Finished off the kombi van:
I come from the land down under!
The design is basically mirrored as the front and back are similar. It’s a two seater with a blue (why blue?) 2×2 block separating the two “seats”; also acts as a cup holder (comes with a red cup).
As with the blue car there are no doors, so entry is questionable/comical:
It’s not like Lego doesn’t have car doors…
Kind of a shame that Lego didn’t include a proper wheel on the front.
Bring the Vegemite sandwiches!
I’ve decided to start on the 2012 4207 Garage:
Lego City 4207 City Garage
Whilst it’s not as large area wise (box not withstanding) to some other sets, it is quite tall. Plus it comes with several vehicles and the garage itself is capable of storing them.
The first manual takes you through building the girl and her car, then the guy and his kombi van:
Manual 1 for 4207 City Garage
The girl’s car is a standard design: has no doors, has a steering wheel and only seats one. Though unlike my other vehicles this one comes with thin wheels:
Her first car: you can tell she’s happy
Interesting to note is that the girl’s long hair only lets her head turn left and right by a small degree.
I do like the red light configuration at the rear:
The coloured light grill at the back
I never really had many light pieces when I played with Lego years ago so always happy to see them.
“So whacha doin’ tonight?”
A better shot of the thin wheels and rims:
Impressing the guys
It’s like Sim City but with Lego! And real stuff not virtual stuff. And no disasters. And no EA screwing it u- ok, bad analogy.
With the town layout, I plan to try and achieve the following goals:
My current table layout for the city (have yet to work out a name for it) is basically 4 tables in a ‘T’ style:
Lego City city plan 1
The space I have to work with isn’t much: the room measures to about 2.5m x 2.3m. One side has a desk (south of the tables) and another has a wardrobe (east of the tables).
I’ve already tried various combinations of table arrangements to maximise the amount of space I can have as well as taking into consideration that quite a few lego buildings have an open back (so you can access the rooms and items inside easily), so the less sides that are against a wall, the better:
Different table layout designs
There are only 2 long sides and 1 short side that is up against a wall, allowing for more open-back buildings to be placed against the edges of the tables.
Things like footpaths, trees, (functional?? :O) street lights and whatnot will be added later on; I’ll need to hit things like BrickLink or the Lego Online Shop for all the bits and bobs (which won’t be cheap >_<“).
Despite the issues with this layout, I’ll start building a set and see how things go 😀
Working out where to build the Lego City city wasn’t too hard to figure out, given there were really only 3 possible locations:
– in my bedroom… somewhere
– in the second room
– the garage
I decided against being like some of my inconsiderate fellow unit occupants and leaving my car in visitor parking to make room in the garage for the city. Plus I don’t want cockroaches and other icky insects unlawfully taking up residence.
Whilst my bedroom is the larger room, it’s also just got no space whatsoever, being dominated by a queen size bed.
So, considering I was already building Lego in the second room, and the second room was just being used as a dumping ground for stuff (garage is/was too far away, being downstairs’n’all :P), I decided what the hell: the location for Lego city will be in my second room. Since I’ve moved in 4 years ago, it’s been purely a storage room:
My room before cleaning it up
I spent a week or two bit by bit either throwing things out (goodbye primary school books!), relocating them down the garage (goodbye useless oil heater!) or giving some things to the Salvo’s (which made me feel good :)).
So after cleaning out the room, here’s where the Lego city will be:
My room after cleaning it up
With the floor empty, there’s still more room for tables (probably 2 or 3), just the small dimensions means that there’ll be compromises to be had :/. Hopefully it can accommodate next year’s Lego City sets and the year after. Or at the very least accommodate the following:
My Lego Todo list
I’ve already started planning out the table space and will post what the current version is looking like; swear everytime I think I’m done, I notice something and end up doing a massive re-planning…
So I’ve decided to create a Lego city, out of Lego City sets; a Lego City Lego city if you may. And I’ve decided to document the process: from city planning to building the sets that will go in the city and general thoughts on future plans/issues.
Now true I have been making some of the Lego sets I’ve purchased since October 2012, but that was purely building; I didn’t have any goal of making a Lego city, or at least I was putting it off, hence why I built mostly vehicles:
Vroom vroom!
But continually seeing things like this in the back of each instruction manual:
DO WANT
MOAR DO WANT
I eventually gave in to this awesome yet expensive idea and thus find myself as town planner :P.
Note that future posts won’t go up real time, given it takes time to write the posts up, add images, etc. But the day numbering will correspond to the correct day that I started writing up the post.
Feel free to post comments and ideas and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible 😀
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