HereWeGoAgain

Yes, creating textures, even by just adding plates, adds a lot to any Lego layout. I've spent the last few days moc'ing out the sand/water/rock formations I'm planning to add around the base structures of the bridge (water depth is more challenging that it looks). I've had to place a relatively massive order of 1x4 trans light blue plates today (512 of them) for the water as I don't want it to be open-stud. I initially wanted to go for 1x2 plates, but there are no sellers on Bricklink, in Switzerland, with 1000+ pieces. I could order outside of CH, but since we're not part of the EU, the import fees + VAT I'd have to pay make no sense. I could only find one seller with a large amount of 1x4 plates in my country, so I'm going with that. The next update will probably be pictures of the progress I make on this, might take a bit of time as I wait for parts to arrive and I only have about an hour a day to work on my city :). In the meantime I hope I can set up the last table next week-end, then I can move modulars over, fix the tunnel for the other trains as mentionned before, and do some re-arranging of the current buildings. In any case, thanks for leaving a comment!

Thank you!

Hello again brick fans, Small update, I was able to put up the middle table and test fit my bridge. I use the Olov ikea ajustable table feet, it's about the only one I found with like 30cm of ajustability. The large tables are at max settings, so I had to find the right height for the middle one. The Olovs are a bit of a pain to adjust correctly, but here we go. The table is a perfect 3 baseplates width, don't let the 1st picture fool you. Behind the bridge we'll have more water, then the beach with the Old Fishing store and at the back, I'll have to figure out a way to get cars and trains to pass through as I won't be able to use a road base plate. Also all around this middle table there will be rock work and a large ramp/stair for vehicles and minifigs to come from the city to the beach. And finally, under this middle table, we'll have an underwater scene. This is all going to take me a lot of time to build...lol 'Till next time.

This is really awesome! Love the detailing!

Thanks for the feedback guys! Yeah I understand people building their own brick-made roads, maybe I'll get to that one day myself as it gives you the opportunity to create physical roadwork etc.. I wish Lego made narrower street baseplates (like without the "sidewalks"). Not sure how that would look though, but the one annoying thing about road plates is the building space it takes away from you. Anyway, I finally got the 2 pieces of wood needed to build my tables. I'll probably try to at least set up the middle one for the train bridge tonight and the larger one this weekend. Until then I probably won't do much custom building as I need to see how the bridge fits with the rail layout above since the radiator on the wall is going to slightly offset that middle table. I'm really eager to start working on the beach/ocean side for which I have big plans. I'll also have to adjust my mountain tunnel slightly as I have noticed that the non-cargo trains that have longer noses scrape on the entrances of the tunnels with the turn. sigh! When I test fitted I used the locomotive from set 7939. Cheers

Hello fans of the brick, Over the last few days I was able to complete all 6 sections of the train tracks and assemble the bridge. Here's the final result. I had to move the build on top of the freezer in the cellar to take good pictures of it. As I mentionned previously, this will span accross the middle table where the ocean and the beach will reside and connect to the other table where the city will expand. Tomorrow I'll go pick up my tables, finally!

Good to know, it's the 1st of the wave I built.

I built the new street sweeper the other day. What a cool little city vehicle, the moving parts work just as a real one. Surprising bonus to me: no stickers!

Hello folks, No I have not abandonned the build of my city. Just had little time to spend on Lego latelly, and when I did, I spent it sorting bricks and tidying things up more than anything else. Also there was a delay and the pieces of wood I ordered to finish off my tables, I'll be able to pick them up next Saturday after waiting for a month. As the 1st table was full, I couldn't do much on the city. I also had to order quite a lot of bricks for my bridge. I ended up getting a lot of them directly from Lego. I think sometimes, when you take into account that shipping is free for large orders and taxes are already included, it's not necesserally more expensive. In any case, I have started to build the bridge. The final build will be three 32x32 baseplates long. The part for the train tracks is largely inspired by the spiderman bridge attack set. I've designed it in a modular fashion. Enjoy the pics.

To be fair, they just did jungle explorers which would pretty much be the same no? Frankly I can't see Lego not bringing back pirates again in their own lineup at some point. The good thing is we're getting 2 pirate sets this year: the bay and a creator pirate ship.

They should do it like for minifigs now where they give you a hairpiece along with a helmet, give you a regular windshield along with the printed one for those who don't want to use the stickers.

I don't mind it being called ocean exploration :-) Honestly except for the police stuff, the 2020 city sets until now are kind of cool, although I haven't picked up any yet. They do seem to be redesigning some of the old school stuff (the street sweeper and the safari truck). So who knows, the new diver sets might be in the same boat...

Yeeeah, I have it too, love the dead shark or whale or whatever it was. It's all in pieces but still complete, even have the rocks with the fish stickers still. I also picked up the one that had the white underwater base a few month ago that I never owned as a kid, used but with its box an all. Cost me like 70 bucks or so. I' m looking forward to building my underwater display with all this stuff.

