Eilif

V-LV-23D & V-LV-23E I so enjoyed building the logging truck that I made these two more vehicles this evening. I have a list of about 20 items I'd like to upgrade on Brickington before Brickworld 09, of which these are two. First a vintage pickup. Rather than trying for 7 wide to enable side by side seating, I just took an arm off each minifig! Passenger side: The passengers sit a touch lower than normal, but I wanted it to be tall enough for a cowboy hat. Room for 5 barrels of moonshine! I thought it was worth showing the bare bed. Secondly, a small black car. Nothing special, but I am determined to make that grey grill work on a 4 wide car! As I mentioned in the logging truck thread, I'm pretty new to building cars so any suggestions for improvement are welcome, especially the black car which still seems a bit awkward to me.

Thanks Brickster, I've never been blogged before! The frog is clever, but it I'm sad to say it's not my invention.

Welcome aboard Colonel. Great to have someone with your experience here at Eurobricks. Most of us have had considerably less experience with LEGO so we'll be looking forward to hearing your persepective on some of the various topics that are discussed here. I just looked at your brickshelf, and I think it's time for me to bring out the yellow bricks. Did you paint the background in this picture ?

There's my first post. I assumed at the time that the group was mostly European, which turned out to be only partially true. Also, I slightly exagerated my lack of a dark ages. I picked up a set here and there, but from 96-2004, I probably bought less than 5 LEGO sets. Thinking about it now, less than a set a year and almost no build time definately qualifies as a dark ages. My posting style hasn't changed much, but them I'm an adult, and have tried for some years to be pretty carefull with my online posts. However, I did a similar search on Talkbass.com, a music forum that I've been a member of since 2001 (early college). Some of my early posts were truely embarassing.

I really like this building. It definately fits your goal of making it look classic, but it doesn't suffer for it. I like the way you built the foundation also. Two minor suggestions. The slopes with the printed white stripes look a bit out of place. There's no other white in the entire moc, and they aren't close enough to the windows to be proper awnings. Secondly, the red brick sections over the windows look a bit awkward, perhaps the windows could be situated more in the center with a bit of red on top and below. Those are minor quibbles however about what is a MOC that is very nicely done inside and out.

I finally took the time to look through the brickshelf folder and I am in awe. The whole building is great, but the third story is a thing of beauty. I'm always impressed with interesting rooflines, and it really deserves a shot from every angle. Nice streetlights also. I know I'm looking at a good MOC, when it makes me think that maybe it's time to go back and rebuild all of my buildings...

The Chicago "EL" has alot of stations that are directly under the tracks, but usually there is a bit of space between the roof of the station and the tracks above. It's always loud when a train runs over, but standing directly under the tracks outside the station is alot (like thunder) louder than being inside the station. I would imagine that having a station that actually had trains on the roof, would be quite loud.

Not a shreeder, more of a groover actually. I play bass guitar. Right now I'm in a country band (www.janesvillecountry.com), but my favorite genre's to play range from Brit-rock, to alt-country to reggae to Blues rock. I have alot of instruments (full list here ) and I've kind of become a gearhead/tinkerer. Right now I'm mainly gigging my Homebuilt Jazz bass (Waromoth p neck, allparts body, Dimarzio pups) my Fender Precision, and a '79 Peavey T-40. I sometimes take out an Ibanez Artcore with a Jack Cassady Pickups/Electronics, and a Lakland 55-01. I'm currently working on a Franken-bass with dual Darkstar pickups but that's not quite finsihed yet. I don't use effects, but I have a Boss ODB-3 that I occasionally as a gain boost if I need it and a Morley ABY for keeping my backup bass immidiately available. For amps: at big shows, I run a Peavey VB-2 (200 watts all tube) through a Carvin 8x10. It's alot of fun to hear that setup rumble, but for most shows my lightweight rig of an Ampeg portabass 210 cab and 250 head are more than enough.

I think this depends entirely on who the buyer is. For the builder who is new or newe'er to LEGO and wants to build up thier minifig collection and get some accessories, it's a must buy. What other set gets you 4 figs for 10 USD? For those of us who already have tons of minifigs and accessories. it's pretty much a "meh" unless there's a piece you feel you must have.

Thanks. The windshield is a small frustration of mine. I really wanted a 5 wide window to cover the driver better. I acutally had to use jumpers to get the windows placed as they are. In the end, it looked better having the space in the middle than filling it with 1x1 trans brick. I'm glad the antique look came across. I was hoping it would look old. Thanks Ricecracker, I just moved the axle back and it looks much better! As for the bed, I decided to leave it so that it looks more like it's "dumpable". That pretty much summed up the look I was going for. Rugged, old and capable. I wanted it to look like a truck that may have had a previous purpose, but had seen alot of use.

