October 2007 – Bill Ward's Brickpile

Modular 16×32 Buildings

These two buildings, both built on 16×32 stud baseplates, have been featured in many BayLTC displays over the past couple of years. They were built in a modular fashion so that floors can be mixed and matched if desired, and taken apart for more compact storage and transport.

The blue building has a removable module for the two upper floors, and another one for the roof. The red building has one removable module, consisting of the upper floor plus roof. The Blackburn Hotel was built according to the same standards.

The trouble with this modular design though is that the architectural style of the different buildings clashes too much; they would never be combined in real life.

These buildings have now been disassembled, largely because I feel that 16×32 is just too small of a footprint for a realistic building. I am now working on new buildings using a 32×32 or larger size footprint. I brought the works-in-progress for this project to the October BayLUG meeting.

Click one of the big pictures to go to the set page on Flickr, or view a slideshow of the photos.

BayLUG Meeting on October 14, 2007

Pictures from the October 14, 2007 BayLUG meeting.

On Sunday we had our ninth anniversary meeting of the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group. Here are the pictures I took during the meeting. I used my cell phone camera, so sorry about the quality. I used it because I forgot to bring my digital camera. The ironic thing is I discovered I had my digital camera in my bag after all, but not until after several people had gone home… See the individual photo pages on Flickr for captions and more information.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or view a slideshow of the photos.

Blackburn Hotel

The Blackburn Hotel is a building that I have displayed may times as a part of the Bay Area LEGO Train Club layouts at train shows and meetings, but never blogged about.

It is one of several 16×32 footprint downtown buildings which I created for the layout one time a few years ago when I heard that several of the members who usually bring buildings to train shows weren’t going to be participating in one of the shows, and we desperately needed downtown buildings.

The building is five stories tall, built mostly using black bricks with tan trim and red windows. The unique feature of the hotel is the signs: a rooftop “BLACKBURN HOTEL” sign and a vertical sign that says “HOTEL” which is intended to be placed at a street corner, but can be rotated 45 degrees to be used for a mid-block placement.

The name was suggested by my wife. Partly it is due to the color, and partly due to the fact that I was watching an English Premier League football (soccer) match on TV as I was building it featuring Blackburn Rovers (I support any team that has American players, and Blackburn have an American goalkeeper, Brad Friedl, as well as the New Zealander Ryan Nelson who used to play in Major League Soccer).

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.

LEGO Technic Tora no Maki

Yoshihito Isogawa, author of LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT The Orange Book, has just released a new PDF book jam-packed with pictures illustrating a lot of Technic tips and techniques. It’s called LEGO Technic Tora no Maki and although the author and title are Japanese, the book itself consists almost entirely of pictures, so there’s no language or literacy barrier to use. The book is a free PDF download, but the author requests a $10 payment if you use it. I think that’s entirely reasonable, especially with the dollar as weak as it is these days!

I haven’t looked through the whole thing yet, but I glanced at a few pages and think it will be very instructive. I’ve always been pretty weak on Technic skills, so I think I can benefit a lot from this. Check it out!

[tags]lego,technic,pdf,book,japanese[/tags]

RIP 9V Trains

Well, LEGO has finally made up their mind on the future of trains. Steve Witt has announced that the 9V system will be discontinued, to be replaced by IR-controlled, battery-powered trains.

The only silver lining is that the new system will be based on the new Technic Power Functions system rather than the much-maligned IR trains currently being sold. LEGO is working with AFOLs to design the new system, and I am really hoping they find a way to come up with a battery-powered system that has enough power for the needs of LEGO train clubs.

In the meantime, stocking up on 9V train parts might not be a bad idea….[tags]lego,trains,9v[/tags]