Jonas

Hi, EB fellows. My new MOC is a model of a real look-out tower that once stood in Breslau (now Wroclaw in Poland). The tower's unique design was created by German architect Karl Klimm. The tower was built in 1902 and was named Emperor Wilhelm's Memorial Tower. It had 4 observation platforms at different heights and it measured 47 m. In my opinion, it was the most wonderful look-out tower worldwide. Unfortunately, it was destroyed during the WWII battle of Breslau in 1945 and it does not exist anymore. When building the MOC I used a series of historic postcards from my collection and also a project sketches by K. Klimm. The MOC is 65 cm high and contains some 6000 Lego pieces. Pictures: Model and historic picture postcard Model from different views Evening view from the tower More pictures: Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/tacvud/with/5439315032/ Brickshelf http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=461673

It is an excellent MOC. I know that it is not easy to make a well looking mono-color building from Lego but you have done it. All the details make it.

First of all, many thanks for this nice contest. Most MOCs are amazing and one can breath the Xmas atmosphere from them. Anyway, my favorite is Train station by Kost u grlu. Whenever I look at it I have a feeling of a genuine Lego set. I would purchase it without any doubt. So my 5 points go to: kost u grlu: Train Station - 3 points Dix: Tram Station – 1 point Cecilie: Santa's Post Office - 1 point

Dear Sandy, your fairy-tale castle is really lovely. From the first picture I would hardly guess that it includes so many details. Thanks for the guided tour through the individual sections. And well, it nice to see scenes from both the children fairy tales together with the more adult ones (Tarzan, Robin, etc).

Just for illustration, here is a picture from a shop in Tokyo: a pair of machines selling Series 1 minifigs.

Hi all, thanks to those who replied. It seems that there are more people out there who are interested in collecting the catalogs. Due to the recent trades, now I have the following versions of the LEGO 2010 catalogs: - Czech Republic (my own country) - 1H2010 and 2H2010 - Japan - Hungary - 1H2010 and 2H2010 - Spain - 1H2010 - Germany/Austria - 1H2010 and 2H2010 (also the Xmas version) - Australia - 1H2010 - Denmark - 2H2010 - Sweden - 2H2010 - France - 2H2010 - Iceland - 2H2010 For trade, I can offer * Czech ones (2H2010), * German ones (2H2010), * a Swedish one (2H2010) and * a Japanese one. If interested, send me a PM, please. Jonas

Hi Supperkalle, Thanks for your hints. You made me check the system specs and the drivers. My graphic card is NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE. I found that its driver was from 2008, so I installed the newest one. And ... It started to work!!! So, this experience may be useful also for other LDD users. I must say that the brick outlines and the shades make the look of the models much much better. Thanks once more, Supperkalle. Jonas

Hi, can you please tell me how to enable the brick outlines mode? In my installation on a (rather powerfull) PC it is disabled and I cannot change the setting. Thanks

I am adding the link to my layout. Eurobricks Member: Jonas Name of the Town: Kamenice Topic link: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=48094&st=0&gopid=845959entry845959 Jonas

Thanks for your positive replies. You can only lie (very carefully) on the sofa, now. That is the price I had to pay. You mean the concrete blocks like in the 7633 set? I hate them, both in real life as well as in Lego version. As to the Lego space. Fortunately, I am the master in my room (but only there ).

Layout A few days ago, White Fang made a call to city builders. The aim of the call was to contribute to the index of existing city layouts with their descriptions and pictures. OK. I decided to present you my layout. It took me almost 4 years to complete it. Most work had been done in 2006-2008, i.e. before I joined EB. That is why I have not publish it here. Actually, during the last 2 years I was just adding some small items and improving details here and there. Anyway, I think that my experience with building a larger home layout may be useful for other builders and therefore I publish it now. My city is called Kamenice. (In Czech it means the same as Stonecity or Brickville.) When I was preparing the project I wanted my city and its layout to be: - built entirely from Lego components, - made of buildings and vehicles (mainly MOCs) in the same scale, - looking realistic as much as possible, and - fitting to a limited space in my house. So, here is the result of my work: For a larger (1600x705) picture, click here. And now a few words and couple of pictures to show the evolution of the layout. The only place I could use for the layout was a corner in my home office room. It looked like on this picture: I simply mounted a shelf on the wall and used it to keep three solid wooden beams. After that I placed several polystyrene plates on them. In this way I got a building space of 290 x 125 cm. It allowed me to design only a simple railway oval with some space for station tracks. Then, I started to build the station. . Of course, a real railway station also needs a store and engine shed, a water tower, a signal box, etc. Their design is shown here. The city of Kamenice consists of three parts, each one from a different historical era. Close to the station are blocks of houses built in about 1900s. One of them is the Cafe Corner house (it has the privilege to be the only LEGO-set-based building in the city), a hotel, a post office, a city hall, a toy shop, etc. My houses are built on their own baseplates and later attached to road baseplates. The second part of the city is a residential area built by rich city people in 1910s. The two villas are replicas of real houses. For details look here or here. The third part of the city dates to medieval times. Obviously, in those times, towns were built on elevated places. Therefore, I had to do some intensive landscaping. A small castle, a block of medieval houses and a ruin was built on the hill. The hill also allowed me to hide the part of the railway oval in the tunnel and thus create an illusion of real city panorama. One may think that the railway and the road go through the tunnels to somewhere beyond the horizon. When speaking about the transportation I should say a few words about trains, cars, trucks, buses, etc. Again, almost all of them are MOCs and often they are replicas of the vehicles that can be seen here in Czechia. And, of course, the city is full of life. People travel, work, picknick, swim in a pond, mow grass, shoot photos, ... simply they enjoy their lives. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you like the city of Kamenice, you are welcome to come and see more.

