AndyC

I'd love to agree with that but, while I can think of uses for some of these parts like the mech foot, I defy anyone to find an actual use for that train front. The fact that it is a big custom molded piece and still leaves a gaping hole on the model it's supposed to be on is a testament to how useless it is. They are just about the right size for holding many of the Lego stickers for minifig scale signs and such though, and at that point they're much more preferable to 2 1x2's with STAMP, at least in my opinion.

I'm not so sure about that. If you went into a store a showed them the badly damaged box and said "Do you honestly expect me to give my kid this for his birthday?" I reckon they'd have no issue with replacing it for you. Whether or not it's worth doing, of course, is largely up to just how much you value the box.

PDF is an open standard and freely implementable by anyone (though interestingly Adobe still tried to sue Microsoft when they originally added it to Office). TLG could add it, but I'm not sure there would be much of a point unless the quality of printed building instructions was significantly improved over the current HTML ones.

Exactly. It's pretty much a certainty that I'll buy this set, wheras if it had only been half a bridge, even at minifig scale, I wouldn't have bothered. I most definitely wouldn't have bought two just to get a whole set. Sets at this kind of size and cost have to be very much a 'complete' product, or they just won't sell.

I've had the boxes turn up in a less than perfect condition from a few online stores, but only very rarely. For what it's worth, I've ordered loads from shop@home and they are always well packaged and in excellent condition.

Presumably he means this one, utterly useless. Made all the worse by the fact it's molded badly so doesn't actually fit properly on the official model.

Me too, I think it's looking pretty spiffy already. I was waiting for better pictures before commenting extensively, but I'm not sure I understand the backlash. I don't think minifig scale was ever practical, if you've ever been to Tower Bridge you'd know just how massive it is. Personally I'm trying to figure out where it's going to be displayed, I'm running out of house.

I haven't managed to derail the PF Passenger Train, even running it at top speed. The PF Cargo Train will derail if you go above a speed setting of around 5, but that's still pretty fast.

Well poop. When I saw the low res, tiny little picture earlier I was convinced that I had no interest in this set at all. Now we see it in detail and it is all too clear that TLG has once again found a way to extract yet more of my hard earned cash. Between this, the Shuttle and the new Tower Bridge model it's going to be an expensive xmas for me...

Nope, the old RC remote and the new PF one are completely incompatible.

Wow. That's amazing. I love the way those white pillars are done, even if it took several moments of head scratching before I realised how. If only more of the official Architecture line was quite so compelling.

I'd go for the new 7938. The Emerald Night is gorgeous, but there is little point powering it if you don't have any tracks. So then you've got the choice between the PF and the old RC and the newer PF stuff is unquestionably better, in my opinion.

Out of curiosity (and since this has been bumped already), could anyone who has the set confirm whether or not it has return-to-center steering?

Actually I kind of feel sorry for him. To me, if you don't open them you just spent an awful lot of money for a cardboard box. And not even a usable cardboard box at that. Lego needs to be set free! And played with. Actually he'd probably be more upset at the number of MISB old Star Wars sets I've bought, opened and played with!

The Grand Emporium uses no less than 2 of them, for a glass ceiling. A surprisingly useful piece with a little imagination!

I didn't think so either, but looking at the actual built thing the four central lattices in the A-Wing hanger each have one of their lattice corners connected to a stud, so that counts too.

If you have Office 2007 or above you can also just use the Save As PDF option, which produces better PDFs than going through a PDF printer option.

Sometimes illegal connections slip through the net, or possibly it predates TLG really clamping down on them. I don't recognise the set and can't see enough in that picture to recommend a swap, other than suggesting swapping the middle with two thin liftarms. A 3L rod with stop and a bushel on the end might also work in place of the pin.

Yep, that's an illegal use of the pin, since the middle will be in permenant compression. You can solve it by replacing the beam with two 1/2 width liftarms, since the pin can then safely 'snap' into place in the middle.

I'd contact Lego Customer Service, that is really not normal and you shouldn't put up with something that has failed that badly after such a short time.

PF lights should work when attached to the IR reciever and come on/off when you turn that channel on/off. If you use the train remote then the brightness of the lights will depend on the speed setting for that channel.

Well the inventory at the back of the manual doesn't count spares, for one, so that may account for some discrepancy.

I liked it for precisely that reason. It seems to be a running theme in the PT, culminating of course in Mace Windu's "He's too dangerous to be kept alive." The war is pushing the Jedi into an uncomfortable position, where they start to act in ways that are questionable at best. I think that's important to making Palpatines convincing of both the senate and, more importantly, the general populace that the Jedi have become a threat.

While the first sentence is semantically ambiguous, it's still correct. It's an example of why parsing English can be extremely difficult, because it relies on the reader to implicitly understand how to break it up. Features opening cockpit with seats for 2 astronauts and realistic engines! As opposed to: Features opening cockpit with seats for 2 astronauts and realistic engines!

I think a circus is unlikely, there just isn't enough too it. A modern circus doesn't have animals, so they're out. You've got a big top set and then that's about it, except for figs. It's probably much more MOC-able than something you could produce sets from. Which may be why several of the standalone minifigs are circus performers.