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Well there have been a couple threads on this topic, but I'll take the time here to give you a bit of an education. A few things you should know. 1) Brick based sets compatible with LEGO are NOT illegal. This has been upheld by international courts 2) Copying set designs is Illegal. 3) Brands like Oxford, Megabloks, and others who don't copy LEGO set designs are not Illegal. Korean company Oxford, for example has such high quality bricks and designs, that it is copied by clone companies from China like Sluban. 4) LEGO did not invent the interlocking brick. Hillary Page and his Kiddicraft company did, and LEGO used their patented ideas without compensation. Hillary page died in the 50's before finding out that LEGO had stolen his designs, LEGO then added the internal tubes, then bought the kiddicraft patents in the 80's while they were trying to sue Tyco. It's a long story, check out the Megabloks thread for more info. 5) Brands like Brick/Shifty/Enlighten and Sluban make most of their money selling illegal copies of actual LEGO sets Sorry that this has been posted before, but this is one of those recurring topics that it's best to address as soon as it comes up. Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to suggest that LEGO hire whoever is designing sets for Oxford. Their military, adventure-ish, future military, ancient Korea and city sets are brilliant. They are really the one non-LEGO brick company that I would purchase alot of if they were available in the USA. It's a big website, but it's worth the time to look through it. http://www.oxfordtoy.co.kr/eng/

Thanks Mike. Architecture and Murals! Yaay!

Thanks for the input guys. You make this sound pretty feasible. I checked on BL, and the small wheels are only about a buck and change each, so assuming you have a pretty good part selection, you're only looking at an investment of 10 bucks per car to run them on standard model railroad tracks, which are available in a multitude of configurations, plentiful and fairly inexpensive on the 2nd hand market. Oh, the possibilities!

Thanks to those who have purchased! If you need bigger quantities than I have listed, let me know, and I'll see what I can find.

Hey folks, Here's something I thougth of. The new PF functions trains still use the classic 9v trucks for the cars. These trucks are fixed width. However, the wheels for the engine are separate elements. Using these wheels to brick-build all the trucks on a train, wouldn't it be possible to build a LEGO train that would ride on O or O-27, or even G scale rails? It might be a slightly expensive proposition to order all the wheels you would need, but heck it's the new PF system, what's another 50 bucks?

I'm a registered, paid attendee and I can't find anywhere to sign up for the classes after logging in. Anyone have any better luck?

NILTC had a show this weekend, and a couple of members had brought along their Emerald Nights. We had one with the PF system, and one with the 9V system. 9V was the clear winner for controllability and power, but it was neat to see the PF system chugging along without the telltale 9V motor box. -One downside (and partial upside) to PF is that while it's pretty strong, the way it's geared in the Emerald Night, it's very slow when you put a couple cars on it. However, it's possible that it could be re-geared for a bit more speed. -Also, the rechargeable battery box is quite expensive. -However, on the plus side, the rechargeable battery has a fairly long life, and it has a very handy built in speed regulator, with a technic axle control knob that could be built into various types of manual speed controls. Thus, even though it's an expensive system, you don't need the remote control to have a moving train. -Finally, as mentioned above, the PF system has no bulky combo engine/wheel box, so you can build trains with much more uniformly realistic wheels and trucks.

Nice town, I'd tend to agree about the ultra-modern station amongst your otherwise classic styled village, but it's your town, and it is a neat set. I like how you split up the farm, the smaller sections have a more classic town look to them, then one large farm complex. As to the buildable area of road baseplates, if you need to expand the buildable area, check my sig for 8 and 16 wide baseplates. When we see the expanded layout. I hope it includes a stop in Gravestone!

I found a few more baseplates. The last batch was pretty popular, so I'm going to add a minimum order of 8 bucks Hey Folks, As some of you know, I run a LEGO club for boys here in the inner-city of Chicago. It's called Building in Lawndale (BILd). We've been borrowing LEGO from the Northern Illinois LEGO Train Club, and Brickology, but I'd like to build up a stock of LEGO for the club to have for itself. Every cent that is generated from this sale will go to buy brick for the club, if you want to buy a large quantity, I'll give you a good discount. If this sale goes well, I'll have more to sell in the future. All pieces are brand new and unused. Quantity in ()'s (34) Green 8x16 Baseplates. $0.75 each (32) Green 16x16 Baseplates $1.50 (25) Dark Grey 8x16 Bricks. $1.25 You will be responsible for shipping, but I am willing to ship anywhere in the world, and I take Paypal, MO, or personal check, though you will have to wait for it to clear before shipping. If anyone would like to know more about the club, or would like info on sponsoring one of our students, I'll send them more info and can answer any quesitons here, or via PM. Thanks for taking the time to check out the sale.

I think we're on the right track with lead, but instead of lead sheet, how about lead solder? A low-watt soldering iron and solder is cheap and relatively easy/safe to use. I've never tried it, but I've done a fair amount of wiring of guitars, so I would guess it might work something like this... -Flip the brick over. -Use a soldering iron to heat up the solder and drip it into the brick. -Fill the brick about 2/3 full so that it can still stick to other bricks. -Solder heats and cools fast, so it shouldn't do much, if any damage to the brick. -The solder should stick just fine to the inside of the brick, and if you have a small scale, you could make each brick near the same weight. If you don't want to use solder, 2 part epoxy might also be a substance you could use to add some weight to a brick, but it's pretty messy, and not as heavy as lead.

Sorry, no picture yet. However, bring in the sku numbers that I posted earlier. Then they will be able to tell you if they have it, had it, or have it in the back.

