brickchic

Love the piano! *wub* I wouln't mind seeing a version of this that fits in a system scale house - maybe a 6 stud wide x 3 deep x 4 high? It would lose some definition as a result though I guess :-/ . One day, when my almost two year old can be trusted with "mummy's special Lego" I will redo my town setup and blatantly plagiarise your piano idea on a smaller scale :-P

Alrighty then - I voted a couple of days back. Here's how and why: City & Space: I'm a town/train fan - mostly civilian town stuff like houses. I therefore liked a bunch of sets (including ricecracker & imperial shadows), though standouts were Alex54 (nice variation on the vintage 80's postman set with bicycle - I liked the mailbag idea), KhoRne (for the humour value mostly), and my final pick landlubber for the detailed buggy - I can truly imagine this as a real set Lego would sell *wub* . History, Adventure & Pirates: There weren't too many that didn't take my fancy in some way. I particularly liked Hinckley (there's a treasure worth defending), TinyPiesRUs (are they firecrackers in the barrel?) and WhiteFangSG (if I were into Castle, I'd probably buy it). Winning my vote though, was SkelliesGang. Maybe it was the Orient box design - but this MOC totally looks the part. BTW - what was up with the food theme going on in this category X-O? There was just so much of it used! Even quarryman's maiden has a drumstick to snack on in her bedroom (and a monkey, if she's desperate)! Also SirNadroj - does a crab, clam, and starfish count as more than one animal - or are they "food" too :-P ? Nice beachy feast scene though! Licensed: I really liked WhiteFangSG in this one too. Nicely padded out scene with surprisngly few parts. Also liked TanoTrooper, BatBrick & LegoLyons - all well put together and totally imaginable as real sets. Getting my vote was Lego-Freak because not only is it totally plausible as a SpongeBob set - but it's fun X-D ! This contest has sparked my interest in becoming a little more active on this forum. I wonder what the next contest will be... Rebecca

No mean-ness taken :-). Just wondering why a contest needs to be selected on the basis of making it easy for everyone to participate? Meeting that criteria means you could never test the concept of everyone using the same set of parts for a train theme. Surely if there's enough variety in the contests running at any given time, there'll be something else you can participate in. I'd like to see the concept tested - whether with the Hobby Train set - or the Hoiday Train (as someone else mentioned) - as long as contestants are all limited to the same parts. There could be a parallel contest with more open rules to satisfy other members.

Entry for the Licensed section. Theme: Harry Potter Title: Ron's Secret Study Parts: 27 plus minifig

Here's my entry for the history, adventure & pirates section (mine is classed as adventure). I call it "Bittersweet Discovery". Landlubber convinced me to try an entry but didn't mention that I should try not to use baseplates (not an actual rule - more of a suggestion) :-$ . Well I did say; That sound like a rule to me, especially since it was rule number one. -Sinner Aside from that I'm pretty happy with it. I was surpised I could come up with such a substantial looking set using only the max 27 peices.

Agreed! I also have the hobby train set and I think it would be an interesting contest to showcase people's talents using a limited set of parts. The hobby train set is the perfect set for this. It's not too expensive (I paid AUD$75 for mine) and it's intended for developing your own creations with. If all contestants use the same set then it removes the advantage some people have with access to expensive or rare parts that could skew the assessment of creative talent. Maybe there needs to be a hobby train contest and then a separate train contest for those who want no limitation on parts they can use.

The table was custom built to the shape of the room. I could re-model the table but it would be an awful lot of stuffing around :-/ . One thing I like about the way it is is it's shallowness - it's easy to reach everything being in a big U shape. The shed may come one day... Yes - these are all good ideas. I might dabble in some of them. I have a lot of spare bricks, but hardly any brown/tan/grey/green to use for a mountain. I had the mountain idea already, as well as a subterranean section under the "upper level" which I haven't built yet. I am limited by lack of suitable colours though. One other thing I wanted to do was to put some printed paper on the wall behind the town - like a roll of wrapping paper with blue sky and clouds design - so it looks good in photos. I haven't been able to track down any such paper yet though. Thanks for your suggestions! :-)

Asuka - I use a lot of Blu-Tac and tape to secure the base plates in place, but aside from that, Lego is so well designed the pieces stay in place pretty well without falling to the ceiling. If I run my trains fast enough they stay on the tracks from sheer gravity too ;-) Nathan - I think there's a lot more variety in the town & train stuff than you can get in the castle theme. I'll admit I'm quite fond of Classic Castle and had a few little sets when I was a child, but I'm not so keen on the Knight's Kingdom stuff theyve got now. what's with those futuristic looking helmets they wear anyway? Classic Castle is very expensive to get second hand now too. On another subject, after my post yesterday I got the 12v light bricks I won on eBay in the mail. Check out the motherload X-D : I will have fun lighting up the town with these - there's 53 all up.

