Locomotive Annie

That's a great video clip Peterab. I particularly liked the station.

An unusual subject for a MOC, but it turned out really well and looks good on your street. Your Police station made me think back to other older period buildings that I've seen with an added modern extension and I must say yours looks better than most. For a time I worked at an hospital that was having its old buildings progressively removed section by section and new modern buildings being built up to replace them. Since the hospital had to keep functioning while this was all going on it made for some odd looking building configurations over the two year period the work was being undertaken.

When I was still into Brick wargaming I would buy Chinese military sets, not because the sets were good because most times the vehicles in the sets were very strange indeed, but because it was the only way to get olive drab bricks and modern weapons since Lego don't make any military sets. Some Chinese sets were Ok and I soon got to know which sets to buy for specific parts and vehicles. Cogo make quite a presentable amphibious tank as an example and their Jeep type vehicles were acceptable too for the most part. One of Banbao's tanks was good provided the gun barrel was replaced with one made by Kazi for their armored car (Kazi provide a spare gun barrel in their sets). Sluban make the best looking modern troops and Wange made the worst with Cogo, Enlighten and Kazi falling somewhere in between. Banbao make the best helicopters, but their fixed wing aircraft needed certain parts glued in order to survive handling as well as the substitution of some Cogo parts. Cogo's aircraft were better, only I wasn't all that into aerial warfare and what planes I had were generally used as set pieces in infantry campaigns. Lately I've purchased Banbao trainsets and I've found them to reasonably good and a useful way to get hold of train models that Lego doesn't make. Banbao's freight locomotive is particularly good and I had a lot of fun building it too. The brick fit and clutch was really good and much improved over their earlier sets in my opinion. Over the past months I've purchased a lot of Enlighten's train series and have found them to be reasonably Ok. Generally I use these sets as a basis for modding and MOCing into the type of models I want to build and it's a very good way to get train specific parts cheaply and easily which is important when my only means of support is my Invalid's pension. Don't worry I still do buy Lego, but in the form of individual bricks rather than a whole set. Most Lego sets are well outside my price range these days.

If I was still into Brick wargaming I'd be all over these sets like a rash.

It all sounds like hair splitting to me. Lego is Lego and I'm certain that when I was still into Brick wargaming and owned hundreds of minifigs customised for Steampunk and Colonial wargaming I was still very much an AFOL. These days I'm into Lego trains, - is somebody going to say I'm not a true AFOL because I mainly build locomotives and rolling stock and not buildings. I've also just started to collect Friends mini-dolls, will somebody now say I'm outside the fold because the mini-dolls aren't proper minifigs. As far as I'm concerned if it's made by Lego and since last time I checked in the mirror I was still middle aged I must be an AFOL. Case closed.

I have noticed that Wange have a 'Lucky City Girl' series now which seems to be copying some of the Friends themes. The minifigs are still Wange's cheap looking and unconvincing standard figures though so no clone Friends mini-dolls with their sets at least.

This is wonderful, I can remember going to picture theaters like this one when I was young. Unfortunately all replaced by multiplexes now and the original grand old buildings either demolished or converted to other uses.

Wow, I hadn't seen this one before LT. Talk about being filled with atmosphere of a time gone by. Keep bricking on, your streetscapes are wonderful.

A really great petrol station MOC. We still have this kind of petrol station in the rural area in which I live, but with most of them the lube bay and workshop has been closed down and the work area is only used for storage now.

I have a good stock of the old magnets as well as the fork for mounting them so I'm not too worried. My mostly New Zealand prototype locos and rolling stock should only have a central Norwegian type coupler and no side buffers, but I haven't really figured out a solution to that as yet. I can see a razor saw being used at some stage, only I want to be be very sure of what I'm doing before cutting anything. The older fork mounted magnetic coupler as a close enough appearance to a Norwegian coupler to keep me happy, but those side buffers will have to go. One of my locos carries a modern sealed type coupler and buffer beam assembly for purely experimental purposes though I don't see it becoming a trend as I don't fancy having to buy a brand new buffer beam and then have to saw most of it up.

