Davey

Yeah, the PF stuff gets cheaper as you buy more of it from S@H. They don't advertise that, but you can mix and match PF components and once you get to 5 or so I think you get 15% off. But nowhere near as expensive as trying to start with 9V from scratch. -Davey

A lot of chatter in here back and forth about 9V vs. PF. That's good to see. I would advise you to do some searching on Eurobricks as there have been many discussions regarding the exact questions you are asking. That being said, here is my opinion. At this point, 9V (yes...it stands for 9-Volt) is dead and it IS NOT coming back. PF is the way of the future and, in my opinion, the direction you should go. It is cheaper to obtain and offers many similar features that the 9V line possessed. As many have mentioned, the #8866 Train Motor can be used similar to the old 9V Train Motor to motorize most of the old 9V locomotives. You may need to do some minor modifications to fit a battery box in somewhere...but let's be honest...modifications are all part of building with LEGO. I would recommend getting the #8878 Power Functions Rechargeable Battery Box to power the motors as it is smaller than the standard PF Battery Box and will pay for itself in the long run by not 'eating batteries'. As you move forward, you can start designing technic style gear-trains to power your locomotives. A search on Flickr yields a number of designs. For the designs you see here, you would need either the Power Functions M-Motor or the Power Functions XL-Motor depending on the speed and pulling power you need. You will also need a few IR-Links and one PF Speed Controller. With this (and some RC/PF Track) you should be all set to get to work! As a final note, I will address you question about which system is more 'kid friendly'. In my opinion, the Power Functions system is WAY more kid friendly than the 9V system. The 9V system has issues with short-circuits and as you add more motors you have to start running the controllers in series to supply enough current to run all the motors reliably. With the Power Functions system, you just turn it on and play! It also allows track geometry that wasn't possible in 9V such as a reversing loop. So in summary, I would strongly suggest you jump into Power Functions trains and forget the 9V stuff. If you really want some of the old 9V locomotives, you can always buy them and use the new #8866 Train Motor (which I linked above) in place of the 9V motor. It might require some modification, but that's the fun part! In reality, the best trains are the ones built by fans. I would encourage you to build your own trains in addition to the official LEGO trains. Good luck! -Davey

Getting Stacy into LEGO was pretty easy for me and a very similar story to MetroiD's. While moving out of our respective parents' houses, we came across my LEGO collection. We knew it was worth keeping, but weren't sure what to do with it (as I was still in my dark ages). So, we brought it home...and promptly started building all of my old sets to see what was missing in terms of pieces. Miraculously...we weren't really missing anything. About this time, I started to find the online LEGO community and we started communicating with some AFOL's that lived about 2 hrs away. We met up with them for the first time at a local model train show in about 2006 (I think?). After seeing their displays, Stacy and I were both hooked and really jumped back into the hobby with both feet. So how did I get my wife hooked...I introduced her to the online community and other AFOL's. Luckily, she's pretty accepting. I'm sure she will jump in here and talk about why she got so hooked on the hobby. I was lucky and she has always been interested in building to some extent. Having access to a larger collection seems to have magnified her interest significantly. -Davey

From the Logitech website, it looks like this camera is not compatible with Vista. However, you might try searching for compatibility workarounds. Windows Vista has a "Windows Compatibility Mode". In other words, there is a way you can run your programs in a virtual environment that is similar to Win9x. This allows you to run legacy programs on newer machines. You might have a look at the following websites. Microsoft Windows Compatibility Mode Another option would be to get a Win98 emulator and run the camera inside that emulator. I haven't messed with this in years, but it is another (albeit complicated) option. My suggestion echoes the above posts though...get a newer camera. Good luck! -Davey

Nice work so far! I really like the design of the seats and the projector effect. I can't wait to see how you add to this. Perhaps this would be a nice insert into a modular theater building? -Davey

I'll echo the thoughts of others by saying that you have a phenomenal set of high speed trains there! They are really gorgeous and look fantastic running on those long curves. I like the idea of stepping up to a 3 amp controller. I have been thinking of modding one of my controllers like that for awhile now. Just trying to decide if it is worth it for my layout. The video you took was really impressive. If you don't mind me asking, what kind of video equipment are you using to take the video? I liked that the video was taken from different angles and edited together. Really great. And the train crash was hilarious. It was actually really interesting to see it in slow motion as it really showed how the physics of a LEGO train crash mimic those of a real crash. Well done! Also, welcome to EB. Glad to have you here and I hope to see more of your creations soon! -Dave

