Davey

Loved it! I almost spit cereal all over my monitor when I saw this one. You sir...are a genius! :thumbup: Stacy and I will definitely have to add something like this to our layout...right next to our 'Sarlacc Sandbox'. Again, well done. Oh...and by the way... -Davey

Thanks everyone for the kind words! We really had a blast working with the local paper on this article. I'm glad we managed to convey the idea of having LEGO as a 'family' hobby and hopefully this inspires some people to build. Just today at lunch we had a mom and her son recognize us at a local store. The mom said that the article prompted her son to pull out his LEGO Train set and start playing with it. Score one for LEGO! I didn't even see that the first time I read it. That is hilarious. Maybe he didn't realize the proper term was Minifigure. He did get all of the other LEGO-specific lingo right so I was super impressed by that. -Davey

Mark...this was absolutely amazing to see in person. There is so much detail that one can easily spend over an hour just looking at this one MOC. So many scenes and little funny details. Stacy and I loved it and took tons of pictures which we will eventually post to Flickr. Thanks for taking the time to give us the grand tour of the castle (especially the little hidden items). We really liked your 'I Spy' idea and will be using that at Brickworld this summer. :thumbup: Sorry to hear about the thefts. That's never fun and aside from plexiglas or something like that, I still haven't figured out a good way to eliminate that. It's frustrating that people feel the need to do that. We had a couple figs stolen off of our layout at Brickworld last year and it just guts you when you realize it happened. Nope...must not have been us. I'm not building a lighthouse right now. My avatar picture is what I look like right now. We were there from about 10 am until 12 pm. We looked at Mark's castle for awhile and then went in to get a couple PAB cups and a bunch of PoP sets. -Davey

Hey fellow Eurobricks members! Many of you know that we recently displayed our LEGO layout at the La Crosse Model Train Show. While we were there, we met one of the reporters from our local newspaper (The La Crosse Tribune). A few days after the show, he called us and said he had decided to do a feature story on our LEGO collection and home layout. He and a photographer came over last week for about 3 hours one evening and hung out while we were in the 'LEGO Lair'. Stacy and I wanted to share the article he wrote with all of you here on Eurobricks. We were the lead story this past Sunday, April 11th, 2010 in the La Crosse Tribune and the Winona Daily News. It may be small town news, but it was still a lot of fun and Chris Hubbuch of the La Crosse Tribune wrote a great article. You can view what actually ran in the paper on our Flickr Photostream. You can also check out the online article at the La Crosse Tribune Website. We hope you all enjoy reading the article as much as we enjoyed being a part of it! -Davey

School Rumble is one of my favorites!!! I just finished the '1st Semester' and the 'OVA'. Now I'm about 3-4 episodes into the second semester. I love all the characters in that show and it's nonstop hilarity. The series are expensive, but Amazon US just had a 50%-off sale on most of their Anime DVD's so I picked a bunch up during that. Some of the other ones I watch are... Ah! My Goddess Fruits Basket Last Exile Fullmetal Alchemist Moonphase Negima Love Hina Shuffle Rumbling Hearts Trinity Blood Honey & Clover I got into Anime and Manga when I started reading ShojoBeat magazine (which was discontinued in the US last year). I follow Vampire Night, Honey Hunt, Otomen, Death Note, and Honey & Clover in the Manga world. -Davey

Simply fantastic work Matija! The is a beautiful piece of art and you managed to capture the essence of the house so well. I love the stone work and the winter scene really adds to it for me. Congratulations on another great piece. -Davey

Great to hear V1.6 is almost out. I'm using it almost daily in preparation for Brickworld 2010. I also used BlueBrick to design the layout we displayed at the 2010 La Crosse Model Train Show and my current basement layout. Thanks guys! -Davey

Yep...the rails are going to be the hard thing to find. Your best best is to hit up Bricklink.com to try and buy the monorail pieces. Plan on spending about $150-$180 USD to get the appropriate monorail rails to complete the Airport Shuttle. The long straight track alone goes for $15-$25 USD per piece. -Davey

