peterab

It's really nice to see your German trains. It spurs me on to complete some of mine. I really like this choice, the BR 70 was a bit old for my tastes, which is mostly post war DB. Do you have any pics of how the motor is connected to the driving wheels, I can't even tell where it is from the finished pics

That's a very brave strength test. I'd stick to milk jugs. I'd hate to see your cathedral needing a rebuild Nice bridge by the way. I'd love to include a trestle in my layout but it just doesn't fit the time or location I've chosen

One of the factors in my crash was not being confident cornering, I hadn't mastered counter steering (and despite what everybody tells me it didn't come naturally) and I was fighting the natural tendencies of the bike around corners. As you said the learners course didn't really cover it because mine was on Honda CB 250s and my Across' geometry is quite different, and we didn't really get up to the speeds that make it more apparent. It looks like you are in a rural area so you should be able to find some curvy roads. Get some leathers and find a friend to ride with so you can help each other out if need be, and get some road confidence up. In traffic the last thing you want to be thinking about is controlling the bike. Other road users are so much more of a danger to you. Sharing scary X-rays is a common pastime among motorcycle types. It's not a bad way to maintain caution, it might be a good idea to take it up if you think you wont maintain it naturally. Also consider doing track days if you have a bit of a hoon in you. You're far more unlikely to do something stupid to yourself on the road if you can go as fast as you want on a track at other times. Advanced riding courses are often touted as a good idea but all the Australian stats I've seen indicate they breed overconfidence among motorcycle riders. I'm reliably informed doing emergency stops from 240 K's on someone else's bike is pretty awesome though. Most people chicken out when it's suggested that they can try it on a wet track though. I've never even been back to do the next step in my Hart course which is the step up from 250s to a bigger bike because the bigger bike was never a priority for me. A lot of my bike riding was through central Melbourne and the 250 allowed me to be a lot more nimble in traffic. Doesn't have to be deep to be slippery, or maybe I'm just too uncoordinated :-P

Oh yeah you can join. It may not be as fast in a straight line as bigger bikes, but it's plenty powerful enough to get you killed. I assume NSW has a learners course like Vic which is partly designed to scare the appropriate level of respect into you. The first time you completely megabluck up and come off will also give you a large amount of respect, but if you have the right attitude you may never need to learn in that way, or if you are a least tending in the right direction you'll be at a low enough speed to avoid too serious an injury. If this sounds a bit paranoid it's not un-intentional. I've come off my bike once when it was moving, it was 3 weeks after getting my P plates, and was all my own fault, mostly due to inexperience. Luckily I was able to wash off a lot of speed before I came off, but it still hurt, scared me, and wrecked an $800 helmet. I've been very cautious since but have ridden solidly almost every day for about ten years without incident. In fact I've been told several times I ride like a girl. One of the people who told me that no longer rides at all, and walks with a limp, and has restricted movement in his shoulder and spine. He was pretty confident his rally driving skills and fast reactions would keep him out of trouble. His poor judgement and risk assessment didn't. He was an aggressive car driver, and that doesn't translate well to motorbike riding. </ concerned fatherly tone> Have fun on your new toy. I try and approach all my riding from a point of view of I'm in no hurry to get to the end of my journey because I'm enjoying the ride, so I can just sit back and avoid all the stressed car drivers, and if it takes a bit longer, that's a bit more enjoyment. Keep the sticky side down. ETA: oh and watch where you put your feet when you're holding up your bike (looking at the mud in the picture) there's nothing more embarrassing than falling over at the lights because your big motorbike boots have no grip in oil patches. Well there is one thing and thats falling off your bike and knocking it over while parked outside a cafe with your motorbike friends. Not that I would know anything about either of those events

I read that post and that list was his wish list not based on any insider knowledge. The mother with stroller and Gypsy with dog should give it away anyway since we are unlikely to see an impulse sized set in a collectable minifig, and Lego is hardly going to make reinforce such a negative stereotype as a 'Gypsy'.

