peterab

It's a very subjective matter, but I tend to agree. I would point out that there are a bunch of normal train wheels, and the green and red windows as well. Still for me even on sale the local price is a bit too high.

I was born in Canberra, Australia and have an Australian Passport (I wish my mother had kept her German one so I could have one too). I've been to Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Townsville in Australia USA as a toddler (Chicago & New York) Germany, a few times. Went to school there for six months Hungary, lived there for a month when I was 10 Bangladesh, visited a friends relatives for six weeks. 7 months touring around Europe - Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Greece, France(Paris only), Germany, Malta Thailand, well only Bangkok for a few days on the way home. Canada, Toronto for a month for work, Hawaii for a few days on the way home. As others have said being Australian its a bit difficult to travel widely, but since the flights start out expensive making the most of them makes sense. We probably list the other Australian cities since they're all so far apart it's a special occassion to visit another one. I missed out most of eastern Europe, and France and Spain so I'd really like to do that, also South East Asia, and South America. Also Turkey and Egypt for some ancient ruins, as we don't have much in the way here.

Hi jonwil, I also like the Ferraris. The others seem a little to square shaped, a common difficulty with minifig scaled cars. The hot hatch has potential but yours seems a bit too large. Thanks for sharing your pics though.

I agree a picture of the real thing would be great. Reminds me of some of the small electrics from Germany, I'd love to see the prototype to compare with the German ones.

Gambort and a few of his mates get together to drink and build but thats all as far as I know. There seems to be quite a few AFOLs in the brissy area though so if you felt like starting a LUG it would probably be a succsess.

To join two plates bottom to bottom you can use the levers from these between the plates http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=298c02

One of my (possibly insane or irrational) theories is that the US market misses out on sets that have large numbers of minifigs because the US Lego prices are lower. Legos own comments of diffrent prices in different markets seem to imply they want Lego to be seen to be a premium product, and that they will charge whatever the market will bear. Its also a good bet that the production costs of minifigs are higher than simple bricks due to printing and assembly. That would lead to the conclusion that the profit margin on sets with lots of minifgs is lowest, and hence in the market with the cheapest prices, these are the least profitable sets. If you look at the sorts of sets that dont get to the US, such as some of the impulses, advent calenders, and now limited numbers of these collectable minifigs, you may see the same pattern that I see. Is it any wonder when the US price was US$1.99 and the Australian price was AU$3.99. BTW the Americans who are complaining about the unreasonable BL prices, should also note tha a lot of the BL sellers bought the figs at a lot higher prices, so the BL prices are not that inflated.

I'm pretty sure last years impulse sets were also not in the catalogue so I wouldn't rule them out. Besides they are all on S@H for Auistralia, so I'd expect we will eventually get them in retail stores.

I voted for the beach house, I like its more exciting design, and I like it for parts since I prefer its windows to the Apple tree house. The only real attractions the Apple Tree House has are its dark blue roof and light grey bricks, not enough to overcome the big price difference (BH ~AU$50 ATH ~AU$75).

Yeah, but think how cool they would be, and they would be easy to model in smaller scales, in fact, you could use your own hands

Well I guess if the problem exists someone will have tried to solve it, but I'm surprised :-) BTW I've worked in embedded systems too, I wrote code for the controllers of fruit sorting machines.

I too have just bought and built this set and I noticed something that puzzles me. It is an electric engine, but the set includes a gantry crane. I can't imagine how the overhead wires and the crane could co-exist. Other than that I've enjoyed this train, and am I happy with the price I paid since I got it for nearly 30% off. I'll probbably end up modding most of it heavily.

I have exactly the same opinion of this set. I can see future uses for the roof tiles, but find the tan windows a bit odd or perhaps too few in number, and the other parts not a good enough reason to buy this set. Most of what I buy is with a mind to extend my train layout, so I buy for parts but I do think the creator houses make a good transition between city and modular buildings. I'd like to see one/some of the smaller brick sets (like the fire, castle and pirate sets) include perhaps a female minifig and some furniture designs, ideal for adding to your creator/modular buildings to citify them. I bought a couple of the tan townhouse when I saw them reduced, and have now bought 3 of the tan family house, the first on sale, and the secound when they were reduced for clearance. I thought the family houses were too expensive at full price, given I didnt really like the design, and was not too keen on the red roof. Had it had a dark red or dark blue roof it would have been very desirable. In the future I'd like to see perhaps a dark tan house, or maybe one of the newer colours from PoP, with a novel roof colour, and high ratio of windows to wall space, like the beach house. I dont really mind what size the set is since if its small and cheap I could buy multiples, as long as the price per peice is OK.

