and only about 8 baseplates for buildings. Well, I'm thinking of building more of a yard, so I could have 4-5 trains 'parked' while 1 or 2 can circulate. I'm afraid 200x200 maybe too big for the space -- but it's good to know what the 'best' scenario is. This is a slightly bigger layout than what I have now, I'm not happy with it, but I'm trying to figure out how to build a yard with the space available: http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/musicarib/Layout-14/withyard.png

That sounds like a very good idea. I'm not skilled enough to contribute much, but I would certainly 'consume' such a product and gift it to others.

This is fantastic, and I don't even like baseball :) I agree with other commenters, the oyo figs actually mesh well with the scene and for once they justify the 'heresy' of mixing non-lego pieces. The result is truly great, I am sure you could exhibit the moc in an actual ball park ticket office or fan shop, they'd be lucky to have it on display for a few weeks. Congratulations!

It's my fault: all this time, I've been wondering who the heck was buying those baseplates at $8 or $10 on Amazon and in toy stores, when Lego was selling them directly for $5... darn :( Now I wonder if other onlie an offline stores will quickly match the increase or not.. bah.

A tram, a steam train, a modern train.. but give us something! My ~$200 are burning a hole in my pocket! :) :)

looks good! I may suggest expanding then yard with another switch and another lane. You already have four trains and have space for one more. Don't you want eventually to have two more trains? :) :)

Imho, most of the value in those and the newer sets is in the rails, couplers, train bases, wheels and pf components. The trains themselves are mostly built with 'simple' pieces and techniques -- no 'train' windows or doors like much older sets -- and the passenger trains have not been very populars among afols. I'd rather 'invest' in an extra HE, if you can find one at the original price. But that's just one opinion.

Excellent point. The current station is a shell, with barely a 'building', while some of the old favorites like 7997 or the metro station 4554 are better examples: a slightly more advanced version of one of those would a good set, and people may buy multiple sets and combine them. Good thinking!

@Exa: this is what my Lego room looks like: legoroom The room itself is not that small, but there are doors pretty much on each side. The maximum usable space is something like 200 x 200 cm, but with limited access to all sides, which could be a problem in case of derailments :) anyhow, I'm open to suggestions and not afraid to tear it all apart -- which is one of the reasons I don't have it all ballasted. It is easy to undo.

oh, it's totally doable, and yours is quite nice and elegant -- and fits well with other modulars. I just don't see it as an official set, since the intersection of train fans and modular fans is pretty small. That said, there has been a Fire Station, so maybe a modular bus station or subway station could be a possibility -- and easy to convert into a train station of sorts.

flickr links were all wrong, my apologies -- they should have been fixed now.

Hello, and thanks for reading! This is my current home layout, built over various iterations in the last year. I started with nothing but the desire of getting back into trains and into Lego. Given I had limited space, I settled for a 4 ftx6 ft rectangle, or roughy 7 x 5 32-stud baseplates. Here's the BlueBrick diagram: Layout in BlueBrick, on Flickr And here's the first version, with green felt over the raw wood panel: Initial layout Here's a view from above -- it was not easy to take this picture :) Layout full view Modulars on 'main street' are temporarily with their top floors removed so we can see the whole railroad. This is a view from the other side: Layout from the back I am able to run two trains concurrently, and keep a third one on a side line, which has been good for a while. Now I want to build more, and I am again kind of out of space.. ..problem is, in the meantime I also got somewhat addicted to modular buildings.. so it's a constant struggle to use space as best as possible. I eventually opted for a 'custom' road between two rows of buildings, which saved me some space. I also wanted to have a feeling of a small but vibrant town, pedestrian and bike friendly. No private cars. The little smart-like cars mimic the 'car2go' shared cars we have in Seattle. The tunnel helped creating some more space for buildings: Tunnel The other good thing about the current layout is that it leaves enough space for a decent station: Train Station - Stazione Still a WIP, once I'm more satisfied with the interior I'll add more pictures and a post for that. I think I will now look for a different 'iteration' and different layout.. suggestions? I could possibly expand the available space by one baseplate in either (but not both!) direction. I would like to accommodate 4 or 5 trains, and at this point I don't care anymore to run several of them at the same time. I just want to build and display more trains :) Lastly, thanks for all of you who participate in the forum and keep it alive. This is my first year "back" in lego and I learned a lot from all of you and your great creations. Keep on building!

I hope *something* gets announced and released. I think now is the first time in many years that no train is currently on sale for 'experts', afols, 'factory' or whatever 'sub-brand' you want to use.