Tag Archives: Train

LEGO trains have been for sale since the 1960s, and LEGO fans have been creating their own custom layouts with LEGO bricks ever since. Whether you enjoy 4.5-volt, 12-volt, 9-volt, RC, or Power Functions LEGO trains, and whether or not you have an opinion about 8-wide, 9-wide, or some other scale, you’ll find lots of gorgeous engines and rail cars right here on The Brothers Brick.

Brickvention 2011 roundup

As I mentioned in my last post I spent last weekend (14th to 16th) enjoying myself at Brickvention 2011. This year is was significantly larger than last year with 140 AFOLs attended and 8000 people through the door on public day. In order to deal with an increasing number of attendees (last year there were 3000 through the door) the event had moved to a bigger venue but with a three-fold increase in attendance it simply wasn’t enough. Sadly many people had to wait two hours to get in and some were turned away at the end of the day. The event seems to be approaching the size of some of the smaller European and US fests.

But I suspect our readers aren’t too interested in statistics compared to pictures. After giving attendees a weekend to get their pictures up there are now a bunch of photos up on flickr (check the BV pool and BV 2011 pool or appropriate tags).

My absolute favourites were the steampunk ship Hyperion (top) by Darren Reid and the Sydney club’s Western display (bottom). Much to my chagrin I spent most of the public days building and didn’t get to see many of the smaller models but I did get a quick moment to wander around and check out the bigger models so can also recommend Ross Crawford‘s crane (right), Kevin Hall‘s Drachenberg castle, Ryan McNaught‘s The Love Boat (left) and Hogwart’s school (left) by David Scalone. But there was numerous other great models around the place.

I certainly look forward to Brickvention 2012 whenever and wherever it may be. If you’re in the region this event just gets bigger and better each year so do come along. And many, many, many thanks to the organisers. They put in a lot of effort and ran a very tight ship.

David Cook has posted timelapse photos of the start of public day

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LEGO Ararat in 1972

I’ve just returned from Brickvention 2011 where I had an absolutely awesome time. I’m waiting for more photographs to appear on flickr before I give a proper roundup but there were some excellent LEGO models there.

In the interim I’ll write something about what Mike Pianta (scruffulous) and I displayed: a diorama based on the (presently flooded in) town of Ararat in Victoria, Australia as it was in the year 1972.

Mike and I started planning this about three months before the event. Our goals were ‘simple’: keep the level of accuracy and detail high, include a large curved track, and work off the grid as much as possible. Not the easiest set of goals but not impossible. I feel like we did manage to achieve them.

However we had one further problem: Mike lives in Melbourne (where the exhibition is) and I live 1800km away in Brisbane. Which meant my contributions also had to be modular enough to survive a plane trip. This was OK until, just days before I was due to go, my city was flooded leaving me wondering if I’d ever make it out.

To cut a long story short I did make it and I got very lucky with the baggage handlers who helped my models survive largely intact. Phew! Anyway, that’s probably all you want to hear about it here. If you have any further questions ask here or on flickr.

And as for the floods: my friends and family are all fine, my girlfriend got stuck on holidays for an extra three days by a flooded road and the city is a mess. Luckily the loss of life in Brisbane was very low but some nearby towns were destroyed by an ‘inland tsunami’ which killed many. Still, compared to those in Rio state we got off lightly.

EDIT: Mike now has videos.

Sand red rust bucket

Every so often Peter Norman (swoofty) floods flickr with great train models. While this is great for LEGO train fans it makes life a bit difficult for me in choosing what to blog. This time I decided that the most novel of them all was a heavily weathered old Alco RS-1. Weathering in LEGO is hard enough at a small level but attempting it at this scale is even harder. I think Peter has made an admirable job of it here.

Motorised Rocket

As unbelievable as it seems it appears that M and M has managed to make an adorably cute and motorised version of Stephenson’s Rocket. The original is notable as one of the first effective steam trains and the LEGO version might just be the first effective pull-back motor train.

Two for the track

It’s obviously my lucky day as, in addition to Rodney’s new model, Carl Greatrix (bricktrix) has delivered not one but two excellent freight wagons. And before someone complains there is no glue on those crossbars, just cleverness.

RAILBRICKS Issue 7 out

The seventh issue of RAILBRICKS magazine is now out for your enjoyment under new chief editor Elroy Davis.

It’s filled to the brim with articles, pictures and ideas for LEGO train fans. It includes articles on: What to Do After That Starter Set?, Billund’s Miniland Trains, Emerald Night Improvements and Fun with Radii as well as a great cover pic (and related photography advice) by Anthony Sava. As usual it’s a great read for fans of LEGO trains and non-fans alike.

Head over the the RAILBRICKS website and use the download method of your choice.

Virtual Insanity

I always get very excited about finding a new model from Andreas Weissenburg (grubaluk) because he is a) an excellent builder and b) an excellent renderer. Which means his CGI BR 55 gets to give a big tick to both our Trains and CAD categories.

The minifigs of Oslo

I’ve got a real soft spot for realistic town dioramas and this LEGO version of a Norwegian city center has realism in spades. Built by members of Brikkelauget it’s had pride of place in the window of Riktige Leker toy shop in Oslo. The walls of the metro are a particular highlight for me. If I were a minifig I’d be pretty happy to live there.

Where do shoes come from? Containers!

Better late than never. Nate Brill (Shuppiluliumas) and PennLUG debuted this wonderful container ship and port at BrickFair2010. RAILBRICKS have already written at great length about it so I’ll spare the details here but I will add that I’m a huge fan of the old rundown port next to the much more modern one. Lovely!

Meteor shower

Any train builder can tell you that taking photographs of full rakes is really hard so I apologise that this photo is a little hard to see. I make no apologies, however, for blogging Peter Norman’s (swoofty) excellent Silver Meteor model as it’s lovely.

Micro Timesaver train switching puzzle

Elroy Davis (taltosvt) has built a LEGO microscale version of the Timesaver model railroad layout.

I’m not much of a trainhead, but I can certainly appreciate the functionality Elroy has built into his tiny puzzle, as well as the black bricks bordering the tan base.

E is for electric

Peter Norman (swoofty) is offering swag in his latest train building contest: E is for electric. It’s being run in the LEGO Train MOCs group over on flickr. It would be great to see people use this contest to try out their first train designs, or first electric train designs. The contest runs until July 31st so there’s plenty of times to order bricks and get those entries made. If previous contests are any indication CAD should be acceptable too but source files must be provided upon request.