Missing Brick

Just a quick heads up to anyone looking for some extra straight track to run their Horizon Express. Amazon.co.uk have got it for £12 at the moment - 25% off the RRP - which is the cheapest I've seen it for some time. Spotted it at the excellent http://www.brickset.com/buy/amazon/ page.

Love these sets. Definately getting the train, cavalry and stagecoach - not least to get some white & black horses for my Rohirrim. It was annoying the way all the LOTR horses were brown. A brown horse looks rubbish stood next to a predominantly brown hall of Edoras. Definately need more variety in horse colours. I'd like to see dark tan, dark brown and DBG also.

Thanks for the suggestions. The effect can easily be seen by simply rolling the carriage at a bend. With the default wheel base you can clearly hear the fixed wheels scrapping as they go thru the corner - and the carriage almost grinds to a halt. By contrast, a carriage with articulated bogies experiences no drag or slowdown. Of course a powerful engine can drag the Octan car thru the corners no problem, even if the wheels are grinding - but it adds to the drag and slowdown in corners. Articulating one or both of the wheels is probably the best solution.

Sorry, I don't have an LDD file. I built it the old fashioned way - you know, trying things out with actual bricks and plates :) It should be fairly easy to copy. You just need a shed load of red seats, DBG plates and dark tan 2's & 1's. New pics of the complete interior to follow next weekend - the screen wall is done and looks pretty smart with chandelier and iPhone screen built in. Great fun playing the opening credits to Star Wars in the auditorium. I first saw the film in a cinema alot like the Palace. Double nostalgia.

Thanks for the review. I think this set could best be described as 'a mess'. I will be skipping it with no regrets. I bought every set from the first LOTR wave - but so far only Bag End from this wave. I'm quite happy to save my money for Orthanc or a future Minas Tirith set.

Impressive layout. Looks like you bought at least two of every set. Wish I had the money and the floor space!

Thanks for all the comments everyone, > I wonder how this is going to fit the frontage of the cinema building I have left room for the two ticketing windows in the lobby. The floor above the projection room is designed to line up flush with the base of the upper storey windows (so the projection room has no windows to the outside). So hopefully it should all mesh together well with some minor tweaks. > you will need to make some careful decisions with the size and placement of the screen > if you want it to be fully visible from both the regular and balcony seating. Yes. This is tricky. Ideally the seating should be one or two studs further back - but the geometry is pretty much fixed by the need to keep a minimum 4-studs for the ticket kiosks, the projection booth and the 45 degree door area. The way I've made it you can just about see the screen from the back row of the balcony with a slightly restricted view. Just bricklinking some parts for the iPhone screen wall now. I will take some better pics of the inaugural movie showing next weekend.

Great truck and beautiful pics. Reminiscent of http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=6650-1 which I remember fondly from my youth.

Very nice iron bridge and lorries. The only problem I have with lego railway bridges is you need about half a mile of straight track to slowly ramp your trains up high enough to cross it :) But it would be worth it to see them crossing this bridge. Good job.

I thought the 6-seat Palace Cinema auditorium was a little small, so I built a bigger one! [ Now updated with pics of the complete set:] One minor change to the exterior: I removed the wedge plates under the Wu-clock and ran the snot pillars all the way up. Nice and smooth. As you can see from the posters in the lobby - it's 70's night at the Palace. The concessions stand had to go but at least there's a restroom now: The seats are filling up fast. The Palace is fitted with the very latest in big screen technology: Time for tonight's main feature: by Legoogel, on Flickr

I wish I could sound as enthusiastic as Astrid when speaking in my second or third language sat in front of studio lights and a film crew of strangers. She's a great designer and it's a beautiful building. Brick on Astrid! PS. I love the way her voice goes up when she says 'minifigure' :)

Nice review but I voted poor from an AFOL perspective. Too many big pre-moulded pieces that you can't use for anything else. eg. the grill/ headlight assy instead of proper useful 1x1 stud-on-side bricks , the roof piece, the chassis. And no doors. Too <insert that tiresome argument> for me as an AFOL but kids will probably like it well enough.

Modular buildings are all about the exterior. Generally the interiors are close to empty - with just a few items chucked in for fun. eg. The upper floors of the Grand Emporium, the empty cafe corner, the petshop brown house. It's left up to the customer to fill in the blanks. I've already mapped out a rough design for a 30-seater two-tier auditorium which can be dropped in to replace the Palace interior. I must say it takes alot of plates and bricks - at least 800, so I'm not suprised Lego decided to leave the interior largely empty to keep the price down.

