Criga88

That's a fine looking showroom LT, you'll have to fill it with Aussie cars before they disappear on us.

Thanks Wooootles. It took ages to work out how to get the grille right, although the 2x2 tile on the bonnet isn't attached because of it, but it does stay in place until you flip the car In unrelated news, I came up with another livery for my AS350: This was the National Parks and Wildlife Service's "Park Air 1", in its old livery. It's fitted with a hook and mirrors for carrying sling loads which were mostly bambi buckets during the bushfire season. I'm pretty happy with how she turned out so I'll be pulling apart a few of my older helicopters to try and scrounge the parts to build her.

A quick update for everyone, parts for the Top Gear everyday track cars and the finishing touches for the Nine News helicopter are on their way. There's also a couple of other cars due to be completed with the parts but I'll save that for when everything arrives. I'll post pics when they're all complete. I've also made an Ideas project based on the AS350 helicopters design and includes lots of different accessories for the helicopter. Read more about it and feel free to support the project here, there's also more info on the specifics of the helicopters accessories on Flickr.

Of course he's allowed in, he did that challenge after all, plus I don't play by the BBC's rules

Thanks LT, the heli's done with the exception of a dozen parts that I need to get in the right colours. I'll be on bricklink this arvo to get them ASAP along with parts for the Top Gear everyday track cars.

Thanks Gazumpty. I actually started building a few of the models this week but need to scour bricklink for the right wheels, windscreens and the last few parts in the correct colours. I'll take some pics after the orders arrive

Hi all, while settling into my new place I've seen the Channel 9 News helicopter fly past a few times over the last couple of days. Drawing on it for inspiration I smashed out this mod of my Squirrel helicopter to kill some time between cleaning and waiting for furniture to be delivered, and it only took about 2 hours in total to do this render and the markings. This version of the helicopter has dual 'sliding' doors to access the rear of the cabin, with a tiny bit more headroom for the pilot up front. It has two camera mounts on the underside to record the action around the City and only a few other minor changes to the original Squirrel design for the sake of realism. Depending on how much time I have tomorrow and what parts I can find lying around I may be able to piece this together, and maybe some of the other vehicles I have yet to build.

That looks great LT, I'm digging the scales in the back and that's a perfect minifig for the staff. The building itself fits in well with the rest of NM too. As for what to build next, it looks like it'll be a corner building, so why not build a little corner store? I'm thinking somewhere for takeaway burgers and chips, a small selection of groceries, a large selection of lollies and magazines, and no small town would be complete without one either

Cheers LT, it's almost up to 1300 parts for that level of detail, but I do love having no restrictions on the parts count

Thanks Coghilla and LittleJohn. I've put in a bit more filler in between packing and had my laptop running a couple of renders of the garages while getting everything ready for removals. There hasn't been too much more progress made but my priority is obviously moving. This section above was built in 1907 as offices but was converted to garages for motorised appliances in 1928. It'll be home to two Pumpers ("Flyer" and "Runner") and will have the main access to the upper floors on the right as well as the fire pole and turnout clothing. This is the most recent extension completed in 2003. The Rescue Pumper, Salvage, Aerial, Duty Commander and any other Logistics vehicles will operate out of this side, with the firies private vehicles parked out of the way along the back of the station. For Zeki, the doors have a technic pin with a stud at the bottom edges to run up and down tracks on either side, and plates with slides protruding halfway up the front to pull the middle of the doors out and upwards. Comments, criticism and questions are welcome, and keep an eye out for updates.

There's so many details hidden away on that station, but those trucks are brilliant. Can we see more vehicles from you, pretty please

Cheers ER0L. I'll smash out more of the garages and get renders up of them after I get more packing out of the way, a lot of the new side is just structural supports with very little greebling so it shouldn't take too long.

It certainly has the front end of a BM Trouble-you, but I agree with Gazumpty on his updates. I'd put 1x1 round tiles as the headlights though, and maybe have black rubber bands for the black parts of the fender. My vote goes to the grey rims as well, but good luck with whichever road you decide to take this down

Thanks Kristel and Gazumpty. I'll try and get more of the facade done in between packing sessions, but the new side may have to wait until I get eyes on the real building.

