Murdoch17

Parts have been ordered, though don't expect it to be built anytime soon: it's for Christmas. But in other news, I found enough parts to make the rail entrance a reality! (I just had to modify the main gate from the old base doors and add a small number of extra parts) I just hope there is enough room to park the Astrotrain inside the base, as it's pretty tight in there!

Glad everybody likes it! Thanks, @Laura Beinbrech, here you can see how it will enter my space base: The rest of the base walls, along with the buildings, space ships, a giant robot, and other Classic Space-y stuff is visible in this topic here.

That face-plant looks painful in the last panel.

Thanks, @Klaus-Dieter, but the landscaping is kept to a minimum outside of shows. (keep unnecessary costs down, and more money for other things!) Thank you @Brandon Pea! I've just taken this overall picture of the four locos Wild Western-style engines. They are numbered as follows: Engine No. 1) I created more realistic version of set 10254 (Winter Village holiday train) for all the train fans who don't like the engine. I added working pistons, and a more cohesive green color scheme plus two more sets of wheels on the engine while modeling it after the unique "C.P. Huntington" of the Central Pacific Railroad. This loco pulls my 1870's military train. The original C.P. Huntington is at California State Railroad Museum. Engine No. 2) This yellow 4-4-0 "American" type engine was originally modeled after set 7597 (Western Train Chase) with some design inspiration from TF Twitch's "Humble Sapphire" 4-4-0. This loco pulls my 1870's western freight train, and is modeled slightly after the last remaining American inside piston loco, the "Daniel Nason" of the Boston and Providence RR, preserved at the Museum of Transportation in Kirkwood, Missouri. Engine No. 3) The red 4-6-0 "Ten Wheeler" type engine was originally modeled after set 71044 (Disney Train) with some design inspiration from Lone Ranger set 79111 (Constitution Train Chase). It pulls my old-fashioned passenger train. The loco is inspired by St. Louis Iron Mt. and Southern 635, also at the Museum of Transportation. Engine No. 4) The blue 2-6-0+0-6-2 "Double Mogul" type engine was originally modeled after @SavaTheAggie's wonderful instructions, which I added working pistons and Big Ben Bricks medium drivers wheels to. The engine type (a Garratt) technically wasn't around until at least 1909, and was never sold in the USA, but whose counting? This two-for-one loco pushes my rotary snowplow.

Thank you @JintaiZ! Just revised the first post with new pictures of the modified engine and cars. Hopefully the 2 new weight bricks in the cab will possibly fix the issue, so thanks for the suggestion @XG BC! I have shortened the train overall by one car, to four total, as well to reduce drag... However, this is still one more car than I've ever got any train motor to pull. Another factor to consider: the motor was seldom used, (maybe at Christmas time only for 20 minutes over 10 years and stopped being used around 2015 except for my jaunt with the Aerotrain, no joke.) as my dad loves to look at his trains, but not use them! Anyway, I REALLY hope this works.

Awesome work! I'm just waiting for someone to make Babylon 4 to scale with your B5. That's my favorite station... even though it was only in in the series for two episodes or so, it was, shall we say, ahead of it's time.

There is NO way, after the debacle with Shell and GreenPeace's "Campaign", they are making an oil rig. Period, end of sentence. .....unless LEGO has lost their collective minds.

Well, it was actually yesterday when I did this, but here goes nothing: I bought the parts for this 75293 MOD in Classic Space colors I made in LDD from six BrickLink stores. (I purchased it along with two more sections of modular space base wall and a new, reinforced spine for my Iron Giant-like robot.) I'm amazed to report that all six stores have shipped already, but I doubt they will get here anywhere near the projected delivery times, due to the screwed up US postal service. My last order came from Colorado, and took just over two weeks to get two states away to Missouri... and that was first class shipping.

