MGCJerry

I've built plenty of tiny houses. Its always a great challenge to cram the most usable features into a specified space and not crowd it too much. Also the bouns of building tiny houses is that you can generally build many to create tiny neighborhoods especially if you have limited parts like I always had. Building tiny is also handy when building spacecraft with living quarters.

These are some wonderful aircraft. Thanks for sharing them. :)

Danco #96749 rubber o-rings fit wonderfully. The Lowes in my tiny town had them so I got 2 packs for just over $5 for the pair. My dual 60052 had lots of wheel slipping going up a slight incline and adding these rings helped a lot. Put them on the powered wheels and if possible, have the battery box over the drive wheels... That helps a lot too. You can try to modify your tender to be the actual 'engine' if the battery box wont fit in the loco.

Holmes on Homes - Season 4, Episode 10 "Kitchen Coleslaw"

The Star Wars, Architecture, HST, train station, & Modulars are my girlfriends. As well as the Chima sets (Chima flying alligator thing was her *first* set). Also not pictured, but on top of the big tv is a VW Bbus (and micro bus), Mini Cooper (and micro cooper) and Ferrari. 3 of the planes include interiors. The black/gray & red one is actually based on a spacecraft in my sci-fi 'world' and is built close to minifigure scale. This one has an interior. The one facing the camera next to this spacecraft is a passenger plane that holds 24? minifigures is also Octan colored. Shame theres no Octan Airlines stickers. I already have a 5' x 5' L desk in my room covered with computer & server stuff. The room the doorway leads into we plan on turning into a dedicated Lego room so we can reclaim the living room. Trying to talk my girlfriend into building a plywood 'table' around the room and assemble a city. I'd love to build a long girder drawbridge bridge spanning a few feet with an active load controlled by an arduino as a building challenge. The local library here does a small Lego thing every year for kids and I think it would be cool if we could setup a small 'display' like a mini Lego show and perhaps drum up some more Lego interest in this tiny town.

As a 'newer' member I was happy there wasnt some "waiting period". I remember how annoying it was on Fanfic. 3 day waiting period to post stuff? I never submitted anything so instead I saved my story as pdf, and emailed it to people who wanted it. As a primary lurker, sites that do this are enough for me to turn around and walk away. Personally I'm fond of the "walled garden" (not sarcasm). First x posts need to be approved by admin. You can see them, but nobody else can. Also prohibiting from having clickable links until a specified time and/or postcount (I published a mod for some forum software YEARS ago and it wasnt hard to create or implement). I have also run into a site where new members also had to wait 5 minutes between posts. I do know how annoying forum spam is and understand the battle is a hard fight and usually when I see spam I hit the report button. I havent had to do that here yet. Seems EB is enough on top of things where this forum probably wont turn into a bot spam warehouse. CAPTCHA is also another now failing technology as OCR abilties have improved exponentially in the last couple years. Some CAPTCHA OCR can read them better than many people. Finding a balance that doesnt push away introverted users (like me), and stopping the crap is always a delicate difficult balancing act.

Eventhough I'm 34 and only have limited train experience and only a single simple MOC boxcar under my belt, I look at my trains and the rest of my Lego collection from a play perspective. However, I do try to incorporate some realism in MOCs & MODs. I just cant shake that "play" ideal when building so instead of fighting it, I go with it. As far as the hardcore realism such as the mini cooper, vw bus, and even the modulars, those I feel are more display only pieces but absolutely great models and have no problem showing them- but I wouldnt 'play' with them. I was never a big fan of the vehicles that were only 4 wide, I absolutely love the new 6 wide vehicles. My trains are mostly stock, but I'd love to make them a little wider since real trains are wider than most vehicles. I have highly considered making my 60052 locos 8 wide in effort to actually have minifigures 'walk around' (albiet 1 stud wide). I do actively try to reduce unncessary greebling (why is this antenna here, this vent doesnt make sesne) and in some instances increase greelbling (rooftop AC units, plumbing vent stacks, etc). I take my MOCs & MODs from the perspective of a minifigure. If he cant get there by walking, he needs stairs, a lift, or an elevator. As a result I have added many ladders, stairs and elevators in my MOCs and sets over the years. I'm even planning on adding ladders to my trains as well because the only way to get into the loco is to climb it. How many times have I seen "no step" on heavy machinery... I can only expect "realistically" for the same things to happen in my Legoverse. In the end I see sets in the following "realism" settings: * Play & unrealistic. Such as fire station (60004) and police station (60047) and most of the city sets (trains included). * Play & realistic. Playable, but elements from real-world incorporated. Stairs, some enclosed spaces. I prefer my MODS & MOCs to be here. Even when I was a kid. I will go ahead and say the modular buildings are a good example. * Realistic. Sets designed primarily for show and not play (eg delicate, and you wouldnt let kids play with them). All the architecture, modulars, and many of the train MOCs I see here. Many of these I wouldnt dream of playing with, but would love to have.

