ProvenceTristram

I really like this. It's accessible to people due to its size.

Lol, I love the crew. Does the ship have any kind of interior?

I think you need to lift (and lengthen) the trucks a bit more. In my experience building diesels, this has been a common rebuild point on 8w locos - you wind up with bogies that are 'anatomically correct,' but don't quite pass the smell test because they are a bit too small for the engine. This is owed to the fact that the Lego wheels themselves (minus the enormous flanges) are a bit too small to represent those of an 8 stud-wide engine. So starting with the wheel and saying "okay, this is my reference point for scale" throws everything off - it's better to disregard the wheel entirely and instead build around the size of the truck (the flange itself is closer to scale for the entire wheel). The solution to this is to bulk up the wheelsets slightly, thereby raising the locomotive height by a plate or two more off the tracks. You can see this effect pretty clearly on my Southern GP30:

Ooo, neat.

I know Wolfpack is probably going to ultimately win this, given their devoted following. However, I am a Kingdom Lions (2010) guy, and probably always will be. Their heraldry matches that of both Britain and Bohemia, so it syncs up incredibly well with my lineage.

It's a good set. I was able to get it used for practically nothing.

One more render. I completely redid one tower, added another, and reconfigured the window over the main entryway.

One more photo, just because it took like 4 hours to render :P.

Right off the bat, I have to get this off my chest: I am not a fan of Disney. I used to adore what they do, but lately it seems like the company is on a mission to vacuum up every IP in existence, and thus far their treatment of some of my favorites has been... uh... unfortunate. I will probably never set foot in another Disney theme park again. *Cough* Having said that, I have always loved Disney's castles - they're essentially whimsy run amok. They also draw heavily on the works of Christian Jank and Eduard Riedel - the artist and architect, respectively, behind Germany's Neuschwanstein Castle, and the never-built Falkenstein Castle. Falkenstein, in particular, would have been just marvelous (had Ludwig II not died under mysterious circumstances before it could be started) - Jank had envisioned something smaller than Neuschwanstein, but even more vertically-oriented. Some photos of the real ruin, and of the what-if reconstruction, can be seen here. With Cape Arundel Castle, I borrowed a few ideas from Disney (the top of the central tower is essentially ripped off from Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant at Disneyland Paris), the majority of which involve the technique of selective compression as the structure rises (the first three levels are totally habitable - the tower is not). However, I also wanted something that felt similar to what Falkenstein would have been - the ruins of an old castle made new and outrageously exaggerated, while still retaining a skeleton of classic medieval good looks. If you sort of squint at it, you can see the older fortress underneath all the ginger bread "frosting." Finally, I was totally inspired by this screenshot of (I guess?) a video game. I have absolutely no idea what that picture is from, but it's my ideal fantasy setting in a nutshell - a small fortress situated in the center of a broad vale (containing all the resources the kingdom needs), surrounded by a low outlying wall (seriously: if anyone knows where that screen is from, please clue me in). The MOC itself features three primary rooms: the two-story great hall, the King's master suite, and a dungeon/cave with an abandoned royal tomb, which is accessed via a hidden door within the grandfather clock located in the hall. If I ever design the 'back,' I'll add a kitchen, barracks, and armory. The model is "only" 6,000 pieces, which I actually don't feel is all that bad for something on this scale. It took a remarkably long time to design, at least for me - probably about 25 hours. This is largely due to the fact that I redesigned each individual element about 4-5 times, until I settled on something that I was one-hundred percent satisfied with. And I am... even if I thought I was going to go insane last night after I ripped down the highest chamber for like the seventh time :P.

Very brooding color scheme. Not that it's not accurate - I have seen plenty of stone houses that were very dark grey. I particularly like the little smithy. I do wonder, though - was it common for medieval barns to be built of stone? I would think that would be prohibitively expensive for the time. Even barns in the late 19th Century U.S. - the high water mark of barn building - were almost exclusively built of wood (and that took into account the massive risk of barn fires).

I've never been a fan of the failure to fit pieces flush. It's just too loosey-goosey when it comes to the craft - in the same ballpark as gluing.

