Bricklink Designer Program Round 4 - A Win for Castle Fans

I’ve turned picking the Bricklink Designer Program round sets into a game and round 4 was the first where I didn’t get any right. You can see my failed picks here. This round was heavy on the castle theme and even another train made the pick which is cool to see as a train fan. I’ll be curious to see if LEGO brings back the castle theme based on the popularity through Ideas, Icons, and this program. Onto the finalists for round 4…

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First up is Medieval Seaside Market by user Bricks_fan_uy which contains 2,183 pieces. This one is an interesting selection with the addition of #10332: Medieval Town Square in the Icons line. I realize the differences, but it also has a lot of similarities. Either way, it’s Castle and as of late, Castle sets are super popular. This one will most likely sell out quickly.

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Next up is the Merchant Boat by user NicolasCarlier which contains 1,933 pieces. This one is something different that we haven’t seen before. I like the concept. We haven’t seen a steamboat before, but maybe there’s a reason for it. We’ll see how this one does with sales.

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If one Castle themed set wasn’t enough, this round gives us two. The Siege Encampment by user SleeplessNight contains 2,637 pieces. SleeplessNight designed the Mountain Fortress set from round 1. It’s a full on war scene with the equipment to take over a castle, some tents, and some areas to support the troops. It’s something we haven’t seen in Castle before so I suspect this one will go quickly too.

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Next up is The Riverside Scholars by user Hanwas which will contain 2,692 pieces. This one is another unique design and is tied to the Mountain Windmill set from a while back. I like the fantasy theme, but I’m not sure this one will go like the Castle themed sets.

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The last one is the Wild West Train by designer llucky which contains 2,760 pieces. llucky designed the General Store set from series 1 so he is another repeat designer for this program. It’s good to see another train set after a lot of years of no trains. This one is from a different era as I don’t think we’ve seen a western themed train set since the Toy Story train a few years back. This one should go well with llucky’s General Store set of the same era.

Return of the Bricklink AFOL Designer Program

In 2018, LEGO and Bricklink teamed up for the AFOL Designer Program. They crowd funded 13 sets that were designed by fans and released them for purchase in 2019. I ended up buying two of them. One was #BL19003: Skyline Express and the other was #BL19012: Bikes!. I was a big fan of both of them and probably would have purchased all 13 of them if I had unlimited funds.

LEGO announced their purchase of Bricklink at the end of 2019 and there was much consternation in the fan community as to what would happen. A number of fans, including me, hoped the AFOL Designer Program would return. We heard nothing for a while, but we finally got something a few weeks ago.

Bricklink announced on 17 December 2020 that they were going to re-open the program, but it would be slightly different in 2021. Instead of soliciting new projects and crowd sourcing them, they are going to use designs from the Ideas platform and produce some of them. While not exactly what we wanted, I can’t complain about this effort. The rules are the project must not have an IP tied to it and it must have achieved the 10,000 votes. My search revealed 44 sets in this category. If my link doesn’t work, go to the Ideas site and when you search, select Product Phase - Not Approved and IP - Original Ideas. There are a lot of great designs and then some that it looks like LEGO has produced in a different form already.

If LEGO/Bricklink reads this post, here are the three designs I would like to see made in the 2021 AFOL Designer Program.

1. The Train Station: Studgate

I’m a big train fan and a modular building fan and this set would look fantastic mixed with the two themes. Designed by Bricky_Brick, the same designer as #21322-1 - Pirates of Barracuda Bay, I think this set would add some elegance to some of the more boring train stations that exist in the current LEGO set realm. Plus you get a small passenger train so win, win all around here.

2. Food Stand Diners

How awesome would this set look in a City scene or a park scene or mixed in with your Fairground sets? Designed by builder FrostBricks, this set would be a great add and could be produced at a lower price point considering some of the other larger sets listed.

