mtMOClug

Thanks Hinckley... you're too kind. I've been lurking on Eurobricks for about a year, and watching your builds too... which are incredible BTW. Sharing these MOCs is great fun... and it was about time I got around to participating too. The feedback received from the community is very helpful and always makes me revisit the creation even if I think it was the 'final version'. I'll be posting some more MOCs over time... some final tweaks with updated photos are needed for the majority.

Thanks everyone for the kind words! Let me expain how I got to this scale... I've been working on a few Cafe Corner style buildings - sets, MOCs, and MODs. Our club has a large collection of Creator houses and we often have duplicates at the shows. I wanted to create housing from the late 1800's to early 1900's that fit better into the scale of the Cafe Corner standard. This yellow one, was one of my first. fp_lego - there's the dog! Commodore Hornbricker - voila a larger scale (slightly different style). I found the scale was just a little too big, it can't fit onto a 16x32 baseplate - well it can but the roof can't with another building beside it. Also the sidewalk being 8 deep - the same as Cafe Corner style buildings - doesn't allow for any greenery in the front yard. I'll be scaling down the yellow house to fit in better with the lime green house. I based this blue house on the design of the yellow one... an experiment to see if the smaller house worked. This new design is no longer modular, it introduces the 14x14 structure and it still has the 8 deep sidewalk... so no grass to mow. The sidewalk has been tweaked since the pic was taken and is now 6 deep. I guess I'd have to consider this series of houses a work in progress. Each house that is built reveals new modifications for the next. The plan is for a total of 5 or 6. Set our Club standard, so that other members can create their own MOCs and give some originality to the group layouts.

I whipped this up this morning... but has been pre-built in my head for a couple weeks waiting for enough time to get the build done in one try. The house is 14x14 and the front porch is 5x12. Mission accomplished. I plan on making a whole series of these, in different colours and styles. Enjoy! Comments or suggestions are welcome!

After picking up a few of the LEGO Power Miners 8957 Mine Mech back when they were first released I really wanted to use the rollcage (LEGO element 64450 Windscreen 6 x 4 x 3 1/3 Roll Cage) from the set to create a more realistic rollcage on a farm tractor MOC. Then I picked up the LEGO 7731 Truck & Forklift set. The original rollcage on the forklift was okay... but I knew the rollcage from the Power Miners' set would be a good fit... and hopefully improve the look. The forklift build was easy enough, and the forklift mechanism really makes the action realistic. Once upon a time I was a licenced forklift operator so this was a real treat. The only thing missing from the forklift I drove is the propane tank, but I could overlook it, and consider the LEGO forklift to be electric. A minimum number of elements are required to do this mod. In fact you could use a broad assortment to achieve the same look and result.

Cheers everyone for your suggestions and kind words. I was a little nervous posting... this is my first MOC to be posted on Eurobricks... and definitely will not be my last. When I first started the MOC it was in light grey and dark grey. I also use contrasting colours when first beginning a new MOC - it helps me to define the shape and lines without having to dig too far into the bins. In this case, while starting the MOC, I started introducing more and more blue elements... I liked it so much - because it was something different - that it stuck. If I were to create another, it would likely be more traditional and use brown, tan, and the greys. I'd really be interesting in seeing 4 wide!! Got some pics somewhere?

This is a MOC I created for a club display in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada and Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada in February and May 2009. It took several attempts to reach this final version before and between shows. The challenge was to have it travel on a figure 8 through a MOC'd version of Dwarves Mine (sorry no pic) where the entrance and exit was much lower than standard height trains. The other challenge was the couplings and the length. Using standard LEGO couplings, they made the train seem to long. The solution I created was to use technic rubber couplers and technic pins. This worked very effectively and the couplings never failed. The locomotive really rumbles while flying around the track... the short wheelbase of the locomotive causes the train to really vibrate on the tracks and did cause several derailments... a bump in the tracks and speed being the culprit. The 'sweet spot' for speed was found, the track fixed, and never again did the train derail. The dwarf engineer sits on a 2x2 turntable and as the locomotive moves, he randomly looks back and forth (and bounces around quite a bit)... an accidental animated feature that was a pure joy for the audience.

Super MOC! A great inspiration to us all! Lots of "activity" happening... and too many fav'd details to list!

WOW! Nice collection of buildings! Great variety of colour and building styles. I really like how you've done the Esso station... just like the real thing.

Lucky you alex54! I have the same set, and it still had the old hat in it... must have been an early product run. You're the first I've heard of with the new cap in a set. Congrats! If you want to take a look from another perspective, I did a comparison of the old and new hat and posted a photo set to my Flickr account. I too am hoping these come out in a rainbow of colours... great for creating more realistic baseball teams... now if TLG would only come out with a baseball mitt...

Cheers, everyone! Thank you for the warm welcome. Now, I'd actually be posting more if there wasn't so many MOCs on my bench right now!

Hello All!! The LEGO bug started back in the early 70's with about 10 pounds of LEGO. I could build anything back then - the formula consisting of 10% LEGO and 90% imagination. The darkages started in the 80's and lasted until the new millenium. That 10 pounds of LEGO now occupies a large room... shucks, eh? I find the formula now is 70% LEGO, 20% Imagination, and 10% pure luck. My main interest is City and Trains, but I do selectively collect Star Wars, Technic, and some of the newer themes such as Space Police III. I've been lurking here on Eurobricks for about a year now and am s..l..o..w..l..y becoming involved. I am also an Admin for MOClug.com based in Eastern Canada which seems to occupy more of my time maintaining than allows me to build and create MOCs. You are welcome to take a look through some of my builds... they are updated at least weekly. Brickshelf and Flickr. Eurobricks is definitely one of my favourite sites to visit at least once daily now and has become a great resource and inspiration! (Go ahead and pat yourself on the back!) I know that our members at MOClug.com post regular links to the forums here too simply because they find Eurobricks such a valuable resource as well. There's most definitely a positive sense of community here at Eurobricks, and I'm glad to have the opportunity to be a very small cog in the machine.

According to my Peeron account I should have 744. I estimate the number to be just over 800 however since there are many in the collection that were bought in mixed lots.

Although it is a beautiful set, I too believe that Minifig Horses could have been used and would have been a little more excited about the set rather than using bricks for horses. This MOC does just that, the horses go up and down, and the motor is contained within the build. With a bit of tweaking it could be made to be as grand as the 10196... and cost 1/3 less.