Thanks Wilson. The Scania and Isuzu both have half stud offset seating in the cab so two figs can fit side by side, you can just make out the fourth firie in the back of the pumper render. It's a tight fit with the three sitting in there in all their equipment but it is possible.

Thanks Ecmo and Zeki. The black/trans doors in the first render are just placeholder for now to determine the height, I have a design for them that I'll show in the next render when I've done a bit more of that side of the station.

Thanks guys, I guess the hours of staring at reference photos of the trucks paid off . While 8 wide doors are pretty tight for the trucks LT, the real ones are by no means spacious, and on the inside of the building there's cutouts in the supports where the cab doors line up. I put the Scania LXF up on my brickshelf as well but the rear lockers are empty except for a spinal board so feel free to load the truck up as you see fit, it'll take a couple of hours for the file to be public though.

Hi all, I just wanted to start this topic to let everyone know about a project that has been on my mind for quite a while now and is slowly starting to come to fruition. While I love the Fire Brigade and it has served me well since I first bought it, it does suffer from a lack of space for modern fire engines. I bit the bullet ages ago and bought a second Fire Brigade to add another garage and for an assortment of spare parts but now I've outgrown the two garages. Since I'm moving house I figured it'd be a good time to start from scratch so I've chosen the City of Sydney Fire Station as my reference building and here's my progress. While there's still a lot of work to go, I have a solid plan for what the ground floor layout of the building will be, and will try and get the facade as close to the real building as possible, although I have left out a large section of the original building to try and save a bit of space. The masonry side will be access to the upper floors, a room for the firesuits, the mandatory fire pole, as well as two bays for fire engines. The newer section on the right will house three fire engines side by side as well as some smaller support and logistics vehicles behind. My fire engines have been getting updates for the new facilities as well, with a permanent fleet of two pumpers, one rescue pumper, one heavy rescue, one aerial and one small vehicle planned to take residence in the station. The Scania chassis will make up the brunt of the stations responses, with two vehicles as pumpers and one as a rescue pumper. The basic truck features seating for four firefighters, with three of them being able to wear breathing apparatus in the cab on the way to calls. These three trucks will be almost identical on the outside but will have different loads in in the back to suit their allocation. The Isuzu is fitted out with pneumatic tools for responding to structural or vehicle accidents where a minifig may need to be cut out. Since this is a rescue unit, the two firefighters don't have a need for breathing apparatus or full firesuits so the cab is a little bit less crowded than the other trucks. The Duty Commanders vehicle is for providing quick responses to calls for the supervisor and is built on my standard SUV base. It has room for one minifig driver with a full breathing apparatus set and a small assortment of tools in the boot. A new aerial apparatus is still on the drawing boards, which will be more accurate compared to the previous incarnations. The biggest hassle is trying to get a functional and realistic boom and outrigger system into a City scaled vehicle. Comments, criticism and questions are welcome, and keep an eye out for updates.

Nice shaping, I like the colour too, all it needs now is a racing stripe down the middle. I wouldn't mind having one of these to give the police a run for their money. Keep the classics coming GallardoLU

Is anyone else disappointed by the new fender design? While the old fenders have a 1x2 brick on the inside which you can work around, having so much plastic on the new ones seems pretty limiting to how they can be used in MOCs. Just my two cents though, I'll still get most of the cars to drool over.

Nice house so far LT, is it just the one tradie and his dog to finish the roof? At least he can duck straight to the Royal afterwards for a cold one

That's a great little plane, it's vague enough to be based on anything but it's still full of detail. I'm definitely looking forward to more from you Macsergey.

Growing up I used to spill the bricks out all over my room to build whatever but these days I spend more time planning and fine tuning designs than actually building. While I'm out and about it seems that my only thought process is "how can I make that in LEGO?", which leads to a lot of notes and sketches of future designs. My usual day consists of working a couple of separate MOCs in LDD or drawing up some plans in the arvo, building in the evening and then re-sorting any parts trays that I used. I find that just sorting through my parts collection before bed results in a better sleep, as long as I get everything sorted (curse you OCD!).

Thanks Timtam, it's hard not to be a fan of helicopters when they're so awesome. I just tried the downloads from my brickshelf link in my sig and they work, if you haven't already tried those downloads yet, otherwise I'm at a loss.

Wow, that's instantly recognizable! Great work on all of the panels and shaping. How long did it take you to put this together?