The Soviet BAZ 135 Transporter-Erector-Launcher built by Marcin Witkiewicz (Nexus 7.1) ticks many boxes I like: it’s a truck, it’s military and it carries a ballistic missile on its back. The missile, coincidently, appears to be the type known to NATO as the FROG-7, for Free Rocket Over Ground. It was exported to dictatorships all over the world.
There may be a few modified parts on the front, but don’t let that distract you. The chunky tyres are a nice match for the ones on the real vehicle, the detail is excellent and, most impressively, Marcin has managed to capture the slightly oddball styling typical of Soviet military trucks.
Posts by Ralph
Dutch truck builders united
Last weekend a number of Dutch truck building enthusiasts, including yours truly, met up to display our models at Model Show Europe, as I mentioned in my introductory post a few days ago.
The show is for scale models of heavy haulage and earth-moving equipment and, perhaps surprisingly for such a niche interest, it’s big with a few thousand visitors on a single day and exhibitors from several countries, including Germany, the UK and Denmark. Most of the models on display were plastic kit models and die-cast models, but, because of their high quality, the LEGO models on display didn’t look out of place at all.
TBB favourite Dennis Glaasker (Bricksonwheels) showed off his love for chrome with his latest Peterbilt and trailer.
Ingmar van Speijkhoven (2LegoOrNot2Lego) unveiled his new Western Star.
Dennis Bosman (legotrucks), whose Kenworth wrecker truck was featured here a few weeks ago, also brought his impressive model of a Scania R500 with a low-loader and drag-line.
Built on a slightly smaller scale but in a similar colour scheme, the classic Scania dump truck built by Nanko Klein Paste (nkle) stole people’s hearts.
The biggest crowd pleaser, however, was a massive Liebherr mobile crane by Huib van der Hart (haRtV70R).
It’s still a work in progress, in the sense that it cannot yet be raised, but already looks impressive.
For more pictures taken during the event, including more trucks by Daniël Dil (Legorigs), Barry Bosman (Barman76), Ron Jansen and myself, check out the other pictures in Barry’s photo set. As George Panteleon (ZetoVince) put it in a comment on a picture of part of the display put it: “Lucky guyz! So many fantastic lego car builders in one country! I’m jealous..”
Anything but forlorn -the home of the German Parliament
After having been gutted by fire in 1933 and heavily damaged during World War II, the German Reichstag building sat forlornly in West-Berlin for decades, mere meters away from the Berlin Wall. After Germany was reunited, the building was extensively refurbished and fitted with a spectacular glass dome. Since 1999 it has housed the German parliament.
Check out the clever spacing of all the columns and the way in which Al Disley (aldisley) has built the windows on his microscale version of this grandiose building. Al built the model for an upcoming book called Brick city, by fellow Brit Warren Elsmoore, which will be out in early May. Expect a review of the book in a few weeks’ time.
Mad about LEGO
Completing a new model and posting the first pictures online is always a bit exciting. Seeing the model being blogged here is even more exciting. Now imagine getting the opportunity to contribute to this blog yourself.
It is with great pleasure that I introduce myself as the newest writer for TBB. I am a Dutchman and live in the Netherlands, but I spent several years living in the UK, where I was and still am an active member of The Brickish Association. Regular readers may know me as Mad physicist. I have been mad about LEGO since I could first put two bricks together and have built many different things, but nowadays I primarily build scale models of vehicles: cars, trucks, aircraft and helicopters.
For Model Show Europe (a show for scale models of heavy haulage and earth-moving equipment) that I attended yesterday, together with fellow Lowlug-members, I recently built this Dutch MAN truck with a step-frame trailer and a JCB backhoe.
With my aircraft building, I am currently having a bit of a Seventies kick and recently completed a US Marine Corps F-4 Phantom II in the bright markings that were typical for the period.
I will post about my own work now and then, but I am looking forward to seeing all the wonderful stuff all of you are up to, picking my favourites and sharing them with the world.