Great Job! I have a special place in my heart for Seaside layouts and yours is great. I like the classic Town feel you managed to keep while still incorporating some very nice buildings. I really like the raised railway. It adds alot of visual interest to the town, and while it does obscure some of the street behind, it creates a situation that definitely rewards a closer look. You managed to cram and incredible amount of action into a 40"x90" area. Very Impressive.

V-LC-10B Not long ago, I added a small Christmas tree farm to my LEGO town Brickington. Now that the trees are nearing maturity it was necessary to build a vehicle to transport them. This started out as a mod of the German Transport truck from INDY set 7622. By the time the evening ended, it was something very different. Here's some pics. Life is much easier ever since I wised up and spent 8 bucks on a mini-tripod for my digital camera. I wish I could take credit for the frog hood ornament, but someone else did it first. Finaly found a use for my chrome grates though. This is probably my first vehicle that has used half setbacks and combined 5 and 6 wide sections. Old hat for most MOC'ers, but new ground for me. I wanted it to look like it might have a dump capability with out having to build it as such. With driver and a full load of 2 trees. Yeah, it's a small truck. That's it. I wanted to build a truck that would fit with both the 4 wide cars and 6 wide trucks that exist throughout Brickington, and I'm happy with the results. However, I'm pretty new to MOCing road vehicles, so suggestions for improvement are greatly appreciated.

Hinckley! I'm not sure what made you think this MOC was any where near ready to show, but you need to work a little harder before taking just any old thing off your workbench and regurgitating it up on EuroBricks. I am truly disapointed in you.... Just kidding, I love it. I'd really like to see baggage and observation cars in this style, and has been noted, your horizontal fence luggage rack is a stroke of genius. Great MOC.

I don't have anything different to add, but in case a TLG employee is listening (Maybe we should put this in the ambassador forum) I would like to express a sincere desire for more baseplates. They are brilliant for supporting large MOC's, and have been comparatively lacking recent years. Please, bring back the baseplates!

Bob, I think it's time for you to move to Chicago. We have LEGO stores (with PAB) at 15, 40, and 50 minutes away...

For me a car is really just a means of transportation. But my dream ride right now would be a Honda Civic Hybrid Hatchback. They only come in sedan, but you said "dreamride" If I had to pick a production model car, I'd settle for a Prius. -Big enough to sit me comfortably -Great mileage, especially in the city -Just big enough for an 8x10 (eight ten inch speakers) bass cabinet, amplifer and two electric basses!

Thanks, I have LEGO Store Pick-A-Brick to thank for most of the roof pieces. In fact, most of the brown (including almost all the 1x2, 3x4 arches, 1x1), the arch window frames, trans 1x2 and alot of the grey all came from PAB that I've been acquiring over the past couple years. I've become something of a PAB addict. Great, I'll see you at Brickworld. Have you registered yet? Thanks!

Great job. Excellent job of capturing all the detail of the original in such a small 6 wide space. Thanks for including the original pics also. The train looks so unique that if I hadn't seen the pictures I would have thought it was a sci-fi MOC.

Just got back from the LEGO Store For me: Winter issue of Brick Journal One large Pick-a-Brick cup For the LEGO club that I run for neighborhood boys. 4 copies of the Racers Chase Set (2 cars and a copter) One small pick-a-brick cup

Thanks! It was the boat that made me expand the building. Originally I was just going to add a boat to the interior, but once I had a WIP boat that I liked, I realized it was to small for the original building which was half the size of the current one. Steal away! When it comes to MOC designs, thievery is often the sincerest form of flattery. Thanks for the high praise. You make a good point about removing the boats. I just figured they'd slide it out on lumber. Unlike the lifesave boathouse that this building is loosely based on, there would be no need to have a permenant ramp, and the lumber/ramp would probably be stored away when not in use. Originally, I was considering building a sliding ceiling hoist that would run the lenght of the boathouse. It was the kind of thing that would be used in construction, and also in lifting the bow so the stern could be slid into the water. However, in the interest of keeping it all modular, and not interfering with the roof sections, I decided to leave it off.

Sorry to hear about your impending Dark Ages. Sounds like you've given it some good thought though. And of course if you should decide to return to the brick someday, the AFOL community has always been very good about re-welcoming those who come back. Blessings in your future whether it be LEGO-less or merely less-LEGO.

