Martin_B

Wow...that looks fantastic. The smooth, clean lines of Lego elements lend themselves really well to that style, don't they? Art deco's a really cool architectural style that I wish I saw in Lego more often. Two votes for extending/building this up to a full-scale modular building!

I dig the realism of this one; it's futuristic, but close enough to today's technology to be believable and lifelike. Fantastic detailing too. It reminds me of the old Life On Mars range, but cranked up to 11. Love it!

Thinking back, my Caribbean Clipper (which was called Sea Hawk in the UK, and the BSB was also known as Dark Shark over here...I remember that clearly too!) had sails that needed to be separated too. These two really were classics against which all the later Pirates ships were judged! I bought my BSB off Ebay years later (I wanted to reunite the CC with its adversary!) without a box before it got reissued so can't say what the packaging looked like, but the instructions I have don't include the error and its corrected extra pages so it's definitely not present in every batch or production run.

Sorry for a double-post, but I've taken separate photos of the street and monorail layouts...with my good camera this time so you can actually see what I'm trying to do! I absolutely LOVE that camera, but I digress... Here's the monorail, prior to the second station (which will be a MOC in the style of the Tokyo Metro) and awaiting the 32x32 plates that will provide the foundations for everything else: And here's the street layout that will literally sit on top of it: For nostalgia's sake I'm incorporating my old childhood 'Weetabix' house and the early 90s-era Shell fuel station, multi-storey and car wash. Part of me wants to rebuild the monorail train, but the bricks are in such good condition for their age (honestly, I don't think it's been played with at all) I'm inclined to keep it. I'll be modelling the underground station on the Tokyo Metro simply because it's the only underground rail system I've seen in real life, apart from the London tube which would be hard to recreate in Lego due to the walls of the stations and corridors being curved! Apart from the obvious problem of getting 32x32 road plates to physically attach to any supports underneath, what do the rest of you think?

You may remember I posted a thread recently about the possibility of using the old Airport Shuttle monorail system, but in the opposite way from how it was originally sold - running below 'ground level' instead of above it. TBH I've been mulling over the idea of raising the level of road plates to give room for things like basements (seeing them in modulars and MOC buildings didn't put me off the idea either) so after finally getting my own Shuttle set home and putting it together I started planning a 'raised' town layout. I've attached a pic of what I've done so far...which is unfortunately taken on my camera phone, which seems to automatically add graininess and blurriness to everything so isn't as clear as I'd hoped. Anyway. I've done a simple loop around the edge of the layout, with two stations so far. The one on the left (green baseplate) is a slightly-modified 'Airport' station from the original set, with the track raised up in that corner. The route goes below street level everywhere else, running around the outer edges. The other station will be on the opposite side, underneath the old Shell car park/fuel station, and will be below ground level, as will the other three-quarters of the track. I realised early on that the best place for the stations is on the edges. The main reason is that it's the only easy way to display an underground feature, but there's also the issue of access to anything underneath the 32x32 'street' plates. I initially allowed gaps in the middle of the layout for extra 32x32 plates (the right hand side of the main street), which will allow me to fit a row of modular buildings on their own 32x32 baseplates, possibly with their own below-ground basements or cellars. That main street is where the staircase to the underground station will go. I know this is going to be an ambitious build, but since I have the monorail and 'surface' level mapped out already, all that remains to be done is setting out a subterranean foundation of 32x32 baseplates to sit the surface level plates and their support columns on before adding buildings. I'll start taking photos with my better camera from now on, since it's probably easier to understand with photos!

My system is halfway between the simple colour coding and part-specific sorting I guess. I have eight polythene boxes that are about five litres in size for the general colours (black bricks, black plates, red, blue, yellow, white, transparent and grey) with 'specialised' pieces like minifigs, wheels/tyres, Technic and other colours in small 1 litre ice cream tubs. It's still difficult to find the parts I want so I'll have to get some of those Raaco cabinets from Clas Ohlsen and arrange them by both 'type' and 'colour'. I thought it would be a bit OCD of me to go as well organised as that, but looking at the photos that other people on this thread, it's a really good idea when your collection grows! Especially so now that I'm using my collection again rather than just storing it.

