About Gambort

I'm a builder with a short attention span and a lot of virtual bricks. I'm probably most known as a train builder and was involved in the creation of LEGO set 10183 but I do a lot of other stuff too. I'm also a member of the LDraw SteerCo and a webmaster for the site.

Posts by Gambort

Honing your technique

The models featured on The Brothers Brick are here because we think they’re cool, but most of them share one thing in common, they make use of advanced building techniques. These techniques range from Studs Not On Top (SNOT) building to strange parts use and connections, or as the star above demonstrates, making use of part geometry to achieve something interesting.

While nothing can beat practise and experiment for learning about these techniques there are a few useful guides and the likes out there to help you along the way. I’ve collated a list of some links for those who want to improve their building technique or who are just curious.

Didier Enjary’s Unofficial LEGO Advanced Building Techniques Guide (click Télécharger document)
Flickr LEGO techniques pool
LEGO Techniques library
ILTCO library (contains links to a number of train specific and more general technical guides)

Perusing any of these should prove illuminating and help hone your building techniques.

Of course there are plenty more out there so if you know of any then please post a link and description in the comments section.

The Brothers Brick is funded by our readers and the community. Articles may include affiliate links, and when you purchase products from those links, TBB may earn a commission that helps support the site.

Dieselton, USA

Matt Hamann (jaster) and Peter Norman (Swoofty) have been busy making excellent US diesel trains lately. As with any good LEGO diesel design the devil is in the details and none of these disappoint. The rear grilles on Peter’s AC6000 (top) and the middle flare on Matt’s GP40 (second-top) are particularly worthy of note. They’ve both also posted their own takes on an EMD GP15.

Big Bens Bricks wheels

(Advertisement by Anthony Sava featuring his Hudson 4-6-4)

Since it’s the season of giving I felt it was timely to remind our readers of another great LEGO supplementary piece manufacturer: Big Bens Bricks LLC. Ben Fleskes has been manufacturing high-quality ABS wheels for LEGO trains for a few years now and it’s almost impossible to build steam trains without using his excellent products. The wheels are designed to be fully compatible with standard LEGO train pieces with diameters and spacing chosen to fully integrate with the regular system. There’s even LDRAW parts for instructions.

As one recent convertee puts it they allow him to

expand my building options by embracing the supplemental elements produced by community members in order to complement the excellent range offered by LEGO.

On a personal note along these lines, BBB wheels are the only pieces not produced by TLG that I will use in my own models.

And as Peter Norman demonstrates in the above truck design they are not just for steam trains. You can also see how close they match to the (later released) official small wheels with the rubber bands.

Casual camping

Bill Ward has made a very cool compact caravan. It’s based on a Shasta Teardrop Travel Trailer. While the doors are a little hard to find I suspect most of us could whip up a little variant of this to show off in a display.

EDIT We liked this one so much that Andrew blogged it too:

Details like the vent on the roof and Bill’s choice of the old-style door are excellent. The trailer is being pulled by the SUV from 7635 4WD with Horse Trailer.

A box of train

As part of my Wild West Train project I’ve been trying to vary the presentation as well as produce useful instructions for each stage. The final stage let me try a new experiment: packaging the ‘train set’ in its own satin lined wooden box. Fabric is kind of difficult to render without special tools so I decided to go for satin as the easiest.

And of course there are instructions for each part of the train: loco, passenger wagon, lumber wagon, boxcar and caboose.

Drilling deep

Fedde (Karf Oolhu) has dug deep into his heart (excuse the pun) and produced the glorious drilling machine “Doolittle”. Check out the lovely twisted stacks of teeth plates behind the main drill. I wonder if the two giant drills currently working somewhere beneath my feet inspired this.

How the west was won

I thought that it might be nice to do something for the community to finish off 2008 (fixed thanks). So I’ve begun a project to develop a Western Train along with some instructions. You can find the instructions here or as an MPD.

I’ll be adding new posts when I complete new stock so check back regularly.

Hope you enjoy it and may 2009 be a great year.

Tim

Eurobricks “Build a Train Car” contest

The Brickster is hosting a “Build and Decorate a Train Car” contest over on Eurobricks. The contest, in brief, consists of building a train set and decorating it in a holiday theme. For a full description head over to the contest thread.

Which coincidentally brings me to my next post…

One big, bad mother

Thomas Grassmann and his son Sebastian have come up with one of the most plausible (and plausibly scaled) giant spaceships I’ve seen. Their Explorien Colony Ship can carry an entire pre-fabricated colony to a distant world. With a detailed interior and all the mod-cons this beast is certainly no lightweight. The best way to see it would definitely be in person but a perusal of the various folders should give some idea of the size and detail.

And if you’ve ever wondered how to take a photo of something this big, wonder no more. You use a tarpaulin.

Edit: I blame a headcold for making me forget to a) credit Marco Tagliaterri for pointing this out to me and b) Not linking to Thomas’ post (in German) at 1000steine

Rainbow tricks

In my early days of building I designed one of the fantastically colourful Pakistani trucks. I wanted to have a real copy of it but never quite got around to building it. I’ve also always been terribly impressed by Jason Railton’s ability to combine motorised functionality and good looks in small packages. So, Technic being one of the few themes I’ve never really attempted as an adult, I decided to have a go.

Anyway, to cut a long story short I managed to fit remote controlled steering and driving (plus the batteries) into the truck. I can hoon this around the house all from a Power Functions (PF) remote control. Video of it in action.

I’d like to take this chance to compliment LEGO on the fantastic PF System. Modular RC is just great. I hope that a smaller motor is coming.

I’ve been busy

I’ve been quite a busy little bee lately and really getting back into building. There’s a few more new ones in my photostream (including some NoVVember fun) but I’ll blog my favourites from most recent.

First is my “Wombat” VTOL which I’ve fairly blatantly ripped off Ryan Rubino and Keith Goldman. I had fun trying to gett a variety of different angles to give it a real ‘stealth’ look.

Secondly we meet “White Rabbit”. A fairly straightfoward hot rod (or is it a rat rod?) with some fun SNOTwork to get the various subtle shapes.

And I’ve finally finished (insofar as it’ll ever be finished) my long-worked-upon Kuranda Scenic Rail train. In attempting to take photos of the whole train I discovered the difficulties of taking good photos of big things.

It’s been good to be back.

Many themes, one viper

Chrispockster uses parts from various short-lived themes to get a wide variety of interesting colours in his version of a Vic Viper (yes it’s still NoVVember). I reckon that the range of shapes, textures and colours makes this the most unusual take (so far at least) on the two-pronged Viper shape.