Hrw-Amen

Has to be classic space. I think prior to that most of my sets were early trains, other than that my parents just used to get the big boxes of bricks that were available and we built houses to go alongside the railway, or other railway trucks and things like that. Not so many sets though. The few I did get were at the old pre-minifigure scale so were quite tiny by comparision. Toward the end just prior to space I got a couple of police sets, a boat I think, that had those minifigures without arms that were just molded down the sides. So yes my best memories are of classic space and the space themes that followed.

Stickers can be really frustrating, you try to line them up and are just about to get it right when the sticker seems to get sucked down onto the bricks in a slightly off angle to what you want, then they are really hard to get up only to have the same thing happen over again and again.

This one looks really good. I am not a big fan of electric trains that use overhead wires, but I will make an exception here as your is so unusual and has a nice character to it as well as being a good model of the original. The colour and everything about it fits well I think with how I imagine trains from that area of the world looking.

This reminds me that when I was younger my father (Who used to like to build as much as me although he'd never admit it.) used to always be on to me to keep the LEGO organised and stacked in the drawer in an orderly manner. Nothing as organised as what my LEGO is nowadays mind you, but back then we only had the one cupboard. I was forever just chucking it in haphazrdly and he would get a little cross. One day when I had all the bricks and other parts spread out all over the floor he demanded that we stack it neatly in its colours and brick types and so on. This was on the premis that we would get it all to fit into a smaller space. But, becuase he wanted to keep all the stacks visible and not on top of each other it actually took up more space than we had available and so in the end he had to concede that actually just chucking it all haphazardly into the drawers did save space afterall. I would never dream of doing that now though and spen a lot of time soreting stuff out. Almost as much as I do builing I reckon.

When I started with LEGO trains, well after my dark age I was thinking to myself that I would like a train set again. I had really small N Gauge stuff as a kid which was in my father's attic but I really wanted a bigger scale and had looked at getting O Gauge as an option. Don't get me wrong, small n gauge is good, you can get alot into a layout the size of a coffee table, but with O Gauge you can get those big engines with lots of details. The thing that put me off O Gauge was the cost of the things at £100.00 + for a single wagon, not to mention £400/£500.00 for an engine. I just did not have that as sor of cash. It seemed to me that LEGO was the answer, I could have the fun of building an engine and everything else and get as much detail as I possibly could into it. In the end some of the engines still end up costing me around £200.00 but that can be spread over a period as you do not have to get all the bricks before you start building.

Picked up a set yesterday (19/04/2014.) in the UK (South coast.) all felt out for me in a bag waiting behind the counter by friendly store staff who knew I wanted them. They came in the delivery on 18/04/2014 from what i can gather.

Have been thinking of an armoured train for some time, but never had the exact idea of what I wanted to make. A very nice and character driven train though, very Star Wars'ish. Perhaps it could do with a passenger wagon or two just for tranporting troops and nothing else?

That is a really nice classic space looking ship, at least the blue / trans yellow. Very similar to how they used to look. I to would buy it if it were a set. Edit, And I have just supported it for you.

Very nice steam engines, they look so huge!

It looks even better with the new photos.

I was just wondering this. Which part in LEGO do I use the most of? There are all the common bricks, I guess the one most people think of is the 2X4 or 2X2 brick and whilst I have a fair few of them, I would not say they were something I used the most. I am pretty sure that title would have to go to the black 1X2 Jumper modified plate. For me most of my building revolves around trains and rolling stock. I build them in a 7 stud wide chasis for the most part, although some spill over to 8, even then the main construct is usually 7 studs wide. As such the jumper plates are almost certainly the elements I use most and the black ones are probably the most common, although I also use a lot of the various greys, blue, red and green ones. They are always the bit i seem to be running short of the most and one of the first things I look for when placing a Bricklink order. So what are the most used LEGO elements that others on the forum use and if possible what do you think is the reason behind this choice?

The trouble I have is that one wall of the conservatory is taken over by drawers full of bits and my desk. It does inspire me to build, the problem is that I then have nowhere to put things once they are built.

Nice looking engine.

Great, there are never enough little diesels around, they tend to get pushed aside by the huge ones or people who hanker after the more historic steam, a bit like they are the dark side of railways. However I think some of them including your one, are quite interesting characters.

Good to see it. Very fitting to an earlier era and layout associated with that epoc.

Looks good so far, have you enough to do the whole track?

