Yesterday afternoon several of us members of BayLTC set up our layout at the Great Train Expo in Pleasanton, CA. The show runs today and tomorrow from 10am-4pm. Watch this space for pictures, and I hope to see you there!
Category: BayLUG
Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group – www.baylug.org
BayLUG Tenth Anniversary Meeting
We celebrated 10 years of the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group on Sunday, October 12. 
The club was founded on October 10, 1998 after LEGO came to San Francisco on a Truck Tour.
At the meeting we had a lot of schmoozing, showing-off of models, snacking, speech-giving, and prize-winning. If you enjoy any of those, you should come to our 20th Anniversary Meeting in 2018. Or one of our regular meetings, where we usually have at least the schmoozing if not the other stuff.
Enjoy the photos on Flickr (slideshow). I also shot a bunch of video footage, which hopefully I can edit into something appropriate for LAMLtv or maybe I’ll just put it on YouTube myself. Either way, I’ll blog about it here when it’s up.
Great Train Expo San Jose 2008, Day 2
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.
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.