Bill Ward’s Brickpile

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 […]

On my old Web site/blog, bill.wards.net, I have a lot of LEGO postings which used brickshelf.com for image hosting. Although I copied all the images to Flickr some time back, I never updated the listings to point to the new image location. Now that Brickshelf is going offline, however, I need to do […]

I keep building stuff and using it in BayLTC displays but not posting them online! Here’s another example. This locomotive was built a few years ago, not long after I first got the Super Chief, which sadly has long been discontinued. Like the Super Chief, the top lifts off and it has […]

This weekend, BayLTC is exhibiting at the Train Collectors’ Association Cal-Stewart Spring Meet at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara. We have a 25′x25′ train layout with four loops of trains and a monorail. The exhibit is open to the public today from 10am to 2pm.
I took some pictures […]

Each year for the past couple of years BayLUG has put on an exhibit at the Museum of American History in Palo Alto, CA. This year was no exception. The exhibit ran from December 16 through January 14. I didn’t actively participate in this show, though, as I was busy with holiday […]

In BayLUG’s recent exhibit at MoAH, Bruce Chamberlain set up a display of minifigs protesting to save the 9V trains line. Here’s a pic:

The Save 9V Trains campaign is a grasroots movement by adult LEGO fans to try to persuade the LEGO company to not discontinue the old, rail-powered, 9V train system. Last […]

I spent much of Thanksgiving weekend at the Great Train Expo in Pleasanton, CA, at the BayLTC layout. Click the photo to see the rest of my pics on Flickr, or check out the slideshow.
As usual, my primary contribution was in the downtown area, where I lined both sides of one street (mostly) with […]

Last night we set up the BayLTC show in Pleasanton at the Great Train Expo. I forgot my camera so no pics yet, but I’m bringing it today. Come on down and say hi!

Three years ago (on November 21, 2003) I wrote a page on my old site about
Track Layout Geometry showing some of the interesting things you can do with LEGO train track, for example, this method for running track on the 22.5° diagonal:

I was browsing my favorite blogs today and noticed that the page got mentioned […]

For the past year or so, the train station on the Bay Area LEGO Train Club layouts at train shows and museums has been my San Ladrillo Suburban Train Station.
This is a modern suburban train station, with one platform and two tracks. Passengers boarding trains on the outer track wait on the main platform, […]