lego – Page 65 – Bill Ward's Brickpile

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.

June 2008 BayLUG Meeting

BayLUG (Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group) held a meeting on June 22, 2008. Here are the pictures from that meeting.

We had a club contest at the meeting with a theme of “rolling stock.” Bruce’s entry, a revamped 4-8-8-4 Cab Forward locomotive, sporting a new larger diameter boiler, won first place in the adult category. Charles and Adrienne contributed a flatcar with an assortment of hobos. In the younger categories we had two entries, a 7-year-old named Ryan who won his age category with a “Police Spy Train” and Tim (age 11) whose boxcar came in second place. There were no entries in the 12-18 category.

I didn’t bring any models but I did bring the plastic trays I’ve been using for sorting, and demonstrated them by working on the new LEGO Factory Star Justice set during the meeting. I purchased the colorful plastic bins at a local drugstore and have found them to be very helpful when sorting bricks.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.

BayLUG at Maker Faire 2008, Day 1

For the third year, the Bay Area LEGO Users Group (BayLUG) is taking part in Maker Faire.

We have a 25-foot square train layout and several additional tables, including a large Technic crane and excavator. The show is open until 6pm today (Saturday, May 3) and tomorrow (Sunday, May 4). Hope to see you here!

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.

April 2008 BayLUG Meeting

We had another meeting of the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group (BayLUG) today at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto.

Members of BayLUG descended on the museum’s meeting room for a day of buying and selling parts, schmoozing, and displaying our latest models.

For the meeting contest, which had a Disney theme, I brought a pair of Mickey Mouse ears I had made out of LEGO. I won the contest in the adult category! (Of course, I was the only entry in the adult category, which takes a little bit of the fun out of it…) Unfortunately in the excitement I failed to take a picture of the contest entries…. I’ll post about the mouse ears separately.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.

Yuri’s Night 2008

The Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group (BayLUG) took part in Yuri’s Night Bay Area at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA, on April 12 2008.

The event was a cross between an airshow, a rave, and a mini Maker Faire (which we will be taking part in next month). We had a display of some of our LEGO models, mostly following a space or futuristic theme, as well as a play area where adults and kids alike could crawl around and build stuff. I brought my DC-3 and the “Fast Flyers” jet.

Click one of the pictures to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.

January 2008 BayLUG meeting

I’ve fallen a bit behind blogging about recent BayLUG meetings, though I did post the pictures online. Here we have pics of the meeting in January at Dave Porter’s house in Woodside. We also had a meeting in Palo Alto on February 24, but I missed that one as I was out of town that weekend. Our next meeting is this coming Sunday, April 20, at MoAH in Palo Alto, and it’s open to the public so come by and say hi!

Club member Dave Porter has a house in the mountains where he puts up a display every year for the holidays featuring a very detailed train layout with lots of great scenery. And every January for the past few years, the club is invited up to view the layout and have a big meeting at his house. It’s always a lot of fun.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.

MoAH Exhibit 2008-01-05

Exhibit of the Bay Area LEGO Users Group at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA.

Every year BayLUG puts on a “Living LEGO-cy” exhibit at the museum during the Holidays. We put it up in early December and take it down in early January. Families crowd the room to stare at our creations every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday during this period. It’s a lot of fun, but it can be a lot of work. I took these pictures on the last day of the latest exhibit, on January 5, 2008, just before we tore it all down and took it all home.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or you can view a slideshow of the photos.

Interview: Bjarne P. Tveskov, Classic LEGO Space Designer

There’s a very interesting Interview on BoingBoing with Bjarne P. Tveskov, Classic LEGO Space Designer.

I grew up on some of these sets! I started collecting Space LEGO sets in the late 1970’s when I was a little kid, and spent most of my spare time building and rebuilding classic LEGO spaceships and bases.

My Track Geometry page translated to Italian

My Track Layout Geometry page has been translated into Italian!

A few days ago I received an email from Alex Cordero of ITLUG (Italian LEGO® Users Group) saying that they were interested in translating the page into Italian. He just contacted me to let me know that it was done; you can view the finished page on the ITLUG Web site (EDIT 9/15/2008: updated URL).

This is the first time something I’ve written has been translated into another language, and I’m very flattered and pleased that it was deemed worthy for this treatment.

I don’t speak a word of Italian – though I do have some Spanish – so I don’t know how accurate the translation is, but I hope that it proves useful to Italian-speaking LEGO fans everywhere!

BayLUG Display at MoAH now through January 6

The Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group has a display currently on view at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA. The display was installed on December 8, and these photos were taken on December 15.

You have two weekends left to enjoy the display! The exhibit is open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 11am to 4pm. Hope to see you there! If you plan to stop by, let me know in advance and I’ll see if I can meet you there. I’m scheduled to help staff the layout on Saturday January 5, but may make other random appearances as my schedule and whim suit me.

My models on this layout include all the buildings in the city block containing the “Blackburn Hotel” and the coast guard base on the “water” table.

Click the big picture to go to the set page on Flickr, or view a slideshow of the photos.