WIP Metro Station Mod

OK, so in a rare move, this has to do with a set that many people I've known for years are familiar with: the 4554 Metro Station. Aunt Debbie (hey - did I ever give her the address for this blog?) gave me this set when I graduated Kindergarten. My friend Steven (who I know is reading this) did a mod of this set with me when he was over some years back. I don't have any photos of that version, but it was built on a grey 15" square baseplate, had yellow walls all the way around and red walls inside - it changed the set from a simple station to a Train line headquarters, with several offices for various train officials. There wasn't a proper roof for that mod, but it worked well for a little while. I don't recall when I took that apart (probably during one of the moves), but I never did reattach the station to the base it originally came with.

I've previously mentioned here and elsewhere that I got my hands on some nice little bits of glass that I thought would make good windows for gigantic minifig-scale models - such as a shopping mall or European train station. I forget where I read it, but I seem to recall some more dedicated train fan explaining that the official set has that sort of European look already, so it wasn't hard to decide that that would be a fun project. Of course, if it were truly built similar to the Brussels station I was thinking of, there would be two trains that would have their lines end in the station - and for a display that won't be pre-programmed or micromanaged, it's better to set it up so that the train can go all the way through instead.

I hope to eventually come up with a solution that will be modular in Cafe-Corner fashion (and thus be easy to adjust to a few different shapes), but for now, it's going to just be this long, rough, open-to-the-rear shape. I hope to give it a real roof soon too.

Brickshelf link: http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=319892

Hmm - looks like some other WIP stuff got in in the background.

Off-Topic: IRC.peeron.com used for XKCD?

EDIT 1/1/2009: The subdomain points to an unrelated server. A bit more explanation is provided in the comments to this post.

I'm guessing that this isn't what it looks like, but it looks like the popular LEGO set inventory website Peeron.com might be hosting an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server and a geohashing script based on a webcomic. I feel kind of silly about being guilted into visiting the LEGO shop online through their links now that it looks like they're giving away bandwidth for something like that. Of course, now there's this magic link:

BrickLink Store Name?

I thought I'd get the grunt work out of the way today so that I could work on listing a few LEGO things for sale during the week. I'm not sure, though, what I want to name my store. I'm open to any suggestions - the only rule is that we're not allowed to have "LEGO" in a store's name.

Exciting Times

So I've been having a good share of excitement in the few days since my schedule started to open up again. Haven't done too much that people would notice on the computer - most of the online work I've done has been related to getting set up to sell things on various sites (I'm a new LinkShare affilliate now and by the end of the week I hope to be MetaExchange seller and BrickLink seller). The LinkShare thing will start appearing on my blogs in the near future.

Speaking of which, I might try to pick up music blogging again. One of the best parts of living in North Carolina this past week was a pair of free Arcade Fire shows. Arcade Fire has been one of the hottest bands around for the last couple years, and last year around this time I seriously considered paying $90 plus gas for a 12 hour round trip to see them. Now that NC matters for a primary, and both me and the band are Barack Obama supporters, they decided to throw a free concert at an Obama rally for all of us who are early voters (the official primary was yesterday, but I voted the previous Tuesday). Arcade Fire played a full set, covering half of Funeral and most of the highlights from Neon Bible, and they also did a cover of David Bowie's "Heroes". I'll go into more details if/when I get Unfound Bloom back in shape, but that project probably isn't going to improve much in the near future.

After that awesome show in Carrboro on Friday, I stopped by Durham to visit Sandy and trade some LEGO^® parts. His WIP buildings are all excellent, but that's to be expected at this point. I got the Destroyer Droids parts I wanted (along with the book and box to complete the set, and some nice extra parts), and I gave him some Ninja minifigs, parts from larger UFO sets (I've somehow managed to buy the entire UFO line used once over without ever getting enough parts to complete one of the better sets), Harry Potter books, a HTF Bionicle part and some tan cylinder portions.

Saturday turned out well, too. I bought the perfect piece of electronics for a larger project I'm working on (I'm keeping the project secret for now). I got it free at a church sale, but it works and I've already successfully gotten some basic stuff working with it. I also grabbed a nice new shelf - it was apparently a child-size shoe rack originally, but it's the right size for small storage bins and for smaller models and sets. I'm primarily putting long-term storage in the back and small models in the front - this is trickling down throughout the room, with larger shelfs now not having anything small on them, and lots of little things clearing up other storage areas. The only downside is that the perfect spot for the new shelf is where I had been storing stock to sell on the MetaExchange. So now I have to really hurry up and get some stuff sold.

