brickzone

An absolutely astounding street scene. I am indeed very envious (I have enough to do one, maybe two buildings in this style to sit alongside my CC, GG and MS). Envious of the display space too :) I like the distinctive nature of each building and yet their regularity too - they don't look "ad-hoc" but rather carefully planned, yet they are not plain either! The architectural style sits so very well with Café Corner and Green Grocer. My brief comments don't do this justice, but it's so overwhelming that I barely know where to start! I'd like to see more on the bike/cycle shop/museum - the roof construction looks very detailed and intricate. The link in your first post is unfortunately *not* to a close up of that building, but rather the same link as for the previous building - you could edit your post to correct this! Actually you could probably put that many photos inline without problems if the image size isn't too large. Truly works of art!

Thanks for the comments. I would certainly have liked some of those snow-covered pine trees - but alas, they are expensive and I don't have any. The white leaves used to snow-cover the MMP tree are in fact my entire stock of those! legotrainfan - I did see that thread and thought it was quite interesting! As regards snow on the train - well, apart from it being tricky to do, the train has just pulled into the station so I think it wouldn't be realistic even for the carriage or any less "hot" areas (the snow would fall off). I should have filled the tender with coal mind you, and perhaps some snow would sit on top of that. However, one could also assume the train has arrived after the snowfall (indeed the market stalls also have no snow on them - although the car outside the station does - I guess it has been there a while!) Klaus-Dieter - well, I had hoped to experience a proper German/Bavarian Christmas market by visiting Munich again this year before Christmas, but alas finances don't allow it. So part of this was to remind me of the past experiences!

Thanks for comments and especially the frontpaging (although as I say, the station is but a part of the Winter Village scene which I have now posted). Yes, classic red shutters at the ticket counter - I would have liked green, but actually red probably works better on the brown interior wall. DJForce - it would look more "boring", but I think based on my experience with the Norman church (also in the picture), dark grey plates for the roof would set it off nicely too and it would look "the part". The base would be grey - as outside the front would be a station yard or town street.

Hello again. Well, I'm back to post photos of the festive Winter Village scene of which the station is but a part! The scene is a collection of Lego model (Winter Toy Shop), modded Lego model (Town Hall), modded old MOC of mine (Norman church), family MOCs (weaver's cottage from previous Medieval village MOCs, shops) and my MOC (station). The scene was in fact my Mum's idea (also an avid AFOL) and one of my brothers was involved too in arranging the shops beside the station. Here is the scene from the front showing the square: Angle showing station/shops (shops are unfinished): Angle showing Town Hall and Norman church: Close up on the choir (minifigs arranged/belonging to my Mum). The building was a Weaver's Cottage (built by my Mum/brother) in the mediaevel village scene: View across the square to the finely dressed people leaving church: This view shows the shops (my Mum/brother's creation) and the stalls. People are skating on the frozen pond in the village square. Town hall is closed for Christmas: Close up on the toy stall by the Winter Toy Shop. Where did that stall and stall owner come from!? And finally a view of the town overlooking the station and Emerald Night which is just pulling in to the station.

Hello all - well, finally I get to post an MOC I was working on earlier this month. My very first railway station in Lego, and finally using the Emerald Night I built months ago! Due to the constrained space, unfortunately not part of a working train layout (for now!). The station was built with a Winter Village in mind (MOC posted in this thread) and so is snow-covered (white plate covered!) A view of the front of the station on its own (in the final display pictured last here, there is a building hiding the platform): Just another angle to get a sense of proportions. The ordinary stone "house" look was modelled roughly on some existing/closed simple Irish railway stations (although many of the ones in use are on former Great Southern & Western Railway which had many pseudo-chapel/castle buildings with fancy parapets and gothic windows, or have detailed Victorian trappings) View from the platform - here you can see the canopy for the platform. Close up on some waiting passengers and the station master. The people are an attempt at roughly early 20th century - as with others in the Winter Village. The roof comes off in two pieces to allow access to the interior, and platform under canopy. Another view showing (poorly unfortunately) the uncovered platform and seating. There is a little room for the station master on the first floor (unfortunately out of focus). He has a radiogram (or whatever you call it). A view inside the waiting room - a nice fire to keep people warm. In case you thought a clock should be in the waiting room - there is one on the back wall above the ticket counter. This wall simply lifts out to allow access to the ticket office. A simple filing cabinet, and hidden by the ticket man there is a little safe under the stairs. The stairs were, needless to say, tough to fit in (but I never like to omit stairs)! Finally a view of the station in-situe in the Winter Village (again, will be posting this later, although the building beside the station which is not my own MOC/MOD/model, isn't finished yet).

