fred67

Agreed that it's too bad. Very few people helped keep my store up to date. I finally went in and took a picture of everything and, while running excel on a tablet, entered everything we had. Went home and updated it all. I did it several more times, but stopped when no one else was helping. If I ran a LEGO Store, it would be one of the jobs during slow times to make sure those sites (there is also http://www.brickbuildr.com/index.php/all-stores/) were up to date, but I suppose the idea is for people to come in and check - getting people in the store is primary concern. My store there hasn't been updated in 2 years. If people don't participate, a community supported endeavor like this can't succeed. I haven't been to my local store in ages - largely because I don't want to travel there and find the wall loaded with the same junk. Might be different if I could still buy a k-box. Stopping the sales of them was a terrible move on TLG's part, too.

You should go ahead and start your WIP post, post your progress (and people can comment and maybe offer useful suggestions). That's the whole point of a WIP thread, so don't be shy - just don't start a new thread every time you have an update. If people aren't interested, they'll just skip it.

I am not justifying anything LEPIN does at all - just wanted to get that out before posing this counter: how many people that can afford LEGO are buying LEPIN? I suspect that's a fairly small percentage of the people buying LEPIN as, I hope, most people realize the much better quality of LEGO. As a further point, LEGO got in bed with Chinese manufacturing to reap the benefits of cheap Chinese labor and production, so while what LEPIN does is not justifiable, I really think TLG should have seen it coming. The Chinese knock-off market exploded after TLG started production there. In any event, I think most of the people who buy LEPIN will still buy LEPIN even if they have to wait a month or two for LEPIN to catch up. I'm suspecting those purchasers are not the same kind of fans we are. BACK ON SUBJECT however - I do think we need a police station. I'm sure some cool "Art Nouveau" architecture would look absolutely amazing if done right, but we have a fire department for our modular cities, and no police station and no hospital. Not even a doctor. Perhaps a double 16x32 doctor/dentist would be good, too.

TLG is already one of the most profitable toy manufacturer in the world. With an average profit margin well north of 20%, and a volume of sales that would make a Rockefeller choke, I have no qualms buying it as cheaply as possible from somewhere else. Most companies are happy to get over 5% profit margins.

No re-releases if it means no new release. We all pine for sets we missed, but it's done, it's gone, move on and give people who've been collecting all along their due with a new set. I really don't want to get bogged down in discussion about it - we did that when the released the Toy Shop. If TLG doesn't want my money, they can be lazy and re-release stuff. If they're going to do that, though, I have a huge list of sets that would be much better received than any of the WV ones.

As far as trains go, the Lone Ranger locomotive is still my favorite steam engine, even over the EN. I will get this set, as I have the first and last ones made, and am a big train fan - especially steam. However, that said, I still think it's a big disappointment for those who want a reasonably accurate set. I think the engine, overall, is too small. I think if they made the front more accurate (some separation between the first two wheels on the front bogie) it would have been maybe a couple of studs longer and looked a whole lot better. Then there's the tender, which has been done better in the past, and the car, which looks smaller even than past sets (and somehow even boxier, despite the curved roof - I don't know why). I get it - they're not going to make a $200 HE for kids to play with, but $10 more could have made a world of difference. I do hope someday they do a UCS Hogwarts Express. The "Ruby' version of the Emerald Night would be a good starting place.

I actually like microscale, and I like microfigures because of it (far better than brick built microfigures), but now is the time for something that would have made a lot of people not complain - microfig hair. That would have gone a long way to make this look much better. The problem is that we're not all millionaires. I would love this set, but I've got a mortgage and kids in college, so I will likely miss out on this, but I can't imagine if they did minifigure scale. Keep the scale in mind when you go from micro to mini - the microfigures are roughly half the height of minifigures, and they are half the width. In the depth dimension they are equal (which just actually means microfigures are actually better scale models of people). But if you're doing scale, you need to count 3 dimensions. If a minifigure is twice the height, that's 2^3 = 8 times larger scale. EIGHT TIMES! If they made a commensurate minifigure scale set, it would take up 4 times as much floor space (who has that?), be twice as tall, be really cool, and cost north $US3000.

