Hrw-Amen

It seems a little sad that you will not be able to buy the plastic rails from him after all this time of waiting.

My father started building with me when I was two years old. He would build and would ask me to pass him a brick 2X2 or a plate 2X4 or whatever and in whatever colour. I learnt a lot about maths through this pocss.

My first actual mini-figures (There were two of them.) were of the type that was a plain yellow heads with no details and then arms were just molded lumps on the side of the torso with the legs all in one. They were black with white hats and were supposed to be policemen, they came with a police boat that I played with in the bath as it floated. My first real mini-figures were two space men that my father bought me. Two sets together, the very smallest of the space sets when they came out. A little buggy with the white (American.) spaceman and then a little skimmer with a red (Soviet.) spaceman. These were soon followed by all sorts of space themes and more red and white spacemen, eventually giving way all sorts of colours. Nearly all of my early mini-figures were space realted in one way or another.

Nice boat and I have added my support on Cuusoo.

I think it would be a strong contender at least up in the top few. But as has been said there are lots of others in modern times. 'Ingrediants' would probably be another good contender. Is there some way to find out or has no tests other than those discussed already been done?

I try to build everything railway related 7 wide. I think it does look a lot better than 6 which for me looks way to skinny and tall. Having said that whilst I set out for a 7 wide build certain things, like rods on the steam trains, sometimes grab rails or buffer beams on diesels stretch to 8 wide even if the main body is rerally 7. So I could say I guess 7.5 on average. I have tried to build whole things 8 wide, mainly to save on parts and excessive jumper use, but I found 8 wide just looked a little too wide in the main, where as 7 looked pretty much spot on.

It will be interesting to see this made. I have considered doing similar as I do not have a lot of room to leave anything up and if I did it would be similar. I find though that with the level of control you ghet from the PF controller and IR unit that a small layout like this is hard to function and is very jerky with stop/starts. On the other hand oval tracks of similar size in LEGO Mini-figure scale are so short that the train is whizzing through the station only seconds after it has left. Neither very realistic. I would still like to see how you do though as maybe you can over come these issues? I guess if it is a small layout and you are using small tank engines and the like with small local or goods trains it could look good. I get that you want to run your Flying Scotsman (And who wouldn't?) but I am not sure how it will look on such a small confined space? It will be good to keep up to date with the project though once it is going and we can see actual photographs of it all being built and in action.

Very nice. I like the Deltic espeically, such a huge engine and very BR Blue.

Are there not two Sherlock type shows at the moment. I have seen one based in the USA although the dectective is supposed to be British and some of it has been in the UK. Then my wife was talking about Sherlock and I thought oh yes, the one we watched the other night. But then, no it is some totally different one that I did not know about until the wife started to watch that as well. Now we have two at the same time, it is so confusing.

Although I do not collect them myself I do like to see the architecture range and new sets when they come out. I would also prefer to see one thread per set or at least smallr groups of sets so they can be found easier. But anyway, this one does not really do it for me. I have to say that from the pictures it looks a little messy and all over the place. I think it is in too small a scale to get the detail. To capture this it needs to be quite a bit bigger. As it is it just looks like a wall with random bits in a pond at the front.

this looks really great, I am not familiar with the building though as I am not from that area. Is it still being built or extended/renovated in real life or is that a little artistic licence? I love all the details around the columns that you have put in and around the windows. It is hard to say which bit i like the most, I like big buildings myself but could not have space for something this big, but all of those details are really inspiring for me.

I was also wondering where the faces come from? The engines look good, I like the James one as it is a bit bigger whilst keeping the older styling than the EN. Also everyone has Thomas, not so many James, but in your set up he has an equal place. Go James!!

I find I am able to distinguish between dark grey and DBG quite easily and have a large selection of bits from both. As I sort by color and type I have numerous pots of dark grey and DBG each in their own containers. I do find it really hard to tell the difference between grey and LBG though unless it is good daylight. At night in artificual light I am hopeless and cannot tell one from the other. So I have to do any sorting in the daytime the the respective pots. As for browns and reddish browns I find that there is so much variations in hue that it is virtually impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins as they are so simiar, therefore there are no seperate pots and they all go in together, but as I cannot tell them apart it does not matter. No one has picked me up on it yet.

I am not familiar with these Tachikoma? Which is a surprise as i did see two (I think.) Ghost in the Shell movies, but that was like twenty years or so ago, so memory not being what it used to be I may just have forgotten them. Still it is a nice idea. I could see something like this in a future war zone bringing up ammunition car from the rear on a specially laid railroad then taking the contents around to different units as required seeing as it can act off rail as well.