3. Chemical Plant

If you like Trains, City, or the Octan theme, this one would be great to see. Designed by fan Ymari, this set has a lot of playability (although not meant for kiddos), lots of great details, and connections to train with the tank car and roads with the Octan themed tank truck.

We’ll see if any of these even make it, but those are my votes. What are yours?

For those of you disappointed that we don’t have an AFOL Designer Program where you can submit your project, don’t worry. It appears LEGO and Bricklink are planning on launching this effort in 2022.

Happy Building!

Set Review - North Eastern Style Caboose - Brick Model Railroader

I enjoy building different LEGO themes, but when it comes down to it, I really trains make it to the top of the list. LEGO hasn’t offered much for a while and hopefully the new Crocodile Locomotive is a start towards more brick trains. Despite LEGO not diving into trains, the fan community has done their best to pick up the slack. One such group has a website called Brick Model Railroader. The site has been built by a group of LEGO train fans from around the world. You can read about them and find links to some of their work here. The team is trying to promote the hobby. They want to show other model railroad fans that the “L Gauge” is a real thing. They’ve built a standard for everyone to follow so people collaborating on a train display can build separately and then assemble it all at a show and have it fit together.

They’ve also done something great for fans like me who are not good at building MOCs. They’ve turned their detailed MOCs into sets that you can customize. You can peruse their shop here. I purchased a few of the sets and today I’ll take you through one of them.

Let me back up a bit. I purchased four sets and three decals. I received an order notification and shipping notification rather quickly. The package arrived promptly and was possibly one of the best packed items I’ve ever received. The box size was right and the sets were wrapped in bubble wrap. There was zero damage. Props to the BMR team! An order sheet specified that I would be receiving one of the decals in the mail directly from OKBrickWorks. It showed up a few days later.

Onto one of the sets. I ordered the North Eastern Style Caboose for $40. It arrived in the box pictured below. It is a plain white box with a BMR sticker affixed to the top.

Inside were the parts, an instruction book, and the decals I ordered. No bricks? Correct. You are buying the instructions, but they aren’t just any instructions. They provide the design for you to match multiple historical versions of the car based on what you want to build. Then you can use your own collection or purchase bricks to build one or multiple versions of the set. So not as easy as buying a LEGO produced set, but lots more options.

The LEGO purists will freak out at this point, but the set includes some custom parts. GASP! It includes the train wheels with ball bearing axles and then some custom clips. I have not tested out the wheels yet, but BMR advertises that they run much smoother and cause less friction than standard LEGO train wheels. So we’ll see…

The instructions are the key to the set. They come in an individually wrapped bag and weren’t crammed in like they usually are in LEGO sets. The first few pages contains some details about the actual caboose to include when it was first built, where it was used, and some of the stats about the caboose itself. The actual build instructions compare with ones you would see in a LEGO set where it shows you the pieces you need and a picture of where you are at with the build. I haven’t actually built the set so I can’t verify that they are good or not.

The back of the instructions comes with a bill of materials stating all of the pieces you will need for the set. For customization purposes, the bill of materials lists what pieces go on the inside, what goes on the outside, and which pieces should be specific color (mostly black). This way you can build based on actual cabooses or come up with your own color scheme. If it wasn’t helpful enough, the instructions also list the part numbers on BrickLink for your ordering purposes.

Last bit of usefulness to report… included in the instructions are details about replacement pieces to use if specific pieces aren’t available in another color. I found that useful on another set I purchased as the color I picked didn’t have a few of the pieces available in that color.

The last bit of detail I ordered were some decals. These are printed by OKBrickWorks and cost $7.50. I purchased a Conrail version as I remember Conrail trains going through my town as a kid. I didn’t buy decals for all of the cars I purchased, but I figured I’d try them out on a few. As a kid, I built plastic model aircraft. I was never good at the decals that went on them so we’ll see how this goes.