If you don't mind having to clean the Lego, and you're not looking for very specific parts (just general new colours and pieces), I'd recommend ebay. Just look out over a week or two for random mixed lots with newer Lego (you can tell usually by whether it is old primary colours, or more interesting newer colours). This can be very cheap, and gets you an interesting mix of bricks to start with. Plus if say you bought 10 kg, it will be a good start for a collection (indeed you might actually be buying someone's old collection). I find sorting it fun too - you never know what you'll find! My best lot so far included an almost-complete King's Castle Siege - great for parts (loads of new bluish grey, dark green plates, new dark bluish grey plates, etc.) I find bricklink is only good for *specific* parts - you can get certain parts cheaply but if you want a good bulk mix, not so easy as rarer parts are priced more. A mixed ebay lot will be as cheap (or cheaper) than buying a load of plain parts from bricklink, but will undoubtedly included special parts, big and small and all manner of colours and types of bricks, plates, etc. (that is, if you buy what looks like a "collection" with recent colours).

I think I like the middle best. Sometimes I have trouble putting the finishing touches to an MOC, and also sometimes things just won't gel together correctly at the beginning. Actually I'm finding it useful at the beginning to do a little bit of tinkering in LDD before starting with real bricks. I think it is something to do with it being easier to take bricks away again in LDD, whereas in real life I'm loathe to even "unbuild" a handful of bricks or redo something (even though that is often necessary). I also like the "pre-start" bit - i.e. playing around with an idea in your head for an MOC. This can be an extended process - as I sometimes can have a rough idea of a couple of MOCs I'd like to do for months before I get around to it (given that I can only do a certain amount of Lego building).

So with 6.6% consumer price deflation here in Ireland today (NYT link), when can we expect to see the new cheaper Lego prices on S@H? (i.e. the same as already in Irish toy shops, and in most other Eurozone countries)

Very nice interior - I think the double seating works OK even with the only 1-wide gangway - it makes for a more "full" looking train from the outside if you were to put more people in.

Thanks for the comments - interesting to see your design Cooper. An impressive amount of dark red plate, that's for sure! With my own attempt, I wanted to maintain the base as just two plates high (although in a sense it is three plates high if you count the added plates inside the carriage) and the bogies/carriage at the same relative heights. This does mean that the entire carriage resting on the bogies is really just resting on those two modified 2x2 plates with technic hole - but there doesn't seem to be any strain. Captain Zuloo - 8 wide would be nice for interior detail as you say, but I am noticing that though the Emerald Night carriage didn't look right at only 6 wide, even at 7 wide it starts to highlight more the different scale used for the loco, or the shortness of the carriage, or something. Also I need to stick some kind of end doors into the passageways (looks silly that people can step out of the end of the carriage to the tender or track).

Hi there, I have been arranging Emerald Night as part of a display I'm working on at the moment (to be unveiled closer to Christmas) and it sits by a station MOC with platform. I found it unsatisfactory that if the loco was to clear the platform, the carriage would have a big gap between it and the platform. So I decided to modify the carriage (sacriledge!) to be 7 wide. Nothing drastic (e.g. making it longer) just a simple conversion to the existing design. I'm sure others have done likewise, but I didn't get any useful results on a search of the forums. I was inspired by the 7-wide carriages of Cooper in this thread. If anyone else has mods to the Emerald Night carriage I'd appreciate any comments, links to previous threads, or pictures. Here's my attempt. From the outside and inside it looks much the same as before apart from the width: However, I have replaced the train baseplate with a handbuilt one using dark bley flats (unfortunately I didn't have all the dimensions I wanted to hand - hence the use of 1x1s for the non-structural "skirt"). I used the existing bogies, but modified the rungs to be offset by half-brick each side. The base isn't too rickety - but if you look at the above photo you'll realise that the side on the bottom of the frame has 1-wide flats along it. This side is helped by the cross supports (ends plus two in the middle in the only available 1-wide space between turning bogies and middle undercarriage) but also making use of the Emerald Night carriage's existing interior. The seats are on a raised plate, and I simply used 2x 2x6 dark brown flats to connect the carriage edge to the rest of the base for extra support. I did add a layer of flat along the gangway too, to gel the 2-wide flats on the other edge to the rest of the base: Nothing fancy but nice as it's discreet and given that dark brown is such a limited colour, but 2x6 is possible (I don't have the Troll Battlewheel so I very boldly stole them from the MMP inn furniture). Anyway, this is a very simple little thing, but I thought I'd post it just because I couldn't myself find other examples, and I think it improves the train (or at least makes it a bit less silly-looking beside platforms).