Hi all, I am an AFOL focused mainly on building. If you want to see some of my MOCs, click on the picture in my signature. I am not a set collector. Anyway, this year I traveled a bit (e.g. to Japan) and have brought home various local mutations of Lego 2010 catalogs. Hence, I told to myself that it would be interesting to have a larger collection of these local mutations, from different countries but all from the same year 2010. At this moment I own Lego 2010 catalogs from: - Czech Republic (my own country) - Japan - Hungary - Spain - Germany/Austria/Switzerland - Australia. - Denmark Would anybody of you be willing to trade a Lego 2010 catalog from your country for the Czech one (or a sparse one from Japan)? The Czech catalog I can send you is the latest one (for the 2nd half of 2010), it is new (not used) and it has 84 pages. Sample pictures of the Czech catalog: If you are interested in the trade, please send me a PM. Thanks. Jonas

Hi all, several days ago I returned from my trip to Japan. I was attending a conference so I had very little time to explore things like Lego. Anyway, thanks to Metalgearsolid and Def, I had at least some hints where to go and what to see. So, I visited one of the Clickbrick shops in Tokyo - the Yaesu one in the shopping mall near to the Tokyo station. It is actually a small shop with a rather limited selection of Lego. I searched there for anything that would be Japan-specific but all the displayed Lego sets looked same as in other parts of the world. No Japanese characters on the boxes, no special sets. Later I visited also a small department store called Kiddyland (near Harajuku station on the Yamanote line). The selection of Lego sets was a bit larger, but again only the same classic stuff as anywhere. Although, for the first time, I could see those tiny Nanoblocks creations mentioned by Def. So, the only Lego souvenir I brought home was a Japanese edition of the Lego 2010 catalogue. Some more pictures are in my Brickshelf folder.

You come with an amazing MOC again, Kris. It is a faithful rendition of the famous piece in the history of steam engines. I admire how easily and how well you are able to switch the themes of your MOCs: pirates, castles, WWII, western, city .... I always look forward to your new creations.

Many thanks, Metalgearsolid. Your blog is very interesting and full of useful information. I am sure it will help not only me but also some other AFOL visitors to Japan. And, I like the Red Idea Book, in particular.

Thank you very much, def. This seems to be a useful link. It helped me to find a Clickbrick shop just in central Tokyo. It should be that called Yaesu, which - according to Google maps - is close to Tokyo railway station. Thank you also for the other tips. On this web page I can start to practice my Japanese.

Hi, I am going to visit Japan in the end of September. I will stay mainly in Tokyo and in Osaka. I will be quite busy, but just for curiosity: Can anybody tell me whether there are any special Lego shops there? Or is Lego widely available in department stores? Are there any Japan-specific Lego sets, like e.g. those Kabaya sets some 10 years ago? Can I find a Japanese Lego catalog in stores? Thanks for any reply, comment or advice.

Hi Bonaparte, I wonder if you had time to visit the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. There you can see the oldest and biggest Lego brick. It is a stone brick, quite large and some 4000 years old. The photo was taken by my friend when we visited Cairo in 2008.

Thanks, Inventor. Those, who played the game (or at least the demo), know that most of the sceneries are really amazing, with so many details depicting the world of (mostly archaic) machines. That is why the game is named Machinarium. However, most of the machines and buildings have very complex (not rectangular) shapes and that would be a big challenge for Lego builders.

Yes, Computerbug is right. And, well, it would be pity to hide robot Josef behind the fountain, wouldn't be?

Hi, computerbug. Do not hesitate and make your own version. I am looking forward to seeing it.

I have not played PC games for almost 20 years. But when my friend sent me a link to Machinarium game page, I got interested in this puzzle adventure, played the demo, and eventually bought the full version. The game takes you into a fantasy world of robots with amazing hand-drawn retro sceneries. There is no shooting, no killing, you just have to help robot Josef to solve clever and witty puzzles on his way to escape the Black Cap Brotherhood and save his robot friend. The graphics and the music are brilliant and there is no wonder that the authors received several international awards. For MOCing I selected the scene when Josef meets a jazz band of other three robots. He helps them to fix their instruments and the band starts to play – you can watch the scene in Youtube video . Original scene: My rendering: The band: Oil shop: Angry lady: Josef, the robot: More pictures are here BTW, the main character is named Josef to honor Czech artist Josef Capek, who invented word robot. The word was used by his brother Karel Capek, the author of the world-first drama on artificial beings (R.U.R., 1920). Since that time, the Czech word robot has been introduced to almost all languages.

Cecilie, you have done an excellent work, again. I visited your Flickr account and could admire all the details. Your imagination is amazing. How long have you been designing and building this second part of your display?

Thanks for the nice review, Svelte. The real building, located in beautiful Pennsylvanian forests, is amazing. I could see it during my visit in the USA. The LEGO model is the best one of the already released Architecture sets. But, as Prateek says, the color scheme of the model does not correspond to the reality, which is shame. Why did the designer decide for that mono-color and rather boring look? If the model had the proper colors I would buy it, in spite of its high price. But in this situation, I just downloaded the set instruction file from lego.com and decided to build in a slightly modified way.

I like this MOC. It uses simple, pure-style architecture, which is a pleasure for eyes.