About Ralph

Ralph Savelsberg, also known as Mad physicist, is an actual physicist, but he's not all that mad. He has been building with LEGO ever since he could first put two bricks together. He primarily builds scale models of cars and aircraft. You can find most of Ralph's stuff on his flickr pages.

Posts by Ralph

Mad Monster Masher

We don’t often feature Technic models on this blog. The Technic aesthetic is rather different from the ultra-realistic models that I tend to favour. In other words, I like models that look realistic (albeit with just the right sprinkling of studs), but don’t care too much whether or not it functions like the real thing. The subjects also tend to not excite me. I have great admiration for the cleverness that is involved in getting the mechanical bits to work, but the tenth Technic supercar, say, to me, looks just about the same as the first or second: both have got lots of gears and lots of holes in them. That said, sometimes a Technic MOC does hit the spot, like the Mad Monster Masher by Barry Bosman (Barman76).

It is based on the eponymous toy from the eighties, which I thought was pretty cool, and looks great. Like the toy, Barry’s model is remote-controlled. The front and rear wheels are steered using a Power Function M-motor and the vehicle is driven by no fewer than three XL motors. If you’re in the Netherlands, you’ll be able to see it in action at Lego World Utrecht, which is due to take place next weekend.

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Steam 2013 round-up

While most of my fellow Brothers were having a great time at Brickcon in Seattle, I was enjoying myself immensely at the UK’s largest LEGO-event: the Great Western Lego Show in Swindon. The show is organised by Martin Long, who is the president of the Brickish Association. The show took place on Saturday the 5th and Sunday the 6th of October at a great location: the Great Western Railway museum, a.k.a. the Steam Museum. Most of the models on show were built by members of the association, who tend to refer to the show simply as ‘Steam’.

The models were all of a very high quality, but I want to share a few highlights with you. The first is the Rolls Royce Trent 1000 jet engine build by Bright Bricks, which is a company run by Duncan Titmarsh -the UK’s only Lego Certified Professional- and Ed Diment (Lego Monster). The model is built to half scale, weighs 350 kg and was commissioned by Rolls Royce for last year’s Farnborough Air Show. It is beautifully built and by means of an electric motor the fans actually spin, which gives it certain hypnotic quality.

Another very large and impressive model was the Tigelfáh Castle layout (We featured part of this a few weeks ago). It was a collaborative build by no fewer than eight builders: James Pegrum (peggyjdb), Harry Russell (Kǻrrde), Thomas Coleman (Malravion), Luke Watkins Hutchinson (– Derfel Cadarn –), Barney Main (SlyOwl), Colin Parry (Cuahchic), Jimmy Clynche (Invicta Bricks) and Steven Snasdell (workshysteve). It was enormous, fantastically detailed and very hard to capture in a single photo! No matter from what angle you looked at this, you always spotted a nice new detail.

One of the favourites of the public at the Steam show is the mosaic build. Members of the audience can fill a baseplate with 2×2 plates (in pre-arranged patterns printed out on paper), after which the plate is added to the mosaic. The mosaic gradually grows during the show and the end result is always spectacular.

For more pictures of these and other models at the show, check out the photosets by Andrew Harvey, Alec Hole and Drew Maughan. This was my 7th time at the event and it just keeps getting better. I know I am not the only builder already planning what to build for the show next year.

Tigelfah Castle

In the last week or so, new pictures by James Pegrum (peggyjb) kept popping up in my contacts’ latest photos, offering tantalising glimpses of an amazing Castle model coming together. James has now posted a picture that shows just about the whole thing, although he couldn’t quite capture all of it without doing some major remodelling of his house. The castle is not based on any particular real one, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t look realistic.

Admittedly, I’m not a connoisseur of Castle models, but this one strikes me as really rather good, for a couple of reasons. My fellow brother Gambort once explained that, to be good, a LEGO city should ideally not all be built on the same level or on a rectangular grid, except perhaps if it’s meant to be somewhere in a particularly flat part of the United States (I am paraphrasing a bit and this latter part is my own addition, but it is a nice bridge to the next sentence). There are no castles in the United States, except for generally cheesy-looking fakes, and I reckon that LEGO castles too get better by not being rectangular and level. James’ model ticks both of those boxes.

This is as good as it gets for now. However, it will still get better. This is merely James’ contribution to a collaboration with seven other members of the Brickish association. Their complete layout will be unveiled at the 2013 Great Western LEGO show, which will take place on the 5th and 6th of October in Swindon, and I am very much looking forward to seeing it with my own two eyes.

Stobart Scanias rule the roads of Britain

In the last few days I have written blog posts about the latest creations by Dutch truck builders (Nanko Klein Paste’s DAF and Dennis Glaasker’s Scania), but now it’s my own turn.

Since about two years, I’ve been building a collection of British vehicles to display at shows. In the summer of last year, I travelled from Portsmouth to York in the company of a group of British LEGO-building friends, going to a LEGO-show. Along the way we discussed my plans for building more British vehicles. During the five-hour drive we saw at least two dozen trucks operated by the Stobart Group. This company was founded by ‘Steady’ Eddie Stobart and operates more than 2000 trucks, mostly Scanias. They are ubiquitous in Britain and instantly recognizable. It was obvious that, if I was going to build a truck for my collection, it had to be a Stobart truck (or lorry, as my friends insist on calling it).

It took me a while though. One of the things that make these trucks/lorries so recognizable is their rather funky-looking colour scheme and even though the graphics on the real vehicles are done with stickers, I wanted to build them out bricks. This was complicated, obviously, but the end result does give a decent impression of what it looks like on the real Scania.

In little more than a week, the 2013 Great Western LEGO Show will take place in Swindon in the UK. My collection of British vehicles will be on display there, including this truck, as well as my B-52 model.

