Eilif

Well done. It's inspiring to see what great results you achieved with a limited selection of pieces.

6350 again. Of course, when I first got it the Pizza and the chef were the main selling points. Looking at it years later, that it has 3 figs, one female, and a simple design that captures the essence of the pizzaria so well in a smallish set are the other reasons to make it my #1.

MOCs s all the way. Some of this is the influence of the train club that I am a part of where almost everything is a MOC, but for all my 22 years of building, I've nearly always preferred my town designs or modded TLG designs to official sets. I'm a builder and not a set collector, so while I enjoy building the set first, it's the rare set that survives on my shelf for more than a few months before being radically modded, completely rebuilt, or sorted into the larger collection. There are a few exceptions of course, so some StarWars, Indy, and the Cafe/Market/Grocer series, have a longer "shelf life". Thus, for my 80"x40" seaside town display/module, (half of which is visible here http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=309896) I essentially use MOCs exclusively. I am not great at designing vehicles so I have a few modded TLG vehicles, but the Indiana Jones moto w/sidecar is the only unmodded TLG design on the entire module. My humble opinion only of course: TLG designs are cute, and nostaligic, and represent the highest level of the toy-designers craft, but MOC's are the very spirit of LEGO creative play.

I will weigh in on this one. I routinely find MB and other clone bricks in batches of LEGO I purchase. While I do believe that with the exceptiong of TYCO -which is so well made that it often blends right in-there is a difference in quality, most clone brands are compatible with LEGO and are of sufficent quality to be usefull in some situations. When I get clone bricks, some gets kept, others do not. Here's what I keep and why: -Black elements of all brands. Black elements, while usually not a glossy as LEGO blend in well and are usefull for interior and structure -Grey and brown of all brands. These colors are usefull for the same reasons as Black, but also are good when making landscapes, cliffs, etc. -Megablock silver-grey elements. Quite simply a cool color that LEGO does not make -Megablock Sand green- Another cool color whose LEGO counterpart is quite rare, and shows up often in MB lots at thrift stores. -Megablock clear and translucent elements. these are almost indistinguishable from LEGO, and you can never have enough clear brick. -Megablock purple and pink. My wife asked me to keep it around for her. -Interesting windows, doors, laders, weapons, accessories, and some minifigs. These are things that LEGO does not make, and may come in handy for certain circumstances. Also Enlighten minifigs and accessories are often good enough to use with my LEGO. Everything else gets separated out until I can find a suitable trade or donor. The most recent batch -a full large red MB bucket and small bag of overflow- went to a couple who had advertised on craigslist wanting LEGO for physical therapy for their child. They are very happy with what they recieved. Oh, and Larry, I think that the 45 year aniversary of "Enlighten" is another one of "Enlighten's truth twistings." It's possible that Enlighten as a business entity may have existed in some form, but I sincerely doubt they were making LEGO knock-offs at the dawn of China's "Cultural Revolution". Even if they were a Hong Kong company, I just don't see it.

Castle Chess. I am very dissapointed. I'm sure that numerically it is worth it, but what is the point really? Toss out all the extranea, base it on a 32x32 baseplate and just give us a great pack of figures and a reasonable price like the Vikings chess. I'd gladly pay a 20 or 30 more USD than the Viking kit in order to get unique minifigs rather than repeats, but at 300 bucks, it's just too much. By making it so elaborate and expensive LEGO has taken what could have been a regularly sold set with wide audience and wide sales and exchanged it for a low volume selling specialty kit. I realize I am whining a bit because I want a lower cost figure pack, but 300 bucks is just too much for me.

Very nice town. It reminds me of the neat layouts featured in the very early 90's LEGO promo materiel.

Here are 3 figs that I'd like to see that are very underrepresented. Female minifig with distinctly female head and torso Female elderly minifig Male Elderly minifig Female Child minifig with new torso and "child'ish" face

Thanks Asuka, I was trying to make versions of the different types of houses one finds in US vacation homes in places like the pacific northwest and the Great Lakes areas. I have a 1950's prefab, 1960-70's cottage, hunting cabin, and of course, the ostentatious rich-folks home. Now I just need a trailer home and an A-frame... I can't take full credit for the vehicles though. I built this module in a hurry over less than two weeks, so all 5 of the road vehicles are modified versions of existing LEGO designs. They are mail car, Arkham asylum ambulance, Indy's motorcyle w/sidecar and the two trucks from the Indiana Jones Chase set. The float-plane is even a modified design that I found on brickshelf. I'll definately be posting pics of the expanded module. In the mean time, any suggestions for improvement are welcome.

