Ralph_S

Teazza, my opinion of this is a bit ambiguous. I like the concept and the overall look of the van, certainly considering that you describe it as your first MOC. It's menacing, but still sticks fairly closely to the types of vans LEGO sells as sets and as such will fit very well in a modern LEGO city. The SWAT team looks suitably impressive too. These are not guys to mess with. I don't like some of the details. I completely agree with the other people who commented that it really should have at least a plate more ground clearance. I've also been wondering what the grilles and vents on the side are for, as well as the 1x4 tile. There are many builders who in an attempt to make a model look more detailed add more-or-less random bits to them. While that can work well on a fictional spaceship, on a model that is supposed to represent a real vehicle (or a vehicle that could be real, anyway) it looks awkward IMO. My suggestion would be to loose the grilles/ vents and use the empty area that you will get behind the rear 'windows' to add 'SWAT' lettering to the side of the vehicle as well. I reckon that will make it look even more realistic. Cheers, Ralph

That's not what I meant. Indeed, if the LEGO is warmer than the temperature of the air, it will cool down more rapidly if there is wind than if there isn't, because the wind makes the thermal boundary layer thinner, but no matter what happens, it won't become colder than the temperature of the air. That's what I meant. The wind chill factor is based on what a certain wind and temperature feels like. -10F might feel like -25F in the wind to a human (because the human in question looses heat more rapidly in the wind), but a piece of LEGO won't become any colder than -10F irrespective of whether it is or isn't in the wind. Ralph

Even in the wind your LEGO wouldn't be colder due to wind. The whole point behind a wind-chill factor is that we, as humans, produce heat and we loose this heat faster in the wind, making the temperature seem lower than it actually is. LEGO doesn't suffer from the same effect. Cheers, Ralph

My own layout consists of modules pinned together, but I am guessing you're looking for something a bit bigger. (Mind you, this isn't particularly small either.) Some of the train builders in The Brickish Association use standard tables they make themselves as the base for their train layouts, but I am sure they put the LEGO on top after they get to the venue. The LEGO baseplates aren't attached to the tables. Here's a picture taken by a friend of mine showing one of their layouts from behind. GWLTC at GWLS - Operations Side by whoward69, on Flickr It's slightly dark, but the best one I could find. Is that the sort of thing you had in mind? Cheers, Ralph

Thank you. The 1x1 technic brick as well as its counterpart (brick 1x1 with studs on two sides) are ideally suited for making letters. If you are forced to use headlight bricks for all the SNOT work, things become orders of magnitude more complicated -one more reason why if I do use CAD, I'll stick to LDraw (but that's a different discussion). If you're not stressing the elements, you're not trying hard enough. Cheers, Ralph

? You can't seriously expect somebody else to make this decision for you! Only you know why you bought it in the first place and know whether you'd like or need to use the money this might fetch for something else. Good luck making up your mind. Ralph

I've spent a few minutes making an image of how you can make a N like I did. letter N by Mad physicist, on Flickr I hope it is obvious that if the stud of the 1x1 technic brick doesn't line up with whatever sits on top or the bottom of this, the letter will have to be held in place from the side. Cheers, Ralph

The picture of the 'N' Mr. Lego builder linked to is mine. brick-built letters (4) by Mad physicist, on Flickr There is no tile in the 'N'. It's all built with cheese slopes. The diagonal is made with two red cheese slopes. I suspect that if there are troubles recreating it in LDD those have to do with the way it deals with the grid (aka the discrete jump problem) or connections between the elements. When built with actual bricks there are very few gaps. It all fits very nicely. The height of two cheese slopes stacked on top of each other is the same as the width of a 1x1 brick/plate. Coming up with a standard design for the SNOT work needed to keep the parts in place makes little sense to me. There are various different ways of building it, depending on whether or not the center of the letter lines up with studs on the top or bottom, which depends on the combined widths of all the other letters to the left and right of it. If it does, a 1x1 technic brick, two 2x2 corner plates and four cheese slopes is all you need. If it doesn't- as is the case for both of the letters N on my 'off licence'- the vertical parts of the letter have to be held on by a structure to the left and right of the letter. As it happens, I used different solutions for the two letters N on the building. This is one of those things that really isn't all that hard once you've done it once By the way, I have to commend you guys for actually trying to do this sort of stuff in CAD. I can only make these by fiddling around with actual bricks. I don't use LDD and don't have the actual model handy, but I'll see whether I can whip something together in MLCad later today. Cheers, Ralph