Welcome to the wonderous world of Yesteryears' view of the future! Where the moon is being colonized, robots are commonplace in our homes, atomic power is everywhere, and outer space is the new frontier! Here we see two Retro-futuristic trains together: the longest one is the "Nucleus Express" atomic-powered express passenger train, while the shortest one is the "Astrotrain" diesel passenger four-car train set, and the middle one is the "Moon Mover" diesel-powered freight service, with all three sporting streamlined Classic Space color schemes. ASTROTRAIN I already have a real-world Aerotrain LEGO model completed, and was fiddling around while bored when I came across this Classic Space version of the train from 2018. I had to take out the upside-down slanted coach windows because the parts don't exist in trans-yellow yet. I added different windows, red and green directional lights, and a bigger horn that looks like a thruster pod. I used black wheels instead of gray ones because they are cheaper and easier to find, but you'd never know that because I hid them behind SNOT'ed panels that look more like the prototype. Then, I deviated wildly from the GM Aerotrain and added a Baldwin Sharknose type-end to the front of the engine to make it even more unique. The classic space 4 x 2 slope from Benny's spaceship goes right below the headlight, of course. Also, as a side note, a 9V motor can be added to the engine for shows alongside my CS base / vehicles. (I don't own a 9V motor or track, but some GtwLUG members do and have offered to try out my locos wit h 9V power in the past.) The engine has been thoroughly made into a futuristic space locomotive... which wasn't too hard as it was already pretty forward-thinking designed originally. The roof is now removable, with seating for a driver and dual weight bricks for adding traction to the 9v motor. (when it has one for shows) As a concession to using trans-yellow as a window color, I had to remove the original slanted GM Fishbowl-bus style windows that were used on the original Aerotrain due to lack of parts in that color. The rear of the train has no coupler as it's "supposed" to be a part of one complete train-unit. Here we can se the original aerotrain working slightly at my dads. link to video showing Aerotrain in motion at Flickr Please excuse the pineapple couch, its my dads, as is the borrowed 9v equipment. The motor sadly only can pull three cars and at full speed only or not at all. But, it is a step towards having it run at train shows! (if anyone can help me figure out how to get the motor to move more than three cars, or add the video to my actual post, please respond below! Thanks to a suggestion by @XG BC, the locomotive now has weight bricks over the (potential) motor, so it should be ready for 9v power for shows next year. NUCLEUS EXPRESS PASSENGER TRAIN Heavily inspired by @Electricsteam's long-awaited Atomic Streamliner project, (as seen here ) I have designed my own Atomic-Age wonder for my "Moon Mover" fast freight service. It is, as is Electricsteams' engine, a fission powered turbine loco with 4-4-2 "Atlantic" wheel arrangement. This engine lacks the full streamlining of other locos, but it does have the nose streamlined. This allows for easier working on the nuclear powerplant that powers the engine's movement. Unlike the slower Earth trains, the Nucleus type of space-train is super-streamlined, and can go up to speeds of up to 180 MPH on it's special track, with super-elevated curves and a long straight-away over 101+ miles, all while using Positive Train Control (PTC) on the the mostly double-track mainline, where all vehicle crossings are flyovers and switches virtually non-existent once out of the city limits. Here are the three coaches for the Nucleus train. The inside of all the cars for this train look the same - three seats for each car. This dome car features spectacular views of Earth through it's car-width rooftop window. The rearmost-car features a large observation window. ASTRO-BASE COMMUTER RAILROAD STATION This commuter station will be the departure point for my two Classic Space trains. It features a very low floor with two accessibility ramps to get at the two train tracks - one run through and one stub end. There are two benches, two ticket machines, and a single double-sided analog clock. The manned ticket booth (for those uncomfortable or unfamiliar with the electronic machines) has a sign above it saying the train terminal's name, which is named Astro-Base. This is because it is located next to my Classic Space moon-base. Here we see the other side of the run-through track. OTHER STUFF The two identical doors of the space base has been re-designed to handle train tracks so the trains can enter and exit the walled-in base and the doors still open and shut. Atlantis City (located in Copernicus crater on Earth's moon, in XL shape and yellow on the map), the great domed wonder of the solar system, has a rail system to get people to work at it's outlying un-domed facilities. The interstellar transport hub of Reinhold is the next stop, and is the terminus for all the public passengers / galactic tourists. (The Reinhold crater is in green here) The following two branch lines are for specific crewmembers only: The Lansberg line is for power / shield generation over the city and surrounding land areas. It also was where the original city was located, before the original founders relocated to Copernicus Crater and founded the Great Glass City as we know it today. (Lansberg is in violet / purple crater) The Gambart line is for military personnel only, as it where the top brass pour over charts and make way for the latest improvements in "laser scanner" technology. (This one in the Blue with yellow rim crater) Potential new tracks could be laid to the planned 100,000 seat stadium in the older Stadius crater (barely visible near Copernicus crater) for Sportsball events. New tracks could also be laid past the space hippies encampment at Hortensius Crater (small yellow crater), but has been continually voted down by protesting neo-hippies, as it would bring bad vibes to their region by the loud construction vehicles just to get to the ice mines of the Mare Insularum. (No one has managed to get through to them that there is no sound in a vacuum!) (Photo from Google Earth, with railroad lines drawn and story by me. The colorful moon landscape background is from early 1960's NASA maps that I thought were really cool. More stuff will come as I think of it, so keep your eyes peeled for updates to this thread! UPDATED 7/11/21 This Zephyr-like loco is going to replace the engine at the head of my Astro-train. I decided to do this for one reason: motorization! I will soon be able to put a 9v motor at the head of the train, running it via electricity for shows with Gateway LUG. The inter-car connection is the same as before, and most of the needed parts for the engine (plus one more passenger car!) will come from the pervious loco. Thoughts?

