peterab

Don't delay if you want to register as an attendee/exhibitor. Tickets are selling far quicker than anticipated, and will sell out soon. Jade and Anita, hope to see you both there. Peter Edited to correct Anita's name

Tickets are now available online for Brickvention 2012. Public days are 21st & 22nd of January If you wish to come to the public display book Here To avoid the queue that we had last year we will be limiting the number of tickets sold, have added an extra public day, and will be selling tickets with staggered entry times. If you'd like to register for the convention and exhibit book Here There are some exciting things planned for exhibitors, but to be involved you need to book early. Setup will be 19th January, with the convention day the 20th. EB rollcall Member Status peterab exhibitor MLTC layout Tazmaniac ??? lorax ??? debrick registered brickmamba attending gabe exhibitor cossack225 exhibitor pinioncorp attending

The PF light cable has a 9V adapter, which you can plug straight onto a 9V motor. The disadvantage to this method is the current and therefore brightness will vary with the speed of the motor, the advantage is; no battery needed.

Edited to remove off-topic post.

The US is the third or fourth biggest market for TLG most years, Germany is the biggest and the stronghold there (like most other places) is City. While the potential market in the US is bigger, actual sales are bigger in Germany, and I'm pretty sure there are just as many AFOLs in Europe as in the US. There are other non-english speaking forums for both French and German speakers which are very active. The LEGO exhibitions have been run in Europe longer than cons in the US too I think. The poor sales in the US per capita is part of the reason the US prices are so low compared to the rest of the world.

I think that depends on where you are. A Fleishmann loco in Australia costs about $600 from a local retailer. The LEGO yellow cargo train on sale $240. For the trains LEGO is much cheaper here. For scenery and buildings it probably evens out or swings the other way. In the US local made HO trains would probably be a lot cheaper than Fleishmann though.

Sometimes the US does, sometimes Europe, and very rarely somewhere else like Australia has first release. If you think about it, it makes sense to concentrate on one market at a time from a production point of view, since European and US packaging differs. Bulk shipping prices also have an impact. Also you need to be able to deliver across the whole market pretty much at the same time, because retailers will get upset if you deliver to a rival a long time before them, so you do market by market rather than everybody at once. The US probably goes first in this case because they have longer shipping times than delivery to Europe, so if you want to deliver to both markets from Denmark before Christmas, it makes sense to target the US first.

While I can understand frustration with DHL shipments to Australia, I'm not sure if it's directed in the correct place. If I understand correctly DHL is the privatised parcels arm of the German post office. Their tracking works up to the point delivery is taken over by Aust. Post and our customs. Most of the delays also occur in our customs, and Australia Post, and the shipping from Germany seems to be quite quick. Both customs and Aussie post have been swamped by the many Australians buying overseas due to the strong Aussie dollar, which would probably go a long way to explaining why it's happening. I'm not sure if Aussie post even provide tracking as a rule.

Well as it happens, this sort of happened to me yesterday. I was towing my mowing trailer along through a strip of shops, being followed by a police car. I heard a siren and saw lights, from an ambulance about 200 meters back, but I had to check it wasn't the police car behind me before I worked out what was going on. I pulled over out of the way, just as the police fired up their lights to escort. Had it been the police I would have gone further to a better place to pull over. Since I prioritized getting out of they way I had a crap time getting enough room to back the trailer back out, since nobody would give me any room. Bastards. About ten years ago all our police fire and ambulance vehicles got switched to the same light systems (before police were blue the others red) because more people would pull over for police than for fire and ambulances. Some people are douche bags.

Thanks for sharing your secrets :-) I'll have to try the 3mm hose. I've got a couple of grain wagons where it might help a lot.

I have to agree the colour scheme of these is very attractive. Particularly the red fronted engine. I like your micro spacing of the passenger doors. How is the friction of the custom bogies? Whenever I've built custom I've ended up going back the the standard wheelsets because of friction.

Hi lorax I struggle with buildings myself, but for what it's worth I'll leave my suggestion. I think the blue and tan building has too much going on, and the embellishments compete with each other. I'm inclined to think that if the third story was not set back, and styled more like the second it might look a bit more consistent. Perhaps a small balcony jutting out from the door, if you wanted more interest than a repeat of the second. The blue ground floor works well, as a contrast to the rest of the building.

At exhibitions I tend to run trains relatively fast, because kids find that more interesting. I've recently finished a BR 103 electric which was a relatively fast electric engine in its time, paradoxically the small amount of room I had for fitting the two XL motors means it runs pretty slowly. At home I rarely run my trains apart from testing (waiting till I have enough room for a permanent layout), and in those cases it's mostly to amuse our cat, so whatever makes her interested, sometimes slowly, others quickly.

You might want to take a look at Teunis Davey's Victorian Railways B Class, though the European window shape is different it may give you some ideas.

The most common mod I've seen at train shows and LEGO exhibitions is using an axle to connect a technic wheel above the speed control. It gives a larger area for adult hands to grip and you can use a twisting motion rather than a push down and around so it gives a bit better fine control. Some of the guys in my train club also add coloured plates and tiles to give an indication of whose controller it is and which train it's set up to control. Some connect several controllers together with technic pins, but I find this a bit unwieldy when walking around to follow trains on a large layout.

