peterab

Thanks for the excuse to remove my sig. I think I'm the last member/stalker left.

Feel free to whack me. Though I should be pretty safe unless people start stealing Duplo Eeyore from their kids

Nice flat car LT. Since you've done the hard work building and taking the photos, it's traditional to share the love widely; EB, Flickr, ANZFOL, Brickshelf, MocPages ...:-) I've been mucking around with one myself (trying to distract myself from problems I'm having with a German steam train) but I haven't got very far. You build really well and quickly. Peter

It's pretty perfect for riding here too, after a very humid and uncomfortable Summer. I should take the bike out sometime soon.

Both CC and GG were initialy about AU$50 off their eventual prices for about the first three days, if you plan to buy from S@H now is probably the time. I'll buy from the US later I think.

Looks perfect as a kebab shop as it is.

I quiet like this steam engine Matija, and it's very good given it's your first one. My sense of symetry says the cab roof should be dark red like the rest of it, but I'm sure thats due to the rarity of dark red. On thing that does stick out for me is the smoke deflectors (the flag pieces near the smoke stack), they should be further forward to work effectively. They create an updraught to blow the smoke above the cab, so the engineers have a clear view, but wont work behind the smoke stack. Other than that your locomotive seems to have enough realism to at least be plausibly real. I'm looking forward to your coaches.

The technique doesn't depend on how far the wall is from the tracks so you could make it wider if you wanted, or you could build the wall lower, or raise the track within the walls so the train clears it.

Nice Find, it looks like the top photo shows the container from the red truck can be put on a flat car. I'm really looking forward to these train sets. The only set I'm not sure about getting in the passenger train, and if that includes the rechargable battery it will probably be good enough value to tip me towards buying it purely as a parts pack. Edited to remove double post.

You might want to check Homa's flicker and brickshelf accounts. His designs are pretty widely know. Particularly his ICE.

Nice Moc Klaus-Dieter. I don't agree The Tan Townhouse had a very similar alternate build of a schoolhouse. Just add interior, and some minifigs, and remove the back wall.

I'm pretty sure you're correct about express orders, but for regular orders, the courier company is located in Sydney. They get bulk shipments from Denmark, and repack individual orders here using Lego materials. That's my understanding after disscusions with Sue Ann the MUGS Ambasadore. The S@H shipping rate is not flat, it changes depending on the dollar amount of the order. It starts at $25, but peaks at $45 after $500 purchases. Compare TLG's shipping with Bricks To The World, which has almost the same retail prices, and a flat $4.99 shipping rate. Unfortunately BTTW doesn't often have easy access to the exclusive sets. You're correct that shipping doesn't influence prices, but it does add to the eventual total cost of purchase for me. As an Australian I'm already getting gouged with the full retail cost compared to the US, the least they could do is try to avoid me having to pay to have the sets shipped from Europe as well. Any other product I pay a full retail price for, which is different to the rest of the world, is different because it _includes_ shipping to my local area. I understand that S@H is a seperate business group to Lego Australia, and that they need to cover shipping seperately to the price of the set to preserve their profit margins, but frankly that's not my problem. When I can order the same thing from the US, pay for shipping myself, and get it here for less than the AUD retail price without shipping somethings rotten in Denmark. Either the profit margin in Oz is too high, or the profit margin in the US is too low, and I'm the sucker who is subsidising them. Given there is an imbalance in the pricing, the real questions are; Will I go through the hassle of ordering from the US via a remailer? Is it worth it to me? Do I care if it hurts TLG? Finacially it only makes a small difference to me, but due to my circumstances, that small difference is significant. Given that I have a nagging feeling that I'm getting screwed to subsidise the US market, and that if TLG cared about my market they could consider opening a Lego store here, yeah I'd like to push back even if it means it hurts TLG.

I quite like the doors, but the handles look too big. Perhaps if you moved them to the bottom edge they could double as steps. Peter

Part of the shipping cost as I understand it is there is a third party who repacks and resends everything in Sydney, after TLG sends a bulk shipments to them. I wish they would just replace that very expensive and inefficient system with a Lego store somewhere in Australia, and then we could order direct from them without having to pay the huge shipping. I doubt it will happen because the Australian market clearly isn't very important to them. In the mean time since the US price is so low, I'll be ordering from there.

I think tunnels just take up a lot of bricks, and since train specific sets don't sell well compared to other themes, there's little chance of seeing one from TLG. My LTC has a couple of guys who are building mountains, and between them they very effectively drain the local Bricklink stores of all cheap green, brown and grey bricks, and they've been at it for a couple of years. Granted Australia doesn't have a large number of Bricklink stores, but this sort of scenery chews up bricks at an alarming rate even if you use duplo for the internal supports.

Looks the same to me, we're just seeing it from underneath here.

The only place I know of that has many instructions is Railbricks The only really hard bit I found unique to 7 wide design was attaching wheels which was disscussed HERE Other than that I found it really helpful to look on the Flickr train groups and Brickshelf, and try and work out how the models were built. By the way there isn't really much difference between 6,7 and 8 wide as far as design goes, so you can mostly convert a design from one to the others. Some of my favorites are Monteur puntcom ulimy Flickr Lego Trains Pool

I guess we'll have to wait and see. TLG are normally pretty good about not showing stuff that isn't included, so maybe the prelim pic just didn't have them yet, and the display is accurate. On the other hand they might just be there in the display for decoration, like the buildings in the background. It's only around six months left now ... Are we there yet ... are we there yet ...

If you mean the black round 2x2 one, it looks like it one the red and green containers in the bottom right hand corner of the picture, so maybe one for each small container. I think only one track and one road is designed to be there, but it should be an easy mode to lengthen the crane. EDIT: Actually it looks pretty long in the picture, so maybe two tracks and a road will fit. I'm really looking forward to the freight train.

I sort of agree with the others above. I think if the object is to have a small layout, they may serve a purpose, but then why use lego given L gauge is quite large? If the purpose is to reduce cost, it doesn't work well for lego purists, because the brick to cover the riser is going to be expensive anyway, so you'd probably be better off with a larger single layer layout. It does remind me a bit of the toy fair 2010 trains display, and I guess it's a compact way to nicely display a small train or two. It does seem the limitations make it a bit of a niche though, except perhaps as part of a larger layout. Peter

Trains for me, but that may have been obvious from my posting habits. The results seem to conflict with my LUGs theory that every town set must include an alternate build of a helicopter though :-)

Either you could do something like THIS or perhaps some of the 3x5 doors from the lage vehicles in the 70's; they were pretty common so shoul be reasonably priced on bricklink. Peter BTW nice truck, and I'm sure the stickers will finish it off realy nicely.

Alot of the sets you are mentioning are the S@H exclusives, so you would have to add the shipping to the S@H prices, BTTW has a flat rate postage charge which is much less, so while the BTTW prices appear higher, they end up being pretty much the same.

From the point of view of The LEGO Group designing new alternate builds and instructions for them are expensive and time consuming, and don't result in any extra sales, unlike designing a new set. I'm pretty sure the intention of this set is not to have kids follow instructions, but rather to encourage creative building, so having lots of alternative instructions would probably work against what many see as the greatest strength of lego.

1. You've got all the goodies. 2. I'm pretty sure the custom printing is similar to LEGO's. As with any other printed part try to avoid getting oils such as from your hands, or some plastics on the printing, as they can soften the polymers used to print on the parts.