Stash: You can use the same one as last year for me. Thanks! -Dave

Thomas: No, the old power adapters for the 9V Trains do not work. You must by the new adapter. Sorry. Yes, the rechargeable battery box will power things like the carousel and can substitute the AA battery box. Actually, with the 9V-to-PF adapter wires, you can power just about any LEGO motor. I have even powered my LEGO Monorail motors with the rechargeable new battery box. Hope this helps! -Dave

I can tell you right now that if you remove the age limit, you are just asking for trouble. We're dealing with a situation over on MOCPages (a site that admittedly is more targeted at kids) where AFOL's are posting MOC's that contain adult humor (with a warning in the title of the MOC) and the younglings are getting all bent out of shape over it because "children browse that site and shouldn't see those type of things". So my contention is that if you remove the age limit, you will be asking for the same type of trouble over here. By keeping this site 18+, it helps us to justify allowing pretty much any discussion or MOC post to be legal. If someone gripes about a youngling seeing a post, we can point to the 18+ rule and that is the end of it. I come to EB because it's an adult community where we can have intelligent discussion and not necessarily have to censor ourselves because there are younglings around. I fully support keeping this site in that format. As adults, we need an online clubhouse where we can be adults and EB fits the bill perfectly. Just my $0.02 though. -Dave

It's funny, but getting married actually pushed me out of my dark ages. When Stacy and I got married in 2002, we had to clean everything out of our respective parents' houses. While moving my stuff out, we came across my old LEGO collection which had been packed away since we had moved from Illinois to Wisconsin seven years prior. We took it to our new house and it sat for a few months. Then winter came along and we decided to start building the official LEGO sets I had in my collection to see what was lost in the move. We built on and off for a couple years, but not really doing any serious MOC-ing. During this time the majority of our time and disposable income was going to fund our rally racing endeavor. In 2005, we decided to step away from racing due to rapidly escalating costs and went looking for a new hobby. It was about this time that we discovered the online communities of LUGNET, MOCPages, and LEGOFan.org (anyone remember THAT one). That Christmas, we placed our first major order at LEGO S@H and began to get into the Train genre. We also found out about a couple local train clubs that were going to be displaying at a model train show near our town and decided to check it out. Once we met the AFOL's in GMLTC and TCLTC...we were hooked. Since then we've only grown more involved in the community and we've met so many amazing people over the past few years. This truly is one of the greatest fan communities in the world. -Dave

Cute site and an interesting concept. I like the idea of highlighting the use of LEGO in problem solving and it seems to align with the goals LEGO Serious Play. I would say that the new LEGO Cl!ck program is aimed more at adults and businesses than kids and teens. Don't get me wrong, it still has applicability to the problem solving that kids and teens encounter on a daily basis, but I see the push as more directed to adults. The idea here is that you use LEGO to solve a problem in your life and when you solve it...it just cl!icks. I think it's a cute idea and a great way to spotlight how LEGO is not just a toy. It fills so many other roles in peoples lives and is a life-long companion. I say well done! -Dave

I have to agree with a lot of the points that Mark and Lockt bring up here. If I look at the track purely from a 'fun' stand-point, I gotta give it to the brick-built track as it's just more fun to build. I have to agree with Mark though that when it comes to ballasting, I prefer working with the prefab track and Lockt's comment that required storage space for the brick-built track is less is spot-on. I also like that you can easily change the gauge of the rail using prefab track. This would allow a person to build a nice narrow-gauge or rack railway. So with all those advantages...I had to go with the brick-built track in the vote. That being said, the majority of my track is 9V. Why?!?! Availability (at the time I got back into Train), the 'look' of the metal rails, the power source, reliability, ease of setup for large layouts. The prefab track certainly wins on convenience and I really just love the look of the 9V rails. With that metal on top, they just have a more realistic look to them. For me, the 9V or the RC/PF track is the easiest to deal with on a large scale layout. I am, however, considering adding a small 4.5V line on our layout at some point. Good topic here Brickster! :thumbup: -Dave

Wow! You're layout looks great and I am excited to do some exploring on your website. As I just joined EB in mid-2009, I had not seen your site before. I have bookmarked it and will continue to check it out. Great work! Edit: And your cat is hilarious! Love the pictures of the cat on the layout. -Dave

This is great to hear and should make the Train portion more accessible as it continues to grow. :thumbup: It was only a matter of time until trains needed its own forum. Congratulations to everyone who has been helping to really make Trains and Town huge here are Eurobricks. I can't wait to see what 2010 brings. -Dave