I have bought BB's wheels, but it was a long time ago. I just looked the other day and saw the $15 just for shipping, when I know it shouldn't be anywhere near that. A small padded bag can usually get away with just a couple of bucks of postage. So now I will look more on BL, and perhaps when the new Hogwarts Express comes out, those parts will be available from Bricks and Pieces.

Very cool! I'm inspired to make a mechanical one, although I don't have any of those classic figures.

You know what? You're right. Every cost "improvement" TLG gives us means I buy a whole lot less of it.

If someone was going to spend $160 to get TWO Hogwarts Express sets so that they could MOD it and make it bigger and with more cars, I don't think getting some magnetic couplers for less than a buck each on bricklink is the end of the world. After all, anyone who is serious about making it really good will need full bogies and extra wheel sets, too.

With all of 4 posts (as I write this), you're free to buy on the BSTF forum, but not sell. Just click on the "Forums" link and find it in the community section.

Where are you w.r.t. buying? Have you made at least one purchase? If not, the one thing you need to get accustomed to is that it's essentially a bunch of store fronts, and it's not Amazon - you generally don't buy your list of parts you want, and let Bricklink (BL hereafter) just choose for you and tell you what shipping is. It generally (*) doesn't work that way. Instead, you typically go to an individual store and buy from them. Most stores do not have a "buy now" option, you have to commit to buying without even knowing what your total price will be, including shipping and handling. A few stores will let you do instant paypal check out (including shipping), but not all of them. (*) Now - in the case of making a wanted list, there is an option to buy all the parts on your list, and BL will automatically select sellers for you to buy from, but you can then easily face a bunch of separate shipping charges. The fact is that it takes some getting accustomed to, and you should definitely use the BL forums to ask questions. They key problem with BL is shipping, and as usual, the more you buy from a single shop, the more you amortize the cost of shipping over your entire order. In other words, a single $0.10 part might incur a $1.00 shipping, which makes it completely not worth it, but $20 parts might incur a $3 or $4 charge (depending on their size, of course), which makes it much more worth it, and 100 part order might be $5 (might be, I'm just making an example). So the key is to have a decent "wanted" list of parts that you maybe don't need right away - cool parts, of figures you are collecting, or a part in certain colors you've been wanting... Then, when you go to a store to get what you need, you can possibly amortize the cost of shipping by adding items from your wanted list to your order. Always look at seller feedback. There are definitely scammers, even if not as common as on Ebay. Some of the used parts I've gotten on BL have been terrible, but the vast majority have been quite good. All in all, I have over 180 BL orders, and I've only ever had to deal with a problem seller once. Just be careful about who you order from, look at their feedback, and look at their responses to negative feedback. Test out newer sellers with smaller orders. Never order something like a retired UCS Star Wars set for 50% less than what everyone else is charging from a seller with 4 or 5 feedback - it's just common sense.

Maybe if people could actually tag their posts properly (like reddit requirements), then automating something that builds up a list of MOCs would be possible. And what would the poll be? Which one is best? So then it feels like a competition, and a lot of people would not post something they might otherwise post. At the same time, you're requiring someone - mods, or someone else, to do all the work of adding all the MOCs. I would love to see a monthly post (2018-05 MOCs) if it didn't require constant effort. A sticky with a link to each month, so you could go back through history, would be cool, too. It could all be automated as long as people could follow a few simple steps (like preceding their MOC post with "[MOC]," and only doing it for a completed MOC (otherwise it should be tagged "WIP" or "MOC-WIP," but good luck trying to get people to follow guidelines. As long as I'm posting in this thread again, and whining about posters who aren't clear in their post titles, and can't follow simple guidelines, I have to say I love it when someone posts about a great deal they found at their local store - without saying where it is, and without having so much as filled out (validly) their location. If you're too paranoid that you can't fill out your location, then a post about a deal at your local store is absolutely useless, a waste of space, and a waste of my time. It's funny, too, when they are trying to sell something, and say "domestic only," or that the buyer pays shipping. This was particularly bad on the minifigure trading post.

"Cost improvement." What does that mean? Improvement for whom?

