CP5670

Well, as I said, the issue is not with the flexible track itself, but how you use it in a layout. An entire layout made of flexible track would look terrible, but using it only for ramps is ideal. You cannot make proper 3D layouts with traditional track without filling up an entire room.

With a 150 euro limit, any of the big flagship sets from the 90s can be had for that much if you're willing to buy used. The ones Blakbird brought are up are great choices. I would add 8479 to that list as well, although its code pilot unit seems to have had QA problems and is prone to breaking over time.

This looks like the best set of the 2009 city line to me. The bus is easily the highlight and I'll be getting it just for that. I love the large windows everywhere on it and the various ads on top. The pizza place is also very nicely designed. The $60 price also seems reasonable given the size, more so than most of the other recent city sets. Some of those stickers should have been printed, but I like how they have a generic look to them, similar to the old stickers/prints in the 80s and 90s. That would make them a lot more useful in MOCs. It's interesting that they used the train logo for the bus stop. Maybe it's supposed to be a generic sign for public transport and not specifically limited to trains. The only issue I have is the small baseplates. A full-size road baseplate would have made it perfect.

The flexible track is a great addition to the usual tracks. It should get around the one limitation I've always seen in the train system, the inability to make ramps and spread out the track layout in all 3 dimensions without using a ton of space (this is actually why I preferred monorails over trains many years ago). At the same time though, it's no replacement for the existing track. If used exclusively, it would indeed look ugly and unstable.

Yes, it has always been possible to make one from existing pieces. The 8479 Barcode truck used such a mechanism, for example. However, the LA piece has a metal shank and is much more powerful and compact.

It's also interesting that the older, high quality ones had the Stack-on logo at the bottom, while their newer ones have no branding. I wouldn't be surprised if all these different brands come from the same manufacturer now and are just rebadged by different companies. Do the Akro Mills variety come with any dividers? Stack-on doesn't include them anymore.

I have this, but it's meant for standard floor cleaning. The hose's suction is somewhat weak and it's clumsy to move around the room if you're only using the hose. Something handheld that still has decent suction power and is specifically meant for cleaning displays would be more useful.

The blinds in the room are down, which lets diffuse sunlight in but not direct sun rays. I often point a fan at my hands while building, especially if the room temperature is high. Even a small amount of airflow keeps my hands dry and prevents fingerprints from getting on anything. I also remove bricks in a certain way that prevents damage to them, as I described here. I want to do something about the dust on displayed models, which is a big issue in my apartment, but I haven't found any good solution apart from just brushing off the models every now and then. The models are all on open garage shelves, but I might look into getting enclosed display cases in the future. Does anyone know of small vacuum cleaners that would be appropriate for cleaning Lego?

Yeah, there are a couple of companies that make these things. I have five gray Stack-ons with the 30/9 configuration, which cost me $17 or so each at Home Depot. (bought over the course of several years)

It depends on what you want to do, as they are meant for different things. The purpose of LDD is basically to let you build and order models from the Factory. It's tied into PAB and has a very limited parts selection based on what is available there, so it should only be used if you want to buy the model. LDraw (or rather, MLCad, SR3D and other programs supporting the LDraw format) is the best choice for most other things like general MOC design and planning, producing instructions, and so on.

"Refusing to tip at space diners"

What exactly are you trying to do? The things described in Jipay's article are all basic functions supported by any of the well known graphics programs. I actually use Paint Shop Pro myself since I like its interface better than Photoshop, but only that of the older, Jasc-developed versions of the program (before 10.x).

Uh, no.

Nice. I need to get one or two more of the Stack-on/Akro Mills containers. I've been running low on space lately.

I have a couple of those too, although I didn't break them for this purpose. The ones from the early 80s have a thinner connection in the middle and are prone to snapping off on their own.

I don't glue any models and would never want to do that, especially since I continually update my older MOCs over time. It's worth trying to make the model fairly strong in the first place. Technic elements can help with this and provide a lot of structural strength, especially for large models. A well built model shouldn't really come apart that easily. There is actually a related point worth mentioning here; there are many so-called "advanced techniques" that people widely use in MOCs but are actually very flimsy and wouldn't appear in any official Lego set for that reason. I don't necessarily see anything like that on your model, but it's something worth keeping in mind.

It's a pretty good set, probably one of the best in that size range during the last few years. The 8294 excavator is another good one with the same price, although it doesn't include any PF components. Neither of these sets are flawless, but they would still be a great introduction to the world of Technic.

What exactly is considered classic town here? There were big differences between, say, early 80s, late 80s, and mid 90s town sets, although I like them all. I like the use of the basic colors in them. That made it easy to collect a lot of pieces in the same colors for MOCs, which is harder to do today unless you use Bricklink or PAB. The overall higher quality bricks, included road baseplates and large amounts of printed bricks are also things I appreciate today, as well as the far more impressive box packaging and inclusion of catalogs back then. Many of the printed pieces were fairly generic and had wide applicability in MOCs (the arrow and grill tiles are good examples), and the same applies to the types of minifigs used back then. The simplicity had its appeal too, but it was simplicity only in a certain sense. The sets had actually gotten much more large and complex around the time I was a kid, in the late 80s to early 90s, but I like how they still obviously looked like Lego, both the sets as well as the parts. This can be said about some but not all sets and parts today. This is actually one reason I'm not that keen on the modern, curved and highly studless style that is common in many MOCs these days, as I think that distinctive, blocky look is part of the appeal of Lego models in general. Nostalgia and rarity are part of it, especially since I spent hundreds of hours staring at sets in the catalogs back then and have invested a lot of time and money into acquiring some of the sets off ebay over the last several years. However, there are some things in the poll that I disliked even when I was a kid. I always found the open backed buildings strange and often added hinged rear walls to the sets I bought, whenever I had enough pieces available. I was never a fan of the 80s car design either (not because they were 4 studs wide, but the proportions were just off) and remember being quite excited by the somewhat larger race cars and trucks in the mid 90s.

I haven't kept track but this would be interesting to calculate. I have around 300 sets, but only 215 of those are from the minifig themes. As a very rough guess there are probably two minifigs per set on average, and I have gotten maybe 50-60 more off Bricklink over the years, so I would say somewhere close to 500.

This is another fantastic model. You're probably my favorite MOC builder around here. These are the kinds of creations that inspire me to try and build similar things myself. That switching mechanism for the steering/coupling is pretty clever. I never thought of using the friction axle pins as a functional element. I often use stacked rubber belts to do that sort of thing, although those don't create nearly the same amount of friction. Do the windshield glass panels stay in place firmly? I like how you're using the grill tiles to hold them there, but it seems like they would fall out unless something is blocking them from the sides as well.

You might want to try a normal battery box. I don't have the solar panel but my guess is it outputs much less than the full 9V.

That looks really impressive. How big is it exactly? It's hard to get a sense of the scale since the bricks are so small. You can only tell that it's brick built by looking at the picture very closely.

Modern OSs don't just crash. Any instability you run into is usually due to hardware faults, or occasionally a misbehaving background service. Anyway, GIMP will easily do what the OP wants and has a Mac version available. Photoshop is more powerful, but it's expensive and not needed for something like this.

I can think of two sets in the past that have had features like this, 6764 and 1352. Their instructions should have some ideas.

Actually, that doesn't violate any rules at all. The price is for "shipping and handling" fees. The shipping cost can be calculated, but who is to say what handling should cost? Among other things, that depends on how valuable your time is and how long it takes you to go to the post office.