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westracing01

Eurobricks Vassals
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Everything posted by westracing01

  1. westracing01
    Very nicely done. I love the rake. Going to have to incorporate that into my Indy/F1 car.
  2. westracing01
    All depends on the layout. I had the perfect spot for the BH, but everyone doesn't have a 45 degree angle baked into their layout. I believe the Jazz Club will slot in next between the Detectives Office and Police Station in my layout. Ideally I wanted to put it near the BH because I think the themes go together, but at the same time the Jazz Club next to a Pool Hall seems to make some sense. Birch Books and The Pet Store/Brown Stone will move next to the Town Hall and Grand Emporium and Green Grocer respectively. This is certainly not my favorite, but it's not terrifying. I stand by my "Eh" from earlier. I doesn't really matter though. Once you get locked into a collection like many of us have, where we have all of them (yes, even Market Street) you're going to buy this regardless. It would've had to have been something truly awful for me to not consider getting it. Is the Jan 1 for VIP's in-store or online only? Like others, I usually head down to the Lego Store on New Years Day to pick mine up.
  3. westracing01
    Very eh... Will buy it of course, because I've bought them all so far... But this one is the least excited I've been for in a long, long time.
  4. westracing01
    Longest running Lego Theme? Has to be Town/City no?
  5. westracing01
    ^^ That's a good idea! I also like the placement there. A Hotel next to the Parisian Restaurant always struck me as the right location.
  6. westracing01
    The wedge filled in with a "poured concrete slab". The wedge with as many tiles as I had available to complete the look. I have parts in my bricklink cart to finish it off. New catch fencing to protect the Art Gallery instead of the bill boards. Those bill boards were moved down toward T2/T3 in front of the stairs to the top of the garages. And just a shot of the 8 wide Supra Medical Car #2 on it's side of the road to show more correctly the scale of width of the 8 wide cars on the road.
  7. westracing01
    Yeah, the 8-wides I wasn't thrilled with when they went there. That's what sort of forced me to expand the garages and open the apex of the corners up. I have room to widen the streets but that would be a massive undertaking and I'm not sure I want to deal with that. But, you never know. The rollback has a 10 wide flatbed portion and it basically takes up a whole lane. We'll see how it shakes out. Despite the American flare of the buildings (and the palm trees), the track/town has in my mind always been somewhere in Europe. They do tend to have narrower roads in places so it's not totally out of whack although I do agree with the general assessment. I think the compact nature of the circuit also hurts the perception of scale but that's not something I can do much about. If I ever widen the roads, it'll be one brick height (turned on its side) on either side. Right now, the roads are 8 bricks high (a little more than 8 studs) laid flat, so any expansion to include a road "shoulder" would up that to 10 and probably be about the right width. I think Green Grocer is staying where it is, for now. It depends on what the next modulars are. If something comes along I think works better there then I will move it. I have room planned for the next 5 years of modulars starting in 2023. 2 spaces you see here and there is room for 3 more where the grandstand is across from the Palace Cinema. After that, it's going to get tricky. As for that wedge... Not sure the solution there yet but I was just thinking about that whole corner and it's something I will start playing around with. Probably copy what I did on the other end of the back stretch but I'm not sure I have any of the parts I need. If I can find another couple of angled parts then I can lay down the framework of what I need and head off to bricklink to order parts as I'm totally out of pieces in dark bluish gray for the roads.
  8. westracing01
    I noticed that too. I only had one of two that were really just resting there, the rest of them more or less were secure.
  9. westracing01
    OK, some random updates then the new Boutique Hotel... 1) The next two modulars foundations are laid... Work continues... The road plates are just place holders until I get back to the store for the proper baseplates. 2) This is the best shot I could get of what I did to fill in the "almost" 45* angle. Some trickery was used to cover the gaps and I happened to have the correct angle pieces to build the bases. Now I just need to order 4 of the 45* triangle tiles. Cleanup from the Porsche wiping out some of the barrier and a catch fence post... And now here's the new Hotel in it's home. Also seen are the second medical car giving the Porsche driver a lift back to the pits and at the top, the remains of his wrecked mount on the rollback. BH to the right looking back up the back stretch... Red flags can be seen out of course. Wider shot of T5 where the BH nestles in next to the 10th Anniversary Assembly Square... That wasn't on purpose, just a happy coincidence. Full on shot... And a shot looking at over the top of the Marlboro Bridge. The angle of the hotel worked PERFECTLY for my layout due to the angled backstretch. I also replaced the palm tree in the set with one of my gazillion that I have. The art gallery is almost lost as it's hidden behind a couple of billboards that are there in lieu of catch fencing to protect the store and it's patrons. The BH as it was built before placement.
