Breakdown

Wait . . . . . what???? That's pretty cool . . . . Ima have to find out your secret??? More fluent than I would expect too!!

I think that sharing lego is hard. My approach as I get my city to where I want it with my nephew who comes over and plays lego here and has since age 2, is that if you don't want me disassembling your creations . . . respect the sovereignty of mine. The most difficult and annoying thing when he was really young is he had this obsession with removing and discarding the visors from helmets which drove me nuts. Its a minor miracle that none went missing (at least to my knowledge). You have to supervise. I think that it's best that they have their own lego. But playing alongside them in a more "rules-free" lego situation can be rewarding. I made this with a 4-year-old niece. It's an epic mess, but actually does give me some ideas. It's the house of the future, or something. The white 90 degree brick is a toilet in her world.

I realize it's not lego, but some of the very same applies, this is my collection The great part is that there's so much third party art available. One of my plans with lego is to get some big prints done (I found a place that's local with great quality and just as good pricing), take some pics, maybe even purposely have them out of focus of sets and put them in the background of other sets. Might be easier to show an example rather than talk about it. Glass cases are great for dust avoidance. I have a lot more smaller art with the individual robots elsewhere in the room. It's all in what you intend on doing. I'm giving the case for individual sets, etc. Ping pong and other tables for larger layouts, etc. Not all of us have the luxury of a lot of space.

So . . . by now some of you may have seen me lurking around here. I registered back in 2011, introduced myself and then didn't make an impact. Things have changed a little, especially with the acquisition of lots of late 1980's lego and very early 90's lego and my first new lego sets in an eternity. I got a pair of 60051 trains, I do already enjoy the RC trains . . .minus the batteries that they use. I'm a little unique as I grew up looking at those catalogues that came with the sets and wanting the 12V stuff, even though we didn't have it in Canada . . .where I'm from. So . . . starting around 1999, I just started piling up Ebay transactions from everyone world wide. I once got a feedback of: "Good to dial wet" originally I thought it was something really perverted, and refused feedback. 2 years later I realized that I was "good to deal with." I can't really complain, my German is rather non-existent and I have a good amount of German blood in me. I play a lot of ball hockey (not field hockey, it's basically ice hockey without the ice), that's me, I'm big, strong extremely agile goalie. That's what makes me unique in my eyes rare traits to put together . . . . that and my 5' tall box of Kraft Dinner. I do a lot of hockey photography (ice hockey), I'm no pro, I don't even own an SLR camera, but it's something that I enjoy. I love just about all things from the 1980's: Transformers, Lego, Hair, Music (specifically pop rock and hip hop). I also love my Grand Prix's, I have three in total. In 2013 for my birthday one of my closest friends treated me (at my request, you can request free crap) for a photo shoot of AJAM & AMY (below) later in the shoot we had a hot air balloon land in the background of a shot (I also requested this about 30 minutes prior to happening, but jokingly), I'm active on the car scene on the internet and attend 3 meets a year, all in the US. I'll blame my nephew for sparking my interest in Lego again lately. He loves the stuff, my home is like some kind of theme park to him!! It probably needs some work (lots of work??) but I made 90% of this car 20 years ago and then never put a front end on it. Not sure I'm happy with it the way it is, but much the passenger jet conversion of my 6544 plane, tonight it's a true sign that I'm back in the lego fold. There will be a Youtube channel . . . and it will be epic. This is me about 6 years ago. I had bought a wrench for the house since I didn't have a BFW, but was shocked to find it was no ordindary wrench (rated PG-13): Will have a new Youtube channel for lego related stuffs). Thanks for being so welcoming already, for me the best is yet to come . . .and "ALL OF YOUR IDEAS IS BELONG TO ME." Some sets that I have kicking around: Trains: 182 727 7715 7722 (partial) 7745 60051 X2 Town: 6354 6358 6375 6378 6380 6382 6386 X2 6389 6391 6392 6394 X2 6395 6396 6397 6398 (and wish I had a 6399 . . . . maybe some day)

A little background. While my sets were mainly disassembled from the 1990's, the vehicles for the most part were NOT. Prior to the emergence of the World Wide Web. my mother had picked up a bunch of used lego at a garage sale for me. Until I acquired set 6395 (Victory Lap raceway) I was utilizing the funky window and hospital symbol pieces as wall and building window pieces. That is until I acquired a stretcher, then the gears in my adolscent brain started turning. That strecher especially with a person on it wasn't going to go in pretty with regular lego blocks as walls at the back of the ambulance??? I wonder if that's why these have the grooves and all of that?? Which took me to the rear end of the ambulance. The unfinished look of studs didn't appeal to me, so after much messing around. I ended up with the result that you see below: Even at that age I didn't want the slopped front window and rear window look so I blew my old flat windscreen on the front, the sunroof pieces don't look bad but sets like 6688 look bad to me. After looking at the pics, please don't point out the lack of QA on the stud gap on the middle of the hospital. So . . . I'm a little curious if the anyone can tell me if this was in an idea book or genuinely my own idea. I really like it regardless. As soon as I parked the ambulance beside the one from the 6380 my first reaction . . . . aside from cringing with the yellowing . . . "I have to moved the rear axle up further!!"