I've got an interview for a job on Monday where I'd be paid to ride a motorbike. On the footpath. It would only be a 125cc and I'd be dressed in bright safety orange though. Wish me luck, Peter wants a new larger LEGO budget. Clearly he meant a temporary stop since otherwise we'd have to pluck some birds, heat the tar and break out the whacking sticks :-)

I think this is the way to go, build to fit minifigs but just narrower gauge, for example a sugar cane train or a mining train. Part of the coolness of your train is it could be combined with 6 wide lego trains.

See a lawyer. Most solicitors here will write a cease and desist letter for about $50. You need to see a lawyer since copyright laws vary depending on country, and Ebay will pretty much ignore you till you make a serious legal claim. Send the letter to Ebay and that should stop his auction. Also you should change your privacy settings on the photo so it disappears from the auction, you could also delete it and repost it with a different name. I doubt you'll have much luck getting anything out of the seller apart from getting him to stop selling your design though.

Just for your information, the testing is performed on the roadside using a hand held meter. The booze bus is normally parked on one lane of a two lane carriageway (legal term for road in Victoria) the police direct traffic into the lane behind the bus, six or so cars at a time, while that area is full the traffic just gets waived past. Those who pass the test (less than 0.05%) get to drive away, those who don't get to wait in the bus. After an hour they are re-tested, if they are still over 0.05, they will be fined or charged etc, and will need to arrange someone to get their vehicle. Inside the bus will have an admin area, and a bunch of seating for those waiting. Often there will be divvy vans in the surrounding area and a pursuit car to catch anybody trying to avoid the Booze Bus. Why do I know so much about the Booze Bus? I worked for a company that developed facial ID software and went to a few police equipment expos. The Booze bus was a Victorian innovation, we were also the first place in the world to have compulsory seat belts, which greatly lowered our road deaths and has shaped the very pro-active approach taken here to road safety.

I think it is unfair to get upset at one company for copyright infringement (which by the way may not be happening since the Chinese government pretty much only enforce them for exports anyway, in which case it's the importers breaching customs regulations, not the producers), while singing the praises of TLG who founded their brick business on patent violation. In fact it seem like hypocrisy if you actually know about TLG's past actions. I think the link is clear enough, since patent violation and copyright violation are similar, that a reasonable analogy can be drawn. As others have said most of Enlightens trains are custom designs so perhaps it is you who should be more careful with your analysis. At this point you just look biased, since you are willing to ignore TLG's past behavior, but accuse others who are willing to ignore Enlightens few copyright infringing sets of "participating in or at least condoning a criminal act". By the way my understanding is copyright is very rarely if ever criminal, but is civil law in most countries. I also am pleased that Eurobricks moderators know that clone and third party brands are of interest to some builders, and I think if you don't like it that's fine but it doesn't give you the right to smother other opinions by falsely accusing them of participating in criminal acts. This has a lot to do with fair competition, since I've been told by Jim Foulds, TLG's current strategy is to compete on quality, rather than further pursue legal means (though I'm pretty sure their last attempts were mostly failing). Without competition that pressure would not be there. I think had you been more careful with your accusations I probably wouldn't have felt the need to quote you.

I always find it funny when people get so uptight about clone brands given that the original patents belonged to Kidicraft and TLG illegally produced copies for much of its early history. TLG only purchased the patents many years later, from the original owners widow, while they were in litigation against Mega brands. It's a bit sad the original creator died without being rewarded for his vision, and the copies made it big. It's even more sad that some fans would try and suppress competition which is likely to be healthy, on the erroneous notion that TLG has some exclusive right to produce these kind of toys, or that others shouldn't behave as TLG did themselves.

In many parts of the world wooden bridges and sleepers were treated with creosote as a preservative, the result was a very dark black. I'd guess Tony was at least partly influenced by the prototype.

The casing of the motors are identical, only the motors themselves differ. An easy way to differentiate from outside is the label on the motor, the 4.5V has 4.5V printed on a red background, the 12V has 12V printed and a yellowish green background. You can sort of see this colour difference though the little hole on the top of the case in your pictures. The other difference is the gearing of the motors. The metal cog on the shafts are in different spots, so they drive a different size gear in the case. The 12V motor drives the larger gear (thus gearing it down more) I think.

Yes it is legit. It was made for 'The Art of the Brick' by Ryan McNaught the only Lego Certified Proffessional in Australia. The owners who ran the exhibition are auctioning it for charity. I think there is a difficulty photographing a mural this size. If you get too close you can't see the image, if you are far enough away for the image to be reasonable, you cant actually tell it's made of Lego. I'm pretty sure that's Father Bob standing in front of the mosaic.

I get that a bit on the 250. I think there's a percentage of car drivers that just don't understand power to weight ratios are going to mean a motorbike will accelerate from the lights faster than most cars. I used to enjoy driving before WRXs were common, since most of the other cars that could catch me were seriously expensive, and most of their drivers valued their cars. Some of the young hoons who do try to catch up are really scary. I can't think of an auto motorbike, though it wouldn't surprise me if the Goldwing had auto as an option. They have reverse gears FFS. They're more like a small 4x4 than a bike...