  10. westracing01
    Agree on your points AFOLguy. Those cabinet doors are silly loose. I quite enjoyed building this. The layout of construction was quite good though I do often ask myself when building these why Lego decides to use the parts they do. I mean, I know it's to up the piece count so they can justify the costs, but, for instance, there are many times where they use an "L" 2x2 and a 1x1 where are regular ole square 2x2 would suffice just fine as the piece gets hidden. Regardless, the second Hotel has taken its place amongst its brethren (see build thread for pics.)
  11. westracing01
    Got it yesterday. Line was insane but the Lego Store employees came down the line with little tags of the different new sets and handed them out to everyone based on what they wanted. Walked in the store, handed it to the cashier, he handed me the hotel, poof, done. Will begin building today after I run some errands. No gift unfortunately.
  12. westracing01
    Despite the negativity we all know a lot of us will be there first thing Saturday to buy it and that the set will sell out by mid next week. I fully plan to be in line Saturday morning at the Lego Store to get mine.
  13. westracing01
    You would have to think that even on the town level, a doctor's office would be in the cards if not a small hospital. That would be the one I really want (hospital.)
  14. westracing01
    So actually this wasn't as big a change as I thought. I have the foundation for the new hotel laid for the most part. Now, where the bridge comes down on that little platform will be the very edge of the new hotel right about in front of the Art Gallery part. It'll land on what would be the curb and there should be 3-4 studs of space between the edge of the bridge and the gallery. The angle of the hotel means that anyone in the rooms on that side would have an excellent view of the approach to T4/T5 from their window. Should work well. We'll find out for sure in three weeks.
  15. westracing01
    Currently working on clearing room for the Boutique Hotel. I moved Market Street over next to Brick Bank and the Detective Office and the new Hotel will go in the corner of T4/T5 (Cinema) across the street from the Palace Theatre. The angle is almost perfect as the back stretch approaches under the Marlboro bridge at a 45* angle. The only hangup I ran into was the bridge. I had to move it ever so little and I will have to build some new steps on the infield side so the stairs will actually turn coming down. Still not 100% sure how I'm going to work that but we'll figure it out. Should have updated pictures of that in a couple days once I get it sorted.
  16. westracing01
    Anyone who has all of the Modulars I would think this an automatic buy. I know for myself, I'll be in line on Sat Jan 1 to get it. Due to the varied geometry of my layout, I believe I have the perfect spot to place this. Now I just have to make sure I really have the needed space.
  17. westracing01
    Rebuilt the tow truck to allow for two across the cab on a 6 stud wide with doors. Between the top picture and this one, you can see how with right parts, the minifigs will sit in between the studs. They don't click in but the friction between the studs keeps them pretty tight and straight... Along with the close confines of a regular cab. The reason for the rebuild. Counterweight. Lifting the Indycar off the ground picked the front wheels up so I took one of the old floating boat ballasts and shoved in the front end of the truck. Need to go one stud length longer on the nose and use a more sloped windshield. The finished truck picking up the stranded car. All 4 wheels of the Indycar are off the ground and the tow truck is level. Also built and boom extension that you can many of the real life tow trucks use when dealing with an Indycar.
  18. westracing01
    Small edits and fixes to the Indycar. This is the car in it's disassembled form showing the actual chassis. The sidepods, engine cover, rear wing, diffuser, wheels/tires and front nose cone/wing are all designed to be easily removable. I might change the attachment method for the rear wing to make it a little easier to get on and off. The car all put together for it's photo-op. Complete with perfectly poseable font wheels. It's somewhere in another picture but there's a piece of thread that runs across the chassis from one wheel to the other front and back that simulates the wheel tethers.
