peterab

I'd probably agree with you for pre assembled systems, but I tend to want to buy particular components, and then build the system myself. That combined with the fact I use Linux, so I dont pay for my OS or any of my applications, makes Apple, like most other computer manufacturers, more expensive. I do recognise that I trade my time for the saving in money, but since I worked in the industry, I already had most of the knowledge needed anyway, and always enjoyed actually designing and building systems. I would feel I've failed if I couldn't build a machine that performed 50% better for my needs than an Apple for the same price, though I haven't built a machine since the power PC line died. Also as you've admitted there is about a 20% markup on Apple systems, which covers their software, design and testing etc, all reasonable costs, but clearly many in the PC world don't place any value on design and reliability, so they perceive that they are being chaged more for nothing. If it were not so there would be far fewer very shoddy PC builders around (I deliberately don't use the words system designers). You claim Apples are not too expensive, I claim otherwise. We are both correct. Thats why these issues tend to be called religious issues in the tech world. In all these sorts of issues the result depends on the users needs and values. Anybody who claims any brand of computer is best in all posible circumstances is a blind zealot and is best ignored.

I really like your train, in fact it's pretty similar to an idea I've had for a while (I have a lot of white train windows I need to use). If I were to tweak your train I'd add some grill bricks or grill tiles in the area over the battery box, as the windows seem wasted there. I'd probably convert the area ahead of it to a cargo room or an extended cab. I'd use the extra windows to extend the other two wagons, making them the same length as the powered one. You'll have to add to one or both ends of the baseplae, and because of this may need to make a longer bogie design. I'd probably also add some greebles to the roof such as air conditioning units. I've made a lot of suggestions, not because I think your Moc is lacking, but it has excited me and got my creative juices flowing.

I wouldn't consider myself a fan, in fact I've never used one as my main computer, but I do have a soft spot for their design, and I have used one as my desktop at work for a few months. I was a professional coder for ten years, starting on Windows 3.0, and got very jaded at the falling quality and hype surrounding MS products. Apple avoided some of the pitfalls that MS had by restricting their hardware a lot more which allowed better testing and hence reliability. I dont really buy the Apple is more intuative, because I dont find it so, though my expectations might be broken by my many computer sytems since the early eighties. I do think they have a more consistant interface then MS/other windows software in general. In the end I've never really made the jump to complete Apple fandom because the price per performance has always been higher for Apple computers, and I've made a philisophical move to free software, so I currently run Kubuntu (I also happen to prefer KDE as a desktop). I have toyed with the idea of running Kubuntu on Apple G3 hardware but there really is no longer any point to that.

No but TLG was compared to politicians which as much as accuses them of being dishonest, since thats the public percetion of politicians. Your own comment wasn't as bad bad was still inappropriate given we don't know the results of the poll, or even that TLG rather than TRU (who hosted the poll) made the decision. I wasn't actually thinking of you, and I don't have a problem with wild speculation even, unless it morph's into expectation. The monorail speculation was fair enough given the art work, but given we know that trains are considered slow sellers by TLG, and that they have in the past ruled out any new monorails, I personally wasn't going to get all excited by it untill I saw it advertised for sale. I'm sorry I've offended you, as I said I wasn't thinking of you in particular. I deliberately didn't list usernames because I'm not intending to be antagonistic. I also didn't accuse anyone of whining. At the risk of hitting a touchy subject since we are adults on a forum about childrens toys, what I considered childish is the inability to seperate wishful thinking and fact. I think it's great to speculate about a truck stop worth US$160 with a service station, a restaurant, a long range bus terminus, a double decker car carrier, and a three story hotel (not motel) and a waterslide (in order of what I perceive to be likely). However I don't expect anything at this stage, and in fact wonder if the price is likely to be anywhere near accurate. It's coming from a South African web site, I have no idea if their economy is volitile, but wouldn't be surprised if it were. It seems that if you look at the price comparisson with the modular firestation which is US$149, it could be argued that this will be a US$80 dollar set. If we accuse TLG of disregarding public opinion, without knowing if it was TLG's decision, what the results of the poll were, or if the set meets the results (hence it is important what the set looks like) we are getting carried away.