Chamber of Secrets is my favorite. (I love the flying car, It's been my sig-fig's car since it was released in the original 2002 set, but I made mine in black. Updated it with the new versions over the years, but that's another topic...) I absolutely HATE the Prisoner of Azkaban movie. Too many fade-in / outs. It's like the director just discovered the technique existed and said: "Too cool! Now I get to use them in every other scene!"

My 75293 MOD in Classic Space colors is officially on order as of today, with about 100+ bricks pulled out of my bins to keep prices down. The two extra wall sections are for my space base, as the new ship won't fit in there without them attached. The other piece shown here is the bottom half of the spine of my giant robot, which needs reinforcing as it is the last weak spot I needed to fix. We will see how long it take to get here due to the US Post Office debacle!

Long before the Iron Giant began hurtling towards Rockwell, there was a prototype model, which landed on Earth close to 64 years earlier than the Iron Giant's 1957 landing. They were very similar robots, made by an Ancient race of beings that wanted to gather as much information about the Universe as possible. They first created this prototype model which was made mostly of brass, copper, and iron, but was powered by a highly advanced Fusion reactor that was powered by metals the robot consumed, usually uninhabited asteroids floating through space. Unlike the Iron Giant, this prototype was not able to re-assemble itself as it had a error in it's programming. In the year 1893, the then un-named Brass Automaton landed in the Pacific Ocean near the long-forgotten Dino Island. It created a tsunami and unhinged the island from the Earth's crust and as such the land began to slowly sink. The robot was first sighted by nearby Australian military sailors, who upon seeing the giant being arise from the water, tried to describe the being the best way they could through their wireless telegraph: they named it the Brass Automaton. Johnny Thunder and his Adventurers crew would later go looking for this great metal being after saving as many dinosaurs as possible from the sinking primeval island in 1923, but never saw it, as it was hiding in South American coastline to gather information on the dominant beings of Earth, also known as Humans. After staying relatively hidden in various secluded ocean floor places around the globe for around thirty years, the Brass Automaton was finished reading the minds off people for information on humans as a species: Our past, our present as of 1924, our origin (as it was then known), and our many languages, along with defenses, politics, and technology. After gathering all that intelligence, the Brass Automaton headed to the North Pole along the sea floor to transmit the required information to it's home planet using a faster-than-light sub-dimensional beacon. (Basically, a fancy radio) That is just about when a major solar storm hit the Earth, with the radiation hitting the atmosphere of the Earth and scrambling the outgoing signal into nonsense. Now the garbled signal was received by the home base, and as a precaution, the Iron Giant version of the Brass Automaton was dispatched as fast as possible to earth. (That would take it nearly 35 years for it to get there at all possible speed, which would require it to refuel once arriving on Earth, which is why the Iron Giant was at the power plant at the beginning of the movie, whereupon it's memory was scrambled by the high-voltage electricity.) After sending the garbled message and being struck by a passing icebreaker-ship on his trip southwards, the Brass Automaton was temporarily incapacitated. It was then discovered washed ashore at the southern tip of Greenland by Dr. Harold Wormwood and brought back in pieces to his stately laboratory / mansion in Legorado, Colorado, where he ran test after test on the alien visitor. By 1926, the mad scientist-type Doctor Wormwood had the resembled robot nearly reassembled, and was preparing to restart it when a Lord Sam Sinister came upon rumors of the robot and wanted it for his own nefarious desires, with Johnny Thunder close on his heels...

Those Chima heads / headgear don't look half as bad on regular minfigure bodies! Great work, and I'm sitting over here laughing over the name Panda Express!

You have to upload then to a photo hosting site then link to them here, Eurobricks isn't meant to be one (only for your avatar picture). Flickr is a popular choice these days.

My 75293 MOD in Classic Space colors (designated number LL 202) is under construction! ... well, parts are being found for it anyways. The two extra wall sections are for my space base, as the new ship won't fit in there without them attached. (It's currently 4 XL base-plate-square in size, but it's still not big enough for everything!) Also, the first post is updated with the interstellar frigate in question's digital pictures, while the real world HQ building's inside pictures (as promised last time) turned out really horrible, so the LDD screenshots will stay for now. Check out the first post for more details!

Sounds like a timey-wimey sort of problem. Is there a Doctor in the house?

This looks awesome! I'm getting a vague French (or at least continental European) feel from engines 1520 and 1451, which is interesting next to the north american ALCO. Just a thought.