You didn't look closely enough. Their front wheels sit have a tile in front and behind them, so they sit in a little depression. That is enough to keep them from falling off. On a real truck like this, they would also be chained down, of course. Many of these trucks don't actually have a rear ramp that folds up. Instead they have two narrow plates that slide out the back to load and unload cars. I think the new version is an improvement, but it still looks a bit clunky to me. If you had any more plates I'd recommend replacing some of the technic bricks with those, as well replacing the grey hinge bricks with hinge plates. You could still replace the tiny rear wheels with bigger ones with a bit of creativity. The larger tyres you've used for the tractor leave a gap of four studs between them, which means you can have cars sitting between them as well. Ralph

I love car transporters. There is so much scope for detail! wouldn't worry too much about the height. These things are tall. 15 ft. to the top of the cars on the upper deck isn't unreasonable. If the truck becomes taller than the building, I'd say the issue is that the buildings are too low and not the truck too tall. What I don't like about it is the width and how heavy the construction looks. Selanders truck shows that with a bit of ingenuity it's quite possible to make a truck that is six studs wide and can fit four-wide cars. It is definitely possible to make it all a bit more elegant whilst maintaining sufficient strength. Here is my take on a similar truck (a model from about two and a half years ago). I build my cars at five studs wide, so my truck had to be a bit wider than six studs. I chose 7. car carrier (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr It's obviously fairly big, with an overall length of about 50 studs, but that isn't a hell of a lot longer than your truck, and yet mine carries 7 larger cars. I think there is a lot of space to be gained on yours by changing the layout. The upper deck could be stretched much further forward and if you feel it becomes too tall, you could try to save some space by sloping the decks slightly (like on my older larger scale truck). Cheers, Ralph

That works for pictures but doesn't work for videos. For videos it only gives you the html. There is no BBCode. Ralph

As promised a few more pictures, showing the trailer and working doors as well as the working tilt cab on the truck. DAF XF105 tilt cab by Mad physicist, on Flickr DAF XF105 trailer by Mad physicist, on Flickr Cheers, Ralph

I'm not normally into Technic models, but it looks great and above anything it strikes me as a very original idea. Very nice.

Thank you. that colour combination was one of the reasons why the real truck appealed to me. I reckoned it would good in LEGO too. I could probably have motorised it if I wanted too, but -as I wrote before- one of the things I didn't like about my remote-controlled Scania recovery truck was that the cables and motors precluded giving it a detailed chassis and a working tilting cab. I'm going home this weekend and intend to take more pictures of the chassis details among other things. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks Lasse, I am glad you like the truck. I spent a lot of time looking at pictures of containers to get a good idea of all of the details, because I didn't want it to look like just a bland box. The logo is the feature that I am least happy with. the main problem is that the star itself had to fit within one of the four-stud wide sections of the side of the container. I'm still considering ways to increase the size of the medium blue patch that it sits on, among other things by adding replacing some of the white tiles in the vertical grooves in the side. Adding medium blue above the patch and below creates problems with the SNOT work that holds the stars in place. It's tricky. I remember, having read your comment, that you are working on a car transporter. I haven't decided yet. The Scania is just for illustration. I don't imagine I'll be building that, because it is based on a Scania P-series cab (most seem to be), whereas the cab design that I have is for a taller R-series. I can see whether I can rework it or whether I can find one with an R-series cab. If I do build one, I'd like to be able to make as many functions as I can work. That puts some limits on which design I can chose. The older car transporter had very few working features. I'll be moving house in the next few weeks, so I expect to build very little if anything. Cheers, Ralph

The VW van? Sure. It's an old model though, from about five years ago. I still do have it, but it uses a few `techniques' (non-LEGO windows, for instance) that I wouldn't use nowadays. VW Samba van by Mad physicist, on Flickr. I put some larger wheels on it after taking the picture of the truck, BTW. I have more pictures of the van on flickr. Cheers, Ralph

I've been thinking over the weekend and haven't made up my mind yet. Rather than a concrete truck or cement mixer, I'm thinking of a car transporter. I used to have a model of an American one until a few years ago when I took it apart to use the old dark grey for military builds. I kind of miss it. Of course, now I'd opt for a European one. Something like this Cheers, Ralph

Impressive functionality, but is there any way you can make the body narrower? I can understand that you might need a fair bit of space in there, but I think it is much too wide. Cheers, Ralph