For every similar offer I've seen in Oz, you get given a membership application at the checkout. You fill that in and attach your receipt and send it off (the address is one the application) to Lego Club. The applications are on A5 sized pads. Both my cats love the Lego Club.

IMHO the only good reasons to use a brick built base are if you decide that you won't be building six wide. For your first train you should probably just stick with the one piece train bases. If you don't like the length you can extend them with two layers of normal plates. A word of advice though, these sort of very vague open questions won't get you very helpful answers. You should really experiment a bit so you have more directed questions. People are also more likely to respond quickly if they are clear on what you are asking. Good luck with your MOC, I really like the look of that Virgin train. Peter

I've got mixed feelings about these new sets. I think the new police station is a better looking building than the last, though that wouldn't be hard, I always had a hard time to understand what the idea behind the last one was. It seemed to be a bunch of rooms all stuck together. This one at least resembles a possible office building with garage and jail cell annex. I don't like the width of the 4 wide vehicles but since so many here do I guess thats a matter of personal preference, I also don't like the design. The old station seemed to be a better parts pack to me, more fences, more windows. The new semi trailer I think is a backward step from the last, the old one had far better doors, this one seems very boxy, and is 8 wide, way out of proportion to the 4 wide cars in the police station. I think both old and new cabs are comparable. The one feature of the new truck I like is the addition of a cell, probably not very prototypical, but a nice play feature. Like others the new minfigs don't excite me too much since I've got many other police, but I do like the new crowbar and backpack. By the way I don't see red as an inappropriate colour for the crowbar, many tools have a bright protective coating. My crowbar is blue, but I've seen red, yellow and orange ones too. In all as an AFOL who already has a few police stations, I'm not greatly interested in these, but they look pretty good for kids.

Well being overweight and very hairy I'll let you be the judge of that. I look very bad in my motorbike leathers though. Far badder than I actually am all in all.

Better that than thinking he looks good in nothing. Way better ...

Hi uitzetter, To get a good idea of what a lot is worth you could try comparing prices on Bricklink. You can look at the price guide and it tells you what other people have paid for the set/part over the last six months and how often it was sold. Peter

There's this 3 level layout

Well it's hard to judge from an Australian perspective but it has sold out anytime it has been in retail shops here. That's common for exclusives though because they tend to be discounted, and you avoid paying shipping from Europe. I guess the real way to get a feel for it is knowing what sales are like in the two big markets, the US and Germany. I'd even be happy if we got an exclusive AFOL aimed train every four years. We have had a lot of trains lately though, given the Hogwart's Express and the Toy Story 3 train.

Here's a link to the Modular houses on Bricklink. It includes their release date. The first two are now no longer available from Lego. The Green Grocer will probably disappear this year. After that if the pattern continues one will be added and the oldest one will disappear each year. You might want to look at Creator houses instead of/as well as the modulars. They are cheaper than the modulars but are reasonably large buildings. Most people don't create instructions for their Mocs, but some people use LDD or LDraw which are CAD programs for Lego, so in that case they may be willing to share the CAD file. There are a few resources for instructions though. For current sets you can download them from the Lego Service section of the Lego website. For out of production sets you can get most from the Peeron website. The only large group of Moc instructions I know of is train related on the Railbricks website. Some train builders will also make LDraw files available on their Brickshelf folders, Ben and gambort are two users who I know have some. Given that your sons table is so narrow, you might have trouble fitting a train loop. The smallest circle of track is about 70cm. You could have a dog-bone shape if you added a wider part at each end.

You could just use trans yellow minifig heads, which I think would give the desired effect.

There are a lot of great details in this model and they all add up to a very sleek result. I really like your choice of selective compression to get a working Lego train too, normally you have to sacrifice design.

Thats a really great train station Benny, and I think you've captured the grand central hall well. I'd suggest you also modify the two sets as well to make them fit the same style, and possibly make the station symmetrical since that is very common for large German stations. Nice Work.