Up close, you can see minute scratches to the surface of the bricks (at least I can) but that's *really* up close with a light shining on them! So no, it's not really obvious. TBH I don't really mind whether the bricks are new or used, unless they're discoloured...apparently peroxide works on sunlight-discoloured plastic, but I've not tried it myself! EDIT: here's the article.

Absolutely. I want to do a modular town layout at some point, but I'm starting a 'classic' one first. It's partly as a tribute to my childhood so I can do what I wanted to do then, if that makes sense. I paid almost £400 for the Airport Shuttle including postage in the end (and I have to wait till tomorrow morning to collect it from the post office! ) but I couldn't find another one with its original box at that price, even on Bricklink. I'm sure it'll be worthwhile when I get it home! Which leads me to another question: I know the resale prices speak volumes here, but what do fellow fans think of having the original boxes? I personally don't mind too much about the box as long as the set is complete and bricks themselves are in good condition...even the instructions are available online as a last resort. I just happened to find a lot of the boxes of my sets flattened down the other day, but I was always more worried about losing the instruction booklets. I suppose I'll thank myself if I ever feel the need to sell the sets on at a later date...

This is the highlight of Waking Season, which I think is the album of the year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtMjq2LtgVQ I really enjoy listening to ambient/instrumental stuff as background music...although this band are fantastic to hear live.

I'm in the same situation really...pretty much everything I wanted as a youngster (and therefore still want! ) is long since discontinued, but I never thought of using Bricklink this way. The individual pages for each set have an inventory section as well so it makes the job fairly straightforward from that point of view. Cost is going to be an issue though, since some parts are inevitably expensive due to their rarity so it could soon add up. Modular sets seem to be particularly pricey, but I guess that's because they're very popular and have so many parts (I love the look of them too). But yeah, the Greengrocer goes for astronomical prices second-hand; I have no choice but to hope it gets reissued and pick it up then. I've bought a couple of sets off the 'bay but TBH the prices there are even higher than the likes of Bricklink!

@Si-MOS: thanks! It's currently on display in my living room. Quite a few of the parts, especially early on, were taken from my existing collection but I want to keep it together for as long as I can so I'll just replace those via Bricklink or something. My next MOC will be a Classic Town layout using the Airport Shuttle monorail, but as for my inner SF/anime fanboy? Good question! I'm a huge Macross geek, and the plane/mecha designs in that are fantastic - they transform between jet and robot modes, which would be a challenge to recreate but look really cool. My personal fave of the franchise, Macross Plus, celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2014. I might do a fan tribute build for that, since the plane designs are awesome!

Thanks everyone! The stand doesn't look very good and creaks ominously so I'll replace it with something made from Technic beams next week. Here's a close-up of the engine intakes and undercarriage with the landing gear down: It 'works' in that it moves, but without the stand the landing legs would just collapse! A shame really; I never did think of a workaround for it.

I like the way it captures a moment in time like a freeze-frame shot. Very clever! Of course, I really like the tank and the 'realistic' mecha too. It reminds me a bit of an old anime show called Gasaraki that had robots fighting alongside regular tanks and other vehicles.

I just bought that early 90s Classic Town monorail off the 'Bay. It wasn't cheap, but being a rare old thing that doesn't appear in the UK very often (I just checked Bricklink!) I don't mind too much. If all goes to plan it'll form the centrepiece of a MOC Town layout I'm working on. Besides, since I left my Dark Ages I've only bought two sets and some bags of spares for my recent MOC project so I owe it to myself, right? At least, that's what I'll be telling myself as I try to pay off the resulting credit card bill during the next month or two...

I think it's now completed! I've built a new stand for it, which isn't quite as good as I'd hoped, but it does the job all right. The area where the pneumatic tube (for the landing gear operation) exits underneath happens to be right near the centre of gravity where the stand attaches...which is what I intended, but through more luck than judgement, I must admit! Overall view Head-on (the length seems to have confused my camera's focusing!) The underside. It's hard to see in this shot, but there are two light/dark grey jet engines inside the intakes. Side profile. Trying to recreate the curved shape was HARD. I'm still not completely convince I got it 'curved' enough. View from the rear. Another two of those jet engine assemblies inside the jetpipes, except they're black and I'm relying on October daylight! View from directly overhead, showing the outline that I spent ages agonising over. Ignore the goofy footwear. I just checked the landing gear and yes, it does still work now that everything else is in place. I'll try to get a shot of that when my camera battery's recharged. I've uploaded the full size photos to Flickr if you want to see them in higher res.