And here's me busy with buying 12volt track and wanting to retro-convert everything back to 12 volts. With the grey track sleepers and their clips I'm mainly going to use those as wagon loads for a MOW train as I want to use regular 2x8 plates as sleepers instead. Mind you I'm going to be building a permanent layout so any older track parts should have an easy time of it as they won't be dismantled once in place. I agree about using a transformer over batteries. I used battery power and RC for 'G' scale, but that was Ok because the locos have plenty of room for all the necessary bits and can be built to take the battery load with no problems. Having to try and jam PF or RC gubbins into the sort of small late period 19th Century locos I like to build for 'L' gauge would be putting myself into a hiding for nothing situation. I did think about using the 9volt system, only it's a pain trying to make driving wheels also act as electrical pickups while trying to maintain traction. Mind you alainneke's pickup conversion here.... http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=79145 ......makes for an elegant solution to the problem which could help with enabling older 12volt locos to run on 9volt track. For the present though I will be staying with 12volt, but may try some experiments with metal railed track just to see what's possible. An adapter for joining the older 12volt rails to 9volt track is available here btw http://www.shapeways...lego-rail3.html

Stunning! These MOW vehicles make great subjects for MOCs.

Hey that is really sweet, good on Lego for finding him a MISB set and sending it to him.

Thanks for that tip Zephyr. I had a small amount of 1x2x5 and 1x1x5 bricks left over from a Brick wargaming project I'd done a while ago (this girl don't war no more) and after trying out a number of ways to try and build a goods van I finally decided to make use of them. I used the 1x2x5 bricks on the ends because I didn't have enough 1x1x5s to complete the goods van. I'll get some more of these bricks when I put in next months Bricklink order as I'd like to have two more of these goods vans.

It's Banbao track which is a nice enough track and is well moulded and everything, but while it will connect to Lego and Enlighten track the rail height is just that little bit more which will make for a bumpy transition unless the rail is filed a little at the join and the Lego track will need to be packed up slightly under the sleeper base with a piece of card. The other thing to bear in mind is that their straight track is 10mm longer than Lego and their curves are 5mm longer than Lego curves.

Thankyou Rick, I guess that is about the only sensible explanation. It's definitely very strange though because when I examined the figure through a magnifying lense under a good light I couldn't see so much as a trace of printing on the torso or any traces of white paint on the arms. Unless it was a factory second that somehow made it past quality control........ But anyway I'm not worried and I'm sure Gloria won't mind

Just recently I purchased some job lots of 2nd hand Friends minifigs so I could create some custom characters and in amongst all the minifigs there was one that was wearing a plain white sleeveless top with bare arms. None of the Friends minifigs were in any kind of standard condition having had all manner of body bits and heads swapped around as well as being a little playworn and nibbled, - but I knew that when I purchased them. The thing is I can't identify what Friend character this torso and arms came from, They are a good well developed pair of arms too which is why they will end up on Gloria the porteress on my Kotanga Tramway, but the fact remains that I don't know their origin. My first thought was that somebody was knocking off Friends minifigs, only the torso does carry Lego branding on the back just above the belt line. Any ideas?

Good decision, whenever I've sold off things like that I've always regretted it afterwards. And besides if you had managed to sort it all and package it up for sale you can depend that people will moan because there was a brick short, or that some plates were yellowed, or there's playwear, or the postage is too much........ I went through all that when I sold my tinplate train collection. For all the trouble it caused me I would've been better off just leaving it packed away in the cupboard..

Oh that's wonderful! What a delightful NG locomotive and the coach and guards van are great as well. Yes please do show us any further narrow gauge MOCs you build as what you've done so far is very inspiring.

I just thought I'd mention that I think the new Olivia's Desk polybag is a perfect addon to the workshop set. That's certainly how I will be putting them together anyway

I've just ordered this set and I'm impatiently waiting for it to arrive. Olivia is my favourite character unusual eye colour and all and I already have multiples of her workshop because I think it's such a wonderful set. Thank you for this review, if nothing else it has confirmed all the reasons why I ordered this set in the first place,

Wow! All that Lego! What an amazing photo. Imagine owning that much Lego, - imagine attempting to sort that much Lego into basic brick types and colours.......

Clever, very clever indeed.

Wow Murdoch, you are the LDD master. The Aerotrain was an art deco icon and I never thought it possible to build it in Lego.

The bogies certainly are works of art.and I'm very impressed. Now I just have figure out how to change some of the elements around to get some gears in there.