Brickworld is the third weekend of June. However, if TLG chooses a different convention, it could be in August (Brickfair) or October (Brick Con). Of course they might not announce it at a convention, but if history is any judge, these large AFOL directed sets are almost always announced at conventions! One other thing, is that even if it's announced at a convention, it may be a pre-order, and the set might not be available until later.

I wouldn't be to worried. Also, I would take Market street out of your "risk" equasion. Market Street was a risk, but TLG has said that it wasn't part of the original plan for the CC series. It was kind of a fluke that happened to come into TLG's radar around the same time as CC. Not to say that we will never see another fan designed building, but I wouldn't hold my breath. As for the appearance of an interior, that's more of a progression from CC to Green Grocer than anything. CC was successfull enough to warrant a sequel, and an interior was one of the most requested features. Again, no reason to worry about whether or not it will be continued when we haven't seen any further buildings since GG. As for whether the fire station it will appear at all. I have no douts that it will. My only question would be which LEGO convention will it be unveilied at? I'm really hoping for Brickworld! Last year they unveilied the Death star, which was really cool, but the fire-station would be much more in line with my interest and budget.

Thanks, A writeup was planned, but life got in the way. You're definitely right on about the baseplates, however, it would have taken 32 baseplates to cover the area, and most of our plates were in use for other MOCs and train layout modules. On the other hand, future games will likely be fought on a much smaller battlefield with buildings much closer together.

Nice MOC. Is it possible you were inspired by the G.R.O.S.S. club chartered by a certain boy and his stuffed tiger?

It exists, yes, but unfortunately it's about as busy as lugnet.trains. It is, however the home of Railbricks, which is a prime source for train inspiration and train hobby info. It's worth checking out Trains and Town and Lugnet.trains once in a while for some of the technical information that doesn't appear anywhere else. However eurobricks tends to have the info on new releases and most everything else train related before (or at the same time) as everyone else. EB Trains and Town forum seems to be the most active of it's type on the internet.

Nice job. You've re-captured our attention. Now get to the episode!

Hey Guys, I should have posted this earlier, but I thought you folks might like to see pics of a Brikwar that I had last year. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=351979 It was Me (Imperials) vs Pepa (rebels) I don't remember all the details of the battle, but the pics are in chronologiacl order so if you follow them from first too last, you can get a picture of the battle which was each force divided into two groups which engage each other and then merge for the final bloody finale. I lost, but it was a good time, and was over in a few hours. The terrain you see is some of my Brickington buildings with a few of the peices of Pepa's Jedi Temple. Lessons learned -Hand weapons are much better than guns -Brikwars takes longer than you will think -You don't need much space for a good battle. We probably used more space than we needed -Battles that are just charging at each other minimize the use of terrain. -Brikwars if FUN!! A couple of pics: Beginning of the battle The end of the battle

It's definitely tiny, and my preference is for larger cases, but if you're looking to safely store your minifigs individually, I've not ever seen any case that is so well fitted for minifigs. Most larger cases are a good deal taller, and if storing minifigs individually, that's alot of wasted space. You might pay a bit more overall to store an entire figure collection, but it will take up alot less space and be much more organized than using larger less efficient containers.

Thanks for reviewing this set. It's one of my favorite, and probably one of the best sets ever for the value and usefullness of the pieces contained. I was lucky enough to receive this set for Christmas two years ago, and I didn't try all three builds, so thanks for showing all of them.

Update, I found the shrink wrap it came in. You can probably call your local target and see if they have it in. It's called "Divided Container" and the the SKU numbers are: top number- 234221712 Bottom number- 810655019162 I think that all the targets around me have the dollar section at the front of the store to the side of the register area. It may be worthwhile to ask the employees though. My camera phone is acting up. If no one else gets one, I'll try and snap a picture when I get my real camera back on monday. Yeah, I probably won't be using these for figures either. All of my figures are on baseplates on racks. I will probably pick up a couple for small sortings, but I mostly posted this because I figured some folks here might find them usefull. Let's hope so. Maybe calling to see if they have ever carried the item. If they did previously, it's probably gone, if they haven't yet, it might be on the way.

For those of you who are interested in storing your minifigs, or a small case for small parts, you should get to Target IMMEDIATELY! In their dollar section they have a small clear organizer for sale. Specs: -Approximately 5"x3"x1" -Is divided into 6 compartments. -Each compartment is a bit wider than a minifig -2 compartments are the same length as a cap wearing minifig, 3 are about one brick longer, and one is about 3 bricks longer -A Fedora wearing minifig fits in fine (height-wise) with just a touch of room. -Clear plastic with hinged lid -$1 Target's Dollar section selection changes fast, so if you want one (or 20), you should get there soon!

Great figs, and photography, but that Slimer is brilliant. Can he be removed from the pole, or is it stuck permanently on.

I'm feeling fine about the new prices. Sure, basic brick is pretty expensive and most things are more than BL, but all LEGO prices went up a bit, so the current PAB prices are understandable. Also, the fact that alot of special pieces are cheaper than anywhere else, and can be had in quantity is awesome. PAB has always been a source for special and rare elements for me, never for basic brick. I just picked up a bunch of 1x4x6 door frames from LEGO Retail Store PAB, and I'm probably going to order the window inserts from PAB online soon.

Fantastic. I can't find anything bad to say about the review or the set. Very thorough job of showing all the great detail in this set. As for the bike helmet, most bike and skateboard helmets have holes for ventiliation. Unfortunately, Minifigs can't perspire, so ventilation does them no good. When they get too hot (around 160 degrees or so) they die.