Yup. Same here. I can stand, sit and lay on Lego without any pain.

We have a crappy unlevel floor in the living room with a couple shelves with some TLG models and a few 18 gallon (68 litre) bins. I also have a bunch of crappy non-SNOT MOC models scattered about the room (not worth posting, they suck compared everything else here). The 3 trains make it difficult to do much building anymore not to mention the half-finished Sydney Opera house (10234) my gf is fighting with. After building the Arocs & Volvo loader (3 days apart), my back was killing me sitting on the floor. As you can tell... Its a mess... The bins next to the old bigscreen are the remainder to my lego collection. Top bin: full of loose parts Middle bin: Assorted MOC Bottom bin: Assorted MOC

Cool... Thanks for the information guys. My girlfriend will be pleased as well, because this was buggging her too. Guess I've given away a code for people to use. hehehe

I bought a lot of lego off ebay earlier this year, and it had a really weird gray 1x4 flat plate with numbers and letters on it. Heres a piece I have no idea what it came from. The lettering is printed. My girlfriend posted it on reddit awhile back and got no response.

A few months ago I acquired a collection of Lego in several small bins, boxes and misc containers that were mixed with megabloks, and some other generic brand. It was a heavy sort but ended up with an 18 gallon bin of Lego. This collection reeked of cats and had a ton of cat hair and fleas. I ended up washing them in the bathtub with a little bit of light laundry soap and hot water. I then placed them into pillow cases and threw them in the dryer on medium heat for 20 mintues. Nice clean Lego and no stench of cats. Dont know about big balloon tires because this collection only had the tiny tires.

For future reference for anyone reading, if you think you had something hacked (anywhere)... Some sites will send you an email when someone has unsuccessfully tried logging into your account and got "locked out". This would be a good time to change your passwords. 1. Change passwords on every site as fast as possible to different passwords. 2. Use another device to change passwords again in case your primary device is compromised. If you know your primary device is clean, you can skip this step. Ensure that your primary device is clean, then you can resume using your primary device. 3. Best if you change passwords frequently. Yes changing passowrds is a pain in the neck especially if the site in question forces you to use a mix of uppercase, lowercase, symbols, etc. but it is better than the alternative. Also make sure all your passwords are different. If you use the same username & password and when there is a security breach at any of these site, dubious people will have access to everything that utilizes that password and username. Sometimes they can also google the name to find other places to login to. Remember, your internet idenity is only as strong as your weakest link and you have no control over that weakest link. By the time a security breach is usually discovered, the infiltrators have already spreaded and/or sold the leaked information. Just my unsolicited $0.02

Yea... This... Always. If I dont make sound effects, I'm not having fun and should be doing dishes instead.

I'm relatively new here, so my comments will probably mean very little especially since I'm such a low participant here and I'm not a long-timer. Seeing this topic here, and open discussion occuring is something that makes me feel more comfortable about being a member here compared to places where any moderation problems are swept under the rug and hidden out of sight. I havent had any problems with any of the moderation staff here, yet so I can't comment on anything specific. I just wanted to point out from a lurker's perspective of how I see this topic handled. I have been beaten and threatened plenty of times on another site for absolutely stupid reasons and just the mere contacting another mod or admin for *any* reason when "warned" was grounds for immediate ban. That mod did get removed from his position not long afterwards and I've only been back there 3 times briefly in the last 10 years. Nice to see EB doing it differently. :) Kudos to the admin & mods.

The whole setup is great, I especially the play potential of the whole collection. I know I'd have a lot of fun with something like this. :)

This was great! Love all the additional angles. What made this even more awesome is that I live really close to busy CSX line and just before the first crash, I did hear 2 horns. Surprised there wasnt more car-nage at the station. I'm glad to know I'm not the only person who "crashes" things.

I own 2 trains, both 60052. My girlfriend owns 1, 60051.

