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Nice review – that I apparently missed when it was new; a few days before that, I happened to get this set (assembled, no box or instructions) on a flea market for 12€ since it may be useful for part of my planned beach/lake promenade. I agree that it looks too pale overall – and also that red flower contrasts too much. Don't all games work such that the dealer wins in the end? :)

And I was hoping for a Lady Godiva *cough*. Seriously, though, great style with lots of great details!

Well done! And you can indeed be proud of those details.

Thanks again! Yes, after continuing under the road it will (assuming I'll stick with the current plans) flow down to a lake in the open; in the back, it will have even more open space and a little waterfall – which will have to be rather close to the building unless I move the planned train tunnels a little further back...

What can I say... I simply agree with the others. :)

Seems I missed this one in March... I'm sure not only the new skyscraper will turn out well, the entire city, existing as well as planned, looks great and impressive already. (And it makes me even more anxious waiting for the time when my new apartment will be complete and I'll have the space for my big city...)

MOCpages's image server is apparently down since at least Friday evening, as far as I can tell – I'm not getting any images from them either. So unless dongo hasn't uploaded them elsewhere too (like I just did with most of mine to flickr), we can only wait for MOCpages to get up and running again...

Thanks again! That ugly part will certainly be covered in the end. In the back, there'll be part of a train platform on one side and a hill with a little waterfall on the other side, with train tunnels underneath. The front, well, that part of my plans is currently the most volatile... maybe I'll build a slanted park in front of the road, maybe two rows of smaller houses going downhill to a promenade by a lake to the right of the river, and stairs down to a bigger part of the promenade/park on the left, something like that... The citizens who already crossed W&H's paths know that. But no need for me to worry – those lawyers are just minions of the Powers That Be, and who but the builder (i.e. me) could be these Powers in a Lego town?

Great! Great on the inside, on the outside, and the surroundings, too. (But Google says it should be "Douraku", not "Dourkau".)

Oh, if I'm king, there are still emperors and gods to bow down to around here... but thanks.

Well done! Nice to see them together in these different colors; and the big curved windscreen on some of them makes them look more modern. But I think the green ones could use some gray or grilles or other variation on the sides, too.

Thanks everyone! Yes, sand red may be nice; I also thought about a 3rd Pet Shop in sand red already, but there are no grooved 1x2 bricks. Since sand red is rather expensive, I'd have to limit that to the front again. Dark red is planned for a train station next down the road after a gap, so I don't want to use it here; at least not as main color. A betting office for all kinds of sports, with a bunch of TVs and monitors for the odds and a counter to place the bets.

Here's the next building for my slanted road with the Pet Shop and my PC Shop, P.I., Artist, Bar, 8-bed Hotel in two 16-wide houses... I decided to use varying widths this time (10 studs for the snack bar, 14 for the middle part above the brook, and 8 for the nougat left), and made the middle part's wall a bit simpler, plainer; and even though the road remains level here, the roofs continue the slanted line as you'll see further below. Since MOCpages seems to be a bit unreliable these days, I put these photos on flickr. To see all of them with their short descriptions, just start with the first and click your way through the set... Since this building was intended to sit on the left edge of my future setup (though this plan is about to change, as plans always do...), I made the wall removable at the bottom so we can look inside the basements: Above we see the elevator shaft – with a little "nose" on the top left to hold the cab –, stuff for cleaning, toilet, big archive with archivist, and a secret door – you know, just the regular stuff you'd find in any law firm. Wait, did I just say "secret door"? Yes, and two special clients are waiting until they may enter: If you happen to know the TV series Angel with its Wolfram & Hart law firm, you might have guessed that this here is no ordinary law firm. :) A closeup of the cab: It's not really practical for playing (which I don't do anyway) since you have to remove the upper floors and the red pin is often hard to reach through the shaft... Anyway, the sliding piece on the rop right holds the cab on the right level for the doors on every floor. Boss's office interior: One view of the snack bar interior: And the living room upstairs: And finally a look at the entire road so far: (Please try to ignore the ugly foundations... maybe I should have photoshopped them...) As you can see, I added a sand green copy of the Pet Shop – also provides a nicer flow of the levels along the slanted road. I used the rest of my sand green bricks for it and bought only 3 more, so only the front and part of the back are green while the rest is gray. It doesn't have an interior yet. » Again the link to the flickr set I'm planning to complete this row with a 12-stud and a 16-stud corner building on the right, by the way; not sure which color(s) to use yet. Comments and suggestions welcome as always, of course. :)

Actually, that is Belville – this one. As far as the new figures are concerned: Well, I guess they could have been worse, but I too would have preferred minifigs. But as AFOL I'm not really in the girls target audience... We'll see how well their accessories and sets can integrate with regular Cities, so maybe there's something in it for us AFOLs as well.

