Cian

I forgot the light location - definite Elven Rights violation territory,

Building this this weekend. It has raised severe issues over labour laws and employee protection at the North Pole that I feel we need to address This is the Elves "club house" which implies a place of rest and recreation to me. But it clearly has a gift wrapping station, implying that they are required to work in their down time, or at least some other impingement on a healthy work-life balance. The way to their workshop is signposted clearly, they shouldn't be required to bring work home Additionally, the presence of beds here imply that this is actually their house, not a club house. But this bedding is inhumane - firstly, there are insufficient bunks for every elf, which implies shift use of beds - something we now know can spread disease rampantly in pandemics. Additionally, there is a cruel and unusual mechanism for waking those elves who are presumably too exhausted from slaving away by physically ejecting them from their beds, and indeed the entire 'club' house if done with enough force I think we need to send the appropriate employment rights agency in to the operation immediately. There's vast amounts of police in City to back them up in breaking this indentured servitude setup up and getting the "big man" in red put to rights. (I am taking the piss clearly, its been rather a long weekend in lockdown here)

That's something imagined on forums by mostly US-based AFOLS There are multiple buildings in the line with European derived architecture. There's a computer in one of them. It is blatantly not a retro Americana line.

That walkway out to Go is grim; this looks like rather an improvement!

Consider we've finished a 'block' now, a corner to start the new one would be in pattern, surely?

You'd be surprised how accurate to life this can be - many suburban 1930s-1950s cinemas in Dublin are in fact carpet showrooms now - generally if they're not a bingo hall or a furniture shop, they're a Des Kelly Carpets!

Classic town sets rarely if ever had stairs, we're becoming too picky these days ;)

Needs a decent comms cabinet or else I won't install any dispensary systems for them ;)

Majority of them in Ireland are red - Dublin, Waterford and Inisheer as three different ends of the scale there - top 25 international airport, small regional/commuter and tiny tiny regional. I think only one airport in the entire country here has yellow ones even though I'd see it as traditional. The last Lego one was yellow though

Its generally ignored as if it never happened - I was surprised that it turned up in the Mini Modulars. Was branded differently (Factory) to the others and designed externally.

GE looks like any late 19th century British sphere of influence department store. TH looks like a fair few of the early 20th century town halls in Ireland which would have swiped their designs from elsewhere. They do a fairly good job of ensuring no set looks massively obviously from one specific area - even FB which seems to be based on a specific New York station doesn't look much unlike any other city fire station of that era.

Barring about ten parts, my almost visually identical CC and GG are now built Revered the staircase door and swapped the dark blue arch for dark bley on the ground floor of CC; changed the windows on the middle floor to actually be windows and changed the type of frame on the top. I'm still missing the birds. On GG I swapped the extremely dear sand green 1x8s for either 2 1x4s or 2 1x6 + 1 1x4 depending on where they were sited; also swapped some adjacent 1x3s for 1x6s as I was short on these due to a typing error on PAB. Also changed the glassless train windows for the new type that I also used on CC. I think they look fine, another AFOL might notice the differences but that's about it.

What wheels did you use that fit behind the guards at the back? The part numbers are near illegible in the Hispabricks PDF unfortunately

Takes a different inner part, see above for the suggestion I received and took (using two 2x3 panes in that frame rather than the 4x3 the proper frame uses)

Newsagent/tobacconist isn't the same as newsstand though (and there are still a few of those here in the same areas - major city streets and train stations). They're sort of like convenience stores, just traditionally they'd not have sold any fast food (they often do now), and mainly sold sweets, magazines, cheap toys and greetings cards and usually a small amount of "essentials" rather than a full range like a convenience store does. They're basically identical to a Danish 7-11

"tobacconist" was a synonym for "newsagent" when I was a kid - in the late 80s / early 90s - in Ireland. This being where sweets were sold too.

Finally got around to ordering the parts from CS. The sand green grooved bricks are not in stock and are marked as out of production despite the ordering system having them green ticked and getting a confirmation email about it... This puts the price up quite considerably if you have to Bricklink these. Unless you can find two cheap Diagon Alley's (hah!), these are about $1 a piece on Bricklink in any quantity. Can sub 6 or 7 of them for solid 1x2's which are a fraction of the price. The rest of them are very very visible...