I really like the design of those. I've been considering making buildings that combine the 'look' of the traditional Town, but incorporating some aspects of the increased detail of the newer modular stuff as well. I expected it to be quite difficult, but you seem to have done that already. Well done!

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Thanks for the replies - I really appreciate it. I must say the lazy person in me is favouring adapting an existing set over making one from individual spares! In terms of the ready-made monorails, sets of the Airport one are on Bricklink for upwards of £400 (I'm restricting my search to inside the EU since importing from the US carries customs charges and extra delivery fees). There are sets of the old Futuron in the UK for less than £200, which would give me the rolling stock and a simple oval of track including ramps. The Unitron (a small range that seemed to run parallel with Spyrius) is another Space-themed monorail which, again, is available - again outside the UK - for less than £200 and includes a few extra ramps and points. Going onto Ebay might prove to be even more expensive still, unless I happen to be in the right place at the right time for a bargain. Realistically then, it's going to be over £200 by the time I've rebuilt the carriages and platforms to look like a modern 'Metro' system. I'll probably go for the Tokyo model rather than the London one, since the Japanese ones are more square so will be easier to recreate. Considering the time and expense involved, I think I'll have some of the track above 'ground level' to keep things interesting. I'll give the DIY monorail vids a look later this evening. Thanks again for the advice so far, and I'll post pics of this when I get the project underway!

I think it's great too. Perhaps a few plants and/or trees are all that's needed to make it look just right...the long brown area between the two roads for instance would look fantastic with some flowers or an avenue of trees.

I'm planning a town layout with an underground railway for my next MOC and want to try something based on the monorail instead of, say, the 9V Train system. The old Classic Town Airport Shuttle looks like a good starting-point - I'm not familiar with how it works, but there's a really helpful review on here somewhere that gives detailed pics of the complete setup. My idea is that, rather than a rail that goes from ground level to a raised one, it spends most of its time below street level with the ramp pieces serving to raise it up to street level (for above-ground stations or maintenance sheds, for example). I've travelled on the London Tube and the Tokyo Metro, and the idea of smaller-gauge underground railways is cool to me; it's something I'd really like to incorporate into a MOC city. Yes, it's ambitious but it wouldn't occupy any extra floor/table space since it'll run underneath everything else! I've seen one or two people here who have done some excellent MOC street scenes with a bit of stuff going on below street level, and I'm sure a few of you have one of the original Space or Town monorail sets. What's the best way to start? I'm torn between saving up for an Airport Shuttle set, stripping it down and rebuilding it or buying the pieces separately and starting from parts. Neither option is going to be cheap of course but I'd like to hear opinions of how other people would go about it. So...what does everyone think?

Thanks for the review. As many people have said, the only downside is the price (£89 in the UK last time I checked). Other than that, it would make the perfect gift for christmas!

That's a phrase worth remembering - it used to happen to me all the time when I was a kid. Eventually I started to realise my limits and reined in my enthusiasm a bit. I discovered Bricklink a few months ago, which really opened things up for me. Now I can understand how so many people can make such impressive MOCs! Apart from the obvious financial restraints, the only limitation is the physical space inside my house. Fortunately I live on my own these days, but there's still the issue of fitting in everything else (furniture, guitar gear, er, me...).

I can understand where you're coming from, 1974. I suppose the 'heyday' is a subjective thing that depends on what sets were around when you were a child...for instance my own 'golden age' was the tail-end of the 80s and early 90s; there were shops, houses, racetracks, airports, train stations, a futuristic monorail...I'm, still doing a post-Dark Ages catch-up of what's on offer now, but none of it is as charming or imaginative to my eyes as what was around then. The new 'City' is I suppose intended to be colourful and exciting for today's generation, but TBH it always was exciting! I don't think kids' expectations have changed all that much. Not as far as the Town/City theme is concerned, anyway. Right now I'm trying to decide, assuming none of the new stuff catches my interest, whether I should pick up second-hand 'old' sets that I couldn't afford when I was young, or start collecting the Modular range.

Excellent work! I'm starting to find the smaller MOCs like this one to be just as impressive as the really big ones...the amount of detail in such a small model is quite something.

I really dig the colour scheme there...the pipes snaking around the front of the fuselage are neat too. Good job!