LEGO at the 2008 NC State Fair

Posted on October 16, 2008 by Mike Walsh

This past Tuesday Joe Meno and I judged the LEGO entries at the NC State Fair.? This is the 4th year we have done this.? There were a number of really good?entries this year and one in particular stood out.? These butterflies are really clever and were by far the best entry across all categories.? If we could have awarded a best of show, this entry would have received it.

If you are visiting the NC State Fair, make sure you check out the LEGO entries, there are in the Hobbies and Crafts building. Here is a small gallery of some of the entries.

View this slideshow on Flickr.

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Modular Buildings – the first one

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Mike Walsh

I have used a system of modular buildings for my sections of NCLTC layouts for years.? At one point I had built a city block scene as one big structure but it was fragile and really hard to transport.? It looked nice but it was more hassle than I wanted.? The fact that I dropped it bring it home after one show sealed its fate and led me to a new solution.

I really liked the look of different building facades so I decided to build a bunch of them which could be arranged differently with one caveat – they had to be built on a 16×16 or 16×32 baseplate.? I had some corner units and some interior units.? I reached a point where I could assemble a fairly large town area with my buildings.

Modular Building

Modular Building

This building was actually the first one I built and I really like how it came out but it never made it to a layout.? Why?? Because when I built it I made a big mistake.? The back of the building was one stud in from the edge of the baseplate so it wouldn’t sit back to back with another building.? There was a gap which was too noticable.? So it has been sitting on a shelf since I built it.? I thought about fixing it a number of times but never did it.

This building has a couple 2x2x3 tan corner slopes which I got from the LEGOLand California Model Shop.

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School House circa 2001-2002

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Mike Walsh
School House
School House

This is the first building I took apart today.? I built this school house in 2001 or 2002, I am not really sure.? This is actually the second incarnation of it.? It originally sat on a 16×32 baseplate but looked pretty much the same.? I remember when I built this that I was excited to build something with a grey roof.? It took me a while to collect the necessary pieces to build a reasonably sized grey roof.? I actually built this upside down – I built the roof first because I wasn’t sure how the roof would look and how big I could make it.? Once I had the roof done, I built the building under it.? I like the use of the train window glass and train windows – it gives it a slightly different look than most buildings have.

Building different colored roofs was something I tried to do and collecting some of the unusual colored slopes took a while.? I never liked seeing lots of red roofs so I was thrilled when black slopes became readily available.

This second version of the school house fit in with the NCLTC neighborhood standard which dictated two rows of tiles as a sidewalk along street facing edges.

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Wrecking Ball!!!

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Mike Walsh

I have been putting it off but today I started taking things apart.? I?can hardly walk in my office at home there is so much stuff on the floor these days.? I have way more buildings than I could ever bring to a NCLTC layout.??I really got in?a bad?habit of building new things but never taking the old stuff apart just in case our layout was sparse and?needed some filler.?? I have buildings still assembled that are probably six years old.? I decided to take a few pictures as I did, making some last coments on some of my creations before they are lost to the brick pile.

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6 Car Airport Shuttle

Posted on September 26, 2008 by Mike Walsh
So what does a 6 car Airport Shuttle look like?  It looks like this!
6 Car Airport Shuttle

6 Car Airport Shuttle

This picture was taken last Sunday at the NCLUG meeting at the Cameron Village library.   The spirals were a quick hack job to demonstrate what we had done previously at NCLTC train shows.? All of the monorail track in the picture belongs to Carin Proctor, I just brough the train.  This was the first time it had run in several years and it ran great.

Plate 2 x 2 with Towball

Plate 2 x 2 with Towball

Plate 1 x 4 with Towball Socket

Plate 1 x 4 with Towball Socket

The question I get most often (besides “you really have an Airport Shuttle?”) is how they are connected together.  For the most part, the design of the additonal cars follows the orginal plan of the Airport Shuttle but the battery unit needs to be near the monorail motor and the cars need to connect together.  Since the monorail chasis plate only connects to the monorail motor, I had to find a different solution.  I tried a number of different techniques before I tried the ball and socket elements. These two parts work great, they can handle the curves and elevation changes without any problems.

The other question or concern people tend to have is about the load on the motor.  The motor is pretty strong and I have not had any problems with it not being to push the train along.  As long as it has a good 9v battery, it seems to run for a long time.  Because the motor is geared with the track, there isn’t even a noticable speed difference between the standard two car monorail and my six car version.

One of these I’ll document it correctly and publish the instructions.

Posted in Instructions, MOC, NCLUG | Tagged , | 4 Comments