lgorlando

Great Job! I'm really inspired! You took great care in the details of the people with their hats and all (my favorite)

Good Work! It feels very real with the texture you added and I love the canopies. Please keep up the good work and continue to post more of you MOCs

Good review. If priced right this would be a great suburban city builder. I would hope it is no more than $39.99 but I expect it to be $49.99 US

Well, I guess it depends on the execution of the truck stop design. We could get a nice diner with some food options out of it and perhaps with some unique base plates like parking lots are drive ways. I'm surprised though, I can't really see TLC building such a variety of trucks given the huge release of recent trucks from the tow truck garage to the new line of items depicted in the 2010 line. I don't mind the vehicle build up so much but I was a sucker for the monorail

OK, this is major speculation on this. The TRU will be a BLUE monorail (I feel this because we are in need of some blue in the traditional, yellow, red and white color schemes AND IMO the train station will also function as a monorail station. I didn't notice this before but those white trusses suspending the overpass could function very well for an elevated train (i'm going hunting for some trusses on BL tonight). I am also convinced that the height of the elevated overpass is exaggerated so that there is plenty of clearance not only for the train below but for the monorail to clear. Take a closer look. What do you all think?

Wow! There's been a jail break on these new releases. It looks like this will be the year of transportation!

I pulled the stair case out to make room for the pharmacy in the lobby BUT...I did add a new connectable module that has staircase, elevator and new office space that completes the building when it is open at full. (the elevator thing really bothered me...check brickshelf in January for the latest pictures and final mods of this project). As far as TLG, maybe someone will stumble upon the pictures with a google search??? Is there a way to submit ideas to them? I actually would like to see the hospital used for educational purposes which I would think, is desirable to TLG. And, yes that WAS Dr. House "borrowing" some Vicodin

PART II of Lego City Hospital: Mercy General No hospital is complete without a full service medical facility. While there are tons of examples of great building interior for Lego buildings, I didn’t want the interior to be “stationary” but rather it should be “removable” so that it can be “tinkered” with. Thus the final phase of this project concludes with an interior made up of 14 different removable modular vignettes! These “tray” rooms are built on a plate floor that is fitted so that it will slide easily in and out on tile plates fastened to the interior of the building. They fit quite snug inside the hospital but there is plenty of "wiggle room" and the hospital will shut and open like a carrying case ! There were many piece types required to finish each vignette so building this was a bit more complex than I expected, but I had a lot of fun during the process. It was also a challenge choosing which rooms to go into a hospital considering there wasn’t much space for lavish interpretations of surgery or large cafeteria but there was plenty of opportunities to place a well designed room representational of just about anything you would find in a modern hospital. Here are the rooms: Emergency Room Radiology with MRI and X Ray Surgery Hospital Rooms Orthopedics Reception, the Front Lobby Nursery Clinic Lab Hospital Administration Pharmacy Gift Shop Cafeteria (don't worry, it has a salad bar ) There are more beds included for module number 14 and 15 (no pictures loaded on these) Finally, I created a sticker sheet to add to the feeling of a medical facility. Overall, a very fun and satisfying project. The interior was more complex than I had planned and if this were a real set the interior would cost roughly 1/3 the hospital (I know now why Lego frowns upon complex interiors in their sets!) Stats: -Measures 64 X 32 Studs (96 x 48 studs max when opened) -5 stories tall (minifig scale) -Over 2600 pieces for the building (190+ window bricks!) -Over 1500 pieces for the interior -16 minifigs (4 nurses, 3 doctors, 2 surgeons, 2 paramedics, 1 maintenance person, 5 patients (mother, father, baby, elderly man, injured policeman) Hope you folks enjoyed this build but most of all I hope that you are inspired! Keep it MOC'n in 2010 and stay healthy! See the slide show of the hospital HERE

Notice the yellow dashed platform (left side of the box). The train track would line up along this and pass beneath the tall red railings (right side of box). That taxi cab is familiar as well. Check LegoMyMamma's Blog for the original TRU exclusive concept art showing the cabhere

RED MONORAIL!!! I am so excited Need more zoom on that rear image... EDIT: That looks like a Red passenger train. I see the box near her is a train station and the vehicle in the box next to that looks like track repair. So we have another cargo train and another passenger train. I hope they include new engines as well for this 2010

I'm liking the city sets. The limo and helicopter is a new concept that I enjoy! Good job keeping it a secret by TLC.

