mtMOClug

Hasn't anyone been just a little curious as to what the 7597 Western Train is going to look like? I was... extremely interested... so I went digging. In the official movie trailer near the beginning you can see scattered on the floor a steam train. You'll need Quick Time installed to view it. I decided to take a screen cap for easy reference. It looks like it may be built from LEGO in the pic... but it's a little fuzzy to tell and at this point I don't want to speculate a whole lot. There are some interesting details though... large RED wheels on the locomotive... so we'll have some MOC'ing options. Also, 4 sets of wheels instead on each unit instead of 2 which I was fearing.

This is a must have set TheBrickster! Fortunately I got mine a few months before it retired from S@H and paid regular price for it. Several others in our LUG have the same set, and I wanted something a little different that would set it apart from the others in case of duplicate buildings. With a modest PAB order I was able to change the configuration slightly, add another module, and give it a more North American feel to it... yet still leaving it similar to the original for attendee's of the shows that would recognize the elements of the official set. The colour scheme definitely adds some life and diversity to a City layout. Because the interiors are unfinished, it gives you the option of completing them with your own creative input (and money)... or not. I liked this feature, since I did not complete the interior... and I wasn't paying for details that would never be seen by the general public. The individual floors on my building are no longer modular for ease of transportation between displays and storage. The roof on the 3rd floor apartment is removable so that street details and minifigs can be stored easily inside for storage. Click the pics to view the full set in my Flickr account.

Fast... well... the kids are playing Wii. The last thing I'm considering tweaking are the front indicator lights in the fenders. I'll tweak those too... and post a pic if it's worth it. Once it's done... I'll have to dig up some Cobra stickers... or Shelby... or Prateek

And which style of mirrors are most preferred? Antenna base with the clips, or with double-sided studs? I prefer the second - much easier for transport/storage/handling rather than risking losing the antenna bases. Everyone else feel free to jump in

Thanks prateek. I took your suggestion into consideration and tweaked. The big blower on the first version posted was meant to be a little humourous... maybe it would have been more suited to a Camaro. Besides, who really needs a 700 hp motor in their LEGO car anyway? Here's a couple more versions... with the black trim too. I'm on the fence about the black trim, since I like the colour matched bits... your thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

As usual I wasn't totally happy with the official LEGO set. Gee, will I ever stop saying that? My thoughts when I saw the official set was that it was 2 steps short of being a pimped Ford Mustang. So of course, with a few bricks... and a bit of brain bashing... I've pimped my ride - a little more than the Ford factory. Two small details - the Ford version has black mirrors. I tried black, and it looked out of place. So the side mirrors are colour matched to the body. Same deal with the grill.

Nothing yet on S@H Canada... or any other country or region I went looking at... unless I'm missing something... which has happened in the past. I grabbed the URL out of their cache.... but couldn't find the product page.

I'm not really sure why LEGO is asking sites to remove the pic of the 10198 - other than building hype before the official release. The funny thing is... its on their website

Thanks for the consideration Siegfried! I've uploaded the images to my Brickshelf account... unfortunately I can't provide more than one more cleaned-up picture until early next week. This particular set is in storage... luckily I know exactly which box though! Until the folder is moderated, here are the deep links: The pics are a little 1024x768 if that helps you. http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/HotToads...er_space_a1.jpg http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/HotToads...er_space_b1.jpg And when the folder is moderated there are other pics as well although not as pretty: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=379785 This too is one of my all-time favourite sets. If you can build one off of Bricklink for parts, I say go for it! I was so pleased when I got mine... for quite some time it sat protected in the china cabinet. This set will never be farmed for parts... it cost me too much... and when our club does displays it gets many many comments... no sense taking apart something that is so popular. Last I checked... there were only 5 MISB available worldwide on Bricklink.... a few months back, I think there were about 30. This set is defiinitely going to be gone this year.

I'm digging that phone, BlueBard. Nice job all around. Sometimes, the smaller buildings say more... Looks like you're using a few of those tan baseplates. Are those the ones from Spongebob Emergency Room? I got six when they were on sale... should have gotten 10 more... they'll be coming in handy for a beach.