Problem is they're not minifig scale and so they aren't properly compatible with town or city sets.

Yep. That's the one. I bought some train and town stickers off him last year and the only drawback is that you have to cut them out from the sheet yourself because they're not precut. Also, aside from the train stickers which were printed on transparent sheets, the town stickers were on gloss white sheets, and so some of them that were originally meant to be on a clear background had been printed on a background colour to match the bricks they should be stuck on instead. Overall though I am very happy with my purchases. The sticker paper he uses is very good quality.

Agreed - I need a better layout. Originally I had a smaller layout with a smaller table. Then the table was extended and the town grew haphazardly. I've run out of space to do a bigger table. Maybe I can rework my existing one, though it gets a bit restrictive trying to fit on the track so it doesn't overlap the roads and so on. Any particular suggestions?

There was a guy on ebay in the US selling very reasonably priced copies of lego town stickers. He had various sheets with different town stuff including a few of his own design. They're very well printed on a good quality sticker paper, but I cant remember his ebay username.

Thanks everyone - what a friendly community you are. In response to lone_buffalo - most of my Lego sets are from my childhood, so thanks goes to Mum & Dad for them. I'm 28 years old and so I can afford to expand my collection, though sometimes I spend more than I should on Lego! To Section8 - as a girl, I loved the houses. Most of them are actually early 1980's rather than 90's. I just had to have them as Christmas/birthday presents every time a new one was released. They're pretty expensive to buy second-hand now. Fortunately my local BrickLink guy is very generous and a couple of weeks ago he and another Eurobrick friend built me set 1484 from spare parts and gave it to me for no particular reason. I might be getting more for my birthday soon - yay! I have a ton of those grey road plates. There's a big stack of maybe 30 or so under the table that won't fit in my town right now. I got most of them on eBay in one big lot. I haven't bought either of the creator/designer houses yet but I will soon. Hopefully the designer set will go on sale soon because it's been out for a while now and the new creator one will take it's place I guess. I already have the re-release of the airport. I got it on sale from shop@home a while back. It's a great set and is also in my town but I haven't added the photos for it yet. Maybe I will get a chance later today. **UPDATE** Photos have now been added. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/55379813@N00/ I agree - I need a bank. I was also thinking of building a shopping centre as I have a whole lot of those clear 33 degree roof slopes that would make great skylights. Maybe the bank can be a shopfront in it. In fact I even have an original bank sticker from an old ideas book somewhere that could go on it. Thanks everyone for your feedback! Brickchic Australia

Hi! I've just put my first post up in the newbie forum http://eurobricks.hosting.ipsyn.com/eurofo...?showtopic=7774. There's a link to some photos of my town and there's more to come soon. I'm hoping to get some good feedback and ideas from you guys. I think I need to build a bigger Lego table (maybe I need a huge shed in the yard too) to accomodate all the stuff I want to build. I'm just about done with building vintage sets and want to start concentrating on improving my layout, streetscaping, MOCs and wiring up my city with 12v lights etc. Any feedback or ideas would be appreciated! Cheers, Brickchic Australia

Hi all, I've been slowly building a town & train layout for a good part of the past year and been meaning to sign up for a while now. I finally got around to taking some pics today so figured they would make a good accompaniment to my introduction. I got back into Lego at Christmas 2005 when I rediscovered all my childhood sets. Since then I've been buying a lot of new city sets, bulk lots & vintage sets on eBay and so on. I have built hardly any MOCs for my town (a favourite gripe of a pirate forum friend of mine |-/ ), as I've been trying to complete the sets properly before I figure out what's spare to do MOCs with. Anyway, I have attached a link to some pics of my town. It's a bit messy - you know how these things go. I have more pics but haven't loaded them up yet. The table was built with a particular layout in mind, then the amount of sets grew, the table got extended, the sets grew more and don't fit anymore and so on. Any advice or comments would be appreciated. http://www.flickr.com/photos/55379813@N00/ Cheers, Brickchic Australia