Roger_Smith

Great to see some news in this topic. It was actually one of the first topics I read on here, even before I registered my account. Really good job on the 928, looks magnificient. I hope I'll be able to restore my own 928 aswell. It misses couple of pieces, and others are badly worn, especially some of the printed parts...

Sure did it as a kid. Back then, I had a huge city layout (mostly small houses and very, very few official sets). A couple of the older buildings I had in there were color cohesive. But the more buildings I had, the more difficult it became to build one in just one color, so then I started doing as many rows of bricks in one color as was possible, which resuilted in striped buildings. And when even that got difficult, I just built with whatever was left. And to be honest, it never bothered me at all. Sure I would've liked to have buildings in just one color (and have way bigger buildings, too), but that just wasn't possible, so I made do with what I had. I often demolished one or several buildings to build something new, so even some of the one-color houses got broken up over time. On the other hand, I remember breaking down several mostly red/white houses to get bricks to build a giant three storey abomimansion with a red ground floor and white upper floors. And the remaining bricks ended up in smaller rainbow houses... I guess this stuiff doesn't really matter much to kids. I remember that I also built some houses that had car windowshield pieces in lieu of actual windows... Nowadays I wouldn't build MOCs that way at all, though I also do resort to the prototyping technique where I use random bricks to get an estimate on what bricks I need to order for my MOC if I don'e have enough bricks in the intended color.

I wouldn't mind two modulars per year at all. Granted, right now I'm still catching up on the old ones, but I'm pretty sure that I'll have all the ones that are currently available by the end of this year, and waiting a whole year for each new one seems like a looong time. I might have to resort to bricklinking Cafe Cprnmer or something to even out the wait,

The double town house looks nice, especially with the doors next to each other. The pet shop could use some more modding imo, as has been pointed out, centering the 'PETS' and evening out the roof slopes would certainly improve it. This reminds me that I need to pick up the Pet Shop asap. I had planned to do it this month, but my old car died, so I had to get a new one, and unsurprisingly those are quite a bit more expensive than a modular building

Pretty awesome stuff.

You apparently have way too many pet shops. I'd suggest you dismantle one and send it to me ;) Seriously though, having a corner building with no street in front of it on one side feels odd. So I'd suggest swapping the palace cinema with the last two buildings on the right of this street: Then move the MOC that right now sits to the left of Palace Cinemo up to the street aswell, and also put the Haunted House a bit nearer to the street which would soften the progress from inner city houses to suburbian style houses..

Great looking building. The colorscheme works great, and the detail on the facade is lovely. Is it designed as a modular building?

One of the best modular MOCs I've seen in a while. Kudos!

I'm absolutely and totally speechless. I've only just discovered this thread, and as I'm writing this am in the process of reading all of it. Starting at the beginning, with no sneaky peeks at the back. So far, with every update, I'm more and more amazed. In fact, I'm continuously thinking 'Holy Mother of F...'. Right now, I'm on page 7 with the first pics of the whole landscape finished, and this is where you managed to utterly shatter my jaw (from dropping it way too hard ;)) for the first time. Absolutely brilliant. I remember that, as a child, I used to dream pf something like this, as it always annoyed me that my city was flat. But I never thought of anything like THAT (if only for lack of bricks...). The attention to detail, and all the amazing ideas that went into this (the secret escape passage from the castle being my favorite so far), is just brilliant. I'll leave this tab open and continue reading... Page 8: Tourney grounds and chapter 1 finished... It's amazing how alive the whole scenery looks. The brickbuilt trees are brilliant. And all the small details everywhere, all the action in the tourney grounds, the farmer and his cart, the dude resting against the trunk of on of the trees... Page 9, 10, 11: First buildings the blacksmith with the lighting looks very good, and the tavern with the angled footprint and the overhanging storeys so typical for (german) medieval villages and cities is propably as realistic and lifelike as you can get with Lego... the details on the facade, the crests, the tavern sign, the roof over the entrance, and of course the wooden stucture (I totally love Fachwerk (wooden structured) houses, living in one from the 16th century myself...). As I said, I'm writing this reply as I'm reading the thread (there's an evening gone :D), and right now, i can't wait to see what the rest of the village looks like...and the castle! ...and the first shots of the village (with three houses in it) really puts things in perspective. From the looks of it, I'd say your buildings are just about to scale to minifigs...and suddenly the enourmous landscape looks comparatively small. Made me realize how out of proportion most Lego creations usually are. Wow. You made it even bigger, and put a farmhouse with a stable on it, in a size that others build locomotive sheds in. And again, integrated in the chapter, it's abundant with life and details. Damnit, I wish I had as much lego and time as you do. I don't want to repeat myself too much, but the windmilll is cool, too, and the row of picturesof the finished village is just breathtaking. And finally, the castle... absolutely lived up to the expectations built up by the entire thread. Now all that's left for me to say is what has been said in this thread several times on every page: CantÄt wait for the next update, with the latest house in place and new castle ramp. Kudos to you for this immense and immensely inspirational build!