This is a scarry topic It forces me to really see what I burned this year on spare parts I downloaded my BL orders recieved Year to date into an excel sheet and lets just say that I am not under budget. What I have tried to do to save on shipping is plan out core parts (tree parts, glass, 1 x 1's etc) and plan mulitple MOCs (ordering many parts from the same store) in order to save on shipping. I did further analysis on shipping cost per piece cost and some BL sellers have actually been robbing me. What I hate most is cost per lot that some sellers add to shipping. I added these guys to my least favorite store.

Wow! I thought the SW battle packs were going to ding my wallet, but these little guys are kind of awesome!. I can see having a nice size national reserve army in my town. But what to do with all those green heads? Any thoughts?

The scenery is awesome! Thanks for the instructions. I love the old prairie tree

Love the Building! You have good color balance using the canopies throughout. It's the kind of place i'd wanna be! The interior is my favorite (not one of my strengths thus I admire those who put the fine touches on their MOCs). The graffiti is a scene stealer (nice)!

I gush (again). My favorite theme is castle and your interpretation on the black falcon fortress (my most treasured child hood set) is just wonderful! I really studies this for a while. I don't know if it is an accident that your wooden buildings appear to have slightly different colors of brown tiles but the effect is perfect! You have to really look close to appreciate that this is not a brick and mortar castle but a brick and ABS Lego MOC. I wonder do you keep your MOCs or recycle the pieces for other sets? Again, GREAT JOB!

I'm really liking these Western MOCs. I'm a big fan of the Western Theme but I don't like getting my hopes high that the line will return. This cantina is very authentic, I particularly like the bars on the windows and the festive decorations you made with cherries

Thanks all for the positive feedback! I'll add links to the interior shots on my original post in the days to come.

Excellent MOC and fantastic photo. I think all the fans are at flickr checking you out. Is this layout bigger and if so do you have more pictures?

Between you and me (And Big Cam) I'd die to have this MOC considered for production! But really I desire any production hospital from TLG but I suppose emergency service doesn't sell well with YFOL's. I was thinking TLG could create medical units for educating the YFOL's like Circulatory prints on torsos or Skeleton's with details that have parts you can add on (like hearts and lungs etc). The idea is to have the Emergency collection to in fact be interesting yet educational! Hey...somebody vote for that!

Good question JJ. The only traditional modular section is the red tower and only the top. There is a slice of tile plate bricks to allow the top floor to be removed as well as the roof but that was only so I could "dig around" on the floor levels. It turns out that if I made copies of the top floor of the tower it would be stackable. The real modular feature are the rooms I built for this. They can be moved to any level due to a "rail" system on each floor made out of flat tile parts allowing the rooms to slide in and out. Glad you mentioned this (I really gotta get that BL order back as soon as possible to finish my rooms!)

Funny you should say this hewman, that was how I ended up with the classic look. I figured the hospital got an upgrade after they ran out of space and so added a new wing during expansion. And yes the doors are actually sliding doors. I had to lift my whole building up by one plate just to fit those darn things in. What a mess! The red tower is designed to allow a lift (each floor is open from the 5th floor down.) I didn't design the actual lift, though I am open for suggestions. I agree, the helipad was something I moved around a lot. The design was only going to be 1 32 x 32 base plate with helipad on top but I remember seeing a hospital during my research with the helipad on a separate building. I added the paramedic drive thru and the trauma center was born!