Are you sure those are stickers? The dish has traditionally been printed. Applying a sticker to a large macaroni might not be too difficult for you are me, but I wouldn't be surprised if TLG thought it would be for the target audience.

I gather by "non TLG" stuff @Ron Dayes is referring to official sets. Still, I completely agree with you, @Hobbes; this is an "all things LEGO" site. It has been since I joined (a lot more than 3 years ago). I don't like wishlists (although at one point I thought they were interesting - I don't know what's changed), but I do like rumors. For obvious reasons, other sites are better for actual leaks. And discussions should be taking place in the forum about which they are about. If I'm discussing prototypical historical building, then the historic themes sections is exactly the place I should start my discussion.

First off, I hardly think this makes 2018 a good year for train fans - the city trains are nothing special, and instead of an advanced creator set, we get this. Now, don't get me wrong - which leads me to the second thing, THIS is the Hogwarts Express we've been waiting for. Yes, I know it's still greatly flawed - it's not big enough, the passenger car is far too small (and there's only one? That's terrible), but they've finally built it a proper steam engine with the right wheels, drivers, and even a tender (which is missing from some earlier versions of the Hogwarts Express). This is a kids set, we need to remember, and is supposed to be appealing at a price point for HP fans, not train fans, so I think we got a good cross between a Ruby Night (the red colorization of the Emerald Night) the older "play" sets. With a little work, this could become an awesome Hogwarts Express, and unless they were to make a huge (like Diagon Alley size) set (which is obviously not coming, otherwise they probably wouldn't have made this), I think this is the best compromise we could have expected from TLG. I'm actually pretty excited to see this coming, and I'm hoping it's at the $80 price point people have been guessing.

Agree with @Hobbes, even though I'm coming from a different angle. This is how the world is now because of social media - people do things for the smiley faces, the thumbs ups, the "likes," and I get it - I wouldn't post MOCs if I wasn't expecting to get some feedback. But nobody is obligated to say anything, and I may not like a lack of responses, but I don't blame anybody for it - I know I'm not nearly as good a builder as a lot of other people.

Thanks for the reply. For levitation, while the neodymium magnets are much stronger, I think I will use the magnetic tape. My current thoughts are something like this: Although I think a lower center of gravity, and wider magnets - the hope is that it will stay stable both vertically and horizontally. Unfortunately, my room is a giant mess as I try to clean up and reorganize my entire parts collection. I'm actually working on that right now. It got much worse than I thought it would. I did receive my A/B magnetic tape, though, and really want to play with it. I will not try to do anything like Inductrack - that's far beyond just wanting a maglev for my city. Ideally I could use neodymium magnets with metal track to pull the train using the old 9V speed regulator. It would have to be a radically different design to hold the cars up, but it would be cool on so many levels, including not needing a motor on the train. It would cause problems trying to switch, but a loop could work. I have to research the physics behind the linked-to video above (how to make a simple linear motor). NOPE. Requires conductivity across the rails. I will keep looking.

I had my first fail - the magnets I ordered (and I swear I measured) did not fit cleanly inside bricks. The idea was that the small neodymium magnets would fit in, for example, a 2x2, and then be held in place with another plate or brick attached to the bottom. So I had to use 1x1 round to space it; the magnets moved too freely inside. Those suckers are super strong, though. I'm afraid I will need to then sacrifice a few bricks, even for testing. So I will need to glue magnets. I am getting magnetic tape, which will come with adhesive on one side, but I want to test both. Also, the plans in diagrams will not work - any shift out of equilibrium, and the mock car just stuck to the closest opposing pole.... so each side will need to be the same polarity, top and bottom. At the same time, I'm still organizing my space, and still wanting to make the monorail work, also.

@sed6 , I can't answer the question, but frankly they are all pretty much like that. There may be exceptions to the rules, but most adjusters get bonuses for NOT paying out claims.

That's just plain awesome! Thanks for sharing.

There were, but they were easier to weed out.

Solved: Arealight, not LEGO. Definitely looks like a SW helmet, but I feel like I've been through all of them and can't find it, so now I'm thinking clone brand (received in bulk lot).