Could you show a link to that, as far as I remember it it was aimed at fans of Lego, and kids are the biggest group when all fans are included. It was linked via the main TRU website and I think also the main S@H website. It was fairly broadly distributed if it was intended for an AFOL audience. It was not distributed through the normal channels that TLG use to reach AFOL's; for example the Ambassadore at my LUG was not asked to spread it, unlike the surveys that Lego regularly hold to get AFOL input. I think this slamming of TLG every time we don't get what we want, hurts the image of AFOL's. There's a few very vocal members here who speculate wildly for months before any real info about a set is known, confuse this speculation with what might actually happen, and then are bitterly disapointed when it turns out they are wrong. They then don't stop and consider if this is because they've been reinforcing their hopes with their unrealistic speculation every few days, and go straight to accusing TLG of being unfair. I'd be happy to leave this happily alone, except this sort of childish behaviour can have consequences for the whole community. I believe making statements such as the above, that imply TLG dont care about public opinion, when we don't even know what the set looks like, is premature and unfair, and could hurt all AFOL's

I mostly agree with your line of reasoning, but I'm pretty sure both the Hobby Train, and the Holiday Train were heavily discounted to clear the remaining stock. The Santa Fe carriages were also very heavily discounted (AUD$20 at one stage) but I think that's the seperate cars versus set issue rather than motorised or not. So perhaps TLG know what they're doing.

Hmmm, I know what you mean, but snow doesn't stay on a moving steam engine very long, as the boiler gets pretty hot.

I think you are forgeting that this poll wasn't only aimed at AFOL's and we are a very small percentage of all Lego fans. Since this is a TRU exclusive it would be rather odd for them not to aim it at their target market which is kids. I'd imagine they also aim the poll at kids, so I'm not surprised the AFOL logical choices got overlooked.

This is a cute Moc and especially nice for a first train. I too like the smoke. If you rebuild or tweak this one for more realism, I have a suggestion; The distance between the coal tender and the engine is too big. The poor fireman would have to make a huge jump with every shovel load of coal In real life the tender often had a platform which extended over the coupling for the fireman to walk on, and you could also mount the couplings further back to bring the two closer together.

I really like the grey one. Enough to check if I have all the parts, I'm pretty sure I do except for the cab doors.

It's an interesting idea, but I'd do it slightly differently. In the protoype typicaly only one active overhead wire is used, and it would be easier to keep the connection between the train and wire solid in lego too. Unfortunately that would require 9V track for the earth, so negate most of the benifits of having a powered overhead wire anyway. If I were to do this I'd do it purely for looks, and use the PF battery for power.

Well you could always bring both :-) I don't even need to warm up my bike, in this weather it'll only take a few seconds to warm up anyway.

Me too, thats why I put the in there, however it did allow me to move star wars down an extra spot I'm not sure if Seigfied is serious or not either. I'd hope this sort of behaviour "WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE I love Ben10 Soooooooooooooooooooo much" would make it obvious you were a kid and perhaps bring on a banning.

Well some of us are lucky since the numbers in stock never seem to be enough to meet demand in my experiance. It's OK for people like me who set their own work hours, because I can be in the store first thing on the morning of the sale. For the vast majority they miss out anyway. For example I got two of the six Emerald Nights that my local Myer got, and two of the four MMV my nearest Target that had them got. Many many of the members of MUGS, my local LUG, missed out despite being aware of the sales and going to multiple stores. The rarity also encourages people to stock up for Bricklink which makes the situation worse. I've ordered two modular firestations from US S@H and some PF stuff, pick a brick and some track sets. The shipping was $178 US dollars. I ordered before Xmas, as there was a free shipping deal on S@H and a 10% off for large orders. For US$450 worth of lego that retails for ~AU$900 I paid US$628 or ~AU$748, so I'm about $150 plus whatever shipping I would have been charged ahead. I could have done better by getting shipito to discard the lego boxes and repack into standard size ones, as the box size rather than weight was the main factor in the shipping cost.

Oh no, I now have divided loyalties Now that trains and town have pwned the forums, we need to add some town centric smilies. In particular more than pirates and star wars Of course all with classic smilies. Well it could just mean that Star Wars is fifth this year. I predict; 1) Train Tech 2) Town 3) Pirate 4) Ben 10 5) Star Wars

Good Luck with that. I can see a lot of posting to yourself if you want to rival the power and might of Trains and Town

Come down here and you can ride my bike. Stop by Zorbas on the way and get some lamb chops. Greek lamb chops are about the second best thing in the world. Greek goat on a spit is the first. BTW Melbourne Australia has about the fourth largest population of Greek speakers in the world.