B-PM-1D I've been a Eurobrick fan for a long time but I've recently taken up a member role in the EB community and so this is my first MOC on Eurobricks, a hospital built in Cafe Corner Modular style called Mercy General. MOC: 2010 Lego City Hospital: Mercy General “Medicine is of all the arts the most noble…” The First Law of Hippocrates In the heart of Lego city is a great institution of healing and hope, Mercy General Hospital. From emergencies to injury and disease, Mercy General is set up to deal with the urgent care needs of Lego citizens. With it’s state of the art design, the hospital measures 64 studs wide and has 3 and 5 floors of space over a massive layout. Facilities includes emergency vehicle drop off, a helicopter pad, a doctors office, a maternity ward, overnight rooms, a surgery center, radiology room, administrative offices and a gorgeous lobby for guests. There’s even a triage center and a pharmacy! Reconfigure the hospital with just the twist and turn of the buildings for a layout that best fits your city! Whether you arrive by car, ambulance or helicopter the professional doctors and staff of Mercy General will know just how to take care of you! Introduction I’ve been hoping for a hospital from TLC for some time. We’ve had police stations, fire stations, more fire stations but the hospital situation has been dire for some time (check the Eurobricks post on health care for a good take on the situation). I decided that my little plastic city couldn’t afford another chipped hand or scratched up face thus I set out to design a hospital that my town would be proud of. The result is Mercy General, the most comprehensive health care system in the world! (my world is a small table in my garage). About the Design During the planning of Mercy General, I did a lot of research on hospitals and medical facility design. From a city planning perspective a hospital is a major landmark and the real estate for most hospitals usually consists of many city blocks. Many major city hospitals house multiple medical buildings that may be set up as a vertical cityscape of towers or as a sprawling citywide campus. Around the world I noticed that a lot of new hospitals have very distinct architectural features that are fresh and modern ranging from the playful (seen in modern children’s hospitals) to the very contemporary and high tech. The larger modern structures seem vast and expansive incorporating clean materials like steel and glass; the long design lines and the use of certain material seem to invoke the kind of calmness that would one would come to expect in a care facility yet behind the façade of materials is a practical medical facility. Having found inspiration in modern hospitals, my dilemma was building a “modular-sized” hospital for a modest table town city. I love the large scale hospitals that are often done by professional builders and LUG groups but I didn’t want to overuse materials. I also did not want My Own Version of a production set (or some other existing MOC on the web). Thus, I set out to incorporate MOC hospital would complement my existing modular buildings as well as fit perfectly with TLC production CC style sets like Green Grocer and Fire Brigade as well as non CC style buildings (one that I call “playscale” ) like 7641 city corner and the 7744 Police HQ. I determined that the proportions of my MOC would have to scale to the CC buildings yet the final design shouldn’t appear to dwarf other playscale buildings. For inspiration I turn to the existing TLC production hospitals 7892 and my personal favorite 6380 emergency treatment center. 7892 has a modern feel to it with the tall tower and straight lines. I never did like the molded “rock” platform baseplate and the ramp for the paramedic seemed awkward. 6380 on the other hand was a model that I always kept fully constructed in my collection. It was a great addition to my young city in its heyday and 6380 just seemed functional, metropolitan, and the layout felt “hospital-like” (comforting and functional). Seeing the potential in the 7892 and 6380 inspiration, I also wanted to maintain that classic red and white hospital color scheme, though my original hospital was meant to be a modern color scheme of greys, blues and whites; the red and white just screamed classic. Funny enough however, choosing red and white really hampered the style process. I literally spent months revising the design because a red hospital seemed too harsh yet a mostly white hospital was too dull. How to solve this color problem? I use red as an accent (like a beacon of emergency) rather than a base color. I definitely wanted a mostly white building and to keep the white from looking plain I use the power of shape, texture and depth to bring out the light and shadow of the “colorless” element. The results: Basic Red bricks as the tower (the beacon) and jumper plates, tiles and textured bricks to