Overall, I’m impressed with the set and look forward to building it. I’m holding off on the build process as most of my collection is in storage. I want to raid my own parts before I go out and buy more. I’m excited to see what the final end product looks like and can’t wait to someday run it on a train display somewhere. The set is a bit pricey considering you aren’t getting all of the parts, but you are paying for the time and effort to put a custom build into instruction form with a bill of materials for you to repeat as you desire. The ordering and shipping process was smooth and Cale took the time to make sure the sets showed up in pristine condition. Props to the BMR team for a great set!

Have you purchased a BMR set before? What are your thoughts?

Happy building!

20 Years of Bricklink

The famous secondary LEGO marketplace turned 20 years old on 19 June. Bricklink has been posting some special web content to highlight the occasion. If you go here, you can see all of the content for the 20 days. They have gone through history, first members, stories about using the site from users, and a post from an Admin as of the writing of this post. If you want to see more stories or if you want to post your own story, you can go here. There are a lot of great stories about people finally being able to recreate old sets or piecing together lost sets.

My Bricklink story… I joined Bricklink on 31 July 2009 according to my profile. Has it been that long? I found out about the site and had also downloaded Lego Digital Designer (LDD). I started building some MOCs and needed the parts for them. My MOCs are pretty awful and I quickly learned that I was not a good builder… despite that, I’ll post some pictures of my work which was made possible from bricks purchased on Bricklink.

First off was the diesel engine shown below. I really wanted to capture the stripe going across and was very proud of myself that I figured out how to make the stripe angle up. Otherwise, the engine is a bit too long and is very fragile with no real good place to pick it up. Thank goodness for 9v motors and rails though.

Moving on… I built a small train display and it looks pretty scary. I bought #4561-1: Railway Express off of a teenager locally through a site in the place I was living in. He sold all of his LEGO for $115 to buy an iPod. I got a full up 9v train and motor along with some Harry Potter and Star Wars sets. I got the better deal as I’ll bet he doesn’t use his iPod anymore. Anyways if you look at the bottom left, you’ll see my MOC of #4561-1 rebuilt into a “better” train. The engine is pretty awful, but I like the double decker car. Someday I will modify it, but for now it looks good. I later built a second car with a few orders from Bricklink. There are a few other less impressive builds in the picture as well. However, I’m glad to still have #4558-1: Metroliner and #4547-1: Railroad Club Car.

There are a few more MOCs that I sourced through Bricklink, but I am too embarrassed to show them as they are just plain awful. Thankfully three things happened… one is that I discovered modular buildings and that I didn’t need to try and design something awful, when LEGO would produce something incredible. Two was that around that time some amazing trains came out to include #10194-1: Emerald Night (Bricklink helped me build some extra cars and a caboose… sorry no pics of those), #10219-1: Maersk Train, and #10233-1: Horizon Express. Finally, three is I became a Dad and the amount of time I could spend bricking decreased substantially.

I decided to start a store in 2014 as Bricks for Bricks kicked off. I tried some in person sales and that didn’t work out well (see here). In October 2016 I started Bricks for Bricks on Bricklink and did quite well. You can read about some of our giving campaigns here. That ended in May of 2018 when I transitioned with my non-brick job to Germany. I hope to return to selling on Bricklink when I return to living in the USA.

Happy birthday Bricklink! And happy building!

We Need Another Train - Latest LEGO Ideas Submissions

If you’ve followed my blog at all you may have seen some of my posts advocating for train sets. I’m a big LEGO train fan and I really want to see more Creator Expert type train models. As I have mentioned previously, LEGO doesn’t make a lot of money on these types of sets so they have stopped making them and they look for other ways to incorporate trains like with Disney or the Hidden Side.

Another option is to use the LEGO Ideas platform to bring a train model to the public. Currently the Toronto Rocket subway train by LegoVader217 is under review awaiting an announcement. Additionally, the creator BrickyBrick has a station he titled “The Train Station: Stud Gate” and it is rapidly approaching 10,000 votes (under 200 votes left at the time of this post). I wrote a post on that one here.

