Bill Ward's Brickpile » car

Bulkhead Flatcar

Bill — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 19:24:29 +0000

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.

Big Yellow Taxi

Bill — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 23:12:47 +0000

I’ve built an iconic New York City yellow Checker taxi cab.

Throughout building this, the Joni Mitchell song has been running through my head…

Late last night I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi carried off my old man
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

As usual, click the image above to see all the pictures, or view them as a slideshow.

My license plate: “I ♥ LEGO”

Bill — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 23:24:23 +0000

A few years ago I got a special custom California license plate that says “I ♥ LEGO.” And though I’ve had it for several years, I never got around to posting a picture of it online. Well, apparently Flickr user r0wb0t has beat me to the punch. My car was in the parking lot at the Museum of American Heritage as I was helping staff the BayLUG exhibit, and he took a picture of it and put it on Flickr.

I discovered this via the Lego Diem blog.

UPDATE 1/10: another picture of my car has turned up on Flickr.

Land Rover

Bill — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:36:47 +0000

I just finished building my newest vehicle, a 7-wide Land Rover:

It’s a little bigger than most minifig-scale vehicles, and at 7-wide (really 8 if you include the fenders and bumper) it’s a bit big for standard LEGO roads. But I think it has all the elements that readily identify it as a Land Rover from the 1960′s-70′s era. Hope you like it. Click the picture above for more, or view them as a slideshow.

Classic Space NASCAR

Bill — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:25:53 +0000

Inspired by the NASCAR fad that’s been going around the Flickr LEGO community, I built this using the layout photo from mikepsiaki. However I thought I’d do one with the Classic Space esthetic….

The car is identical to Mike’s design, with a couple of changes:

To get the Classic Space logo on the sides, I had to replace the 1×2 panels with 1×2 bricks. That meant the 1×1 brick with studs on two sides would no longer fit, so I substituted 1×1 Technic bricks with half-pins instead.
Mike didn’t have anything between the rear wheels and the car body above. You could see clear through the car above the rear tires, and the car was very fragile. But the space was perfect for a 2×4 brick! Perhaps Mike uses that in his real model but just didn’t show it in the instructions layout image?
Since this is Classic Space, I used the old style 1×1 plate with clip :)
There’s a red Classic Space minifig inside!

Of course, I really wanted a big Classic Space logo on the hood. I have a few of the 3×6 slopes that would have fit but it would’ve ruined the lines of the car, so I elected to stick with the original parts and just put Classic Space printed bricks wherever I could fit them. I used a dark blue windscreen; I don’t think they were ever made in yellow, so this is more like the 6890 Atomic Cruiser set than the 497 Galaxy Explorer esthetic that people tend to associate with Classic Space. But that Atomic Cruiser was probably as big of an influence on me as a kid as the Galaxy Explorer anyway.

Check out the LAML Radio interview with Mike Psiaki to learn more about the NASCAR fad, or just to find out how to pronounce his last name… :)