Rick

It's something that was introduced for Pirates (mainly) but can be and is used by TLG across almost all themes. It's just a really clever element with lots of potential uses.

Nice one again BlueBard. Especially the interior looks excellent again. The chef's hat is pretty clever (too bad the plant is cut/was broken and then cut ). The exterior looks really nice as well, especially the front. Not too sure about the red awnings you used on the back yet.

My point exactly. Unless of course you cover it with some transparent Duplo bricks or just leave an area exposed, like a large lava pit.

That's the only downside of this über-cute van then. Can't you use one of those 4 x 4 roof pieces TLG uses nowadays. You'd need to replace the windows in the back by two 1 x 4 x 2 ('doubles') though, otherwise it won't be sturdy enough.

That's a great idea. I bet this will be featured in the next Western MOC to be posted to EB.

Right, the studs would more or less follow the curve. Maybe this would look even better on top:

Well-deserved. I agree on the tower roof comments. Making the roof smaller will also set it apart from Cafe Corner more. I like this top floor a lot more than the owls you had on there first when I saw it on flickr the other day.

Nice little shop. Can go straight next to the bike/skate shop and the pizza restaurant from the 'City Corner'.

That figurehead looks freaky. You've built a nice ship, but I'm not too sure about the combination of so much yellow with a tan deck. Nice work on the custom sails though.

I once tried it with an impulse set... got annoyed enough to not try again. Nothing beats 'feeling' the Lego when you build.

Very nice ship SlyOwl. The curves on it look really good and so do the tiled deck and the custom sails. I also like the use of technic pieces in the rigging.

I know that, but I knew you'd read this as well... and I see you've added it already

Ricecracker, you could turn this into a tutorial... you've got all the pictures ready for it.

Lincoln is great. That minifig face must have been inspired by Lincoln. What's so funny about yellow pants? Too bad there are no minifig cigar pieces.

That's one of the best reason for having studs and may be one of the downsides to the sidewalk of the modular buildings. They could have gone with the solution they use in the catalogs, which is one row of bricks followed by a row of tiles parallel to the road. But I guess you won't be able to make it so realistic as they are now, or make those nice patterns in the sidewalks. Now, was there some photoshopping involved in making that classic spaceman all purple?

Agreed, in general I like the 'tone' on EB a lot. Sure there are people to whom it's not serious enough, but EB is like EB is, you can't change that instantly. And certainly not by imposing - for example - age requirements. Also, EB is far from static, the 'tone' of EB evolves depending on the member base, for good or worse. The 'tone' in a certain theme is obviously dependent on the people who are posting a lot in certain forums. Sometimes this number is so small that you can easily make a difference - and influence the 'tone' - yourself. Live and let live. Everyone has their approach to the hobby. That's not the first association I have when I see 'clone' at all, but that could be just me. More importantly, I don't think you should be drawing any conclusions from someone's screen name. One of the funniest screen names on EB has 'clone' in it (I Scream Clone).

Let the guy enjoy his purchase... plus there will still be an element of surprise once you buy it yourself I also think that may be a little out of place, but I guess the designer consciously made the choice for red and blue (gold flags are in production I guess, so that's probably not the reason not to use them).

Ah yeah, I remember this one from when I was still lurking on EB. This is really an amazing piece of work, both the exterior and the very detailed and clever interior. The new roof looks great so far TPRU!

Congrats TheBrickster. This looks so much better than the initial loc you posted and the tender really completes it. The yellow works really well combined with the black and the whole front of the loc looks so much more 'finished'.

Blogged at Classic-Town.net! Be sure to add it to our flickr group.

Really? I didn't know that. So they made kind of the same change as with the Castle swords. They've gotten softer as well. I have a few 1989 sets, but have never seen a 'hard' cutlass. Was it country-specific?

New York, 14-17 February

Site Guidelines ('Selling and self promotion') may be helpful. 'Long-term members' only. I believe it's even 100 posts...

The gear rack and especially that weight lifting equipment is great!

It looks like the picture has the watermark edited out. Other than the watermark, the picture looks exactly like the one from the leaked Dutch dealer catalog.