create depth in the white building. My original concept was for a modern facility but I decided after seeing classic European and early American hospitals that the building should have some classical architecture. ADVICE: classical architecture works well for any city layout if it is not overdone. I love the Greek revival style that is used in courthouses, universities and banks so I formatted the focal front of the main white building applying the fundamentals of classic Greek temple design (columns, capitals, architrave, etc). The Greek style design was especially relevant given the symbolism in medicine which is borrowed from the ancient Greeks (Hippocratic Oath anyone?). The rest of the main white building has a classic European style to it with the stone offsets on the walls and corners; there are arches above the windows throughout and I strategically place the arches to tie in the design of the entire facility. An obvious trait of to many modern hospitals is the vast number of windows so I was sure to place lots and lots of windows throughout (184 window pieces!). Spare no expense! OK, enough about the architecture, The build itself…again, lots of jumper plates, flat tiles, 1 x 1 bricks with the headlight stud, Lots of long plates (which are actually pretty difficult to incorporate in a building because long plates flex and long-wide plates are rare or non existent.) I use dozens of the new 1 x 2 x 3 windows (hard to find, I had to buy them by the hundreds from PAB online), and it was very important to plan out the understructure so that there were no inadequate or unnecessary connections for the entire structure to lock together and to stand firm. The main hospital has 3 levels in two buildings. The space will be used for the majority of modular rooms that I have planned (the Rooms will be detailed in Part 2 of my Mercy General Hospital Review). The Modern portion of the facility has the tower, the emergency vehicle parking and drop off port and of course what hospital would be complete without the helicopter pad? The red tower is mostly patient overnight rooms with beds (see Part 2). As for my favorite part of the design; the hospital is convertible! (no not drop top) it transforms using hinge bricks along the inside walls. Set on four 16x32 plates I noticed the potential late in the design phase for a hospital that could be configured into multiple facilities; if I could set each building on a separate plate each could stand alone hinged together. I spent a lot of days on and off tweaking this feature. I placed the main building on the center two 16x32 plates (or one 32x32 plate) and the outer two buildings, the main care facility and the Emergency vehicle port, on hinges. I layout out windows and doorways to match up perfectly in any open or closed configuration so that when the building is reconfigured it will have doors, windows and walls that connect uninterrupted to the building. The end result is a six hospital configurations out of one design! My four favorites configurations: Mercy General Health Care System (1), University Research Hospital (2), Metro Memorial Hospital (3), City System Urgent Care Hospital (4). 1.) 2.) 3.) 4.) Like all good CC style buildings, I added a few minfigure characters to the mix to bring out the personality of the facility. Doctors, Surgeons, Nurses in hospital “themed scrubs”, A family with newborn baby, and various patients; a police officer in serious condition, as my town gets bigger my city streets can get kind of rough, there is also a wheel chair which is loosely based on a concept learned here. I think my favorite item is the Angel of Mercy statue, it is simple yet gives you that feel good feature. I’ll be back with a much more brief part two presentation of Mercy General showing the various modular rooms that I built. These were actually more fun than the hospital build (I even made a custom sticker sheet!). Overall I am pleased with the design, the CC style proportions and the color scheme. I hope you enjoyed the tour and the presentation. See you in the city! UPDATE, UPDATE, UPDATE FOR PART II, CLICK HERE

Well...I gotta say, that's pretty darn good! It reminds me of those all year long Christmas outlets that sell every thing Christmas... I hope you keep this around for some years for display during the holidays.

From a Marketing perspective, the opaque polybag makes sense; You buy more if you don't know what you are getting. I can tell based on the replies to this forum that certain minifigs would be hoarded and hard to get if they were in distinct, obvious, packaging. I can foresee a lot of wrinkled and damaged packaging from all the "package rubbing" if the figures don't come in solid boxes. I still see a problem with the Bricklink Whales buying up all the minifigs if they are limited to Brand Stores and the online Shop at Home. Hopefully Target and TRU will get these figs as well.