Today, July 16th, marks the 40th Anniversary of launching the Apollo 11 mission that carried 3 astronauts - Mission Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr. - to the moon. I was too young at the time to remember this mission, but the hype continued for years afterwards - I had one of the original plastic models of the Saturn V rockets when I was about 5 years old. On July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the surface of the moon. The 10029 Lunar Lander had been on my wishlist for years. Early this Spring, I placed an order through Bricklink for my beloved MISB Lunar Lander. I knew these were only going up in price - collectors would soon figure out the 40th Anniversary and my chance to own one would soon vanish. The build was straight-forward. There is no detailed interior but could easily be tweaked, there is ample room for seats and a control panel. I have no plans to mod the inside... this set will remain as-is. Stickers were applied - something that is quite rare for me. Since I didn't have a crater baseplate, I simply created my own. If you would like to read more about the mission, there is a great article on Wikipedia.

This baseplate has got to be one of the worst in my collection... it looks okay on a large display if you can have it 8 bricks lower than the rest of the blue baseplates (an almost impossible task for a weekend show). Its a pain for storage and there are no studs on it to make it attach to anything or anything to it. And as for Bionicles bashing... I'll admit I'm not a fan... but there are some really useful elements in many of the sets for creating building MOC details.

I think one simple word can sum it up for me... DENIAL

Outstanding! The buildings speak for themselves... it must have taken some serious planning and looking for parts. Just going through the pics of the street scenes.... the mannequins in the windows, and the break dancer are my favs... so far! Still looking and taking it all in. Very well done!!

For me I'd really like a set of the new large train wheels available from PAB. This in itself would open up the doors to more variety of steam engines in my collection.

Welcome back from the darkages Delmar, and welcome to Eurobricks! Looking forward to seeing your MOCs!!

My apologies! I searched after the post... lesson learned. Mod, could you please delete?? Thx!!

Earlier today I cracked open the new LEGO Space Police 5973 Hyperspeed Pursuit and took a pic of the Skull Twins and made some quick observations... • The helmets are made of a semi-stiff rubber material. • The heads are two-sided. On one side there is a third eye and cheek indents. • The torsos have Octan logos on them on both sides... they look a little scraped up. • Both minifigs are identical.

Market Street 10190 is definitely one of the most recognized buildings to emerge from LEGO Factory. As always though, I wanted to tweak the standard sets offered by LEGO, make it my own but still leave the building as recognizable as possible. As usual, the modular features were removed for ease of transportation and storage between our club's public displays. A small PAB order for 1x2 and 1x4 Light & Dark Blue bricks was placed. All the other parts needed came out of my parts farm. I was seeking a more North American style and feel for the building. I don't think there would be too many blue buildings from this era in Canada... but the blue's are beautiful and certainly do brighten the layout. I started first my mirroring the original set, adding the apartment above the Market, changing the 3rd floor facade and rotating the balcony apartment to the back. Other minor details were added... tile in the market, and 1x4 wall sections as well to the market for stability.

Ah yes... placing the tower in the centre. Trust me, this was agonizing. I don't have the pics to show you, but I did attempt placing the tower section over the Cafe entrance. It ended up looking more like a twisted school house. I thought long and hard about what to do with this feature. I started thinking more in terms real world engineering and architecture while trying to find a solution to the tower. If the tower was truly made of stone, that weight would have to be carried by the stonework under it on the 3rd floor, and consequently the heavier stonework of the 3rd floor would have to be supported by the 2nd floor, etc. right down to the ground floor. The Cafe entrance does not have the extra stonework. At the Hotel entrance/lobby is the staircase - a grand staircase if you will - which typically would be winding its way up through all 3 floors. This area in the building would demand more light... for the time period of the building - more windows. The tower on this mod has larger windows because of the stud count required to fit the rest of the repetive windows and arches into the design, and balance the numbers of windows on the third floor over the number of windows on the second floor. There are 5 windows on the 3rd floor, over 10 windows on the 2nd... all perfectly aligned. The tower windows provide the light for the grand staircase. Also, since I removed the SNOT HOTEL sign, fitting the new HOTEL sign onto the roof would have been another whole challenge which would have created an imbalance if placed either to the left or right of a centred tower. In the end, moving the tower over the Hotel entrance was a comprimise... but also from a structural point of view, almost necessary. I walked away from this build many manytimes trying to figure out a solution. Another thought was, since the building is now straight, is the main feature of the building the Hotel or the Cafe? I leaned more towards the Hotel overall when viewing it from a distance. At street level, the Cafe would dominate to entice the wandering minifigs for a little nourishment. When the building itself is put into my layout, to the left of it is a 16x32 building 3 storey building, and then Green Grocer (sorry, no pics yet). In anticipation of the tower of Green Grocer and Cafe Corner having side-by-side towers, I built Green Grocer mirrored... the tower/turret is on the left. To the right of Cafe Corner is modified Market Street (will post pics in a bit). At some point, I really should get a pic of all these buildings together. I truly appreciate your comments, they always make me re-think of the possibility of solution or approaching the build from a different direction.