Great work here! I love the fact that you managed to use simple elements to creating something so beautiful. Great use of the TOPLESs techniques and selective compression. I think your color scheme also helps to pull out the details on the front of the MOC. This is great work and well deserving of this... Again, well done and keep up the great work! -Davey

A great collection of MOC's guys! You really did EB proud on this one and congratulations and an excellent 3rd place showing. I can't even imagine how hectic it was building all of those MOC's in such a short period of time. And here I thought the MOCOlympics was tough. Seriously great work. All of these were really well done. -Davey

Looking good so far Cagri! One of the renovated Alstom BR-203's might look nice in front of that rolling stock. Something like this... I just love the lime/yellow paint scheme. -Davey

This is a beautiful setup and what's even more impressive is that you managed to fit it in your two-bedroom apartment! You have a really well laid out city with a lot of details packed into a small space which makes the city look all the more realistic. :thumbup: I like the mix of MOC's with official LEGO sets and your train collection looks fantastic. I'd like to see some more pictures of your BNSF diesel engines. I also really like that you and your wife get to share this hobby together. My wife and I also have a large Town/Train layout and always work on it together which makes the hobby all the more fun! Great work!!! -Davey

Hey Brickster! Good question here and I'd be interested to hear the answer. My understanding is that the Emerald Night pulls like a beast (at least on flat ground) so I would be surprised if it had trouble once it was on an incline. That being said... We ran the Emerald Night at the La Crosse Model Train Show this weekend and ran into issues with uneven track. The rigidity of the locomotive leads to just what Bruce and Fred describe above. Occasionally the main drivers will lift off the track enough to cause wheel-spin. In one case, I had to re-level the display tables because every time the train reached that point on the track that was not level, it would stop and the wheels would spin in mid-air. I'm also thinking that better o-rings on the flanged drivers might help. Now I just need to find a common o-ring size that works with those wheels. -Davey

Nice looking caboose! I love the color scheme and agree it would go well with the BNSF GP38 locomotive that LEGO put out a couple of years back. I'd love to see you take some of your LDD creations and build/photograph them You really have some talent in LDD. -Davey

Thanks all! The show was really fun and it's a great one for us to do each year. It's only about 30 minutes from where we live, so it makes life easy that way. We're also noticing that the model railroaders are really starting to accept us. They loved the Emerald Night and my Olton Hall 5972 (aka Hogwarts Express). They were really impressed to see how far LEGO (and more specifically LEGO Trains) has come. Nope...no model railroad as a kid. I had the #7720 Diesel Train Set from LEGO and that was it until I started buying 9V stuff in about 2004. Thanks. I was hoping I didn't sound like too big a dork. I just get so giddy when I talk about LEGO. Hopefully that comes through as me being passionate about my hobby. Aww...thanks Shadows!!! I appreciate the mention. Now I guess I could actually go an contribute a post to the blog. -Davey

Hey everyone! This past weekend, Stacy and I had our layout at that 2010 La Crosse Model Railroad Show. Other LEGO Train Clubs such as GMLTC and B&J Railroad were there as well. During the weekend, our local news station came and did a story on the show and interviewed me for the news. You can check out the story at the link below. ToT-LUG on WXOW Channel 19 - "A Hobby for All Generations" It was a lot of fun and I was excited to see our layout through the eyes of a news crew. Enjoy! -Davey

There are a lot of LEGO Train Clubs who incorporate ZNAP elements into their bridges for structural support and them shroud them with other SYSTEM or TECHNIC elements. Some examples can be seen here: Znap Bridge #1 Znap Bridge #2 Znap Bridge #3 Znap Bridge #4 I could go on and on, but as you see there are a number of them out there. If you do a search on Google, Lugnet, or Brickshelf for the terms "Znap Bridge" you will get a whole host of examples. I personally have never built a bridge using Znap just because I don't have more than maybe 10-20 Znap pieces. It is a great (and relatively inexpensive) way to build large bridges. Hope this helps! -Davey

Perhaps. My information is probably 6-12 months old. Either way, they're coming from overseas so shipping is going to be longer than your standard set that is stocked in the US distribution center. Thanks for the heads-up though. Always good to get an update. -Davey