I was going to say this reminded me of 60079, but I like your jet better with the cleaner lines (the vents on the side of 60079 seem out of place to me). The only thing its missing is some tail art.

These hot rods are great. Really loving how the front wheels are done, very clever. :)

Busy day for Lego... * Built a small pond entirely out of PAB bricks (took 2 trips to 2 different Lego stores in a couple days, Cleveland & Columbus) * Lightly modified the 42043 Arocs. Mainly tube management. * Completed building & lightly modified the 42030 Volvo for future pf lights. * Modified the rear cargo door on my "cargo plane" (480sq stud storage. Its boxy, its ugly not worth posting). * Swapped some minifigure's hairpieces with the new ones I got from the Lego store build-a-mini to create a more appropriate appearance per mini. Changed which minifigure goes with whatever set.

Well... Yesterday was my first trip to a Lego store. Went to the one in Columbus, Ohio and got a few things. 3 minifigures, 2 large cups (no luck asking about a box) & the 42043 Arocs. My girlfriend got the 10234 Sydney Opera House.

I have removed the flex track on all but 2 places, and eliminated some of the curves including the one in the picture. Now my layout is *much* smaller. The train does run a lot smoother over the layout and is able to climb the slope much better than the stock rings. I can even stop the train on the slope, and start it again on the slope without problem or wheel slip. The train can climb the slope on speed 3. It does slow down a little though. I can pull this rolling stock with one engine, but I have to increase the speed to 6 for the single engine to make it over. I like the look of 2 engines anyway. The wheel layout on the 7938 looks about the same as the 51, which didn't have problems with the flex track or the bridge. I'll admit my bridge slope is much steeper than 1 plate every 16 studs. I'm more like 1 brick per one track or so. The bridge is cobbled together with all kinds colors parts as a prototype and I lack enough remaining Technic pieces to make it all one color. We have to watch the Lego spending because what we have spent thus far is embarrassing. I have also moved the livestock cars wheels closer together by 2 studs with little change. I do feel a slight difference when pushing by hand around corners and I didn't notice a change in the overall train. I think we can consider this resolved. Using the new o-rings are a huge help, but does cause issues when using flexible track. Here is the prototype bridge. The couple pieces of flex track are the only flex track on the layout now. These 2 flex locations have not been a problem with the new rings, but were a source of slipping with the old rings unless I was going fast enough. Sorry about the dodgy pictures, they are just taken quickly and resized smaller. Hardly what I consider a photograph worthy subject.

Update: I have replaced one of the engine's rings, and it derailed at flex track joints coming down and going up the bridge. I have reconfigured both engines and have the new o-rings on the drive wheels and the kept the original rings on the unpowered wheels. Seems to have improved stability on the flex tracks. With the new rings, the train can climb the bridge much better, but just requires more care when setting up ramps to an elevated bridge. I can live with that. I have also restored the 2nd engine's drive wheels back to normal to keep the weight over the driven wheels. Since I want to add lights, I'll get a switch and swap direction that way on the backward facing engine so I can keep the weight over the drive wheels. I don't care for the flex track myself. With a bridge that is 4 blocks high, what is the ideal angle and can it be reliably done with non-flex tracks? I will need to get more straights regardless.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I had added another level of difficulty for our trains by creating a 48 stud long truss bridge that has an elevation of 4 blocks. The 51 can go over it at a lower speed than the loaded 52. With both engines on a single train with all my rolling stock, the train has to be on speed 4 to go over the bridge. Therize, oh yea and its even worse on the flex tracks especially on any kind of a slope. I also agree that the design is indeed strange and thought they looked really weird when I actually had them in hand. What is that track you have on the inside? Dutchiedoughnut, the wheels are sort of under the battery box per instructions. I may try actually moving the receiver and putting the battery box directly over the powered wheels. While the wheels are ok for the standard rolling stock on regular rails, they seem to slip a lot on a train with custom stock. Davidzq & Rail Co thanks for the info about the o-rings. The local hardware store has them in stock and I'll pick some up today and see how it works. dr_spock, didnt see your post when typing mine and gathering information. I'll be giving that a shot too.The lame train in question: I *just* swapped to a one facing backward setup and it still works ok, but looks more like the trains I see passing through with 2 engines. Just got stuck by 2 trains on the way to get a late lunch, and just missed a train by 30 seconds when coming home. Here, the trains pass by every 20-30 minutes all day & night. Thanks again for the replies. I'll post back with an update.