peterab

I'm a member of a Lego train club, and we just lay our plates down. When we transport the layout they sometimes slide around a bit so we try and connect the plates together with buildings and scenery to reduce this, but since your will mostly be in your basement I cant see it being a problem. The battery boxes and remotes of the new trains may change (nobody knows for sure yet what the new line will be or exactly when it will come out) but it appears the motors will be similar or compatable (ie all 9V). As others have said your train will still run along side the new ones. Here's a link to Brickshelf for the Engine shed. There are 13 available. You could also download the instructions from Lego customer service and use them and the inventory on Brickshelf as the basis for buying individual parts and building a Moc. You may also find one on Ebay with a bit of luck. These are now collectable so the price has risen a bit since they were widely available so a Moc may be cheaper.

If you register, then you may attend both days and participate in all the AFOL activities. If you just want to come and look, the public day is Sunday. Brickvention started in 2006 and is steadily growing. Last year was my first year and I had a great time. Each year the exhibition space has been expanded, but has always been crowded both with more Mocs and more attendee's. I'm sure you'll really enjoy it.

Just a warning; if you wish to order a Brickvention T-shirt, then you must register and pay by the 14th of December (Melbourne time obviously). BTW there are a few very visable Australians on EB (Svelte, ISC, Phes, CutlassIz etc) who appear not to be coming to Brickvention. What would make a Lego convention unmissable?

Thanks for the Xmas present Tim. It's very community minded for you to do this each year.

Thanks for the Xmas present Tim. It's very community minded for you to do this each year.

I really think the photoshop treatment has improved this image. I love the lighting and the smoke. It gives the image a great atmoshpere. I saw this yesterday on flickr and had a stupid moment, or at least an Australian viewpoint. I was going to suggest you remove the stars from the area of the engine, but after the 'Frozen' bit of the title I realised it's snow.

That does make a big difference, since there is independant objective evidence. At least for Australia anyway. Is that a particular retailers order sheet or a Lego one?

Emerald Night will run on any of the Lego track systems, but unless you have a good reason to chose one of the older ones, I'd recommend the current PF/RC tracks. They are currently available from the Lego website, and sometimes in shops, and should be around for the forseable future. They will also be cheaper than the older 9V or 12V rails which are becoming collectable.

It's not really good to judge world availability based on Australia. A lot of the retailers here are very risk averse, so even if they could stock something, they may not if it's been around a while, they'll generally only stock the newer stuff. On the other hand they will also stock run-out stock provided they can discount it enough, so Australia sometimes gets really good deals seen nowhere else in the world. Also some staff at the larger retailers will make stuff up. I'd only believe the above after confirming it in next years catalogue and/or if it was a lego sales rep, other than that it may just be speculation.

We have our own problems though. Since I refuse to ride without at least my leather jacket, boots and gloves (sometimes I swap the leather pants for jeans), and by law I must wear a helmet, it can be quite un-comfortable, and getting a bit dangerous once it gets realy hot. I stop riding for fun over 35 celsius, and avoid riding at all over 40. It's not so bad while your moving, but stopped at the lights inbetween traffic you can feel the sweat pouring off yourself. In those conditions I find it much harder to concentrate, and so I'm pretty sure the risks of riding are higher. I can't imagine riding in snow or icy conditions though, I feel a bit tense even in rain, and I've done a lot of riding in rain now. BTW someone else thought 15,000 k's was a lot. Thats fairly average for a car in a year in Australia. For a couple of years I had a job in a town outside of my home city of Melbourne. It was a 140km round trip to work. I did about 35,000 km's each year for the two years I worked there. That wasn't extreme for here though. I guess it's all relative to what your used to, and Australia is a _big_ country, and a lot of it is empty in between the cities. I'm glad to hear you've recovered from your accident Zorbas. I've been very lucky and have only had one minor accident, in my first few weeks of riding. I only got a bit of bruising but it really taught me how quickly things could go wrong, and made me far more careful. Stay safe everybody.

I voted freight, just because they are more diverse and hence the playability is better. I do like passenger trains too and plan to Moc a 80's TEE like Duq described.

It goes forward into the car port doesn't it? I didn't notice it till I took a second look because of your comment. I've never seen it done before, but I like it. Very clever.