As far as I know we have only concluded the PF contents from the preliminary box pictures, so it's unclear if the recharging transformer is included. I cant imagine it wouldn't be though.

It's not insane if we pay the shipping charge. Of course it does make it far more likely I'll buy mine through US S@H. I doubt we'll get our own S@H warehouse anytime soon because we're just not a big enough market. I'd love to see a Lego store in either Sydney or Melbourne though. That would have the same effect of removing the shipping and make exclusives locally available. I'm pretty sure those exclusives follow TLG's global model, and the larger retailers are offered them first. The S@H exclusives like the Death Star, Emerald Night and modular houses may be offered to retailers here as exclusives purely to increase interest in them in this market, and hopefully boost online sales, or to clear remainders. Lego Australia probably favors the big guys simply because its easier.

I think the main problem is TLG doesn't really care about the Australian market that much anyway. It's not big enough to be important to them. I doubt our retailers have the clout to apply much pressure, but I bet Walmart does.

Impulse sets have a low profit margin, combined with the lower profit margin for TLG in the US, like the advent calenders they would not be profitable, therefore they are not available. This is probably is why no third party pays for the promotinal items in the US, and promotional items are not widely available anywhere. The board games were an experimental line, so they tried them out in Germany which is the market they were most likely to succeed in. If Lego were really to be fair they'd have a universal base price which included their manufacturing costs and profit. Then each region would add shipping/distribution costs, licencing fees, exchange fees and taxes. Since we have had an addmision from Lego that they are keeping the price artificially low in the US at the moment, your prices would probably rise accross the board. If you are really willing to pay more for those sets, you can. Bricklink them. Complaining about it when your prices are so much lower than the rest of the world looks really selfish.

I'll except your argument gambit at the risk of the ban-hammer I doubt it will be within five or even ten years, though it's possible. At the moment most sales happen via retail stores, and most of those are large chains who essentially have a stranglehold so can dictate terms; like S@H wont sell below RRP and we will get bulk discounts. This leaves the large chains as the only places that can effectively discount, and hence they also have the largest turnover. It would take a huge economic change for TLG to decide to risk the sales via these chains by selling discounted on S@H. Compare with the airline industry, many went broke because they paid commision to travel agents on their fare sales. It wasn't the major airlines that risked breaking that relationship it was the budget airlines, who came in and undercut. To some extent it _was_ the major airlines, but with a different paint job so they could claim they weren't. What forced the change was oil prices got to the point that flying became too expensive for enough people that less people could afford it, coupled with 9/11. Except for those rather exceptional circumstances it may never have happened. I can see the Lego brand stores as a more likely compeditor. a) they dont have to charge shipping b) They can stock exclusives c) If they order enough (and I'd guess they would be counted together rather than individual stores) TLG may be able to justify bulk discounts if other chains asked. For this to be successful they'd need enough Lego stores in each market to be able to compete in sales, that will take time, so this will aslo not be within 5 years here. I'm very interested in watching the US market though. We already have indications that TLG is subsidising that market. They could return to a heathier profit margin if they sold at similar prices yet exclusively through their own retail franchise. S@H needs to have free shipping and discounted prices before they become a serious competitor to retail chains in Australia. At the moment the S@H ships in bulk to a third party remailer in Sydney I think, who then mails out individual orders. If they were serious about S@H, they would need to remove this third party. To compete effectively here they'd probably have to have a dedicated S@H warehouse, but TLG simply isn't interested in Australia as a market as we are no-where near big enough for the hassle.

Modesty is nice and all, but I think it easy to see the dedication you have shown to the Train Tech forum. We may have made it happen, but you made it possible. Thanks.

I'm currently using a book of technical drawings, along with photos, and refering to other builders Mocs to build a German steam train. Paintings not so much, as they tend to romantisize things too much and as Cpt Zuloo points out the details are insufficient for prototype work.

I feel thats a pretty foolish view. I think the reason you miss out on some sets (notably the pirate and castle advent calenders) is that those sets are pretty cheaply priced in the European market given thay contain many minifigs which are expensive to manufacture, so the profit margins are lower. If they were sold in the US market, they would not be profitable if sold at the current ratio to European prices because profit margins are lower accross the whole range in the US. Suck it up. If you really want those sets they are available on Bricklink. Shipping from Europe too expensive for you? Aww didums, funny the shipping from the US to Oz is expensive too, but given your low prices it's still often cheaper to buy there and pay shipping than retail here. There is someone who has no right to complain. Pot. Kettle. Black.