Bill Ward’s Brickpile

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 [Aside: I just noticed that the pages for those last two are out of date, and I never blogged about the Caltrain cars I've built...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!

When I first saw the new bracket parts found in the LEGO Tipper Truck #4434, I realized I needed to use them to make a train car.

I used parts from 2 of those sets to make this, along with a few parts I had laying about from other sets I’d recently taken apart (mostly the Maersk Train 10219). It was a very simple build – the main part is just two of the tipper parts from the Tipper Truck set with just a few tiles rearranged. The undercarriage is just made of plain grey plates, and the wheel trucks are quite simple.

In 2008, I designed another Gondola car, using 1x2x2 panels with 1×1 bricks between for the sides. This was so much simpler, and arguably more realistic (thinner walls), though the older model has more details on the ends. Instructions for that older model are available, but the new part isn’t in LDraw yet so I can’t make them for this one for a while.

Happy New Year everyone!

My Yellow Victorian House MOC (“My Own Creation”) has been featured in an article about the housing boom/bubble in Australia. Since I use the Creative Commons licensing for my photos, that’s just fine with me, and they gave my name (“Bill Ward’s brickpile”) so people can easily Google me and find the rest of my work. That’s what Creative Commons is for!

Thanks to Tim “gambort” Gould for pointing this out to me.

This is the third of my LEGO houses that often feature in the suburbia section of BayLUG/BayLTC train layouts.

I built a couple of years ago, but like the last several posts, I never got around to posting about it here. There is a lot of detail work on the porch and bay windows.

Click the image below to see the set or view a slideshow.

This is one of those LEGO creations of mine that’s been around for years but never blogged about before.

A simple red house that I built a few years ago, which has been in may BayLUG/BayLTC exhibits but was never featured on its own until now.

Click the image for the gallery or view a slideshow.

This little red LEGO bungalow with dormer was built about a year ago. This small house appears often in BayLUG/BayLTC train layouts, in the suburbia section.

Click the image to view the set, or view as a slideshow.

I built this LEGO sailboat to be a scale model of a 25 foot daysailer. It’s been built for a number of years and has appeared on BayLUG/BayLTC layouts when we’ve had a water scene.

Click the image to browse the gallery on Flickr or view them all as a slideshow.

LEGO Semi-Trailers made to go with my various tractors. Each one has a folding leg to support it when not connected to a truck, and all have the same interchangeable pin system for being towed.

Click the image for the gallery, or view the slideshow.

Cab-over semitrailer tractors made in LEGO. Identical except for color, these trucks have been a fixture on the BayLUG/BayLTC city/train layout for years, but I never got around to photographing them.

Click the picture or view a slideshow.