Bill Ward’s Brickpile

The last day of BayLUG‘s annual “Living LEGO-cy” show and teardown took place on Sunday, January 15th. My pictures are available online. This is an event we do every year at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA, as a fundraiser for the club and for the museum. This year we had excellent attendance, with a peak of 841 people coming through on the 30th, which was the most people we’ve had in one day since we started keeping track (and charging $2 admission).

Here’s a group photo of club members taken during teardown. Click the photo to see the rest of the images, or view them as a slideshow.

Our next event is the Train Collectors Association Cal-Stewart Spring convention, open to the public on Sunday March 4th, from 10:00am-2pm. It’s a toy train show and one of our favorite events of the year. Two weeks after that is the Bricks by the Bay 2012 convention – the convention runs Friday through Sunday, March 16-18, and is open to the public on Sunday the 18th.

A local newspaper has a great story on their Web site about the BayLUG/BayLTC exhibit at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto. The article comes with a gallery of photos and videos, and I’m pleased to report that three of the four videos show my models (City Park, Caltrain, and Scrambler). [Aside: I just noticed that the pages for those last two are out of date, and I never blogged about the Caltrain cars I've built... sorry I will update that soon.]

There are only three days left in the show: Fri-Sun, January 13-15. If you haven’t made it out there yet, best do so soon!

Earlier this month I was involved in the LEGO display at the National Model Railroad Association‘s (NMRA) National Train Show held this year in Sacramento, California as a part of their annual convention. Members of the Bay Area LEGO Train Club (BayLTC), Sacramento Brick Builders, and Puget Sound LEGO Train Club joined together to put a large display of LEGO trains and other models.

Click either photo to see my pictures from this event or view them all as a slide show.

This Railroad flatcar with bulkheads was inspired by the NMRA 2011 official HO gauge car for this July’s convention in Sacramento.

Here’s a picture of the prototype I based it on:

A bunch of us are planning to put together a large LEGO layout at the NMRA convention in Sacramento this July. If you want to join the effort, check out the planning wiki and sign up to participate.

This past weekend was the opening for the annual “Living LEGO-cy” museum display by BayLUG (Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group) over the holiday season at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA. The show runs through January 9, 2010 and is open Fridays through Sundays except holidays.

Click the picture for all the photos or view them as a slide show.

The Bay Area LEGO Train Club (BayLTC) just got done with a train show. For the past few years we’ve been participating in train shows over Thanksgiving weekend in Pleasanton, at the Alameda County Fairgrounds, but this year the show was held in San Jose instead. We put together a large train layout as usual, but since several key members weren’t able to participate we had a little difficulty filling the space. Still, I think it was pretty successful over all.

Click the picture above or view it as a slideshow.

Last weekend I, along with other members of the Bay Area LEGO Train Club, had a display at the Northern California Train Collectors Association Cal-Stewart Spring Meet in Santa Clara, CA.  This is one of our favorite locations to do a train show – the hall is beautiful, and the crowds are manageable enough that we don’t have to put up our “sneeze guard” plastic barriers on the layout.  It was open to the public only on Sunday for four hours.  Pictures from the show can be seen on Flickr (or view as a slideshow).  Enjoy!

This weekend, the Bay Area LEGO Users Group opened our annual “Living LEGO-cy” exhibit at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA. We’ll be open every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (except Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Day) through Sunday, January 17. Admission is $2 (free for BayLUG and MoAH members and kids under 2), which is split 50/50 between the club and the museum.

Come on down and check it out soon before the publicity spreads and we start getting huge crowds! Last year we had 1500 people on the last weekend, with people waiting for several hours in the rain in a line around the block to get in!! We have our first TV interviews this Friday morning for a Spanish language station…

Oops, I forgot to upload these pictures earlier! We had a great time displaying at the Great Train Expo in San Jose in September, and the following weekend I went to Seattle for BrickCon, and somehow uploading the pictures from the train slow slipped my mind. Well, here they are! Click the photo for the set page on Flickr or view as a slideshow.

This past weekend, the Bay Area LEGO Train Club took part in the Great Train Expo in Pleasanton, CA. We had a large train and town display – the largest we’ve ever done, in terms of square footage of table space, using all 28 club tables plus 3 more that Bruce made for himself. My pictures for the event can be seen on Flickr (slideshow).