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That's indeed a great city setup with a great combination of MOCs, official sets, and enlarged smaller official sets in a big cohesive area. And if you really add a train level as you mentioned, that would be another great thing...

Thanks, everyone! Well, that might be doable with tiles or sidewise bricks, but I think it would make it look less realistic and elegant. You don't need to sell yourself short here with your courthouse (and the others, too). And looking, for instance, at the details especially in the interior wall decoration in exis's auction house, I see where my walls fall a bit short... But it's indeed nice to see so many great buildings and builders here. Well, they have to compromise with the number of parts and the price, especially regarding the interiors. Besides, we've seen the official sets so often by now and there are many more new MOCs showing up all the time, so it might be a matter of familiarization as well...

Originally I intended to use more dark green, especially the gold-lined curved slopes ftom the Emerald Night, on the sides of the corner bay and between the floors; but it ended up looking better in white (and some gray)... And the name stuck. (After all, there's a jeweler's shop on the ground floor.) Another full view and a street detail with the wrought-iron shop sign: Jeweler's shop: Second floor – what's going on there? It's the mini-, erm, maxidoll design studio! The latest and greatest toy for minifigure girls, soon to be available in a shop nearby... (Sewing-machine design from dho7622u.) Third and fourth floor contain an apartment – a rather luxurious one by minifigure standards: The boy living here is switching on the big-screen TV to play some games with his friend on the latest game console, probably a PlaiiBox 720 or something like that^^ Upstairs: The boy's room with a big dinosaur "doll", a robot and more, plus bathroom and the unspectacular parents' bedroom. See MOCpages or Flickr for all the photos! By the way, I plan to make the adjacent buildings in this block – GG, GE, FB and my bank – one floor taller, too. Oh, and those who don't regularly check the Train Tech forum probably don't know my layout plans yet.

Wow, now that's a great and noble looking building with lots of nice designs and ideas – windows, interior walls, furniture etc., big cars,... The spire might seem a bit tall compared to the building itself, but I guess these expensive auctioneers need to show off a bit. :)

Well, the newer magnets do spin, too – just inside their plastic case. Which is of course a good idea because if they'd be fixed as in the early years before the 12V era /when there were red and blue magnets on fixed car bases), you'd often have to grab a car and turn it around by hand. (Strictly speaking, even the old red and blue ones had both poles, the other pole just wasn't accessible; magnetic monopoles are still hypotherical particles...)

Glad you like it. :) Not really. It will take however long it will take... At any rate, once I got the tables (including "short-legged tables" for the upper city), I can at least put all the existing buildings and the tracks (which I should have enough of by then) where they belong to get a first impression of the real thing. And then add the roads, ground and ballast piece by piece.

Amazing! Architecture, floor, dome, details,...

It's still several months until my new apartment is ready for me to move in, and in all that long time waiting, I've been off and on working on plans for what will finally fill that 4x6 m² basement room, moving from centered layouts with space to walk around it to ones set against the wall (more usable space!) in lots of variations. I'm quite pleased with what I've come up with by now, but, as yon might guess, I'm looking for input from you now – there might always be this one great idea that I just didn't have, or that one thing that I forgot... So here is the plan (made with BlueBrick) with all levels put together: Notes: - Images are links to bigger versions. - I used baseplates (and roads) as drawing tools and not really as baseplates as such; roads will be brick-built anyway. (Also, the tram tracks are painted with blue tracks but in reality are brick-built into the road; see Pet Shop block road.) - < and > denote a slope or stairs (higher > lower), ][ a bridge or tunnel entrance. - Green text = completed buildings. - The layout will rest on tables, most likely typical conference/multi-purpose tables with a steel frame underneath along the edges; the main level at a typical height of ~72-75cm or whatever the tables are that I'll get in the end. Brick boxes will be stored underneath in the front area. - I can reach reasonably far, though I'll still need some sort of grippers/pliers for the far corners and some edges behind houses. Don't think that's much of a problem, though. - And I'll need some way to remote-control the track switches in the tunnels. Might start with a simple thread pulled by hand... - I wanted a somewhat balanced combination of train and town, and I decided to go with larger areas of these instead of smaller ones of more types, so there's no airport, no freight harbor (though I thought about adding a small one next to the container terminal, replacing the road there), no space port, no forest police, etc. - And no inclined tracks connecting the levels nor an elevated train around and between the houses either (just a short one at the station) because I feel that would be too much. I still hope it won't end up too cluttered after all... - The rationale of the tracks and tunnels is mostly this: what you can see is "official" as it could be in a real, bigger city, and all the tracks in the tunnels are just "unofficially" connecting the visible parts to make the layout useful and playable. So you could imagine trains coming from way up north (top), enter the station, and leave to the east (right) through a tunnel. - It's intended to keep me busy, Lego-wise, for many years to come, so being big and detailed will help. Before I break that down by level, a quick comparison with two earlier designs with a 90° rotated station that also shows what was important to me: Advantages of the "final" design: - An extra freight train loop on the left in addition to the double passenger loop. - A much better integration of the station area with the city area. - More platforms at the station means less trains hidden/stored off-site. - Compared to left old plan: Avoids a long gap between levels (upper city in the back, lower station in the front) that would have to be filled with (open) wall, underground shops, parking, etc.; though that's not really a bad thing, it might be a bit too much in a row. And the bay might even need another lower level (due to the Pet Shop block slope). - Compared to right: Avoids a big area at the back of the room that's on a lower level than the front. Disadvantages: - Two separate passages, i.e. I won't be able to easily reach everything from the center. - Slightly shorter platforms. - Track switch areas are a bit more cluttered. Alright, now the separate levels: The subway level: The building table shouldn't be here, actually. But I'm too lazy to edit the image now. Note that in addition to this simple double loop – that's using most of my old 12V tracks – there will be an intermediate level above it for the passengers to access the station, probably also featuring some kiosks, and around to the left a secret underground base of the Alien Conquest's ADU mixed with some Torchwood ideas and the like (as written on the combined image). I just didn't draw this level; it wouldn't be much more than a small grey area anyway. And I might actually build more levels from the floor up: A tunnel that's just being built (for a second trunk line due to high demand, with greetings to Munich^^), the subway, an underground suburban train (S-Bahn) station, and the intermediate access level. The main level: As you can see, there's a freight area on the left, connected along the edges to the outer right loop (so it can actually serve as a reversing loop for trains coming from the top right), a double loop on the right, and three "hidden" storage tracks that will be accessible from the front through openings in a wall that could be imagined solid. (Those dark sections of track (e.g. around the crossover switches) are images I created for 8 flex track segments swivelling the track to the right or left before the current BlueBrick version included the flexible flex track feature.) Upper city level: (Yeah, the building table shouldn't be here either.) A lot of big modular houses and streets, with a road in the center coming from the lower level. Gotta make use of the possibilities this multi-level layout offers. This also shows the passenger bridge at the station and an optional elevated maglev track – I used the monorail track here, but most likely it will be some brick-built thing and not Lego's monorail train either, since I don't have that and wouldn't want to buy it at those high prices anyway. The mountain levels: A seperate little train track, using all the few 9V tracks I got with a Toy Story western train (modified accordingly), on the left. Each level of the mountain is intended to be about as high as the upper city level is above the main level, 20cm or so. (Of course they won't be like big blocks with vertical sides, but with varying slopes.) Some smaller, older houses going up the slope in the back next to the small train stop there. And ever since AussieJimbo presented his funicular, I thought how I could include one, too – albeit just a smaller one for people and not for vehicles. So there's one here, connecting the beach with what will probably be a big old castle used as an open-air theater nowadays. Aaaalright, so, any questions, comments, suggestions, ...? Update 13 May 2012: A little change to the top section, adding some space for police and butcher by turning the road on the right into a narrow pedestrian-and-tram lane:

TRU Germany's online shop is having another "happy sunday" today with 10% on all Exclusive sets (17 in total, 25€ minimum order) – including set 8404 that BrickBox mentioned, resulting in 71,98€. (And shipping is free if you pay with Paypal, Visa or MasterCard – for quite some time now.)

It may be a bit too much blue overall, but these are truly amazing buildings that go together very well.

New last year – so far, it only appeared in tan in a Cars set and with the red cargo train (see BrickLink).

Well done! Though the front looks a bit odd with the white part being behind the red part.

But then you'd need a lake in front of it, oriented such that you can make beautiful photos at sunset ;) (But leave out this... frying-pan-shaped not-really-a-dock thing on the left.) Well, another idea would be a big old tree – which is what I'll probably put on the square in front of my town hall, with a small market around it.

These are indeed just the leftovers from those old days when the 1x1 round plates came in pairs on a sprue:

Very nice indeed! Colors, architecture (though I agree with MadManMingo about the middle floor), and interior; I'd just hide the half turntable at the shop's entrance. And funny enough that the corner building I'm currently working on also uses the Emerald Night slopes above the shop windows...

Of course. (If you use bogie plates and not turntables.) But I consider Technic plates "regular enough" compared to train base plates.

(Again wishing I hadn't been dark-aged in those Santa Fe times...) Judging by the gaps that are (barely) visible in some places – best seen on the freight car –, it looks like a train base plate in the middle and regular plates at the ends. And the file names tell that most cars are 48 studs long and the mail car 40 studs. :)

Great building, great interior, great details

Well, there's one in Munich that has an additional basement level – not completely covered, there's a big opening between basement and main floor –, and its main entrance is a few stairs above street level. Does that qualify? I haven't seen it being restacked the other way around, though (but I wasn't there when TRU moved in).

I keep the modular buildings integrated in (what will be) my town, sometimes modified, and nowadays I buy at least another one of these for parts. Some sets unusable for this like the Space Shuttle are just on display elsewhere "forever". Then some sets, such as the Winter Village sets and the Maersk ship, were bought for display for a few months and then broken down; I don't want a Winter Village all year round anyway, and as long as there's a new one each year, I don't need the old ones anymore. :) And some others, like Harry Potter or Toy Story at a good discount, I just bought for parts and never built. Or built some minor elements of it, some nice furniture for instance. And sometime I have to start selling the parts I don't need...

Well done! That's quite some architectural extravaganza already in the original building that you captured very nicely. And nice furniture, too.

And 2.17€ for Germany; comparing it to 17.99 for the straight/flex box, you essentially get its flex tracks for 0.63 (and might get that box cheaper in other shops, anyway). Well, I guess it's good – and intended – for buying that last 1-4 tracks one might need to complete a layout, or for some special use where you don't need more, so it's fine to have them at PaB. 5 track pieces are available for 8€ at Legoland Factory (or were last year), by the way. Now I'm curious to see the LUGBULK prices we'll (hopefully) get...

Looks great with nice details!

"Just" a very nice modular! Both from the outside and the inside.

Or even 7755 except for the symmetry, for that matter. I actually like both: 7939 is a nice freight or passenger rather long-distance engine, whereas 3677 is good for (heavy) shunting, (limited) freight and generic work/maintenance where I wouldn't expect one like 7939. Of course adding lights to 3677 is a bit harder, and I haven't tried a second motor and switch, but that's not the most important thing to me here...