Wow, alot of stuff going on in this thread. Aliens vs humans. It sells, and it's better than human vs human violence. Yeah, there could have been "goodguy" aliens, but TLG chose to keep it simple, and let the kids sort it out. Surely that's not a terrible thing. Indy and other Lic themes. For the most part, they color it like it is in the films or cartoons. The films may be "offensive" to some, but TLG didn't write the films. Also, it's not hard to see that "nazi" might be more offensive than "Russian. As for why they didn't say "German" I'm not sure... Overall, Can we just be glad that for their own lines, LEGO has stuck to the comparatively race neutral yellow heads. I'm by no means an expert in these things, but based on my experience, I must say that these kind of discussions are usually pretty divorced from reality. I've done LEGO classes for inner-city (mostly african-american) boys in the neighborhood where I work and live, and when the LEGO gets dumped out on the floor no one cares what "color" Jack Stone is. That said, I do recognize the importance of race-familiar toys and educational material (remember the good-bad black-white association studies with minority children of the past couple decades?) so when giving out LEGO, I prefer to sidestep the issue and provide sets with race-neutral yellow LEGO figs.

Perhaps a brick-built door would work? I've had pretty good luck with brick-built doors. They seem to look particularly good when recessed, as it helps to hide the fact that they are brick-built, and not a separate opening door. Here's two possible examples. It's a bit hidden,but you can see the door behind the woman on the balcony. http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/eilif/ba...streetscape.jpg Here's another one, the entrance to a Chinese restaurant. http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/eilif/ba...streetscape.jpg

Yep, barring any unforseen barriers, all 120"x40" of Brickington will be at Brickworld, including everything I've posted so far and hopefully including a few small yet-to-be revealed additions. It'll be part of the Northern Illinois Train Club ( www.niltc.org ) layout. Thanks. It's kind of a shame about the inside in that no one at shows can see the far interior, and 90% of folks don't even see the end of the boat through the open doors.

B-OV-8E All right, here's the promised update to Brickington Island. If you just want to see the pics, you can skip the story below. Bjorn Johansen Comes Home Having recently added an airport and ferry service, and having begun to develop the higher elevations of the Island, the Brickington Island Town Board finds it'self with new residents who would like to set up businesses on the Island. One such Resident is Bjorn Johansnen. Bjorn Johansen grew up on Brickington Island, and his family has long maintained the Historic Coast Guard Boathouse in downtown Brickington as a family vacation spot. A boatbuilder by trade, Bjorn has had built boats on the mainland for the past 20 years. Now that he has built a solid reputation, and Brickington has become a more accesible locale, he has applied for a permit to relocate his business to Brickington Island and expand the size of the Historic Coast Guard Boathouse. After a series of negotiations, Bjorn agrees to use to modernize and double the size of the boathouse while maintaining the same traditional style of the building's exterior. Johansen Watercraft has now officially relocated to Brickington. Bjorn and his apprentice/daughter Esther build top quality wooden boats in a variety of styles for the discerning boat owner. The Johansen family lives in the newly renovated/expanded loft above the workshop. Special thanks to Erasuremode who took these pics for me when my camera ran out of batteries. Here's the view from the street. No sign yet, as adding anything to an historic facade requires a whole separate set of permits that are still in progress. The view from the north east side of the building. The walkway allong the side was added as a way to move materials into the building without using the front door. Mrs. Alina Johansen is on the balcony watering her flowers, and in the shadows, you can just see Esther working on the hull of the first ship constructed by Johansen Watercraft on Brickington Island. Note the weather vane atop the "widows perch". An upper view from roughly the same side. Here's the view from the south side. Addition of the external stairway was at the insistence of Alina who wanted to separate the living quarters completely from the workshop. Internal view of the workshop from the west end. You can see Bjorn working from inside the hull. Esther is again visible between the tool chest and the hull. Internal view of the southwest corner of the workshop. A small wash station and set of cabinets holding all manner of varnishes and stains. Internal view of the northwest corner of the workshop. Workbench, tool rack, saw, and lumber stacked on shelves. Thanks for stopping by. A few comments about it's construction. Like nearly all the buildings in "Brickington" this one is built of modular 16x16 stud sections. I mixed new and old brown in an attempt to make the building look old, and because there are certain parts that I only have in one color or the other. I'm considering replacing all the white with faded yellowed white pieces to make it look even older. Comments and suggestions welcome.