cgarison

Nice display and I love the MOC that looks very similar to a V22 Osprey.

My biggest warning is to be very, very careful when trying to undo the yellowing by using one of the many "Retro Bright" formulas on the web. As each color of Lego as well as each part has a specific formula to generate the brick that has the best "play-ability," then you must also take into account that the results will vary by every piece that you try the formula to undo the plastic aging process. In the case of the white that has been produced since the new formula of ABS was introduced about 10 years ago, Retro Bright will trigger a nice "bloom" which turns your white brick into a very tan, antique white color. Also, RetroBright will affect the clutch factor on your bricks and make them harder to separate from one another.

Actually, Lego has different formulations for different pieces that they mold. Some pieces may be a bit "harder" than others depending on the shape. But it does not look like this is your issue as you have a couple of shade of the 1X2 plate and two shades of window frames. So I think this is indeed the natural variation in the parts that are molded. If you have a nearby Lego store, check out the white pieces in a bin on the Pick-A-Brick wall. In the case of some 1X3 bricks that I bought in February of this year, their were two distinct shades of white of which I would call one a warmer, "tan" hue and the other a cooler, blueish hue. When building MOCs with a lot of white tiles and plates that are in conspicuous locations, I often have to sort through a large number of pieces just to get the ones that look like they should be close together on the piece that I am building. I have even redesigned sections of my MOC to hide off shades of white or have decided to go with other colors to separate out the differences in the shades. Best of luck with getting the shades that you need from BL.

Nice work with lots of great detail.

Nice review of this set. I might build a model like it, but I don't think I will purchase a set considering the price of this model. First off, there are two distinct variations of the "white" color that is currently produced by TLG. In the case of most of the parts that I have are either one of these two shades of white or they show some aging which means the bricks begin to develop a light tan hue from the fire retardant in the plastic. In the case of your tiles, the 1X1 tiles could have come from a lot that had a different shade than the rest of the tiles which could explain the color variation. Yellow also has this variation of color as well in which we have two distinct shades for every part that is produced. But..... The guy mentioned above with all the white parts that have discolored in his basement came from the 2007 era of white. I also noticed that many of my 2007 era white pieces are more prone to this discoloration than the pieces that I had when I was little (35 years ago.) I think this has something to do with the new formula for white that came about in 2004 and the company has been working to correct any issues in the formula that took place over the last few years. If the discoloration of those tiles is that noticeable, then I would contact Lego and see what they can do to remedy the situation. In the case of the guy with the white brick in the basement that yellowed, the conditions in his house were darn near perfect for Lego storage so their is no explanation as to why this happened. I know he has talked to numerous Lego representative about the situation and they have failed to provide an explanation as to why this has occurred. OTOH, Lego also sent our sister clubs a box of LUG support "Play Brick" with magenta 1X2 45 degree slopes that had turned "pinkish tan" due to the heat of the florescent tubes in on a stores "Pick A Brick" wall. So heat is a definite factor in the discoloration of Lego parts, but for white that was made 6-8 years ago, these pieces can discolor without the influence of heat or UV light. As far as "discoloration" FWIW... I have a great deal of those discolored white bricks from the AFOL's basement and I plan to use them as the main building component in a project that I am planning. Hopefully those bricks will provide the perfect basis for me to build a MOC that looks like many of the rundown buildings in my local area. So there is a way to use brick that does not look perfect. You just need to build a project around the concept of discolored brick. Best of luck with your issue on the tiles and I hope they are only the natural discoloration from the molding process and not the blighted bricks we have seen from circa 2007.

Great work. The US Bank building is very nice and I love the Trollied. Very LA. Great Job!

Nice work. The tiled roof is very nice. That is a lot nicer than the Japanese restaurants where I live.

Regular Joes are very important. But they run and hide when is an alien invasion in their front yard.

The level crossing is quite fine. Nice work!

For me, it depends upon the amount of time I want to spend with the MOC. My modular buildings are built primarily for the "DelVaLUG City" layout so the interiors are not as important when I display at shows, but some interior details (like curtains and store counters) are visible so it is nice to complete those for the people walking by with a discerning eye that notices those things. One thing to note is that the purpose of the building is to be solely for out city layout and not for other smaller displays, I purposely make those building much more robust to survive the miles and miles of road travel between events with minimal "re-construction" at the event so those do not have interiors that are accessible, but I try to add additional detail to the exterior to make up for the solid construction. I have seen some guys have to almost rebuild their MOCs from scratch after traveling to an event. My latest build will have a completed first floor interior because it is quite visible through the store front and a partially completed upstairs for my own satisfaction. If this thing does not travel well in a few weeks when I go to BrickFair VA, I will go back to solid building for the layouts. So I guess that means I am with the rest in the thread that say to each their own.