Actually, except for a few rather short-range private carriers, we got red trains (with a white stripe) for local/regional traffic – like 7938 (though there's usually more red below the white stripe) –, and white (with a red stripe) for long distances - like the old RC set 7897. There was white with blue stripes some time ago on InterRegio cars, but they have been discontinued. (And were usually pulled by a standard red engine anyway.) And red cargo/working/shunter locos like in 3677 are indeed quite common. Yellow isn't, but it's used by some Dispoloks (i.e. from a loco leasing company), so 7939 doesn't look too strange around here either. :) SBB cargo (Switzerland) uses blue sides on their engines, so that could be an "excuse" for a new blue Lego model - though I rather doubt it...

I'd choose a layout that has (at least) two loops to run two trains concurrently, which, as 22kane already mentioned, the 2nd layout allows, but not the 1st. Which is why I'm currently planning for my setup that I'll be able to start sometime next year with a double-track full loop (PF), an extra small loop on a mountain (9V), and a small subway (12V) underneath. (And some tunnels and some sidings of course.) And I'm thinking about operating distant, possibly unreachable switches with simple strings attached to the moving part of the switch similar to the one shown here, though I don't know how well this will work in the long run.

Well, another day spending a little more... I went to Munich to the Lego store to get 2 PaB cups, 1 BAM set, a bunch of old Easter polybag sets (at 1€ each, they're nice for parts), and the calendar with the printed numbers and the two minifigures for 9,99€. Then on to TRU who currently have a 20% discount in Germany – unfortunately no red cargo train there (saw it at Kaufhof for 140€ instead of 150€), so I only got a few small to medium sets, the most expensive one being the HP Knight Bus. I was tempted to get another bus and tram set (8404) for 85€-20%, but decided to save that money instead, too...

Great! Great buildings, great interiors, great characters and stories...

Looks great already, and the big buildings against the walls are a good idea – looking forward to watching your city develop and grow! I assume it's a big U shape? 20 m² is quite an ambitious size... my preliminary plans (for my new apartment next year) range around 11-14 m², and that feels big already. :) But I'd change that pink patterned wallpaper, it really doesn't go with a lego town.

Great work! Recognizable exterior and nice interior details, and they go well with the official buildings. (Maybe I shouldn't have used the Diagon Alley and Burrow that I bought just as parts supply...)

Interesting calculation, Cwetqo, but it's a bit off considering that this: ...is available together in set 7499 for 16,99€ (MSRP; recently got a few for 12.99 on Amazon.de)

A few paragraphs below, it says they reached 4 billion in 2006 (and the footnote says the 3.7 number is from the 25th anniversary in 2003). So if they indeed manufacture roughly 100 million (or a little more) per year, that's still pretty close to the estimated growth of 80 million humans per year; but indeed TLG needs to increase production a bit if they want the minifigs to outnumber us (7 billion to be reached this October) any time soon. In any case, it's the same order of magnitude, and that's quite amazing...

Great architecture and $! And a nice interior, though I would have added some stairs...

Great design and nice details (in your living room, too)! Might be a bit too big to fit into an entire house in the typical reduced-size style, but that's not an issue here, of course.

Thanks for the nice review! While I think the inclusion of the green hazardous goods wagon is a bit odd, it's really a decent set and I guess I'll get it when I can get it at a nice discount (the next TRU 20% is bound to happen sometime^^); with the track maintanence features, it will fit in my future setup better than the yellow 7939 which I don't have. Brickviller, yes, we got "some" protests about nuclear waste transports in Germany; guess I'd protest too if they'd use just some little barrels like in this set – the real "Castor" units are a bit bigger and a bit more secure...