tatertots

B-OV-22A For the Expand the Winter Village contest: Brickmaker's Shop The story line, a youngster drops off his brick order at the Brickmaker while the snow blower keeps the sidewalk clear. Inside the Brickmakers are all hard at work. We've got one loading in ABS pellets to be turned into some lovely 1x2 plates while another worker loads up boxes to be shipped out. Upstairs in the imagination room a designer plays with new molds and designs for the upcoming year. The project was inspired by two projects, LEGO's limited release of a Molding Machineand Department 56's release of a project with some LEGO bricks in it. I was also inspired by the current Winter Village line and tried to incoporate some elements of those models including a distinct chimney, Christmas colors such as dark green and red, and a layout that encourages play. I also like the Friends floor concept where tiles are mixed with plates so that minifigs can be moved around and posed in a wider range of poses. I'm planning on doing this to the second floor but ran out of time. Winter Village: Brickmaker's Shop Enjoy! Nick

Try checking your surface. I had a derailing problem for an event and the culprit was a slightly curved table surface. This was enough to keep derailing the train on one side of the layout until we figured out the problem. I definitely recommend pursuing the fixes that were discussed in railbricks (can't remember the issue...) Both worked beautifully for the other problems I've had with the EN.

Couldn't agree more. Never mind the piece count - this one is a beauty and would fit right in with the others.

Whoa! This is looking great

Looking back to the original thread, I think it would be cool if LEGO took on landscaping and put together a couple of sets that could modified for projects such as tunnels, etc. I'm sure AFOL would buy these up. As for train tunnels, there are a lot of fun. My kids love watching the train disappear and reappear on the other side. There's also TONS of inspriation out there. For example, check out the Glacier Express in Switzerland (and bridges). http://www.affordablecruisestours.com/phot...and_Picture.jpg The other challenge for tunnels if you do shows is transporting them. Reverse engineering them is time well spent. After making sure the tunnel entrances are the right size, figure out the curve of the track, and then how you can break it up into plates that can be easily transported. Fun challenge :-) Don't forget to make the guts accessable if you have trains going through. Something will surely go wrong at some point!

One of the fun challenges with the Holiday Mtn project is that there's a lot of freedom to keep changing things up. For example, I took skiers off and recently added a snow ball coming off the top: http://www.flickr.com/photos/43138245@N07/4308076718/ I've really struggled with the backside. Instead of a wall of bricks, the backside is going to turn into an underground toy shop for Santa with an elevator going to the surface. More coming. Here's the top of the mtn at this point whiere the elevator will come up: http://www.flickr.com/photos/43138245@N07/4252278833/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/43138245@N07/4266063917/ The size of the tunnel entrances has been more challenging than I originally planned and should definitly be thought out. The turn radius of engines really ranges as you plan how deep you want the tunnel mouth to go. For example the back of the engine often kicks out when it turns into the tunnel and the front of the engine kicks out wide as it goes into the exit. I had to adjust both the width and the height to accommodate trains for my club (NELUG) as the tunnel mouth went back 10 studs. Some links to some of my favorites when I started this project (sorry if there are any duplicates to earlier posts): http://www.flickr.com/photos/decojim/2119766408/sizes/o/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/billward/3377...in/photostream/ http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?i=3907959 A great one - slow to load... http://www.mocpages.com/moc.php/131822 Thanks for the feedback! It's great to share with others and I LOVE ideas