td8981

Oh man, this one brings back memories. I got the Metroliner when I was a kid, but never a speed regulator (PARENTS, right?), so I always had my eye on the trains section in the catalog, and I just thought this one looked SO cool. I forgot how it was designed to come apart with that strange pod system, it really does look almost like something out of space. Congrats on picking up one of the sets from when you were a kid, btw! I know how great of a feeling that is, I've filled out my collection with almost all of the ones I used to beg for over the last few years.

I'm a huge fan of this little station, I absolutely love the way it looks. It's almost exactly what I would picture out maybe on a more rural rail line. I'm assuming you built it as more of a display piece than an actual station to put on a track layout, but even so, I'll echo what everyone else has said about the clearance between the rails and platform (on the chance you ever decide to integrate it into a train display!) Great work, looking forward to seeing more from you!

As soon as I saw the topic name I knew I had to chime in here. Last year I got my trains up and going again for the first time around my new kitten, and she was TERRIFIED of them. Full on back arched, fur standing on end, hissing, and taking swipes at them when they got near her. That said, she still sat dead center of the layout all day while they were running.

I was really excited about this one when I first heard about it, but after seeing it I'm a little underwhelmed. The $200 price tag and incredibly low price/piece ratio are NOT helping.

I don't think the solution gets any more elegant than that! A different suggestion I might add is if you wanted to be able to control the platform and the dancers separately, you can power a Technic turntable underneath the platform to make that spin, then run the axle driving the dancers through the center to a second motor. That setup would let you reverse direction of the dancers, or use a different gearing to make them spin faster/slower in relation to the overall movement. Might give you a more interesting dance! On another note, I never had any idea this was how the haunted mansion ghosts were done before I checked Wikipedia on the Pepper's ghost illusion. I'm gonna be craning my neck searching for the rooms with the mannequins next time I'm at Disney now.

My name's Tom, I was standing in the center taking bricks from the kids most of the weekend, although on Saturday morning I did get to build a pretty decent chunk of Spongebob Steve really was hilarious, my absolute favorite thing that came out of him during the event was when some kid asked how he got his job: "I killed my predecessor in a duel. Mortal combat, in an arena we'd just finished building out of LEGOs"

I was working the event at Jersey Gardens Friday and Saturday, wish I'd realized before hand that I wasn't the only one from EB, would have been neat to be able to say hello.

For the two guys having the elevator problems also: Like I added in my quick edit above, the rubber bands (one of the last steps in book 2) will pull the stick back a little bit and straighten out the elevators, but the range of motion on them is still going to be tiny. It was enough to make me pull my plane apart and rebuild, but ending up with it the exact same way the second time convinced me that I was correct in the first place. It's just an awkward progression of steps that makes the design LOOK wrong, when in fact nothing is.

Anyone else had a problem getting the elevator flaps to work? I've pulled apart almost the entire mechanism at this point and they still kind of default to the 'up' position. I know it's not correct, since I've seen the in-store model built, but I can't find the problem for the life of me. Gonna be time to wreck this and start over soon, I think. EDIT: Just in case anyone else is seeing a similar problem, the elevators don't get straightened out until one of the last pages of the instruction book; they're going to stick towards the top until rubber bands are added WAY later. Really stupid choice on LEGO's part to have the steps nowhere near each other.

I'd bet money that the haunted house is going to be the next modular. Anyone who thinks the 'leaks' in the videos are an accident is kidding themselves, and they've never been anything smaller than an exclusive type set. To the poster who mentioned it not fitting on the CC standard, my impression was that it was a corner with the first connection point on the back (away from the photo we saw) and the second in the fence on the left. Pure speculation there, though.

Actually, when I was a kid (before the different action figure type sets like Throwbots and Bionicle) I used to use the holes to make the technic guys power armor type suits. Using the existing articulation points on the figure was the best way I ever found to build leg joints without using a ton of space.

At my store they stick to the 15 parts rule pretty well, but they're pretty lenient as far as what 15 parts those are. I've never seen anyone take 15 of any single part type, but say, exchanging accessories for extra hats/hair is fair game.

I have a few friends that work in a LEGO store, I was in there just the other day watching a couple of the employees feeling the packets, helping a kid find the minifig he was looking for. I was fairly amused by it, and immediately thought of this thread. I asked them about it, and they said they do it all the time. The assistant manager even chimed in and mentioned having an army of musketeers (although largely from the build a mini bar, I think).

My original vote was going to be for the Sheriff's office; It looks exactly like how I picture a jail in the early 1900's. The saloon was a close second. Once I got a good luck at the insides of the buildings though, I just fell in love with the piano on the second floor. I couldn't explain why if I wanted to, but that little detail was why I switched votes. (Of course, I'll pick up both of them in a heartbeat as soon as you've got the votes on Cuusoo ) Great designs all around, and good luck! It's really something seeing such a huge part of the community pulling together to get your project noticed.

Thanks a lot! All of this is very helpful, I'm going to look into the couple of options you guys presented when I get home from work tonight.