Eilif

Great job, you even got Dr. Jones' umbrella. I need to check at home and see if I have the black aviator's torso.

Thanks Klaus, I'm glad you liked it. I agree with you that we have far to few non-emergency maritime sets. You're exactly right about the dockyard. (I assume you're talking about the brown and white building on the waterfront) When I built it, I was thinking of the old style ship-building barns that you see on the coasts. The black gate at the pier is based on the iron gates that you see all over Chicago marinas.

This is the point that I was trying to make. This is not a Town or City set. It's a Factory set. To criticize it for being too big, or too custom, or not a "very nice set like the classic awesome Hot Rod Club" is to hold it to criteria that it was never meant to achieve. Town and Factory may share a use of the minifg, but when it comes do design goals that's about where the similarity ends. Comparing Custom Car garage to Hot Rod Club is like critizizing a Model Team set for not fitting in with Classic Town. Both lines have thier own standards and goals, and should be judged as such.

That's a great little vignette you have there. Nice use of yellow. It's be neat to see it built as an interior of a MOC. As for the blue pipe wrench (USA terminology) tool you have there, hold on to it. In grey, it is available in a number of sets, one of which is the set that was mentioned earlier in this thread. However, in blue, it only came in one set, the lengthily titled 3626 "Roger Raccoon with his sports car, oil can and wrench"

If anyone's intersted, here's a link to 2 pages of pictures showing the rest of the event. Be sure to look closely to see all the goofy-ness that is a NILTC show. http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=342940

xpat, Glad you enjoyed it Guss, Thanks for the encouragement. In answer to your question, in english, it's SpongeBob SquarePants. If you like funny stuff, check out the Bricklink directory (when moderated) that the photos came from. Our club puts alot of humor into their modules. When compared to the rest of the club my module is by far the least funny. Bob, Glad I could deliver on my boast. I love seaside MOCs, be sure to post your airport when it's finished.

Layout Here, as promised is the expansion of my town, as displayed at the Northern Illinois Train Club ( niltc.org) display at the Arlington Heights Library, September 13th and 14th, 2008. You can see pics of the town before expansion here: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?...;hl=brickington One bit of explanation. I wasn't able to find my camera the weekend of the show, so I am relying on pics that other club members took. Special thanks to Pepa Quinn who took this first batch of pics. Note, also, that with the exception of the yellow and green house, and brown cabin, all the buildings are built of 16x16 or 8x16 Market street compatible modules. ____________________________________________________________________________ Welcome aboard your arial tour of Brickington Island. I'm Eilif and I'll be your pilot and tour guide. We will be cruising at an altitude of...... Here we are at the North end, let me point out the recent additions to scenic Brickington. Here you can see the whole length of the town. Notable in the relative foreground is the new secure, gated marina and two new sailboats; a sleek recreational racer, and a larger cabin cruiser. Further down the waterfront is the recently restored historic Johansen boathouse. As we come around a bit, you get a better view of the downtown from the front. Following the sailing trend, even more residents of brickington have been taking to the water. In watercraft of every kind. A quicki fly-by of the more rural section of Brickington, not much has changed here. (Thanks to NILTC members for the addition of Sponge-Bob charachters, crocs, and sharks with frekin laser beams...) Ah, the highlight of our tour, here is the newest development in Brickington. A brand new breakwater with a well manicured park and lighthouse on it. The breakwater has allowed for a creation of a natural wetlands, visible just behind the bi-plane. Just visible behind the park is the fresh produce store. And here we have the Brickington SeaAirport. Serving Brickington Island with dependable air service to the mainland. The blue roofed building has a full machine shop, and the airport has a complete terminal/gate, 2nd floor lounge, picnic area, observation deck, and control tower. One last look at beautiful Brickington as we circle before our final approach. I hope you've enjoyed your tour and will be visiting us again soon.

Wow, our first real pic showing a set clearly. I think we can judge the line a bit better now. I'm not particularly excited about the it (that I'm not interested in Agents either may clear up why). Lime green bricks and "racers" parts mixed with technic elements just doesn't interest me, but I'll probably pick up a couple of the smaller sets just to get a few of the minifigs and a monster or two. The loader set (bottom left in the group pic) in particular looks like it could be easily converted into an effective town construction vehicle, for which the lime green would be a fine color.

Nice review of a really neat set. This is one of those TOWN sets that really captures the essence of it's subject. I'm satisified with my service station, from Town Plan, but these earlier service stations, do have a bit more realism.

Short sweet, and action packed. Well Done! I find it interesting that most EB'ers, myself included, seem to have such faith in the goodness of the charachters. Most of us voted to approach the mysterious vehicles, not bring guns, and bring along the crazy dude.