I finally got around to taking this picture, I've had the caboose built since the rotary plow itself was done like a week ago. Got the necessary Brick-Link parts list down to less than 200 parts remaining to be ordered for upcoming the 4-8-0+0-8-4 Garratt, seen at the second-to-top picture in the first post. These are some of the parts I found in my bins that were subtracted from that list previously, while the majority will be coming from an older MOC that will be torn apart. (Western steam engine number 4 is that model.) I should be ordering the last few parts next Friday or before, but with the US postal system getting worse by the day, I don't expect to see the parts before mid-September. (I'm currently waiting on a order of parts that shipped on the 6th from Colorado to my location in eastern Missouri.... they've been all over the USA are still not here in St. Louis as of today the 16th!)

Awesome job on making it all work, and I too removed the dancing feature from my castle. I may have to keep this layout in mind for my version of Hogwarts, but I have an extra (updated to the current standards) MOC section of the 2010 / 2011 version of set 4867, Hogwarts from Deathly Hallows pt. 2, so it will be lopsided a bit. What will you do if they release a new section next year?

First post updated and rewritten in a major way, with the new steam engine design to come in a future update in real bricks. (digital screenshot seen below) The new engine was originally inspired by two SRW locomotive works products. (Both were Garratt models made by @SavaTheAggie and formerly available on Bricklink until LEGO sadly removed his instructions) I reworked the engine to have working pistons and side-rods plus a longer frame. This made it from 4-6-2+2-6-4 to a 4-8-0+0-8-4. I also added the forward water tank and aft coal bunker from his 2-4-0+0-4-2 Garratt, and medium Big Ben Bricks drivers to make it from a passenger loco into a freight hauler. (or in my case, a snow plow pusher!)

Thank you, @Rockstaremcee! Both the remaining yellow engine's part and this traction engine were purchased on the 6th of this month, as seen below. Also, the blue Garratt and rotary snow plow were finished yesterday, but pictures will wait until the yellow engine's part's arrive sometime next week. This model will go on a flat car pulled by the yellow engine on it's late 1800's freight train. Even though it is number 2 (constructed 1859 in my fictional head-cannon) on the roster, it is really older than my number 1 (built 1867) engine by nearly a decade. Oh, and just so for the record, and while we are talking about it, the red 4-6-0 number 3 was built in 1870, while the blue Garratt being built in 1890. (yes, that's twenty years before the first REAL Garratt type was even invented, but let's just say it's a forgotten prototype of an eccentric backwoods builder whose one-off design later was used to build the first Garratt in 1909 in England.)

My Hogwarts Express needed some train crew (besides the trolley witch, who I do not own yet), so the top three are the Engineer, Fireman, and Conductor. The bottom figs are all random Hogsmeade shop owners. This picture includes, but is not limited to, Lord Voldemort, Professor Quirrell, Lucius Malfoy (with his cane), the Carrow brother-and-sister-duo, (lower left corner) plus a few Snatchers and some wizards with dubious reputations. From left to right in the upper row: Headmaster Albus Dumbledore, Prof. McGonagall, Prof. Lockhart, Prof. Snape, Prof Flitwick, Rubeus Hagrid, Argus Filch, and a custom random Professor. The students are mostly all as they are in the first round of sets, with the addition of one custom Dean Thomas. (still need to get a Cho Chang / Hufflepuff figure!)

NEW ship incoming! (based on set 75293 - Resistance I-TS Transport with a four-stud-longer cargo bay.) The Nexus Force owns quite a few of these ships, used to ferry supplies around the planet to their far-flung scientific and military outposts not on the railroad route. They can be converted quickly to carry troops, and even used to sling larger cargo underneath via ropes and netting if the need presents itself, but only in atmosphere can they do this. NOTE: The logo for the Nexus Force goes on the nose. The engines are completely different to the set design, as 2 x 4 bricks with three Technic holes going straight down don't exist in LDD. (or in orange, for that matter!) This new design was the only suitable way to get them to work on the ship in a very tight space. Also difficult is the fact that LDD doesn't like the loading ramp doors, crashing every time I would incrementally move them the wrong way or go too far. Thankfully, I got it done with the least amount of hair-pulling-out! Oh, one more thing: the back section of paneling over-top of the engines is floating, as it is connected using studs adjacent to Technic parts, which are incrementally taller than system parts. It works in the real world, but not LDD. (weird, huh?) The front of the ship has room for a single pilot / captain. (but there are no controls as the ones in the set were sadly stickers.) The cargo bay is quite spacious for troops or freight as it has been elongated by four studs from the set's original length. The cockpit roof folds away, and the roof of the cargo bay comes off, (they are both hidden here) while the landing ramps fold up / down. The ship is armed with two large laser forward-facing cannons, but I'm not sure how the pilot operates them, with no controls and all. The ship has been added to the first post in place of the Naboo cruiser, which will not be built because this will be taking it's place. Any thoughts?

Only one word can describe the real-world prototype: Massive. I add another one (and two extra letters) on to the end of that word to sum up your model: Massively Impressive!

First MOCpages, now Brickshelf... what is the LEGO community coming to?