I don’t have high confidence that LEGO will produce either of these, but maybe they’ll get the hint given the number of train submissions on the Ideas platform. Or maybe they’ll move the train ideas to the BrickLink AFOL program now that LEGO has purchased BrickLink?

With all of this being said, there is another idea out there that I really like.

Train Collection by papat08
A Diesel-electric locomotive GE Dash 9-44cw BNSF on a track with some ballast on a display stand with the name on the front similar to the Architecture line. This one is a cool idea where you could just display the engine or use it as an engine on a train layout. There’s over a year left on this one and it has over 600 votes at the time of this post, but a lot more to go to get to 10,000. So go vote for this one. I think a train line for display would be awesome. So what do you say LEGO?

LEGO® Exhibition Visit - Kloster Machern, Bernkastel-Kues, Germany - Part 2

Here’s the second part of my visit to the LEGO® Exhibition in Bernkastel-Kues, Germany. If you missed the first part, you can see it here.

Star Wars did not have a big representation at this show, but there was a hangar of ships on display. Next to it was what looked like Lego Digital Designer and the build of the MOC on a computer screen.

Some nostalgia for you… here is a large 12V train set up with some of the old LEGO sets. It might not be some of the massively detailed train displays you see LUGs set up, but it was still cool to see the 12V trains chugging around the track.

I don’t know if this is a MOC of an actual train station or not, but I thought it was very impressive. I like how the designer incorporated the CITY base plates in the front. There’s a lot of action going on with a tow truck getting a car, construction on the tracks, and a painter at work near the pizza truck.

Next to the train station were a few trains. I would have preferred to see them going around a big display, but I’ll take whatever I can get.

The picture next to it is of a large church with some great lighting behind translucent colored bricks. This would have been cool to see with the lights off.

Next up is a large country western scene with a mid-1800s US-like Army and some Natives about to harass them. The scene was very detailed with the desert scene on the outside of a pretty detailed fort. I took the picture as the builder was showing off the inside of one of the buildings. If I spoke German, I would have more to say about this, but I don’t so just enjoy the pictures.

Not to be outdone, nearby was another country western scene. This one included a train, settlers with horses and wagons, the Confederate Army fighting the Union Army, cattle herders, a steam ship, and some Natives harassing some settlers and their wagon train. This scene was another one where it was hard to know where to look first. I can’t image how long it took to set up each and every single minifigure here. Very impressive!

This display was one of my favorite at the show. I apologize for loading all of my pictures that I took of this one, but as a fan of modular buildings I thought this Venice scene was awesome. The use of different colors helps the buildings to really stand out and the pieces used really create some cool details. I think about some of the pieces that I have and how I often don’t know what to do with them and then I look at buildings like these and realize how I could use them to make some very striking details on buildings.

See if you can pick out some of the pieces used to create details. I really like the scorpions and the Star Wars Battle Droid legs for detail. I also like how the one building uses the ball joints. Awesome work!

Here are 2 more buildings. One appears to be maybe an Asian restaurant while the other appears to be a LEGO® Brand Store.

While a lot of the builders were adults and many were from a LUG, there were also a few teens there displaying some items. I didn’t get pictures of them all, but this group stood out to me. They had a number of mechanical devices to include the amusement park below. They also had a rubik’s cube solver, a machine that held a pen to make some cool drawings, and a few other machines. Here’s a picture of their amusement park.

These may have been the best part of the show. The creativity here is astonishing. They took existing sets and built them using what I can only assume was with parts they had on hand or could get to easily. They had #21303-1: WALL-E build out of various pieces and then the two sets pictured below. The first was #71043-1: Hogwart’s Castle. I first looked at it and was like, that’s a cool looking castle. Then I was like, wait! That’s a real set only with different pieces. How cool is that? That’s some impressive work, but it was probably substantially cheaper than buying the actual set. Next up was #21315-1: Pop-Up Book. They took the design, used the pieces on hand, and added in I <3 U as the item that popped up.