I'm assuming you want to build a European train to go with the UK/European looks of the EN. 1) In Europe where express trains often crossed multiple countries, the wagons were positioned to allow the train to be easily split for multiple destinations, so first class could be anywhere in the train an maybe even in multiple places. I'm not sure about the UK. 2) The difference between the classes was space and comfort, some early railways even had fourth class. 3)/4) Normally the coaches had doors at their ends, which may have been propped open if they had a complete seal between them. Most European express trains would have had a baggage car, about the same length as a regular coach or slightly shorter, though it may also have had end doors. Most named express trains would have had all their cars in similar colour schemes, but may have also used extra odd coloured cars at times. Cabooses (Cabeese?) tend to be American so they probably don't fit if you want your train to look European. I'm not sure about observation cars in the steam era, the only European ones I know of are later dome cars, and royal train cars. There were open ended Prussian cars with 'observation' platforms, but these were 2nd & 3rd class, the thinking being 1st class would be less windy if the platform was enclosed so there was an air lock around the entrance. 5) It looks wrong because it wouldn't be open, it would have a door there. Even in the example of the tender tunnel there would have been a locked door to stop passengers wandering into the engine. There may also have been one against the baggage car.

I would have thought a Halloween theme causing depression could be taken as a personal triumph for the designers And making light of depression can be very therapeutic. See my Avatar.

I must say that although I enjoy the new themes, the change is more jarring than a nice surprise. I suffer from depression at times, which makes me a bit grumpy when my routine is changed. I'm sure you've noticed many Lego fans are a touch OCD too, so if I told you seeing the winter theme all my Australian summer, and even worse the summer theme all winter feels odd to me, I'm sure you would understand. It's not the most pressing issue for me on Eurobricks, and I appreciate the work and personal investment that goes into the themes, but I'm sure if I with my mild mental issues would be thankful for a choice, there are probably others that it would be far more important for.

Yep, thats what happens. But the trains remain available from S@H for the full 4 years, and maybe from Lego stores. At least in the US you have Lego stores, and a local shipping centre for S@H. Australia doesn't have a Lego store and our S@H gets shipped from Europe with associated high costs. I wouldn't agree with this, they've been doing the trains since the late 60's, they've pretty much settled into a pattern of two train sets and a few extra sets each four years or so, which aside from some experiments like the EN and Santa Fe has been pretty stable since the grey 12V era. The only difference is that they have had fewer and fewer single cars over that time, though they have tried a bunch of variations on the theme. For example 2126 - a 'set' of train cars, The Santa Fe coaches which were three sets in one, My Own Train cars which broke the set up into individual cars, and things like the metroliner club car which were add ons to a set. It looks to me they have been trying to find a way to make them work profitably and failing. It appears to me that though there are some huge train fans, the total number of people that buy train sets is dangerously small compared to the number that buy a police station for example. When TLG looks at building a new line of trains each year part of the planning process is sure to be asking the question 'Would we be better off making something else?'. My guess is the current frequency of every four years is as good a balance between fan demand and profitability as they've come up with. On a brighter note the EN seems to be another experiment aimed at fans, so they haven't given up on us yet. I hope we see a replacement exclusive train in the next couple of years which would confirm that EN has been a success.

Normally I'm not very interested in Lego videos, but that was well worth watching.

I think she will. There are a lot of town collectors who want more female figs. If you think of the collectible female figs so far the only one that hasn't been very popular is the witch. I think thats because she's not very useful in a town, and the castle and HP collectors probably already have a witches hat, and a green head is limited. The tennis player wont be a cheerleader but I think she will probably come close. It looks like the elf will be the army builders favorite though.

It depends on how you think of the Trains theme. If you think of it as its own theme as you do it makes no sense. If on the other hand you think of it as a subtheme of the city theme, just like fire, police harbour, it follows exactly the same pattern. It gets refreshed every 3-4 years. The only difference is the trains are more expensive sets and probably have fewer sales because of that. The retailers are less likely to want to be stuck with them once they start selling slower, so trains are less likely to be restocked after they are 'new'. I also don't expect any new trains next year, or in fact till ~ 2013. Peter

Me too, but I guess great mind think alike. I haven't gotten around to Mocing mine yet though so you're way ahead of me there. I really like the end caps you've used and the walkway along the top.