patox

@Modeltrainman had some great ideas, but I wanted to try my hand at 3D printing a piece that I designed. Here's the corner that the train needs to negotiate: And here's the 3D-printed train base: The shortened 60197 passenger train:

Thanks for the tips!

I designed a 16 x 6 train plate with similar functionality as the ones in set 60197. How's this?: Also, since I'm new to trains, is it frowned upon or considered cheating, if you design and print your own pieces?

Hi, I've just picked up my first Lego train, 60197, and the carriages seem long. I'm trying to run the train under a city with lots of sharp turns. I'm using custom 3D-printed R24 tracks. I'm completely new to this and I don't know anything about the train system. What's the way to build the undercarriage so it can handle tight corners? Do the Lego train base plates provide the best performance? Are there any 16-stud long plates that will work? I'm thinking creating a custom plate and 3D-printing it.

This week I started a new project with an underground track on a Nilo table. Since the table is small, I wanted the tightest turns possible. I looked into Trixbrix, but the shipping doubled the cost of the R24 curve set. Also the Trixbrix pieces are not injection-molded, they are FDM printed. So I thought I'd try to print my own. I fired up my Prusa and printed out the tracks linked above. For the R24 22.5 degree curve sections, they took 90 minutes each to print. I've printed up 10 so far and need 6 more. They fit together really well. And with the gray filament from eSun, the color is fairly close to the Lego pieces. It's actually quite shocking how well they all work together.

I'd like to see this:

Here's something I was working on a couple years back. The window design is from Jamie Berard's City Hall.

I found this on a German site about the toy fair. Is this the Friends 41015 Dolphin Cruiser?

This scene isn't in the movie!

I called Lego Education and they're not available in the United States. I seemed to recall a large box at Big Shop at Legoland and someone commenting on how expensive the huge box was, but I was too busy managing a bunch of kids and trying to leave the park that I didn't follow up on what the large box was. I called up Legoland and spoke to someone at the Big Shop. The item has been discontinued for a couple years, but the Big Shop does indeed carry them. Every now and then Lego Denmark does a limited manufacturing run to replace the water park pieces, any leftovers goes to the retail store. But the price is way, way higher than the original $235 when it was in the US Lego Education site. They're asking $579. Crazy.

We've been to LegoLand in California 3 times and really like the giant foam bricks in the water park. Does anyone know where these are from? Are they a discontinued Lego product? (There are other discontinued products there, for example, they have tons of the Block-o-diles in Duploville). Or are these a blocks from another manufacturer that have the Lego name on it? Maybe Edublocks or something else? I've literally been searching hours to find something and I've turned up nothing. Thanks.

Shaun needs some friends.

I love the Toy Story Green Army Men and who doesn't love Lego? Put the two together and it's the ultimate minifig. But then I was thinking that I wanted to jazz them up a bit. Maybe a bazooka. Maybe a pistol. Unfortunately, Lego doesn't make these parts in green. I'd never ordered non-Lego parts before and at first I went to BrickArms. Unfortunately, they discontinued their Green Army Weapon Pack. BrickArms didn't even sell the green parts individually anymore. After doing some digging, I found Minifig Cat. And not only did they have green parts, almost their entire line was available in green. They're located in Taiwan, so I was a bit hesitant. Their store is also a bit sparse on how their products look when equipped with minifigs. But after seeing all their BrickLink reviews and finding some pictures of completed minifigs on Flickr, I took the plunge. At first I only wanted a few extra parts, but with a $5 shipping cost and all the other unique options, I decided to go all in and fully kit out my Green Army Men. It took 9 days for the items to arrive in California. And here's my new pimped out Green Army Men: Here's your standard Green Army squad with mandatory mine sweeper: Here they are decked out: The whole squad: Side by side comparison: There you have it. I was really impressed with the quality. Now they're going to need some Green Army Men wives.