Building excellence only matched by your photography excellence, really love the pic of the propeller in motion. I love the scale of everything, extremely ideal.

As a child I used to start off by eating some of the lego. Now some of my pieces have tooth marks on them, and my teeth are a little worn. Wish I could go back & talk to young Breakdown and not have that happen. That being said, I've lost a lot of imagination since then. Brick eating young Breakdown would have been a more epic contributor to this forum than current Breakdown.

I've been trying to find razor cartridges to snap on to the end of mine to use for shaving. They are like hockey pucks in Canada. You could move here from China just for a year, not learn any english, just go to school/work and such. It would be time to move and while you're packing up you'd find a half dozen hockey pucks, despite a complete lack of knowledge that there even was hockey. This is how I envision these things. I just gave one to my nephew, so glad that I never bought one because I'm starting to make a small collection of these already. They are the lego version of allan keys, I have around 40 of those around the house!!

I think that it looks uber-cool on the box. The problem is that engine car, wedge thing. It looks like it was borrowed from that construction town set, just looks horrible!! If pictures are taken at the right angles it looks great, but ones where it more or less looks merged with the car behind it, if there was one set that people should be modding it's that one. you could make that train look pretty decent compared to "stock."

Since I got some batteries and did the RC conversion tonight, I know exactly what you did. The wire from the Sensor thing, to the motor was on the studs well but not snapped into the other end well. Just experienced the very same, sometimes the train would grunt, but that's about it.

A couple of comments on that. I have acquired some more top grey hinges, I want to get the luggage area in the rear to open again. It's been really hard finding blue plane windows. One of the other things that I'm flirting with is further differentiating the two planes, and trying to add on to either one to increase the total length (probably the passenger one) make it a six seater (6 + pilot). One of the challenges, which should be quickly overcome is that brace piece you see across the top of the wing that is behind the last seat as things stand. When I acquired the sets on E-bay in around 2002 when they were super cheap. I was naive enough to think that I could change a space shuttle or two, into passenger planes, I might revisit those ideas. White windows are relatively easy to find, same with the roof pieces! In addition to the two space shuttles that you see in the pic, there's another two matching the first two in the other room. BTW - I've had the Transcon2 plane for at least 12 years before finally getting my butt in gear and turning the thing into a passenger plane. I have some time to make up for missing.

Ties are wooden blocks that run perpendicular to the tracks on real train tracks, and the same on lego tracks but plastic (like the rails).

One of the biggest threats has to be Tyco, they are now owned by Mattel so you have: Hot Wheels + Super Blocks and Barbie + Super Blocks for the little ladies. I would think that this is a much more formidable threat than Kreo-Transformers.

For the record. As a child, I never had anything that evenly resembled one of these airplanes. I started acquiring some sets and parts casually in my early 20's and now that I'm in my mid-30's a lot more lately. One of the things that I've always loved about being an adult is simply doing what I didn't have the freedom to do as a child. My parents were too cheap to allow me to play ice hockey (it is expensive with the equipment) so as an adult I've been having fun catching up on some of the fun that I might have missed out on as a kid. I can't complain about my parents much. They did fork out for some lego trains and a computer back in the day when they were expensive, but things like playing hockey, driving around in a fly car lookin' like the Super Hoe, toys that I always wanted but never had, even growing fruits at home (I grow pears, strawberries, tomatoes and raspberries). We never got the 12V train lego stuff here, but looking at those pamphlets that came with the sets back in the day with the other sets in them made me want those sets for nothing else other than to see how they worked.

It clips the switch on the 12V points. BTW - where the doors at?? BTW2 - excuse the lego mess in the room and damn did that train speed up!