Those are great! Just what we need to go along with the ping pong table in the new Fire Brigade set. Too bad my little houses don't have basements... Very nicely done. Thanks for sharing!!

Thank you for the encouragement everyone! Believe it or not... I bought only one set... I should have bought two and added another brown storey. My parts farm is of a size and variety that I have most everything I need to complete a mod. At first estimate, I figured I had put 700 more bricks and elements into the MOD. However, I think that guesstimate may be a little high considering there were also some elements left over from the original set. Sorry I didn't keep track of exactly how many... I realized my oversight after the parts were sorted back into the brick farm. I'd have to say a total of 400-450 extra bricks/elements were added to the build, and that would include subtracting the leftover parts.

The Cafe Corner is the undisputed classic of all the modular buildings. Every City AFOL should have one... the down side to this is that every club has at least 3. Which is a bonus if you want to make multiple floors of the Hotel as a group. I'm all for colaborations... they're a whole lot of fun. That being said, since the Cafe Corner has been around for a while... it was time to make some modifications. You'll soon figure out, I modify practically every official LEGO set... if I don't the parts get farmed. Anyway... on to the Cafe! As you can appreciate, this modification took considerable effort and time. I started at the ground floor and worked upwards. Originally, I had flattened the building and had it sitting on a 32x32 baseplate. Although it looked okay, one of the club members pointed out that it lost a significant amount of detail. (Pic if interested) I came to the realization I was simply being lazy not wanting to dig into the brick farm and not giving the Cafe Corner the respect and time needed - I was trying to cut corners. The mod quickly moved onto a 32x48... and got very interesting. Finding just the right balance for the ground floor windows and doorways took some experimentation. The ground floor was built and rebuilt 4 times. Next step was the 2nd floor. This again presented its own challenge in terms of brick/window spacing and where to blend the corner feature of the original Corner Cafe set into the flat version. WIP 2nd Floor After moving the window feature to the left end of the building, it was onwards and upwards to the 3rd floor. The biggest challenge here was getting the colour scheme correct around the flat corner feature over the hotel entrance. I wanted to add a little more 'meat' above the windows as well. Replacing the windows, and adding the dark red curved slopes filled in the gaps nicely. You may notice I'm lacking a dark grey frog... there's been an extra window added. I'll pick one up off of Bricklink someday. The roofline was finished off... and the HOTEL sign added. I do realize the original sign is recognized as being a classic step forward for TLG into the world of SNOT. But for me personally, it drove me crazy that the sign lettering was backwards when viewed from the opposite side... and became even more obvious when the building was inserted into my layout. A roof sign was my solution, and also fit close to the time period for the style of building. A couple final notes. Since the building is primairly for public club displays, it is no longer modular... for ease of transportation and storage. The interior will not be completed... only the first few studs on the ground floor inside the windows to add some window dressing. If you attempt to straighten your Cafe Corner... you're going to need a lot of filler bricks for the back walls.

She's inside baking cookies The roof is not removable, but can instantly modified to do so if you wanted. There are no plans to complete the interiors of any of these... they are specifically designed for our club's public displays, and need to be built with strength in mind for easy transportation between storage and shows. In fact... if you saw the inside it wouldn't be pretty... much of the walls are made up of 2x2 or 2x4 bricks... you can't tell though, can you... Wow! What do I say!? Thank you ImperialShadows!! And please, take the idea and run with it... I'd be flattered.

Nicely done! The reduced scale of the Emerald Night works very well. All the inhabitants of Fabuland can't be getting much sleep at night with a steam engine rattling their windows at night