I wish I knew how to build one of these, It would give hours of fun. My main question though is how do you control it? Does it have to have a seperare IR unit or does it somehow use the same one the trains main motor uses? How do you control it? Do you use a standardard train controller and if so what bit, the button or the dial? If not what sort of controller does it use? Most people seem to be using the M motor which as it is small I can understand as it would be easier to fit inside of things. But the M motor like the other just goes around and around. How do you know when to stop it or cut the power? Is it possible to rig something to automatically cut the power to make the motor stop in the right place, or do you just stop it when it looks about right or when the motor starts to whine and threaten to pull the model apart? I hope someone can anser these questions. Thanks.

Looking at some clearer photos in the summer catalogue this morning I was a little disappointed to see the cattle wagon is nothing more than a flat truck with a garden fence type structure around it. The cow (Which is brown.) simply stands in the middle of this white fenced space. I was expecting something a bit more realistic such as a box car with a slit around the sides for air circulate. The large cables look good on the wagon though so that is something as well as the diesel looking pretty good, although I did not give it that much attention as I was really looking at the rolling stock. The inclusion of the level crossing is a bonus though I am not sure what that little green truck with a grey container on the back is all about. It does not seem to fit in the theme to me and seems a bit random. Perhaps they just put it in so there was something to wait at the level crossing? The white high speed train looks a lot better than in those first images. The nose looks rather good I think, OK so it is all one bit but it is a good shape and from what I could tell from the photos at a quick glance it seemed pretty flush. Also it does look as though extra carriages will be reasonably easy to build from bricklink orders. I think the station is the strangest of the sets. We were looking at it in the shop and even in a good photo seen in the catalogue leaves many questions unanserwed. I spoke to the boss who had been to the toy fare and admitted to having seen the real thing. He could not really account for it though and was himself rather perplexed at the strange canopy that appears to be a roof on the station, it just looks weird and is apparently no better on the real thing?

this little train looks great, just like some of the early ones we see in the old photos in Europe. Reminds me of the type of train we see on Swiss mountain railways, the ones with the cog wheel in the middle.

It would be a good idea to get some of these made if possible by a 3D printer. I don't know enough about them myself, but if someone with the know how did the design I think there are various sites that can then print it and we could all order them as long as they were not overly expensive. Same goes for wider radious curves, in fact that may be a very good idea.

That is a really cute little train. It would indeed be good to see it running again.

The grey roof thing over the track does seem very odd indeed, surely it cannot really be a platform roof, it is way too small?

Very nice. I am not usually into this range, but your house looks very good and a nice example of what inspiration can be found in our everyday lives. Also a good way to show that you are into LEGO without appearing to be excessively Geek like or like playing with childrens toys; the theme is adult and people can appreciate what you have done from that standpoint.

I never use LDD, I find it better to just build as you go. Sometimes you have to rebuild, but that is OK. Generally I have a good idea of what I want to build, for example I am for my next MOC looking at making a small chapel to go with my modulars. I have not started it yet, but I know that I will need lots of stone type colours such as DBG, LBG, Tan and so on, therefore as I do not have a huge stock of these I have been stocking up when I visit Bricklink for other projects such as my railways. I just look at those colour bricks and buy what they have. I know that I will need a large number of those for the walls both interior and out. My last MOC was a big hospital. I did this the same as any other. I knew what I wantewd to include, started on the ground floor, what does a hospital have? A p[lace for an ambulance to pull up, lifts, reception, consultation rooms, stairs? All of that. I start building the outside making sure I have put a place for each room. Once I have the exterior done I try to fill in the interior. Normally this will involve pulling down the exterior walls, as I need to build something into them, a good case for this is bricks with studs on the side for mounting pictures and clocks. When one floor is finished, then repaet with the next. I always finish one floor before I start the next, both inside and out. You can always change it later if you want to! You have to obviously make sure the next floor sits neatly onto the first and so on! Good luck with your build!

I always stack my bricks. I only get to an actual LEGO store once a year so i take my time. Usually I build a brick core of whatever is avaible. but i go for greys and natural colours if I can. Then i make sure the bottom is filled with little tiny 1X1 bits if they have any and then stack whatever smaller bricks around the inner core but make sure to stuff the gaps with tiny bricks, tiles, plates as I go. It takes forever but as it is once a year I am not that worried. I went to Cardiff store in January and got 8 large cups and ended up with well over 6000 elements from them when counted. Not sure if it is the same in all countries, but in the UK if you reuse your old cups you get £0.25 off. Not a lot but that is £2.00 on 8 large cups!

I wonder how wide spread the movie release will be? My local cinema has no mention of the LEGO movie in its 'what's coming soon' style magazine? When I asked at the cinema they did not seem to know what I was on about. I am hoping that it will not be something that is only shown at Saturday Mornings kids sessions, that would not at all be suitable for adult viewing as I do not have a kid to take and there will be spilt drinks, and popcorn everywhere not too mention a lot of noise! Maybe some of us will have to wait for it to come out on DVD.

That was really good to see. An awful lot of bricks there.