Finally acquired a 6396 set to go along with the partial set that I got from E-bay years' ago. Nothing too much original here. It's been a long time coming, but the one 6544 Transcon2 jet (foreground in the first pic) has been converted into a passenger jet (It's my favourite lego airplane from the era). The second Transcon jet needs a matching roof tile at the front . . . if anyone has one they want to unload . . . please it's bothered me for a while now. I'm not really trying to win any originality points with this setup (any idiot or young child with instructions can pretty much accomplish the same) but sampling my photo skillz and layout, Would love another 6396, there's a complete 6392 elsewhere, but the 9-stud greens on the runways hurt my brain when grouped with the 7 stud ones of this set. I like how the planes from 6392 (yellow airport) and 6375 (cargo plane with swing open tail) look together, I was very hesitant of putting them together at first because of the similarities of the two.

The wheels on this mess in the foreground of this pic. The front ones notable because of the plastic peg design. One (two) rare pieces that I'm after are 1X1X1 windows in yellow. Front of 182 train . . . I'd assume that they are rare.

One thing that I've found increasingly frustrating is that the staples of hospital, police, fire & gas station are there for the kids sets for the city/town/whatever theme you want to call it. Seldom if ever a grocery store, a sizable restaurant (shocked that they haven't attempted to work with Subway/McDonald's or something), they've had a couple of banks, but they are beyond bad, especially 1490. Perhaps it's just me sounding like an old man with the whole: "Back in my day . . . . " but I don't get some of the new sets. When you look at some of the planes specifically they hurt my brain. 60022 looks like they didn't even want to put studs on the wings, someone said, you should have just a few . . . make sure that people know it is lego when they see it. One of the things that my parents loved about my lego as a kid is that I'd pick up a set like 7720, one minute it would be a train and the next ever piece other than the magnets and wheels would be incorporated into a office or house or something. That was cool. When I look at the parts to that 60022 plane I honestly have no idea what on earth you can make with 80% of them (volume and not quantity) that isn't pretty much an airplane that looks pretty much the exact same. That's supposed to be the "magic" of lego. You build epic and limitless things with many small pieces. I think that's what parents like about lego as well. I'm still on the fence as to whether having sets like Star Wars is a needed evolution in the product? Or just a bastardization of the product.

The bookcase in the background actually enhances this work. Extremely artistic!!

This looks absolutely amazing!! A presentation to be proud of.

Ultimately it's worth what someone will pay for it. The blue-track sets have scarcity and age on their side in terms of being collectible. I won't profess to know everything about collectibles, but there's a couple of rules when it comes to something being VALUABLE (only YES answers apply): 1.) Is it from a popular or desired toy line? LEGO - YES 2.) Is it relatively scarce? I would say so these were probably reasonably expensive during the day - YES 3.) How old is the item? Very old in terms of Lego - YES 4.) Does the toy have lots of small accessories that were easily lost/broken and they are present - YES, but sadly NO. 5.) Does the toy have shelf appeal, look cool or neat retro. NO. To me this set as well as many of the blue-era train sets are ugly as heck, and have extremely limited shelf appeal. I collect a lot of Transformers, and you have scarcity and age on your side, but if the robot is ugly as hell . . . forget it . . .no one wants it. Just my two cents, I'm sure that I'll have some blue track admirers chasing me with torches, just FTR I have two blue track trains and piles of track, I just don't care for it much.

I just elected to buy two of these. One's gonna be opened right away (as early as tomorrow) the price is just too good. The second one to barter for other cool lego things in the future or Christmas gift for my favourite nephew (it's okay to have a favourite, he's also my only nephew). Newest train that I've owned since 7720 & 7745 (circa 1985) I'm thinking of converting to 12V, or trying to run on the 12V tracks, but I have some spots without appropriate clearance height wise and aside from that will struggle with room for the huge nose on this bad boy. I also hate the one piece nose.

Toys 'R Us in the area are pretty much out of these, they are priced Uber-low online and I wasn't willing to wait. I just ordered, I think that they they'll be going onward and upward to new trains or just killing them altogether. They could also be changing the track . . .again.

I'm kind of a junkie for stupidity, so I'll throw it out there . . . If you're going to go small and you have a pair of transformers, you could do a two tiered setup and scale your little lego village to match, where you have the one more simple oval track running on rooftops, etc, and the other running a more complicated ground circuit. I'm going to be adding a double-cloverleaf to my circuit (or at least that's my plan), I think that it looks sexy in videos, but doesn't really serve well in the whole functionality of a running railroad. Then again if you want my opinion (unless you're a lego man with a physical handicap, on a 4 X 6' surface you wouldn't really be using a train to do anything.

A very, very little bit of progress: Have some of the concept down for the road layout. My biggest concern at this moment is that there may not be enough gas stations in my city. Most of the remaining creations that will be added to this city will be my own unique lego stylings.