Looks wonderful. I really like the wood effect of using plates for the lower sides of the carriages. The design influence of the Emerald Night carriage seems to be there too - I like how it is adapted for 7-wide (must do this for my own Emerald Night carriage). The Loco is impressive - I'm not very familiar with American locos (although I have a couple of books with them) but it looks quite unusual. Quite envious of all those driving wheels! Just some views of someone only starting to "dabble" in Lego trains!

Some of my finished MOCs that are no longer displayed but I'm not taking apart (i.e. might use them again in a future display and I don't need their parts just yet) I store in Lego shipping boxes, using the air pockets that come with those. I also store some sets this way (e.g. modular buildings - I either have them displayed, or something else, but not everything displayed at once as I don't have the space). I've a stack of shipping boxes under the stairs! At the moment the modular buildings are there, most of a medieval village (MMP and MOCs), Town Plan, City vehicles, dissassembled Indy temples, Classic Castle and Space sets. I have "trains" out at the moment (Hobby, Emerald Night, Holiday) and although it's just mid-November, I'm leaving room in one of my normal display areas for the Christmas Tree (although Holiday Train and one or two small items will form part of the decoration below it). I have my Agents base perched atop a bookcase and the same for the Pirates sets. My major Castle MoC (Craghold Castle) languishes at the bottom of a wardrobe. Any WIPs are either on my computer desk (although obviously they can only sit there short-term) or else on a small shelf (at the moment, only a facade/entrance for an Opera House - on the back burner for now). At most I'll only have WIPs with loose pieces around for one/two days - but mostly I have to just tidy away loose pieces after a building session. Probably a good thing as if I had a Lego room I could see it getting messy easily. I sometimes keep a handful of pieces together that I intend using for an MOC - sometimes I commandeer a sorting compartment for all kinds of bricks in one special colour I may be using (e.g. dark orange, navy). Despite the inconvenience, it does actually mean I revisit sets/themes in turn from time to time as I get bored with what I have displayed.

Dr. Brick: Unfortunately it looks like you won't do much better than Lego Pick-a-Brick online price of 0.20 euro each. Even apart from the limited quantity on bricklink, it is more expensive for all but the first handful of sellers (who only have 1 each, or are in Australia, or may not use normal euro/dollar exchange rate, etc., etc.) I've found Lego PaB the best option in general for certain items such as less common (but available on PaB) parts/colours, glass, and new windows, etc. I always add some PaB when making an order from S@H (although I haven't ordered from S@H in a while as it's silly to pay Lego's "special" Irish Euro prices rather than buy from UK resellers - cheaper postage too).

Two very nice spacecraft, and the SNOT is used to good effect, as are the modern curved hulls (these make for great spacecraft IMO compared to the angular wedge pieces I had to build with as a kid). The BubbleMint is quite striking with the medium blue colouring and the stickered/printed pieces, and the purple actually works in really well. I like how the spacecraft have such a polished look - they don't look overlaboured or fussy, even though variable fighter has some detail at the back and BubbleMint has some well-chosen details like those modified plates with enginy detail on either side. I'm itching to get building some Space, but unfortunately I've higher priorities such as a Winter town scene for Winter Toy Shop, and then I am really wanting to design a crazy Indy scenario that's a bit of a mash-up of Temple Escape and Temple of the Crystal Skull, and I still have vague plans (and a half-finished facade) for a modular building Opera House (plus kitting out of Café Corner). So for now my Space sets languish in the bottom storage box of Lego that I have under the stairs. :(

I quite like 6380 - I'd like to see a modernised version - bigger, like the scale of the recent Fire Stations. The most recent hospital is the worse for being on the 3D baseplate IMO (and I quite liked the Police Station that used that board - so it isn't just anti-3D baseplatism). Some hospitals here in Ireland (and from what I've seen, the UK) are a specific 60s modern look, and this would work well in Lego I think. Here some have been renovated and despite suffering from a run-down look in the 80s and early 90s, one can again appreciate the nice architecture (albeit with the environment a bit more cluttered than back in the day). I think a Lego set trying to capture a contemporary (new) hospital building would be a fail - as the current trend seems to be to build hideous box-like monstrosities of glass and concrete or tacky panelling, with very little in the way of aesthetically pleasing lines and curves (or where there are curves/features, they are over-the-top "expressions" of the architect).

£2 is a good bargain. The quality of the plastic doesn't look great on the basis of the sheen/cracks seen in the photos but similar to other clone brands. £4 would get you the Lego Police Car (one police officer - but a decent vehicle), or Power Miners stone chopper (miner plus rock monster, cool-looking but tiny model with eccentric parts).

