Today was the second and final day of the Great Train Expo at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds.
I was there with the Bay Area LEGO Train Club. I had taken some pictures yesterday, but today I was much more prolific and uploaded almost 80 new pictures which I added to the existing photoset. Click the picture or check out the slideshow to see all the pics.
Tag: BayLUG
Great Train Expo San Jose 2008, Day 1
The Bay Area LEGO Train Club is taking part in the Great Train Expo at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds this weekend, September 27-28.
Sorry about the lighting – I didn’t get around to taking any pictures until after they had shut off the main lights, so I had to use a flash. I plan to take more tomorrow.
We have a 25×25 foot layout with downtown, train yard, farm, and other LEGO models on display. If you have a chance to stop by and see the show, please be sure to say hi. I’m planning to be there all day.
Haunted House at Valley Fair LEGO Store
Every six weeks or so, we (BayLUG) change out our display window at the Valley Fair Mall LEGO store.
This time, we replaced the Hollywood diorama with a haunted house in honor of Halloween. It will be on display there through November. The entire display is the brainchild of Kenny Paul, a member of BayLUG and designer of excellent houses and other buildings. Check the photos for all the great little details he’s included. My favorite part is the way two of the windows look like angry eyes glaring out at the street. It reminds me of that otherwise forgettable movie Monster House from a few years back. Click the photo to see all the pictures on Flickr or view them as a slideshow.
September 2008 BayLUG Meeting in San Leandro
On Saturday, September 6, we had a meeting of the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group at Johannes’s church (Bay Area Family Church) in San Leandro, CA.
Several members brought their latest creations and/or items for sale, and Johannes had a huge display of Star Wars models and classic LEGO car sets. I brought a number of my newer models, including a new motor yacht that I haven’t quite finished (you’ll see detailed pictures in this blog when I get it done).
Click the image for more pictures, or view them as a slideshow.
Globe Display at Hillsdale LEGO Store
Today, we set up a new BayLUG display at the Hillsdale LEGO store featuring a large globe, two aircraft, and a ferry, all built by Paul. The ferry and small airplane are old LEGO sets; the rest is original.
August 2008 BayLUG Space Meeting
We had a meeting for the space-heads of the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group at the local Round Table Pizza in Mountain View, CA on Sunday, 8/18.
Click the image for more pictures or view the slideshow. Justin, a 19-year-old member who’s about to go back to MIT this fall, brought the biggest collection of ships to display. Charles and Adrienne brought a good assortment as well. Bruce, who almost never misses a BayLUG event but isn’t as actively into space, brought some trains and a LEGO wind turbine model which he’s been working on, and a clone brand Transformers-like set he had recently bought. We also had two kids, Aleks and Nikolas, and their mom Karen, who brought some Star Wars stuff and contest entries. I brought my Caddy as well as a new Classic Space truck.
Bruce’s wind turbine is an interesting item; it was produced by LEGO as a limited edition set made available only for employees of the Danish wind turbine company Vestas. Bruce got a copy of the instructions online and built his own out of parts in his collection. Many LEGO fans have been clamoring for LEGO to offer it to consumers at large, but so far no luck.
Justin and I had a little aircar rally; he brought an older aircar he had built years ago, and parked it next to my Cadillac. We had a group discussion about what changes we might make, given some of the cool new curved pieces available from LEGO.
Hollywood Display at Valley Fair Mall
This past Saturday, we installed a new display into the “Window on the Community” display at the LEGO store in Valley Fair Mall (Santa Clara, CA).
This time, we featured the work of one of our younger members. CJ has been providing our layout with an impressive diorama of a Hollywood studio for the past few train shows, including the NMRA national convention in Anaheim last month. This display is taken from that diorama, and features a building façade with a car bursting out of it, and a film crew capturing the action. In the train shows, there’s a motor moving the car in and out, to show that it’s teetering on the edge of falling, but we didn’t have the ability to power the display at the LEGO store.
Click on the image to view the images on Flickr, or see the slideshow.
Spaceman/Nanoscale Display at Valley Fair Mall
Last Saturday, we changed out the display at the LEGO store in Santa Clara.
The Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group installed a new display at the Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara, CA featuring a large spaceman model and various nanoscale spaceships by Charles and Adrienne, and a rocket-powered knight by Bruce. This replaces my Blackburn Hotel that had been on display since May 31.
Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.
Ski Slope Display at Hillsdale LEGO Store
On June 1, 2008, we set up a display at the Hillsdale LEGO store featuring models by several members of BayLUG.
The base and the snowboarders were by Anne, with trees and a snowmobile by Bruce, a ski slope and concession stand added by Jim. I added several minifigs (skiers and snowshoers) and a snowmobile.
Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.
Blackburn Hotel at Valley Fair Mall
From May 31 to July 5, my Blackburn Hotel (Version 2) was on display at the LEGO Store at Valley Fair Mall in Santa Clara, CA in the BayLUG window.
This is a redesigned, bigger model of the mythical Blackburn Hotel that I originally built for the Bay Area LEGO Train Club layout. I haven’t done a proper photo-shoot of the hotel itself, but you can see pictures of it in a Flickr set I created to collect all the images of it, including the ones from this store display.
For the store display, however, I had to customize it a bit. I left off the rooftop sign, and modified the baseplates. The version that was used in BayLTC train shows used regular road plates for the street, rather than the tiled half-road (16-stud-wide baseplates) seen in the store display. Also, because the left side of the hotel was located on a street corner, the model didn’t include the road there, while on the right side there was an 8-stud half-alley. When we installed the hotel at the store, that caused the sign to be pressed against the background side wall, and the right side to have a strange gap. So, we ripped the baseplates off the bottom of the hotel and moved everything over by eight studs, putting in a partial road on the left side. Thanks to Russell and Bruce for their help reconfiguring the baseplates.
Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.