Try mixing in some tan and lighter (pastel) blue bricks here and there to represent odd colored stones. I would also recommend trying to add a round tower - even if it is puny - somewhere, just to break up the hard edges a bit (unless you're going full Scottish, since they really didn't do anything but square corners).

I love fleshie Roman soldiers. They look amazing.

Really impressive. Was Tharbad the eastern one or the southern one? Which city was situated in the Barrow Downs?

He did a really good job for such a small model. I think the back section adds a ton to the presentation. While I love interior details and include them constantly myself, the stock castle does look incomplete. Adding the rear section turns it into a superb little structure.

Apparently the builder will be releasing a set of instructions on Rebrickable that will complete the castle. Honestly, I like this angle more than the original:

Something existed there. I mean, the above photos are not a lie. It was definitely a castle. I'm just not sure that when the description rattles on about historical accuracy that that's necessarily truthful. It got the round tower and the gatehouse right. As far as I know, everything else is fantasy. But maybe the original creator has access to information that I don't? For all I know, there's some little model displayed at those ruins that shows how the thing once looked, and maybe he's spot-on.

I think it's funny that they rattle on about it being historically accurate, because, best I can tell, there isn't a whole heck of a lot left of the real deal to compare it to: I couldn't find anything by Googling "Wiederaufbau Burg Löwenstein" - there don't appear to be any drawings floating around as to what the castle actually looked like. All I see is a round(ed) tower, and then a gatehouse... so he seems to have largely gotten those things correct, but... eh? What I appreciate about the set - and the reason I bought it - is that it looks reasonably similar to an actual, official Lego creation. And even though I prefer much more extensive MOCs (including my own - I'm working on designing a castle right now that will probably wind up being appallingly large when all is said and done), for someone of extremely limited means, this seemed like a good compromise to display some minifigs.

I think it's too small to squeeze both a motor and the elaborate mechanics required to lift the wheels vertically. Cue hokey early 90s style advertisement. Basically, the center wheels hydraulically lift and tuck inwards.

I like it a lot. In the same ballpark, I've made several attempts at one of these... ... but can never seem to get the lift mechanism for the road wheels to function properly. One of my great failings in Lego remains Technic - not only am I bad at it, it bores me intensely. I'd love to see someone with the knack for small industrial projects take on the Trackmobile.

Well, there are four things to consider here. First, I think the number of people who are aware of these sets is exceedingly limited. Yes, Bricklink is a marvelous tool, but the people who purchase from it probably represent only a fraction of Lego consumers worldwide - I daresay not even close to one-percent of Lego customers have ever heard of it. Second, shelling out $200 for a set isn't something everyone can just do on a whim. I know that I had to think about it for a bit before I committed. Third, the castle is leading the buying, so I don't think that's exactly a negative comment on the theme's enduring popularity. As far as this sale is concerned, in fact, I'd say it's doing really well. Finally, there's this: the two sets you linked above? They suck. They're of almost laughable utility - the microscale crowd is an extreme minority even amongst AFOLs. And the second set, while very pretty, isn't "castle" anything - it's a bridge and an arch. I mean, seriously: what are people supposed to do with that? It's a lovely little vignette, yes - but where does it fit into my needs as a consumer? If I required a scene like that, it would by necessity be a part of a larger design, and - in that case - I would be crafting it to meet my individual needs. I'll be honest: I think the committee (or whoever made the selections) behind the Bricklink crowdfund program did an absolutely horrendous job. Almost half the sets represented are useless, artistic "le garbage." Lego is way, WAY too expensive for large groups of people to want to throw away money on something like this: Or this: Or this: I am not criticizing the original creators' skills (which are, in all cases, strong) or vision - I'm questioning where the heck the buyers are to purchase these sets on a macro scale. There's a reason why the two leading sets are the castle and the saloon, and it has everything to do with the popularity of the associated themes and their ability to be easily incorporated into current collections. A giant Lego-brick-turned-house, or a blonde girl about to eat a bird (YES, THAT IS WHAT SHE'S DOING) does not fall under that umbrella.

It's nice. There would have been more room for play features with an 8w build, though.

I ordered mine a few weeks ago. I had been looking at possibly expanding it with the addition of a true keep - something square and Bohemian-ish.

Really accurate. I'd love to see some detailing/greenery on the stonework.

Welp, that's beyond my means.