Keep this in mind regarding PAB orders. It is my understanding that the PAB elements come directly from Denmark. Therefore you have to be aware that if you are in the United States, shipping is going to take longer because the elements have to come from overseas. In addition, there is not any kind of express shipping option for DesignByMe or PAB orders. This is mainly due to the hand-picked/hand-packed nature of these orders. Hope this helps. -Davey

Wild idea here! I never thought to try reproducing working suspension for trains in LEGO. Well done on the design and execution. I'm not sure this is something I will consider adding to my trains, but it is way cool nonetheless! Out of curiosity, what drove you to try and design something like this (aside from being able to say it can be done)? I've never had the lack of suspension be a problem on my layout so I'm interested to know if you have encountered situations where suspension is technically helpful or if this is more of a move to get more realism into your MOC's. Either way...it's cool. I love seeing the innovation in this community. It's really amazing what some people are coming up with. -Davey

Oh geez...I didn't even look. My bad. I feel like a total idiot now. Sorry about that. Nice interface anyway. -Davey

Twin-LUG is participating in this round and our order was just sent off to TLG this past week. Everyone was asked to order in quantities of 50 for convenience sake more than anything. The only elements we did not require quantities of 50 of were cows, pigs, and monkeys (although we didn't have enough interest to even get 50 cows). We also are planning on doing trades, if necessary, when the order finally comes in. Orders were placed for private collections as Twin-LUG really doesn't have a "communal layout". Our Micropolis is a collaboration by the individual members and individuals own the bricks, not the LUG. I really like Matija's method of ordering and I'd love for Twin-LUG to use a similar method! I'll have to get on our webmaster about that. Way to go Club Kockice! Some of the things I noticed during the process: 1) Not as many members of our LUG participated as I thought would. 2) Almost every piece we selected was cheaper through LUGBULK than on Bricklink. 3) Almost every piece we requested was available. 4) The process of ordering has been incredibly fun. I love the LUGBULK program and I think it's a great way for LUG's and LTC's to get a lot of core and specialty elements to improve on their amazing displays. As far as I know, Twin-LUG will plan on participating in the second round of 2010 ordering should it be offered to us again. Thanks TLG!!!! -Davey

I'll toss my $0.02 in here since I was in a situation similar to yours back in 2003. I had just picked up my collection from my parents house and was just getting involved with the online AFOL community. At that time, I was at a cross-roads as well and wasn't sure whether sets, Bricklink, or Ebay was a better way to go. While I did end up buying a couple of 20 lb lots on Ebay, I found that sets just made way more sense to me. The key seems to be to find a set with a good variety of pieces (Green Grocer, Grand Emporium, Creator Sets, etc) and buy multiple copies of that set to start bulking up your collection. At the same time, if you build those sets, you will get a glimpse into some of the newer building techniques that may not have been as prevalent in the 80's and 90's. Nowadays, I often find myself looking at a set as a 'box of elements' versus and actual set and buying it as a way to get the pieces I need/want. Bricklink is another good option, but really is for 'filling in the gaps' as Brickzone mentioned. Another avenue you should consider is putting up an ad on the bulletin board at your place of employment. Make it flashy and colorful and tell everyone you are interested in buying LEGO. You would be surprised how many people will come out of the woodwork with collections. This may not get you a lot of new pieces, but it will most certainly help to bulk up your basic collection even more. In many cases, I have had people give me their entire collection telling me they just want it to go to a good home. Whatever you decide, welcome to the community! You'll find that most here are friendly and helpful and you will really enjoy being a part of this group. -Davey

Well done! I love that tire technique to create the skin (shell?) of the Cthulhu. It's a very organic and detailed build and anyone who is a Lovecraft fan is alright in my book. Great work here! -Davey

This MOC is coming along great! I love the fire-truck with all that 'chrome beautiful'. The station looks like it's coming along nicely, but my favorite detail so far is your Stihl chainsaw! Certainly the best Minifig chainsaw I have seen. I suspect that a number of us with be ste...ahem...borrowing that design for future MOC's. I know I will at least. Seriously great work here. I can't wait to see the finished product and I am even more excited to see it in person this summer! -Davey