I missed out on the 2015 ones as I wasn't out of my dark ages. I did get my hands on the set with the exploration boat and the underwater wreckage though which is a really neat set. I'm mostly excited about the underwater base but I have to admit if they put another useless airplane in there it' s going to annoy me as well.

Woohoo, we're getting 4 new sea exploration sets for summer 2020 with and underwater base and all. Always loved this subtheme of city, hope they look great!

I suppose you are a fan of the Architecture line of sets? ;-) To me this set is of architectural significance mostly in the techniques achieved to create a model that is true to the original in a small scale. Whether it can or should be considered as an architectural icon is debatable though. Looking at it, it has all the traits of what I would consider an Lego architecture set. First is the scale of it in the sense that it isn't a minifig scale building. Second is the box's color (all black, like all other architecture sets). Third is the fact that the architecture sets all depict real places, buildings or cities in the world. To me creator expert is more inclined for sets that have a play factor to them and aren't purely designed to get displayed. It is the case for all expert models up to this point (even all the cars we got, although display models and not minifig scale, have opening doors/hoods and whatnot that you can play with). This stadium though has 0 play features. Anyway, not like we can do anything about how they classified the set, but to me it is strange .

I wonder why this isn't released in the architecture line? Creator expert doesn't make sense to me. Of well, it's a nice building overall, but I won't pick this up as I'm really not into football.

I guess it all depends on how much Lego needs to rework a model and also likely depends on the size. I can also see licensing playing a role. Steamboat was released in 2 months since Lego and Disney are already partnered. In any case, I hope it will be as good as the treehouse.

I swear, like most people, I haven't been more excited about a Lego set than this pirate bay, I still have my Barracuda ship from the 90s. It's missing the sails, but other than that it's complete, still have the instructions too. When do you think more information might come out about the official product?

Hello everyone, First of all, a happy new year to anyone checking out the topic! I haven't made any major update to my city. I was off work for 2 weeks like a lot of people and spent most of my time with family. My Lego time has been mostly spent on sorting some collections I acquired and building some sets I had purchased (Like the Fairground mixer, got it used a while back, no box, 99.9% complete, with instructions for 50CHF, quite a deal). To expand the city I also needed to do fine measurements to order the 2 other tables that will have the city span accross the room. I have decided the middle section for the beach/ocean will be 3 base plates wide and 4 (or 4.5) deep while the right section will be the same as the other one (6.5 base plates long and 4 base plates wide). I will soon place the order for those. I did complete the second floor of my modular above. I really like how it looks, but it's just way too different from the 1st floor to have them together. I will probably redesign that 1st floor in the future so that project it on hold. I'll probably rearrange the buildings on the 1st table and have another official modular next to the pet shop to replace my modular MOC. Finally, I have started to design the bridge portion for the train to go over the ocean using LDD. Here's a sneak peak of how one end looks like: For the bridges middle section, I will probably take some inspiration from the Spider-man bridge attack set. Cheers

Sorry I know the rules state to send a PM to the indexer if possible, but I'm not sure why this would be useful in this case. Does anyone have a LDD file of set 7781 Batman & Twoface's escape? I got the set used but without instructions, and the PDF instructions available online are unreadable, way too saturated in black so you can't see what exact black piece goes where. I have found a good quality PDF for the batmobile only, but not for the armored truck. Someone did post an LXF file of this set on page 155, but the file is 0kb when downloaded. Thanks

@LegoDW yep I already thought of that, very simple yet effective. Everything in due time :) I had some time yesterday to work on the station. It did become larger than I initially planned, but I actually find it more interesting now that it spans across 2 16x32 baseplates. There is still a lot of detailing to do and its far from complete, but we now have a nice big plateform with stairs that go across. I don't know yet if I'll keep the station itself with that wavy roof or not as I have to also do one on the other platform which is currently empty. I might also do some changes to the bridge's rails, idk yet. I kinda winged it yesterday. Anyway, some pictures: Bonus, the mess that my current Office/Lego room is

So, while I wait for a bricklink order to arrive to complete that 2nd floor, I have started work on beach access by train and by car with a parking lot. First I created a little train station at the edge of the table where minifigs can get out and go down to the future beach. I sketched it out on LDD and ended up winging it a bit with the parts I had at home. It's really not complete yet. There will be an overpass to get on both sides of the train (2nd platform I didn't have time to build it physically yesterday): This is honestly my 1st time making a train station, but it has the basics: somewhere to sit on and some trash cans. Here you can see from the side how it looks like. As I'm building this on a 16x32, I had to widen the platform to 6 studs. You can see I started creating a parking lot for car access to the beach. Don't mind the yellow 1x8 tiles, they aren't aligned correctly with the station. The idea will be that you can park 2 cars with their hoods going slightly under the station. I was kinda puzzled what to put on the station's roof. I ended up creating some waves and have like a mini island at the top. I figured since this is the beach's train station, I might as well reflect the theme on it. Hope you enjoyed this mini-update! Cheers

As much as I find this new modular nice, the interior is a bit dull. Or is it just me?

Well I really like it. Curious to see the interior as well.