I've been doing quite a bit of building and cleaning lately. My LEGO area is unrecognizable right now. The Cafe Corner and the Destroyer Droid are both finished. The 2xX storage unit that I put together 5 years ago (man - I hadn't realized it's been so long. I think it's been another 3 years since it's been accessible) went back up on the wall this morning. Lots of storage and display space is being juggled around.

OK, a few days have passed since I started writing this so I'll just put it up as-is for now. With any luck I'll get around to posting some other stuff soon too.

Things to Discuss with the LUG

This is more of a note-to-self kind of thing, but if any of these ideas catch your attention, feel free to comment.

List of things to discuss with the LUG:

• 12-high stilts for town, DUPLO, PRIMO, and QUATRO versions of these - 5/15 - this will be joined by DUPLO characters!
• Is NCLTC still around? Mike Walsh cleared this up.
• Destroyer Droid parts (trade with Sandy) - apparently most of the parts Sandy wants that I did have extra of aren't available anymore. I hope this photo doesn't leak too much of the stuff I'd like to finish soon. I am taking roofing suggestions, though, if you have any. I suppose I'll also field a few questions after people do the inevitable zoom-in-and-spot-the-parts-and-ideas-game. - 5/15 - we completed the trade, as per the 5/9 post.
• Are the tables at DGXPO really only going to be wide enough to hold just one 32x32 baseplate? That's going to make building a decent town a bit difficult. I misread the original announcement - that's 12 FEET by 30 inches, not 12 inches by 30 inches.
• When is Joe Meno leaving us for WAMALUG? False alarm. Is Team Joe sitting out DGXPO for another event? - 5/15 - Brickworld.
• Am I allowed to "cheat" and use non-LEGO parts in a group layout? I'm interested in using real panes of glass to build a large minifig-scale model (such as a shopping mall or European-style train station). Also, I have some suspicious looking 2x2 trans-dark-blue tiles that may or may not be clone-brand.
• Is anybody else interested in doing Aquazone, Space, Pirates, Batman, Star Wars, Star Wars Technic Droids, Mindstorms (NXT or otherwise), Castle, Rock Raiders, or Great Ball Contraption at DGXPO? Since I'm going to miss a large chunk of the show day, I want to focus on stuff I know that other people are interested in doing (or perhaps arranging to split a table between two themes) so that my stuff still has an eye on it all day. Otherwise, I'll only bring in town stuff, Bionicle sets, and a stripped-down version of the history display (which reminds me, I still owe our visitor from last December an e-mail - and come to think of it, I owe the Apex FLL coach an e-mail still too.)
• Does anyone have any of the sets/people from the LEGO ISLAND video game? That might be a nice theme tie-in. I could have sworn that I had a Brickster minifig, but I could only find a Brickster keychain when I actually went to look for him (of course, I could probably work that in anyway...but I don't actually have a police station for a town either - could we work in a way to put him in a helicopter above the town?)
• We should plan on a one-table Bionicle display - I have enough sets to do a decent one (although I will also likely be parting out my largest Bionicle set into a town building, just to show off ways to make "stupid" parts useful).
• The refurbished Keebler elf will have black shoes instead of brown ones. Deal with it.
• When we say we're "booked" for a show, does that mean there's money involved? If so, who gets it? (Just curious - although I would love to make some money off of the hobby)
• April meeting? (it looks like we're fishing for a location at the moment) I really ought to pick up the phone and see about booking a library.
• Will there be a train yard at DGXPO? Who will build it? I kind of want to try some of the ideas out of the old train idea book (I like the crane and the automatic unloading in particular). Someday, I'd like to see about automated freight loading that makes a "normal" town secretly a giant Great Ball Contraption.
• New slope bricks in Beach House set (visible in this photo - look closely at the difference in texture and the smudges on the 2x2s)
• Alternate beach house platform (probably won't be used)
• I have an extra chassis / remote combo from the first RC Racer set - I'd like to have this out for kids to play with at our events. Anyone want to build something on top of it?

I'll probably edit this as I think of other things / send e-mails to solve some of these. I did a big edit of this on April 26th, for example.`Another May 15th.