My inability to speak German hit me here as I couldn’t ask questions, but bravo to the person or people who built these. They did an awesome job and did something I have never seen done before. They definitely get my best in show award.

Congrats if you made it this far and thanks for checking it out. I hope to get to more shows in Germany before I depart.

In the meantime, happy building!

LEGO® House: History Collection

The LEGO® House has some fun stairs that you can take up or down. I like how the walls look like they could be made of large size plastic bricks. If you go down, you go to the History Collection. In this post I hope to take you through my experience there. I took a lot of pictures, but still did not capture the whole thing. With 2 kiddos, I wasn’t able to stay and read everything, but I still had a good amount of time to see it all. So let’s go!

(Note: you can take an elevator too. This is especially good if you have a stroller or a little person who is slow on stairs.)

The History Collection is not as bright and colorful as the rest of the House. The walls are black as if you are underground. When you get downstairs, there is a glass covered area in the floor. The area is full of gray 2x4 bricks and some old brick molds. A sign explains how they used to put the old molds underneath new buildings so they couldn’t be used by a competitor. You can read the sign that explains it in the picture. We also thought it was fun that there was a brick built mole digging around in the basement.

From the room with the molds in the floor, you can see a brightly lit LEGO® logo. I took a few pictures so you can see it as you get up close. It’s pretty awesome.

And another mole hanging out…

The tour goes through a hallway in a square. You turn left and you start to learn about the very initial states of the LEGO® Company. It talks about the founding family and you can see some of the early non-plastic toys. It’s impressive that they still have some of the very old toys and first brick sets around.

As you continue to make your way around the History Collection, there are more modern bricks to include some sets or sets mixed in with MOCs.

#10184-1: Town Plan - This was the 50th anniversary set from LEGO®

The factories don’t look like this anymore.

Is this an official set?

The origins of the train line

I’m not sure if the train is an official set or a MOC.

As you continue on, you see more of the modern sets that we’re used to seeing. It was definitely a walk down memory lane to see some of the older items that I still have. And some of the things I always wanted as a kid… like the whole Classic Space line.

The Classic Space monorail

The origins of the minifigure

The castle theme and 9V town sets (I have the police car and fire engine and they still work)

Throughout the LEGO® House are benches. Many of the benches have parts to build with, minifigure parts, or in this picture, DUPLO®. My youngest kiddo enjoyed the History Collection because there were tons of cars, trains, and planes, but it was good to know we had another distraction if needed to occupy him in the “boring” museum portion.

After you finish walking around the square, you can enter into the space inside the square. This area has a collection of many of the old sets by time period. I failed to get a picture or write it down, but I think it is by decade (please correct me if I’m wrong). Definitely a walk down memory lane for me. “I have that one!” “I always wanted that one!” “Wow! I’ve never actually seen that one.”

Sorry for the reflections on the glass covering the windows in my pictures.

Some of the very first sets.

More castle and Classic Space in there.

Duplo®, Pirates, Blacktron, and more!

Here’s a shot of what the wall looks like with the various sets.

Classic space, early CITY/Town, Castle

Technic, Space Police, Pirates, and more!

Can they bring back Classic Space and Castle please?

Some Technic sets in the center of the room.

The center of the room had the Technic display that I showed and then these trains. Please re-release the Super Chief and the BNSF diesel!

Also in the center of the room was a computer screen where you could go through each of the sets from every year and add them to your digital collection. When you are finished, the collection is loaded into your file that is attached to the wrist band. We did not build our digital collection. I’m not sure I could even remember it all. A cool idea though.

If you are an AFOL, definitely make some time to check out the History Collection. I regret that I didn’t get to read everything about the company, but I was glad that I got to see what I did. It’s not the best place for kids. My 5-year old got bored pretty quick and wanted to go back upstairs to do all of the fun stuff.

It will be curious to see how the History Collection changes over the years. How will they add another decade of sets in?

My next post will be about the Star Wars™ 20th anniversary display which was located with the History Collection.