Funny that you should mention that. Here's something I wrote on flickr just yesterday "However, right now I have very few concrete plans on what to build next. I have plenty of ideas, but little opportunity. I have started working on a second Scania. It won't be a wrecker truck, but I haven't quite decided what it will be instead. Perhaps a tipper truck or cement mixer. I reckon that would look good on this scale. " It would be a challenge, indeed. I reckon the biggest difficulty isn't the shape, but the fact that it can rotate and is open on one end, which precludes using a central axle for the rotation. Interesting. Cheers, Ralph

Interesting suggestion. It's not really a truck I considered. I built the Scania quite simply because the recovery truck I liked happened to be one (it could have been something else) and I chose a DAF because it is Dutch, I am Dutch and it goes well with me already having built a collection of other Dutch vehicles. For the first time in a long while I don't have any concrete plans for what I'll build next. I have done some work on the cab for a second Scania, but I'm not sure I'll finish it. I've also got plenty of other ideas, but little time and opportunity to do any of them. They're all properly big things. I will keep an eye out for FH16s with nice paint schemes Cheers, Ralph

Thanks for all the comments guys. I'm not going to respond to all of them individually, but I do appreciate them. I'd love to come to LFW, but unfortunately I can't. I do intend to keep this model together for a while and if I have the opportunity to come to a LEGO event (either through de Bouwsteen or LOWLug) I think this is a model worth taking. I took my Dutch ambulance to a meeting of De Bouwsteen earlier this year and it seemed to go down well. Thanks Rog. I'm not sure what you mean by a proper Swedish truck. I already have a Scania. Are you thinking of a Volvo? The front lower part of the cab was probably the most challenging bit to build on this project, and the mudguard was one of the bits that made it difficult. On the real truck it is a nice curve and the door has a matching curve that lines up with it, which pretty much ruled out being able to use a standard curved brick to do it (provided any of them even come in light bley). I also wanted to make the door such that I could open it, which ruled out any construction in which parts of the mudguard were attached to the door. I toyed with a number of different ideas in my mind, but couldn't figure out how to do it at first. US Army LMTV (1) by Mad physicist, on Flickr Sometimes a solution to a problem is staring you in the face and you don't realise it. It is actually something I did before. I obviously still had to work out how to make the matching curve in the door, but I had already thought of using a combination of cheese slopes and some SNOT work to do that and it came together really quickly. I have to admit though that I was a bit surprised at quite how well the flat parts of the hinge bricks line up with the slopes. Cheers, Ralph

I'm not a big fan of cubedudes in general. They used to be fun, but now the novelty has worn of some, I'm a little tired of them. That said, I have to admit this one does look remarkably like House somehow. That's pretty impressive. Cheers, Ralph

Thank you. There are a few things I couldn't manage (cheese slopes don't exist in dark tan), but I tried to stick close to the original. I also couldn't make the mudguards on the trailer the way I wanted to. Instead of a separate mudguard for each of the three wheels I had to combine them into a single large one. I have seriously dented my supply of dark red cheese slopes for this one, indeed. The container is quite heavy, but the truck itself is reasonably light. It is hard to compare it to the last truck I built, because that had Power Functions in it and consequently feels a lot heavier. Cheers, Ralph edit: Hi Jantjeuh (a fellow Dutchman I presume?). I was apparently writing my reply when you posted, so I'm replying to your message separately. This one isn't motorised. I had a lot of fun building the Scania recovery truck (which is motorized), but one of my minor frustrations with it was that the mechanical bits and motors took up so much space inside and under the cab that I couldn't give it a working tilting cab and a representation of an engine. I love doing that sort of stuff, so when I started the DAF I decided that I did want a tilting cab on that. I didn't have the opportunity (yet) to take photographs of it though. Cheers, Ralph

Thanks guys. I looked at a lot of different colour combinations, but to me this seemed one of the nicest and, also important, one that I reckoned I could make look good in LEGO too. Both dark red and dark tan seem to be colours that are mainly available in the form of small plates. I certainly mainly have small plates of either in my collection, so it wasn't much of an issue that the stripy pattern would require lots of those. I put a lot of effort into the container. It wouldn't have been hard to build a white box. Even the lettering was fairly easy. With the exception of the `M' they're all old-fashioned studs up building. However, I felt the profiling was very important for the overall look. Cheers, Ralph