I have a number of 'coffee table books' on trains that I repeatedly look to when building. I also use a lot of internet photo sites that contain train images. I can't say I have ever turned to a painting, such as the one you posted, for inspiration but it's an interesting idea...especially for the development of a diorama. Good thought there! -Dave

Woot!!! Trains and Town are coming at ya with a vengeance in 2010! And seriously Brickster...thanks for keeping us moving forward this year with many insightful topics and great MOC's. You also held up Classic-Town.net for awhile when the rest of us were...ummm...MIA. :thumbup: You rock!!! -Dave

Yay! I'm glad you were honored to be the star of my first Brickfilm. And yes...I have more plans for you Mr. CopMike. This might even become a series. Thanks again for the kind words. The framerate was 15 fps. Was that to slow? Should I be shooting at 24 or 30 fps? I assume as you speed up the framerate, you have to make correspondingly smaller movements. I had trouble getting the movements to be small. Thanks for the tip on the masking tape and for the studio pictures. I like the use of the paper over the lamps as a diffuser. :thumbup: As for the graininess...I'll have to try some other software and see what happens. If it doesn't clear up I may be looking for a different camera. I'm wondering if one of those new HD 'Flip' cameras would be a good way to go. I thought about using my digital still camera as I have a Rebel XTi, but I read somewhere that digital still camera shutters are not rated for the large number of pictures required for stop-motion. The articles I have read suggest that premature shutter failure could be an issue. I think I'll just have to look for a new camera...preferably something under $150. -Dave

Our layout varies in size based on where we are exhibiting, but I suppose you asked about our home layout. Our home layout is about 18' x 15' with some additional 30" x 30" display tables as well. You can see more at the links below. Layout Summer 2009 Layout Fall 2009 -Dave

So with some prodding from other community members, I finally gave Brickfilming a try. You can check out the video here on Flickr. It's short and only features about 10-12 seconds of actual LEGO animation. I just wanted to see if I could make it look reasonable. I'm happy that I got something to work but disappointed with a number of things. First...my images are really grainy and I am not sure why. I am using a Sony TRV-330 camcorder hooked up to my Firewire port. Perhaps that camera is not optimum for Brickfilming and I would be interested to hear your comments. I tried and Logitech Notebook Quickcam Deluxe and got similar results. I suspect it may be the lighting, but I would be interested to hear other theories. I also would like to see pictures of your 'studio' if you have them. I'd like some direction on how to set mine up. Also, how do you go about keeping the set from moving? Would a rubber non-slip mat like you use to line drawers work? Any other ideas? That's all I have for now. Thanks in advance everyone! -Dave

I get the dreaded 'builders block' from time to time as well. When it happens, I usually do a couple things. First, I will sort Bricklink orders and half-parted sets that I have laying around from when I am in my creative mode. Next, I will usually pull out a set or two and build them, just to keep my fingers moving. Finally, I will often take MOC's that are existing and improve them. This can be a way to get back to MOC-ing and not be creating something from scratch. I recently did this with a number of my modular buildings in preparation for a library display case show that Stacy and I are doing in January. Good luck and I hope your builders block goes away soon! -Dave

I managed to score the #8258 Crane Truck, #8263 Snow Groomer, and #8265 Front-End Loader. That's all for Technic stuff, but also got a lot of other system sets both new...and classic. -Dave

Glad I could help everyone! -Dave

Yep! Is there any other kind? My wife convinced me that it was the car for us...and she was totally right! I adore it. Cool! I remember talking with you as well! Funny how things like that can jog your memory. I do miss rallying though. It was good fun when we were into it. I'd like to start racing again someday...but LEGO keeps putting out so many good sets that all my money goes to them. Nah...they aren't totally related. I've always loved to fly even though I am scared of heights. It's actually interesting that a large number of pilots are actually scared of heights. It's kind of a weird oxymoron. Perhaps were all compensating for our fear of heights. LOL. I indoor rock climb as well. I am using that to try and get over my fear of heights. -Dave

It looks to me like you're losing depth of field. What is your aperture setting? If you can, set it at like f16 of f22 to capture more detail in the mask. It will mean a longer shutter time, but with a tri-pod, that shouldn't matter. As for the bulb, can you put some type of diffuser in front of it? Something as simple as tracing paper might work. -Dave

Hahaha. I guess people have different concepts of what 'emo' is. I don't necessarily that being 'depressed' all the time makes you emo nor do you have to be depressed to be emo. To me, it's more about being in touch with your emotions and the emotions of others. In the end, it's all about passion. -Dave