I noticed amazon Italy were selling 7499 packs of straight track for about £11 before Christmas. Now all the European amazon sites have put the price up to around £20. I guess there must be alot of demand from people who got a lego train set for xmas. So shop.lego is definately the cheapest at the moment.

Yeah - the ground floor seems like a waste of space in the current design. I'm thinking of modding it so the auditorium is a separate windowless room that starts on the ground floor and extends up into the 1st floor. The 'staircase' can be a 3-wide walkway running up the side of the auditorium. iPhone screen on the back wall. Shift the popcorn counter next to the ticket desks (tucked under the auditorium seating) with the auditorium entrance where it used to be ; at the end of a cooridoor running past the movie posters. Should be enough room for at least 4x5 seats. Projectionist's booth access via the auditorium or via a ladder up from the ticket office.

There's also a cheaper option of using a single PF-train bogie but with a much heavier ballast weight fitted directly over the power bogie. The problem is that with 5 carriages in tow the power bogie just spins its wheels in corners since it can't get enough traction. Stick a 300-500g weight over the bogie and problem solved. I use some little bags of lead weights from a set of fitness wrist weights I had lying around. Works well with my emerald night so should be fine with the Horizon Express. Note that the AAA battery box only weighes 100g so it's not heavy enough on its own.

Just thinking - if your 2nd power bogey is in the backwards facing engine you could just swap bogies on that engine so that both power bogies drive in the same direction - so no need to make that motor run in the opposite direction. I guess the risk with your 2 x Rx & batt approach is uneven loading ( eg. due to differing battery voltage or if the back engine fails to receive an IR command so the motors end up runnimg at different speeds ). Not sure if this could lead to motor damage or if the motors are tough enough to take it.

A ha. I thought you must have some fancy stuff to keep the speed so constant. My PF version slows to a crawl in bends :) I'm thinking about fitting a second bogey motor to give it some more grunt. Yes - it likes a big layout with max 90 degree bends with plenty of straights between, so only one carriage at a time is in a high-drag state.

Looks like the power bogey is on the first passenger car. The carriages look great with the 6-window santa fe extension don't they.

I decided to add 2 additional coaches via bricklink. I haven't decided whether to expand all the coaches to 7-wide yet. So far I have one 7-wide and one regular 6-wide. I'm waiting to see how they look with the engine which is currently wrapped up under the Christmas tree :). I may post a 6/7 wide comparison in January. But I agree that you need at least 3 carriages to make a decent looking EN.

The 4564 set has 6 studs between all the wheel assemblies so it probably runs OK. The 7939 Octan has 8 studs so it grinds pretty bad. I modified mine to reduce it down to 6 studs spacing using a few black 1x6 plates to maintain the appearance. Doesn't look too bad and runs much better. I imagine real life carriages don't have to contend with the extreme bends of a lego train track so fixed bogeys aren't such a problem.

It's a great set. I didn't like the look of the blue tavern building, but then again it does have a gazillion rounded lattice windows and loads of useful small brown parts. And let's not forget the tree: The only proper looking tree currently available.

Just wondering if anyone else had noticed this problem. Because the Octan trailer has fixed wheels that don't rotate, 11 studs apart, when it goes thru a bend the wheels grind causing alot of drag. Saw some videos of people pulling 10 Octan coaches - so I guess they must have modified their bogeys. But single wheel bogeys would be unstable and cause derailment. So I guess you'd need an extra pair of wheels on each bogey. Either that or they have a mega powerful engine...

Great use of the Grand Emporium parts. Really nice MOC. Would benefit from some more train track though ;)

Built this set today. Love it. The design is near flawless. Only one thing bugged me: The inside of the round green door has an ugly 4x4 tan plate slapped on it - surrounded by 1x4 black plates. It really sticks out and the square 4x4 spoils the look of the round door. Fortunately it's easily fixed. I replaced the enormous weird flag hinge piece with a pair of regular black 1x2 grabbers. Secured with a vertical 1x4 plate and pair of 1x2 plates above and below, to look like iron hinges. Then I just left the rest of the door empty - so you can see the nice green round shape. Finished off with a door knob on the right made of a 2 single round plates. Looks 100x better than the original and uses less parts.