I would say that old dark grey is definately 'sickly' looking compared to dark blueish grey. I have quite a few of the old ones and whilst I prefer the new it does not mean there are no places for the old ones to be used. With normal grey and light blueish grey, I have to say unless it is very good daylight I find it very hard to tell the difference. The thing I look for is that the old one look more Matt as opposed to the new ones which appear more varnished, but essentially the same colour. Now the reddish brown, well I like it a lot, but it does have so many variations. In away that is not a bad thing as it is a natural 'woodish' colour that lost of use will use for trees or things made of trees, like log cabins or in horses or whatever, but a little variation in that can be a good thing. I often find that the brown and reddish brown are really hard to tell apart simply becuase the range of colours in reddish brown make them all seem like one that is just a different batch and slighly browner than redder if that makes any sence? I have to admit that I also find the blues to be hard. Old blue is blue and that is fine although again you do get quite a few variations within it. But the main ones that I find hard are the medium blue (Which I like and use a lot.) and the Maresk blue. The main way I find to tell them apart is 'cost' in Bricklink! But no, seriously again it is like the Maresk is simply the unvarnished version of Medium blue. Another that I find hard to tell apart especially in photos or over a little difference is all these turquoise and dark Azure, Medium Azure and all that lot, They all pretty much look the same from a distance, it is only when you hold the bricks right up against each other that you can tell they are different.

True, it is a bit cluttered but I guess most of us have a problem of space and want to make the most of it using as many of our models as we can. I note that you have a shelf with other trains on, so I am guessing that you just included as many trains as you could in the pictures and would not normally swamp it with them? I like the micro manager whizzing in from above, it took me a while to figure out what it was! I like that you have included a couple of lines all the way around and then a couple of passing loops. It is hard to know what t include in a small place especially as you want to show off all your modualrs. It is a good start to a good CITY Layout using the space you have avaiable. I wish I had the same, even enough for a small layout so anything I am jealous of. Well done. I think I would make my station a little bigger though, or at least extend the platforms. Maybe incorporate the Monorail station into it, so it becomes a transport hub?

I would do a couple of things that would no doubt please at least one of the subforums on here. As a collector and MOC'er of railway stuff I would like a wider range of rolling stock, engines, associated buildings and structures. Now I know this is not likely to happen any time soon, if ever. Apparently it does not seel so well as police and firemen, not sure why but there you go. However there are a couple of things that I would like them to make and if I had any say I would make sure that they were included. The first I don't think is likely as it would need new parts, although why on earth they did not do it from the start I have no idea? That is a wider radius curve so you could have two tracks the same distance apart all the round. To make sales equal to what track is now would be easy, they could sell the wider radius with the passenger train and the smaller one they have now with the goods train. (Or the other way around of course.) That would please an awful lot of train fans, but although I would do it I don't think LEGO will, but I have no idea why? The second is to put a parts pack together in a similar manner to what they have with set 6118 (Wheel & Axles.) but with various train wheel sets and some of the biffer magnet bits. That would require no new parts to be made, sell for the same price as the normal wheels set and at once it would enable train enthusiasts to get the main parts they need to make their own rolling stock and locomotives. They could include enough to make two, four wheel bogies for a large articulated passenger coach or goods wagon, maybe four of the wheels that go on technic axles and the axles and bricks to put then through, four large (steam) train wheels like from the Emerald night and perhaps four buffers. They could do this right away and I am fairly sure that the people who buy a train set would probably pick one up when they buy some extra track. Anyway, that is what I would do.

I was going to ask about the cattle truck, do they really have ones like that in the USA? I just cannot imagine it as I think the cows may foolishly try to jump out and be injured or worse killed. Perhaps they are similar but with bigger cages? I have made a couple of the type I have seen in the Uk and they are nothing like this. I'll try and get pictures at some point and post them, I have a lot to post at the moment but short on time.

LEGO Historian. What language is the sign you showed us with a pig head and the word slagter, I have to admit to a little sillyness at reading that and it raised my humour for a moment. But more seriously I assumed it meant butcher, but in Google translate it says it has detected it as Dutch, but there is no English translation available for it, that made me think maybe it is not butcher at all but some other obscure meaning like Pig Farmer for instance, but I don't Know as like I said it did not translate?

Good to see a working fire box there, it must have been a small squeeze to get it in.

I would like the option to have all the radius, but if you are only making one then I think it would make most common sense to make ones that would enable someone to run a parallel track to the existing LEGO track, so for that I am assuming it would have to be the 56 radius tracks. Then you could do a double loop with real LEGO track keeping 8 studs away at all times. That would match nicely. I would prefer plastic becuase I only have Power functions or the old 4.5V at the moment but booth of these are battery operated. I would still consider buying other radius track, but whatever it is I would want to be able to get ones that run parallel to enable two matching tracks in a loop. So if you did the 104s I would buy these but only if I could also get the 88s. If you made 88s I would only buy those if you also made 104s or 72s, again so I could have two parallel tracks if you see what I mean. So for just one radius it has to be the 56 I am afraid. Hope that helps.

It simply comes down to how acurate you are with cutting and how good you are with super glue. But you have to have a fairly sharp knife blade or a fine saw. I tried both and the saw was by far the easiest although you loose a little in lenght but not a great deal. Using one straight and one curved normal track per section does give you quite a large radius in the turn. The first one I did admittedly looked a bit messy but after a few it became better. I think the only down side is that if you do not line up all the segments really well the trains tend to hop around abit and not run smooth, but once you have it worked out it is good. A bit brittle if you handle it roughly, but a lot of that is down toi the glue. I used superglue as I wanted a quick result.

This is my answer so far to wider radius. It can be viewed on my flicr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/hrw-amen/