A lot of regulators are now microprocessor based, because it's easier to get the correct result, or more closely follow the ideal output. Most mechanical systems were/are linear approximations, which is Ok for the spot(s) where they match the ideal curve, but sup optimal everywhere else. It also allows for easy tweaking when for instance you change something like an exhaust. The downside is you may need specialized tools to tweak them, and some manufacturers try and keep them very secret, or unmodifiable, because they'd rather sell you a completely new unit. In all this knowledge is power, you'll make better decisions by knowing about the computers, than if you hide away from them. And it might make you go faster

I think using a prototype that doesn't exist in Australia (and would probably be quite useless due to its small wheels on our quite rough roads) wouldn't really help with realism when he's modelling Australian country shire vehicles. Each to his own though.

I don't comment much on any American train, as I'm not very familiar with the prototype, so I don't have anything much to add. I am happy to see them though. I do like your very classic 9V style though, and I agree it's easy to spot a Brickster Moc because of it. I find it hard to work in 6-wide, so I build motly in 7-wide which I find allows a bit more room for detail, so I appreciate seeing sucessfull 6 wide designs.

I don't fully agree with this, as I've never seen that sort of trailer here in Australia. I also think the digger in your picture is far bigger that the one lightningtiger has built so your solution is overkill. Adding one extra axle would be fine. I really like the trailer design other than that.

Well it's probably too late to be asking this but I'd like a Linux version. I actually don't really care much, as I think they should have produced something far more compatible with Ldraw tools in the first place, and if they had it would have been awesome to have one platform independant version.

It would be illegal in almost any part of the world except China. China doesn't recognise international copyright, so it's not illegal for Chinese companies to make direct copies of Lego sets. It may be illegal to import those sets to western countries, however thats pretty hard to enforce since it's a matter of sueing a zillion little importers.

It will be good to see you there, after seeing you so often on the forums lately :-) It is great to see people going to such effort to get to Brickvention. Australia suffers from big distances between cities, so it makes it hard to have huge conventions without these extra efforts. I'm pretty sure you wont be disappointed though. I had a great time last year. This year we have twice the space, so the commitee clearly has hopes of even bigger things.

I agree with Duq, this is a nice clean design, but it would be improved if it were 6 wide. Perhaps next year we will have the parts to make that a reality. I mentioned in the 2010 sets thread that the airport tower appears to have 6 wide round panels, but I guess there are fewer train fans reading that. Hereis a picture of the parts I mean. Just when I bought a whole lot of 8 wide panels

Hi Tavernello, these are very nice buildings. I particularly like the Victorian windows on the white house. I've looked at your Brickshelf account before, in fact I've already got it bookmarked as a reference for ideas when building my own Cafe Corner styled buildings. Thanks for sharing your pictures.

Registrations are now open for Brickvention 2010! Brickvention is Australia's own LEGO convention and it's only a few months away so now is the time to register for the event. Brickvention 2010 will be held over the weekend just before Australia Day (January 22nd to 24th) in Melbourne, Australia and promises to be an exciting event. Following on from the success of the previous years, there will be new competitions, presentations, demonstrations and lots of interesting things to see and do. MOC competitions for 2010 include: - Best in Show - Modular Houses - Town Layouts - Trains - Castle - Space - Moonbases - Other (doesn't fit into any other category) Apart from the awesome MOC display, there will be some old and new competitions; trade tables and a special Brickvention Set inspired by Princess Mary of Denmark. We have twice the display space for 2010 so make sure you register early to guarantee enough room for your MOCs, dioramas and sets. We want this to be the best Brickvention ever! The organising committee are all really excited about the event and can't wait to meet lots of other AFOLs from all over Australia and around the world. Want to know about the event? Check out the website at http://www.brickventures.com Peter Ogilvy on behalf of Brickventures ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- EB Members Attending Captain Zuloo - registered jonwill - registered peterab - registered chibi joker - public day

That depends a bit on you, and where you are. Bricklink has the advantage that if it's available you'll be able to find it quickly. However you probably won't get a super bargain, because most BL sellers are fans of Lego and know what a fair price is, and some will even try to get as much as they can. eBay might be good dependidng on how much second hand lego is around in your area (or close enough that you dont mind paying the shipping) but it might take more time to find a particular set. However there is always the chance you'll get it at a bargain price. Bargains for trains seem to be getting pretty rare as they are now seen as collectable.

I'm not huge and I often find it easier to go sort of sideways down the aisle in our suburban trains. Its a prototypical feature

This is a sweet Moc. It really captures the holiday house feel. I can feel the sand on the floor already.