Great conclusion to a great review! I will agree with many who find the Garage a bit plain. The garage is what made me give this an Above-Average rather than Outstanding As I have other purchasing priorities, I probably won't pick this one up (though who knows...), but I have to say that "Custom Car Garage" really seems to deliver on it's namesake, and the cache of the "Factory" series. Three very custom cars, all fine examples of different approaches to customized classic cars. Perhaps, most importantly, in continuing the tradition of "Factory" sets, this set continues the showcasing of inovative models with more advanced construction techniques, developed by Adult Fans of LEGO. I would like to point out that comparisons to older town sets are inevitable, but not actually usefull. This is not a "Town" or "City" set. Small models (cars in this case), open backed buildings, and lower prices are not standards for Factory Sets; just look at Hobby Train, and Market Street. Custom Car Garage may or may not fit in a particular town/city fan's asthetic setting, but it's definatley a Factory set with an altogether different set of design goals. Now to try and reverse-engineer the red roadster from my own parts collection...

I'm in!

My favorite kind of cheese is Ghetost. It's creamy brown a Norwegian Goat cheese that my Grandparents introduced me too. I'm not sure how they make it -I think whey is involved?-, or if there are similar cheeses, but I love it! It's so creamy and almost sweet, it's like a dessert.

Thanks for this great first section. I prefer less hot-rodded cars, so I was pleased to see that the red car looks great with the covered engine. I'll be curious to see how the others look. I'll be looking for the next segments.

Looks like you're off to a good start. Keep it up!

Glad to hear that Brickfair went so well. Sounds like there were a few snags, but for a first time convention to draw over 400 participants and as many public guests as they did, is spectacular! I know alot of folks had written it off as just a substitute Brickfest, but it looks like Brickfair will be the DC area LEGO convention, at least through next year. As Brickworld was only about 35 minutes from my door, I did not attend Brickfair, but the success of Brickfair is a great counterpoint to those who thought that a Midwest convention (Brickworld) would draw too much from a potential East Coast convention (Brickfair or Brickfest). Thankfully, it appears that AFOL's are going strong and are capable of having annual conventions all over the US.

Not odd at all. They are launching new lines in different quarters, so as not to overlap too much. It's pretty standard. Existing lines will likely have sets released in overlapping quarters, but it's best to launch new lines in separate quarters so that they can get the most out of the "newness" of each line. Thanks for the update though, this is great news!

Crappy, but not unexpected. Considering what they cost to produce, we will never see real minifigs in McD's sets, but it would be neat to see Batman themed sets similar to the McD's themed LEGO sets we've seen in years past. I was looking through my instruction collection, and I found two instructions from the really old ( late 80's or early 90's) sets. Those were even better than the more recent ones. I've been trying to not eat fast-food, so I guess it's good that I have no desire to acquire any of these.

This is truely cool. Way more impressive than the LEGO vintage minifig collections.

Thanks Bob, Alot of folks don't like these raised plates, but I think that when used appropriately, they can be a great way to vary the elevations on a layout. I've just used some of the hills in my collection, but even some of the more expensive (on bricklink) ones are a pretty good deal when you consider how many bricks you might use to build a similar hill. As for this one, it's a base from Kings Mountain Fortress or Black Knights (Dungeon Master's) Castle. It's identical to the base you have, but with a different color/print. If you like this use of a raised baseplate, you'll love what I did with the baseplate from Hospital (7892). But you'll have to wait until next week for the next batch of pictures...

Sorry about that, I think my fictional narrative about the layout bled over into the real details regarding it's display at the Northern Illinois LEGO Train Club (NILTC) show. To clarify, it is not on display anywhere now, but the layout you see in the pictures, as well as the new unpictured expansion, will be on display this weekend at the Arlington Heights Library.

Thanks for the info Joe. Congrats on this set. Care to tell us what part of the set you designed? As concerns a PAB update, somehow a "neither confirm or deny" from someone involved is way more encouraging than any other evidence for or against.

You may be right, but stickers prove nothing. A PAB update followed the release of the previous Factory kits Space Skulls and Star Justice, and both of those kits had sticker sheets.

Thanks Guss, The background buildings (on green baseplates) in the first picture and the windmill belong to other members of NILTC, and some of my vehicles are M.E. Models kits and modified TLG desgins, but but everything else is MOC'd by me.

I just wanted to let you know that the name change to "Brickington" (intended to encourage residency and commercial investment) has been very successfull. The town's tax base has grown enough to support an expansion to Brickington, and it is almost finished. It will be displayed this weekend with the rest of the Northern Illinois LEGO train club. September 13th and 14th, at the Arlington Heights, IL, Memorial Library. The show is free and will be from 9am to 5:00 pm on Saturday and Noon-4pm on Sunday. I'll only be in attendance on Sunday, but the layout will be in place all weekend. A great way to see a sample of some of the best building in the midwest for free! I'll post a new thread with pics next week. Til then, a few hints: The residents of Brickington now have access to commercial aviation, and fresh produce, and there is much less danger of boats running aground.