Classic Dutch DAF

Hot on the heels of fellow Dutch truck builder Dennis Glaasker, Nanko Klein Paste (nkle) has also built a new truck. Unlike Dennis’ trucks, it’s not all shiny and full of chrome, however. It’s a much more utilitarian-looking Dutch DAF 2300 truck from the early eighties.

There is much to like though, such as the construction of the radiator with a small edge around it, the SNOT construction on the side of the cab and front bumper and the detailed chassis, engine bay and working tilt cab. Growing up, I used to regularly see trucks like this and I absolutely love it.

Cool Scandinavian Scania

Many European truck lovers have a soft spot for the Scania brand. In some ways its reputation in Europe is comparable to that of a brand such as Kenworth in the US; they’re driven by proper truckers rather than by mere truck drivers. They are also popular among customizers, and Scandinavian custom trucks stand out, with lots of chrome and airbrush artwork. Truck builder extraordinaire Dennis Glaasker (bricksonwheels) has recreated this typical Scandinavian custom look in his latest Scania model.

This behemoth is more than 1.5m (5 ft.) long and remote controlled with Power Functions. The spectacular airbrush artwork, with a Pirates of the Caribbean theme, was made with a custom sticker and Dennis uses non-standard chromed pieces, with a very cool result.

Autobots are go!

Sometimes a model doesn’t need to be hugely complicated or full of wonderfully clever new connections of parts to be great, although there is definitely some clever stuff going on here if you look closely.

If, like me, you grew up watching cartoons in the eighties, the Autobot logo built by Jason Alleman (True Dimensions) really needs no further explanation. If you want to build your own (and you know you want to), you can even download instructions from Jason’s own website.

Buccaneers and buried gold

I have to start with a confession: I don’t remember ever reading Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, but I did see the animated TV series as a child, I saw the Muppets version several years ago and I’ve actually been in Bristol. Unfortunately, none of those experiences are of much use when describing what is going on in the latest scene built by Matthew Hurt, which depicts the Hispaniola in the port of Bristol at the start of its journey.

So, instead I’m going to focus on some of the details that make it such a great model. Check out the different types of textures used for the roof-tiles of the warehouses, for instance, or the brick-built sails. Then there’s the weathered look of the quay. And finally, the sails cleverly incorporate log bricks that make them look far more like cloth than if they would be built just out of regular plates and bricks.

Wicked robot

Most of the robots featured on this blog come equipped with big guns or giant swords. Cool stuff, without a doubt, but the robot built by Carol Price (Mrs Wobblehead), looks at least as menacing to me, despite its disarming grin and conspicuous lack of armament. I think there’s something a bit wicked about the grin and there’s definitely something fishy about secret underground lairs.

The robot is a large version of the series 6 collectible minifig and, while it may not set the world on fire with super-sophisticated building techniques, the scene has a lot of clever details. I simply love the sense of humour involved in building it.

Bringing down “Yankee imperalist air pirates” with the Cuban SA-2 Guideline

Andy Baumgart (dtowncracka) obviously has an interest in military equipment from the (former) Soviet Union and its allies. After building his cracking ZSU-23 Shilka self-propelled anti-aircraft artillery, he has turned his attention to something a bit more obscure: the Cuban T-55 mobile SA-2 Guideline launcher.

The SA-2 Guideline is a Soviet surface-to-air missile developed in the nineteen-fifties, which was exported to Soviet allies all over the world. During the Vietnam war, North Vietnamese SA-2s were used to shoot down close to 200 US aircraft, known as Yankee imperialist air pirates in contemporary propaganda. Before then, SA-2s gained notoriety when they were used to shoot down Francis Gary Powers’ CIA U-2 spy-plane over the Soviet Union in 1960 -an incident which caused great embarrassment to the US government- as well as a U.S. Air Force U-2 flying over Cuba during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

By now the SA-2 is an old clunker. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, Cuba has been unable to buy more modern and more mobile air-defense equipment. By mounting an SA-2 and its launcher on top of an obsolete T-55 tank chassis, Cuban engineers have managed to come up with a slightly more mobile version. To me it doesn’t look as though it can do much damage except to Cuba’s roads, but it is a great choice for a LEGO model, expertly built by Andy.

The right tools for the job

One of the things I noticed fairly soon after I moved to the UK (not being a native speaker of English) was that, despite being taught English in school, watching too many American TV series, reading English books and being able to hold my own in conversations about my work in English, I still had some gaping holes in my vocabulary. My job in the UK involved doing experiments in a wind-tunnel, which included working closely together with lab technicians. I could handle their southern English accents, but the names of tools were often completely beyond me, apart from really obvious ones such as a hammer or a screwdriver. If MacGyver never used one, I was basically lost.

David Hawkins (davidhawkins. 1964) has built these very accurate-looking carpenter’s tools in LEGO, which, besides being nice and decently photographed models, instantly reminded me of the time I didn’t know what a wood plane was called and went: “It’s one of those things you use to remove the surface of wood”, only to be handed a chisel. Anyway, you try to name all of these tools in a language that isn’t your own!

The Kawasaki Vulcan is ready to cruise

Harley Davidson is still going strong, but in the sixties competition by Japanese motorcycle manufacturers almost drove them out of business. Japanese bikes, such as this Kawasaki Vulcan modeled by LegoMarat, don’t have the same ‘swag’ as hogs, but there’s something to be said for a bike that works every time you start it and that doesn’t make your teeth rattle when idling (or so I’ve been told). Irrespective of whether you like Japanese bikes or not, this one does make for a very nice model.

When I first saw it, I wasn’t quite sure I was looking at LEGO. Part of that is due to the windscreen, which indeed isn’t LEGO, but it’s also because of the nice amount of chrome, clever combination of parts for the headlight and just the right level of detail.