When I was a kid I used to spend my holidays on a dairy farm near Shepparton. The milk truck had doors on the back just like this behind which were the pump controls and hose to pump out the milk from the farm tanks.

This is such a nice idea and really well executed. I'm smiling just at the thought of taking this along to pass the time while displaying a layout at train shows :-)

There are a number of instructions for train designs on the Railbricks site, though they are not restricted to the PAB pallet. Due to the expense of design by me, and PAB I mostly prefer Bricklink anyway.

If you go for the third type you could look at the instructions for the modular Green Grocer for inspiration, it has one inside the ground floor. I like the first one though.

No, there was never a statement that they would be produced in equal quantities, just that there would be three complete sets in each box, randomly distributed. The randomly distributed has been called into question by the fact that Whitefangs reported distribution has been repeated so often that any other distribution can safely put down to tampered with boxes. Since the least sort after figures seem to be divers and crash test dummies, and the most sort after are cheerleaders and zombies, It appears to me we're seeing a combination of the two effects.

If you look at Marks testing link in the post just before yours there is a picture of the one above the other. The RC motors are the ones with red bars, the new PF one has a lead coming off it, otther than that they are pretty similar, as is the 9V motor except for its metal wheels. Peter

It is certainly possible to use a train motor to power the EN. Take a look around the forum and Brickself etc, as there are a few 9V conversions, which shoul illustrate your options for where to stick the motor. The battery box from the passanger train is the same size as the rechargable one the EN was designed to use so you shouldn't have any problem with that, and the IR receiver is also provided for in the EN design. BTW although the train motor from the passanger train appears to have 3 axel holes, the middle one is just an indentation and can't accomodate an axle. There are other threads disscussing 9V conversions which suggest which parts to remove to disengage the gearing of the drive wheels, and I think the removal of all but 1 rubber bands from the drivers and some cylinder rod tweaks to reduce friction and up the reliability of the EN both when driven by PF and 9V motors. Most of these might be relevant to your case, and are probably worth looking for and experimenting with to get a smoothly running EN. Hope this helps a bit, but I'm pretty sure the plan is viable, it just might take a bit of tweaking to get right. Most of this has been discussed in other topics though so just search out all the EN stuff and read :-)

No it's not the only option, but it was designed to use it. There have been many other suggestions, such as the old PF battery box with 6 AA's, the new 6x AAA's, conversion to 9V rail driuve, 12V etc, but they will all require a bit more experimentation. The 6x AAA battery box is very new, so it may be seperately available in the future, or may not. I'm pretty sure if you wait a while it will be available on Bricklink.

I like these, just like I like your trains. You seem to get the balance right between prototypical detail and a clean lego like look. And feel free to post more of your Mocs in multiples, the more the merrier I say.

You've clearly not understood the difference between the old functionality and the new. The daily digest is no good to me because it only tells me once a day, and since I checkread Eurobricks more often than that I may as well just check the forums. The current thread watch is different than the old one. Since it emails every time a thread is updated I'm getting about fifteen emails for some busy watched threads between visits, and the slowly updating threads are getting lost in the spam. I easier to just check the forums. The old one would email only once if a thread was updated between my visits, so my mail box would have one email per updated thread, and none if there were no updates, which would save me the hassle of checking the forums. I hope you cans see the difference, and appreaciate the fact that the old functionality served to clearly notify me in a convienient place (that I check often over the day) of new posts, and saved me the hassle of checking when their were none. The new functionality doesn't do the same job, and is not really doing any job well, because it's easier to turn it off and just hit the forum index. I'd describe that as a bit of a fail in functionality, as it doesn't meet my needs anymore. In fact I can only see it as worthwhile if you have your email open all day which is not the case with me since I have to go out and work on occasion.

They had no limit at my local Myer, I bought 2 EN's, and could have bought 5. The only times I saw the old Cargo train they were pretty much gone in a few weeks. I think with these huge sets the retailers are quite cautious, not wanting to be stuck with expesive stock that doesn't sell, so they limit the number they stock.

Thanks for that. Emerald Night was $129 last time. I wonder if they will last longer than a day this time. I doubt it.