Wheels driving a mechanism is cool on vehicles - e.g. the Agents Gold Heist with fan at the back that rotates as the wheels under the back of the boat run on whatever surface you're "driving" the boat on. Similarly Jungle Cutter, the wheels underneath the spinning blades make them rotate. Just looking through my sets - For Harry Potter, some features that stick out are the letters falling down in Privet Drive, the cobwebs springing up in Aragog and dark forest, the cool pendulum and gate mechanism with wind-up function in the Azkhaban Hogwarts. The skeleton springing up out of the grave in the Graveyard Duel is neat. Pirates - Shipwreck hideout has the rotating bridge, the skull dispenser and swinging out blades. The battering ram in the recent Castle Siege tower is nice functionality (and of course there is the extending platform too). Dwarves Mine Defender of course has the "wheels driving a mechanism" feature. I like the collapsing statues that knock out the walls in the Indy Tomb set. Rolling ball works well in temple escape. Temple of the Crystal skull as various little features like falling skulls, flick fire, moving wall. Also the weird contraption at the top is, well, operational (whatever it does - I haven't seen the film yet).

We used to have fat bricks and thin bricks for 1 and 2 wide bricks. So no two-by-fours but rather a "fat fourered". Same for 1 and 2 wide plates ("flat bricks"). "Fat flat" was in hindsight a bit of a tongue twister for an adjective. 5-tall bricks were "wall bricks" (1x2x5 or 1x3x5) or pillars (1x1x5). We used the nomenclature "onered, twoered" etc. to describe length. Slope bricks were "Slopey bricks" and the shallower ones (depth of 3 studs) were flat slopey bricks. Inverted slopes were of course "upside-down slopey bricks". Other important parts for us when space building were "boosters" (aeroplane engine parts, small or big), guns (modified 1x2 plate with handles both sides) and glowy bricks (transparent bricks). Various plates with clips were of course, clippy bricks. Grille plates were flat radiator bricks (the 1x2 bricks with grille were radiator bricks). 1x1 bricks with headlight were "headlamp bricks".

willy_poodle: Smyth's Toys have Pirates and Castle Lego here in Ireland (indeed they have just about the full range of Lego). There are a few of their stores in Great Britain (you can find a store or check stock online at their UK website).

I also second that set being a fantastic purchase. As beautiful as Emerald Night is (which I also have), the Hobby Train is much more about just building your own models, and indeed the something like 30 models suggested (I'm not sure when, if ever, I'll be able to take Emerald Night apart or modify it). I'm only starting out in Lego trains myself, but I've found the Hobby Train to be great - it does what it says on the tin, it's a starter kit for building trains! I just bought RC track though, and from bricklink I bought the RC components (battery box base, motor) which I used in fact to motorise Holiday Train (used the battery box base, cumbersome as it is, camoflagued as a truck of presents, taller than the one in the set). When I have cash I'd like to get Power Functions kit, though not necessarily for Emerald Night (don't like the way the motor sits in the engine cab).

Very nice model - I didn't quite catch at first that it was 7-wide. Tricky fitting four people in but well done! But apart from the four-seater-ness, I like the application of curves and the profile of the car.

Thanks for this thread everyone - I was reminded that I'd only built about 4 of these models! Have just built myself the little 2-2-0 train with tender and goods wagon, looks really nice. Hope to build an amended version incorporating dark green to stand in as a small engine of the same company as running Emerald Night (hope to do a little station scene with the two engines as part of a planned winter village scene).

Bonaparte: I notice two distinct dark reds that both came in my Café Corner in 2006. One is brighter, and the other is duller. The brighter one matches newer pieces I've got since and has the mottled texture on roof pieces. The darker one has smooth faces on roof pieces. (That CC also had two tans - one more translucenty - and two browns, again one more translucent/bright). I like the newer pieces in white in particular - before even new white could look a bit off-white. Now there is a pearly quality that while not always perfect (e.g. got some slightly off-white in my Soldiers Fort) does make for brighter pieces - hopefully these won't succumb to the old yellowing problem. If I get more space, I will be separating out my old and new Lego pieces - not so much for colour differentiation as such (the variation is usually very slight in MOCs) but so that if I rebuild old sets, they will be using genuine old pieces - not new "bright" colours (i.e. not just talking about bley or new brown). In general I prefer the newer pieces though - easier to build with too even if not necessarily always as precise fitting.

I once accidentally bought a glued set off ebay (note: always translate German listings fully even if you have a basic grasp of the language!). Prising parts off is possible, and the semi-dissolved/gluey mess is not so visible or necessarily an issue on the underside of bricks, but is very visible on the top side (not necessarily an issue if you put bricks in place of the removed glued ones). I say not necessarily an issue as the glue can leave a surface uneven enough to affect building in some cases. In my experience the baseboards can even have holes or missing studs after pulling glued bricks off though!