Lot's of firsts here. This is the module that I assembled for the Northern Illinois LEGO Train Club's most recent show. The part that I built is 4x4 baseplates in area, encompasing the yellow house over to the red house, and from the back of the table by the tracks to the front "water" section of the table. The area with viking ships is not mine. Appologies in advance, I did not take the pictures so some of them aren't perfect, but I'm glad that a friend captured the layout anyway. For BrickWorld I will be doubling the length of the module, and continuing the seaside town theme. Mostly a small marina and and a seaward facing line of "downtown" type storefronts. A slighty hazy overview of the module from the South end Lets zoom in and see the small patch of woods in front of the brown hillside house Move to view the two most northern houses form the west side An ok view of the red house, this one is built to Market Street Modular specs. It had a third floor, but it looked out of place in the layout. More pics of when moderated http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=309896

This is probably redundant, but I just wanted to confirm that you are saying that all the parts in these sets, notably: -Grey minifig legs and torsos -black minifig legs and torsos -2x2 round tiles with vent printing -targeting computer bricks will soon be available for sale from pick-a-brick online?

Great Review, and great pictures. Seems like a really well put together bit of nostalgia. I would disagree with those who are complaining about the price. A quick look at the LEGO site shows that it is priced similarly to Mars Mission kits. I have great memories of CS as kid, and this looks like a pretty good revisiting of that theme. Despite all that, I don't think I will pick it up. I don't do much Space anymore, and I've been spoiled with the 2k+ piece counts and special elements of the other Factory and CafeCorner series. With Town Plan still waiting to be purchased I have to acknoledge that I can only spend so much on LEGO Crack... I mean Bricks.

That's my quandry exactly. I probably have about that much brick, but so much of it came via pick-a-brick and used lots there's really no logical way to tally it. I certainly am not going to be inputing tallies of every brick in my collection into peeron or bricklink.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest the purchase of Market Street. I have all 3, and while Market street differs stylisitcally from the other two, I found that it was packed with interesting building techniques and alot of great pieces. I enjoyed the build as much as Cafe Corner The center mounted stairs of the modular house standard are a bit odd, but it's part of the modular rotatable designs. Also, it's an easy fix to move location of the stairs.

Thanks for the review, especially the pics. In my experience the Enlighten MO is copying LEGO box art and then subistuting pieces and minifigs at will, so you rarely get precisely what is pictured on the box. It looks like the ships you got are very close copies. Were there any notable differences between box/dvertisement art and the actual product you received?

A bunch of images of oxford sets popped up at brickfilms a while back. If you find any reviews let me know. I've only seen brief comments by folks who have had Oxford product, but those comments seem, as you said, to suggest a very high quality. You can see the whole Oxford line here: http://www.oxfordtoy.co.kr/eng/product/sma...s.asp?category=

Oxford makes some really looking sets in their ancient Korea, castle'esque, adventure'esque, and train lines. Unfortunately, you can't get them in the states. It's a shame because they look like really well designed sets and they aren't pirated sets like "enlighten". Ironically alot of Oxford sets have been pirated by the Sluban company and have showed up in the US on Ebay and also under Best-Lock and Just-Kids names. None of the really cool sets though...

Excellent Review. It made it hard to wait for this set. I Just finished building it with my wife this weekend. It really is now my all time favorite LEGO set. There were a few small complaints that I haven't seen mentioned. One is that the three small windows on the rear of the building are placed so that they are at foot level of the interior stair and not at head level. It would have been easy to place them at appropriate height by shifting them all up wards or right a couple of bricks. Also, the 6-high door onto the roof is taller than necessary. A 5 high door looks much more appropriate. That said, it was an easy mod, and it's nice to get one of the new 6 high black door pieces. Well done TLG, the bar has been raised again!

Old thread and great points. I voted for 4 wide cars. My reasons are fairly speicific. From a purely asthetic, "shelf display" point of view, I completely understand why many folks prefer the look of 6 wide or larger cars. However, as most of my town building is for display with my Train Club, there are a few reasons to go with 4 wide. -Most of the members use 4 wide cars. -Most structures are slightly downsized (even the big ones) and the 4 wide cars fit this scale well. -Smaller cars make buildings, streets and scenery look larger. This is especially true when parked in driveways next to houses. -Smaller cars take up less space in car carriers, ferrys, etc. -When making cars en-masse most folks already have a large stock of windows and the like for constructing 4 wide cars. Unrelated to the train club: -I really do like the classic 1980's LEGO asthetic for cars. (not so much for trucks) -I find that it's a charming standard that still provides a challenge to see what can be done in a small space.

Hello folks, I'm Eilif. I discovered your forum a few weeks ago and I finally joined. I'm in Chicago, so I hope the folks on the "Euro" side of the pond won't hold it against me. I've been into LEGO since the 80's and I've never had a full-on dark ages, but a few years out of college, I've found myself in the midst of my personal LEGO Renaissance. It seems LEGO is having a Renaissance also and I am loving the direction LEGO has recently taken with the Market Street series (Green Grocer my favorite is LEGO set ever) revitalized Town series, Creator Houses, Castle, etc. Great time to be an AFOL!