VeganGuy

Plus there is some room in the garage next to the car. Space for Homer's workbench, perhaps?

Very nice review! I have the first and second floors completed and so far the biggest problem I've come across yet is that the front doors don't open fully and there is barely enough room for a minifig to pass through. Each door bumps into the inside face of the nearby pillar. Urg... Also, the printing on one of the 2 shields in my set is off-register, resulting in the printed pattern being off-center on the part. I used that one on the lectern.

Shouldn't the town hall naturally be among the tallest buildings in a town?

For those of you who have only ever seen stand-alone town hall buildings, this is the old hall (called "Latshaw Hall") built in 1880 in my town, Royersford, Pennsylvania, USA. The side facing the white van is its front and the building is in direct contact with its neighbors. It even originally had a clock tower just above the curved corner and is now used as an apartment building with a small store on the ground floor. Our current town hall is another large building on a corner (formerly a bank).

It may be that it's just easier to engineer a mechanism to hide the shorter weapons rather than the longer ones in the space allowed. Or think of it as a more easily-hidden last-ditch blade that the crew can access if they are otherwise disarmed. EDIT: I was beaten to it by the above poster!

I like the design quite a bit and the set will probably remain the only one of the large vehicle sets I acquire. However, as the reviewer mentions, the mounting for the cannon is definitely a weak point and it detaches much to easily. The angled platform behind the pilothouse at the aft end of the ship is conspicuously empty. That's where I have temporarily stowed the crate, but there really should either a smaller gun there to cover the rear, or some other structure. I may mod things by putting a single or pair of smaller, brick-built guns. I have no issue with either of the transformed arrangements except for the way the engines are oriented. They should be pointing straight aft in one mode and straight down at the other (so the ship could perhaps "hover" or glide to a water landing). Right now it seems the engines' "intakes" are pointing down in the first configuration and then the engines' exhausts at an angle at the other. The ship could do with being a bit longer and perhaps having an accessible space below decks, but the engine layout is my biggest beef.

I think after I build this stock, I'm going to mod it by moving the skylight so it is above the large conference table, then fill in the open floor spaces in the rear of the building. I do appreciate the large open space to let light into the lower floors, but I'd like to see more rooms/offices inside.

Thanks to all! I can't think of a favorite theme! I really like the modular buildings, that's pretty much which pulled me back into Lego. Then it pretty much snowballed from there.

True, but it's still a problem for minifigs hoping to escape through those windows! Anyway, I think the color is fine, but it would have been nice to see some of those new bricks with the actual brick texture on them (as seen in some of the new Forest Police and Ninjago sets) used in the facade.

The problem with having a fire escape on this building is that there seems to be no access to the rear windows with that big open space in the floor/ceilings under the skylight. Speaking of which, I like the idea of a skylight, but as with the GE there is just a lot of lost floor space. These buildings seem a bit small to have so much open area.

Hello everyone, I'm a 2 year-long (and then some) lurker who has finally gotten around to posting. My name is Jeff, I'm an AFOL and collector. I live in a small town northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. There are some really interesting topics and postings here and I hope to participate a lot more!

Hello all, new poster, lurker for over a year 2 years. I agree that the execution of the elevator is questionable, but perhaps the justification here is that the lift and lock arrangement is at the rear of the model, where it won't be seen if it's simply placed on display. The gap is unsightly, but directly lifting the elevator with a "handle" may help to avoid having the elevator platform bind up in the shaft (if it were raised by a string/winch, for example). Plus, it seems to make it easier to have the elevator stay attached to whatever floor it's at. An elevator car dangling at the end of a string from the top floor would be fiddly to deal with when re-stacking the floors. In any case, I definitely like the use of an elevator in principle. I'm now planning on modding my already heavily-modded GG to incorporate an elevator in the current staircase space. The GG is a perfect candidate for an elevator because it has a fire escape. Staircases look strange when the steps are over 2 plates high and the GG uses full-brick high stairs as well as the prefab staircase parts which are just unsightly. That, and the sharp turn near the top of the staircase on the ground floor just looks awkward. Elevators and their shafts are just a better use of space and I'm looking forward to making the changes to my GG soon (and I will probably use a string and winch at the top). Not sure why I never thought of it before!