From memory all the parts get used in at least one of the alternate builds - I built all three before dumping to parts. But there is definitely a lot left after the primary build.

Best way I found to deal with that: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemPic.asp?P=60593 + http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemPic.asp?P=60602 These work out a fraction of the price of the support-less panels and look better than using the supported panels. They appeared in 2009, hence why they used the panels on CC and the "train" windows in GG GG is much cheaper to get 100% right from the usual display angles than CC, but CC will still look close enough.

GG. I meant to type GG there, not CC. Was too late for it. MS might have been on sale still but I've never actually wanted it.

Customer Services currently have the sand green parts I mentioned in stock (and 1x4s/1x6s which I had). I actually bought the remaining parts last night, 50 euro to get virtually everything from one well stocked but dearer store and 13 euro for a 10 euro minimum order (and then shipping) to get 2.10 of decorated tiles - so I got a stack of other cheap bits I can keep as stock.... I'll figure out the exact total for those parts in a bit, but obviously its still not going to include the cost of the parts I already had. The worst part of all of this is that I *was* an AFOL when Green Grocer was available but I stayed away from the modular line for a bit and ended up ordering FB/GE at the same time. My CC rebuild has got (slightly) dearer as I managed to colourblindly order 16 new brown curved parts instead of dark red for the top floor roof. Now, the parts I did need are about 8c each. The parts I bought are about 80c as they're only in one single set

Got the vast bulk of parts for Green Grocer ordered now. Had just about 900 already, ordered ~400 from PAB where the price was within +15% of Bricklink averages (as often the average for people that'll ship to Ireland is higher anyway, and this way absolutely guarantees new parts - had some tooth marked 'new' elements recently from BL). Two large BL orders have brought me down to about 300 parts of 34 elements. Have put in for the sand green hinge base and most of the sand green bricks on the part replacement service, it shows them all as in stock except the 1x8s. These can generally structurally be swapped for 2 1x4s (When one is used) or 1 1x4 + 2 1x6s (when two are beside each other) it seems, and these are both available from Lego and SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper on BL. PAB was 41 euro - was buying from S@H anyway so no extra shipping; Bricklink was 23 and 77 euro for two orders, Lego CS have quoted 20 but I still need confirmation they can supply + pay for that. Not sure the last order will exceed 40 euro. Compared to at least 400 euro for a second hand one, albeit with the 1x8s, its a hell of a saving. Of course, I'm not valuing the parts I had already there!

Last Bricklink order shipped (Although one earlier one is still AWOL, but I've found German post to be surprisingly inefficient and getting things before) for this. Set is structurally held together One raid on existing parts, 8 Bricklink orders, 1 PAB order and one customer services order, and a few substitutions/omissions - first floor windows changed to actual 2x3 white windows with glass; second floor windows as per Kristel's suggestions, dark bley arch and a backwards door (that still cost a packet) for the staircase; left out the parrots on the top. About €300 in total and that includes somehow managing to order 42 rather than 4 dark blue 2x2 bricks; ordering the grey curves for the bottom floor twice and ordering 30 new and 30 used dark red 1x2 bricks - must make sure to clear my wanted list properly! Also didn't look for exact part variations when there's two that work identically. Everything is new parts except some of what I raided from my stock - although I'm considering replacing any even slightly old white parts in the Hotel sign with brand new. Now, on to Green Grocer. Learnt my lesson on number of Bricklink orders - sometimes its best to get more off a dearer shop that has more stuff than try to get off multiple cheaper, Ireland isn't a cheap shipping location for the mainland EU - and to make sure to triple check before ordering!

I have some of both of those, will give it a go to see what it looks like. Not going for 100% authentic as I've no intention to try sell it - just want something that looks correct enough from three foot away! Have the window inserts for the 'wrong' (original) frames already, time to throw them to Bricklink.

Have been working on this on and off between other BL orders and I'm down to the last 100 pieces or so, only a few of which are particularly painfully dear either (the Pet Shop bringing back the slopes has helped hugely) The second floor windows - http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/4132 - are now the absolute killer as you can't easily substitute for colour and they're now approximately €15 each. The dark blue arch can be swapped out, the first floor window frames I've swapped for actual windows and the door I'm dealing with also. Anyone got any suggestions?