Nice work! I like the technic wings as awnings!

I know Lego has been collecting a tremendous number of concepts from the community regarding "space" concepts, but it would be really difficult for the themes of "Good vs. Bad" to fit into the old realm of space exploration prior to Blacktron. I would love to see a reboot, but I am a realist and understand that is not going to happen. But I also realize their is more to space than blue, gray, and trans yellow and have been building models using many other color schemes. Galaxy Squad provided a nice new array of space color palettes if you ignore those bug sets although, lime and burgundy is a very nice color combination for some project of mine in the future.

Look around your local area and build in that style. I have created a couple of style of houses based upon the ones that I have seen (or lived in) around Philly for our club's town layout. Now, I am looking at the smaller businesses that line the streets of the small town suburbs around Philly for some of the ideas for businesses to put into the town. Currenty, we are short on restaurants (with only the Parisian Cafe in our layout), so my latest MOC is modular standard building based off the Friend's Juice Bar facade, but in a style that looks like it could be a part of main street in Wayne. PA. I know down the road, we will need a new police station and the Fire Brigade fire station will need an upgrade as well. But all that will come in time.

Oh Bummer.... I am going to be out ot town on August 1 at BrickFair so trying to purchase this is going to be a beast for me. Really bad timing for the Spacers heading out to Chantilly.

Great Detail and Amazing MOC! Hey! Is she playing solitaire on the point of sale system?

Nice work! It looks like the gambling areas at the Atlantic City casinos.

As much as I hate BURPs and GURPs in Lego builds, I have to admit that in some cases the pieces have their place in a lot of builds for AFOLS by providing large infrastructure pieces needed to support detailed builds. If it were not for these pieces and the crappy panels that I hate, then I would be stuck with using Duplo to support large structures. And I dislike Duplo more than BURPs, GURPs, and panels. So their is the "Love-Hate" relationship some of us may have with these pieces.

The car hauler MOC brings back fond memories of my green Matchbox Super King car hauler from when I was a tike. Very nice build. And the rest of the cars are awesome as well. Great Work.

Nice work and excellent back story. I know we are wanting to do more of the worn down look for our town layout "DelVaLug City" and your MOCs have been a source of inspiration for my future work.

We run an 8 wide locomotive with long cars on our moonbase layout with standard Lego 90 degree turns and our poor locomotive cries to be run on the big long sweeping turns of the PennLUG layout shown above. Our train cars also had to be modified to set about 2 plates higher off the trucks so they would clear our turns on the layout. As much as I like those long sweeping turns, we do not have the space on our layout because of our hanging monorail and supports for the moonbase modules.

Great work on the engine. I agree with the others when they say you will get more power and speed when you run a layout with longer straights. Those tight turns on my home layout tax my engines much more heavily than the long straights that we run on our layouts at AFOL events.

Very nice work! The detail in the shed was very nice with the spilled drum of oil. Will you be bringing this wonderful display to BrickFair, VA in Chantilly in August? I would love to see it in person.

Just not off the table... I was getting tired of being asked by my friends "How do you make a flying train?"

Huh! I thought I was the only lucky one to acquire in bulk the majority of parts to build an extra HE or 2. When I add 6 to 8 total cars in the middle with the complete build, I will definitely need 2 PF motors, a AAA battery box and possibly even a train weight in my main locomotive to pull that many cars. If I go with the train weight, I will lose some stability on the snot brick chevron pattern, but that should not be a huge issue.

I have to agree on the size of the HE in relation to the size of the display that you are building. Here is our display at Philly BrickFest with the Horizon Express (minus the two of the 4 middle cars) and this is about 128 studs long. Adding the two additional cars pushed us out to approximately 6 baseplates or 12 straight pieces of track in length. Note the HE was a last minute addition after I had a high speed derailment issue with the MOC train that had been designed to run at the event. It was not a pretty sight when I saw that locomotive fly off the edge of the table and crash to the floor below. I am glad we had this for our show backup.