I faced a similar problem. In the end, the easiest way to hunt down actual pdfs is to just google Lego, the set number and .pdf. That will turn up a result pretty much everytime. You could try downloading them all from the same site, like peeron, but for me that would only work for a couple and then I'd be faced with long waiting times, for whatever reason. edit: spelling.

Ah, crap, I indeed didn't see that :( And I just edited the post because the formatting was ducked up in the original post, didn't change the points. Oh well, maybe next time

4. AussieBJ - 1 point 6. ER0L - 3 points 7. Zed_43 - 1 point

I never bought it, and stated so. But by April 4th or so I thought 'Come one, get it over with already'. The banter in the topic became very repetitive by then, and I didn't see much point in keeping it going much longer. I missed the voting topic when it was open, but that seems like a nice closing joke. The options were hilarious.

Well you guys do have the right to keep and brick arms, according to the second amendment, so that's a wholly understandable wish

Bought Grand Emporium this week, looking forward to building it next week :)

Found this in my collection, and I'm not sure if it's Lego. I'm talking about the traffic sign itself, the post is an old ship mast from the 80ies and definately Lego, and the 1x8 brick is there for additional size reference. Combined with the ship mast (which it was attached to all these years, approx 1995-2013), it is about the right size for the old style maxifigs from the 70ies, or maybe some Duplo stuff, though maybe even a bit to big for either. I remember I used it in my Lego city regardless of its enourmous size. The sign fits on the mast with a clip (about 6mm high) at the back. Atleast it did until it broke when I took the sign off to see if it had a Lego logo somewhere... The front is not printed, just an off-centre sticker. The plastic of the sign feels and looks slightly different than usual Lego plastic, the surface has a slightly structured feel to it. I also found a similar Stop sign later on, with the clip at the back already broken.

That looks mighty wicked. Great MOC! The chopper would work as a spacecraft aswell, maybe in SPIII livery.

Those are really great MOCs! Love the many details on the interior, and the gardens with the wrought iron fence match perfectly. I have to agree with jamesn, though, the positioning of the tower on side of the green house is awkward. Or rather, it feels as if the whole house just sits on the lot facing the wrong way, as the side with the tower and the balcony and the big glass window on the ground floor by far outmatches the 'real' front in terms of representativeness.

I just built Fire Station aswell. It was my first new Lego build since my childhood, and also my biggest ever (hey, I thought, if you end up starting again, aim high :D), and I poured the contents of each bag into individual bigger and smaller bowls. For the first few steps of each storey, it was a bit confusing and time consuming to locate the right parts, but after a couple of steps I got the hang of which parts were in what bowl and from then on it was pretty smooth sailing. I also noticed that apparently Lego avoids putting similar pieces in the same bag, for example 1x1 plates of one color hardly ever were in the same bag (and thus the same bowl) as 1x1 plates of the same color (or 1x1 clips or whatever). That helped a LOT.

Another famopus example that actually ran on regular train tracks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schienenzeppelin

That's really, really cool.:) More pictures would really be nice, especially some more exterior shots.

My instructrions are the same, bought the set new in March 2013 from amazon.de marketplace. The error only is in booklet one, booklet two is fine. I actually built the upper half of the building first because one of the bags (the one with the 34 dark red 1x6 bricks in it) had split open in the box and I was afraid I was missing some parts from that one (luckily, all parts were there) So far, the missing brick counts in booklet one didn't give me any troubles apart from the fact that I have to scan closely for added bricks - but in the old days, almost all instructions were like that. Hope I don't encounter any missing pieces.

Thanks for all your replies. I think I'll try soaking it in some mild detergent first before resorting to any more drastic measures. I'll post the results in case anyone is ever faced with a similar problem.

Does anyone know just about when Grand Emporium will be retired? I got Fire Brigade this week and I know I'll be getting more of them, most likely all that are still being produced. From the looks of it, Grand Emporium is my least favorite, so I'd like to get Pet Shop first. But i don't want to kick myself in the nuts later on if Grand Emporium gets discontinued before I got a chance to buy it. Time frame: I guess I'll buy the next modular around Easter, so unless Grand Emporium would be discontinued in May or June, I'd be good. Are there any definitive dates (well, dates as in 'will be discontinued in June 2013 or something like that) as to when the sets will no longer be produced? Just asking because the 'Fire Brifade discontinued?' thread in the Town forum was started in January 2012, and it's still available now.

That's great :) I once stood on that tower (the real life one, of course ;).