  19. westracing01
    Haha. Thank you! I don't even really want to count the cost of this thing. I've never really added it up but you could start with every Modular ever released (including Market Street) at retail price. The brick built roads were SO much more part intensive and costly than I estimated at first. That was the number one reason why I've shelved my plans to expand the track. We're currently building a garage and I had originally intended to put a loft in it and move the track out there so I could build the long course. But after building the roads for the current size I realized that the cost to build that long track was just so astronomical that I could never truly justify it. However... That said... Once the real life garage is built, if there's any way to weasel the space needed up in those trusses... Maybe...
  20. westracing01
    Thank you! I was editing the post to provide more details when you posted.
  21. westracing01
    OK, so here we go... Potato photo's FTW... In no particular order... Shot down the front straight of the extension of the table needed, the main grandstand, some pit road and the overhang of the new catch fencing. I had to extend the track 16 studs to make room for the wider pit road and extended garage. Workers are here busy preparing the site for new construction of... Surprise me Lego. Shot of the new T1/T2 complex complete with Lego gravel trap finally built the right way. There's something like 4000 1x1 round, tan plates in there.Changed the pit exit to easier to navigate with the larger cars. Slight modification to the Corvette C8. I DO NOT like the studs showing on the bottom and I think it's a little silly Lego chose that solution. There are other ways to do it. My quick fix was to use a 1x8 with the rail on it to simulate ground effects side skirts. I actually really like this solution because the shape of the C8 lends itself to this kind of design had they built it this way in real life. The Ferrari F8 converted into GT race car spec. There are two of these. This is the privateer car. The factory car (not pictured) has slightly different aero and rear diffuser. The Toyota Supra Medical Car complete with doctor and nurse aboard. This is the stock 911 converted to 8 stud. Looks a little... Smooshed maybe and it's built as a single seater. I imagined the Porsche engineers saw a loophole in the rules and decided to basically build a short wheelbase prototype, much to the chagrin of the other competitors. New T6 gravel trap/runoff. This is an example of what the additional T2 runoff and opened corner apex's provided. Before, the outer wall was right at that white line basically making it almost impossible to go two wide through the corner. Here, the Ferrari is exiting the pits, staying inside the red line, while the Vette has ample room to navigate around it. The new extended, angled catch fencing. This is in select parts of the track where the grandstands are either very close to the track, or it's a high speed corner. Forgive me as I don't remember the part numbers off the top of my head for these but they were really tricky to keep stable. The straight post catch fence stays put pretty well, but these were very fragile. What I wound up doing was looping a string over the eyelet of the top vertical post and then anchoring them on either end to put tension on the strings. T2 with no cars present. This shows how far I pulled the apex back and shows the additional runoff. New traffic light. Expanded garages. The entire garage was expanded 12 studs to accommodate the length of the new 8 wide cars. Garage width was OK. The pit road was expanded 4 studs so the minifigures didn't get run over on the tight pit road.
  22. westracing01
    Holy cow! I haven't updated this since January? No good... I will get pictures tomorrow. I have only one handy and it's not what anyone would want to see. However, in the meantime, I will give a brief list of what has been updated... 1) New angled catch fencing 2) Opened up all the corners a little 3) Added runoff at T2 (I really like this) 4) Built a new gravel trap and filled with real Lego gravel (you'll see what approx 4000 parts look like...) 5) Expanded the pit lane and the garage, changed the garage doors 6) Added a medical car (I really like this and all I did was add some lights to the 8-wide Supra, yet somehow it looks just about right) 7) Rebuilt the Porsche 911 into an 8 wide (this is cool, but you have to use your imagination a bit) along with two Ferraris, the Corvette C8 and the Ford GT (still working on this one)... All 5 of them are practicing right now as I type There's probably more I'm forgetting but as I said, I will get pictures tomorrow and I will try to get some detail shots of what I did with the catch fence. I have to string a little more cable tonight to put the finishing touches on it.
  23. westracing01
    I got the Ford set for my birthday. That is a deceptively cool set. The Ford GT looks much better in person than it does in pictures and the Bronco is really quite nice, though very large. Still working out the changes needed to convert the Ford GT to Ford GTE spec.
  24. westracing01
    My kingdom to get an official hospital.
  25. westracing01
    If building in detail, brick built is the way to go. That said, brick built is also cost prohibitive since you need a baseplate to build on, then a zillion bricks to pull it off. Curves are both easier (very customizable for different angles) and more difficult (getting them to line up well is very hard for me.) Kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't either way for Lego.
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