Ok, it is the holiday lull... unless you chose to ship FBM this year! So, a diversion is in order.

I have been planning on building a city for a while, and it is nearly time.  To be honest, I resell lego just to fund my lego city account.  Our basement is almost done, (I will start building new lego tables in January) and I have an area, not as large as I would like, but much bigger than nothing!  So I am building a tiered city, using Eureka Springs, Arkansas as my inspiration It. It is built into the side of an Ozark Mountain, and it very "tiered".

I would love to see all of your layouts for inspiration, so post them below!

 I will try to update my progress on here as I go.  Here is a photo of our build area, that will move to be next to the new city. (side note: if anyone has a good strategy to get an 8 year old master builder to clean up after himself... I would love to hear it!)

 

.... (side note: if anyone has a good strategy to get an 8 year old master builder to clean up after himself... I would love to hear it!)
 

I am a 40+ year old Master Builder and I cannot even clean up after myself, so good luck!

My town. Fit a kwik e mart under the theater expansion.

My goal is to build my city into a coffee table. I wanted something that I could drop modulars into as well as design my own. I also needed a train because what is a Lego city without a train. I'm currently working to modify the Hogwarts express to fit under my arch way. Soon I'll start adding lighting. I am now considering expanding the city and going away from the coffee table idea. I also sell Lego to fund the habit. 

Edited December 12, 20205 yr by Jbad87

In the mean time I am working through some problems/opportunities. 
 We will have trains, and I would prefer that they aren’t just on the first level. But... lego trains and inclines... so, my son and I were testing some solutions for adding a drive motor that would constantly run, but only engage when on the inclines... sort of like a cog railway. Video is too big... you can se it here: https://oneoriginalthing.com/2020/12/16/lego-cog-railway-and-mold-destruction/

16 minutes ago, House Schubert said:

In the mean time I am working through some problems/opportunities. 
 We will have trains, and I would prefer that they aren’t just on the first level. But... lego trains and inclines... so, my son and I were testing some solutions for adding a drive motor that would constantly run, but only engage when on the inclines... sort of like a cog railway. Video is too big... you can se it here: https://oneoriginalthing.com/2020/12/16/lego-cog-railway-and-mold-destruction/

That is clever!

This is a picture of my city during a scenery switch back when adding service station modular. I don't yet have any city pics I'm super proud of just yet but may as well share anyway.

One flat plate rise per track length and no corners while climbing but my trains usually make it up to next level with just a little slipping.

Got some Christmas light up:)

1 hour ago, Belac said:

Got some Christmas light up:)

I see you added the Red Light District. 

Framer’s have been here all week, and tomorrow they start demo of the interior to join the new with the old... supposed to be Christmas Eve and 12 degrees in the AM... we have greattiming. 

So here is a pic of the Lego table all shrink wrapped and boxed up, ready to get packed away until the new build table and lego city area is ready...
 

So, the house is almost framed, and the basement lego area is looking good... only 2 months till everything is done and we are all back in and the city can begin.  Meanwhile, I am also moving our shop, so I had to consolidate all of our "home" lego in to one corner so we can move everything out... Here it is... all of the backlog and sorted parts...

 

4 hours ago, House Schubert said:

So, the house is almost framed, and the basement lego area is looking good... only 2 months till everything is done and we are all back in and the city can begin.  Meanwhile, I am also moving our shop, so I had to consolidate all of our "home" lego in to one corner so we can move everything out... Here it is... all of the backlog and sorted parts...

 

well, that's one way to keep the dust off your Lego

10 hours ago, gmpirate said:

well, that's one way to keep the dust off your Lego

Lego is currently the ONLY thing in my life not currently covered with a thick layer of dust! Priorities. 

Ok, it may seem hard to believe, since, when I started this topic (in December) we already had a foundation poured. But, it is true, we just got our final inspection on Thursday and have been moving in basically all week. 
 

I promised to share progress, so here it is. The first picture of the new Lego area.  We have agreed that I have a 9’ x 14’ Area for the city and build desk. The ceilings are just shy of 9 feet. I think I’m gonna pop a time lapse camera up Soon so I can capture The process from raw concrete basement to Finished Lego area.

 

 

Edited May 16, 20214 yr by House Schubert

Over the pandemic, I got back into Lego; originally as an activity with my son who is train obsessed. In March, we began finishing our basement in the Boston suburbs and created a 13' x 12' Lego room with a 4 x 4 walk-in closet. It's almost setup now. I put a lot of time into thinking about the table layout: I wanted to be able to eventually display our 16 modulars and three fairground sets with enough room for a train loop around the perimeter. I settled on a modified U shape since it makes everything pretty accessible within a 30" reach. I can detail out the specs if anyone is interested. For now, my son is having fun building his own layout while I'm waiting for a shipment of 16x16 bright green plates from Bricks & Pieces. On our next trip to Ikea, I'm going to get some more storage for under the tables. The other side of the room has storage and a building table. I'm quickly seeing that the closet is too small for the growing number of unassembled sets, some of which are to keep and others as an investment.  I snapped some photos before leaving for work but I'm not sure how to upload them since it looks like they need to be hosted on another site. 

PS - I tried to upload a couple photos from links I generated from Amazon photos, but I kept getting an error. Can anyone point me to the right site to use for photo sharing? Thanks much!

1 hour ago, StLBrian said:

Over the pandemic, I got back into Lego; originally as an activity with my son who is train obsessed. In March, we began finishing our basement in the Boston suburbs and created a 13' x 12' Lego room with a 4 x 4 walk-in closet. It's almost setup now. I put a lot of time into thinking about the table layout: I wanted to be able to eventually display our 16 modulars and three fairground sets with enough room for a train loop around the perimeter. I settled on a modified U shape since it makes everything pretty accessible within a 30" reach. I can detail out the specs if anyone is interested. For now, my son is having fun building his own layout while I'm waiting for a shipment of 16x16 bright green plates from Bricks & Pieces. On our next trip to Ikea, I'm going to get some more storage for under the tables. The other side of the room has storage and a building table. I'm quickly seeing that the closet is too small for the growing number of unassembled sets, some of which are to keep and others as an investment.  I snapped some photos before leaving for work but I'm not sure how to upload them since it looks like they need to be hosted on another site. 

PS - I tried to upload a couple photos from links I generated from Amazon photos, but I kept getting an error. Can anyone point me to the right site to use for photo sharing? Thanks much!

I think you have to have more content on the site before you unlock the photo capability...

 

I would love to see the specs.  I have spent a lot of time in the last few weeks musing on what the layout should look like.  I think at this point I am going to build the build table, and place a lot of the under table storage, and then start experimenting before I commit to building the layout table.

 

I decided to go the Ikea route because the tables are easily re-configurable. My eventual plan is to put four rows of four modulars together with a street running down the middle and around the edges. Adding space for the train track, that's about 65" x 70." I decided to go with three Lagkapten 47" x 23" tables sandwiched together to give me a 47" x 70" square. Along the back side of the room, I joined the square to a 134" x 23" rectangle section made of two 39" x 23" Linnmon tables and one 55 x 23." (Incidentally, the Lagkapten and Linnmon are interchangeable). That gives me an L shape with a 70" x 70" surface for the city with an additional 64" x 23" surface. To create the other end of the U shape, I used a 60" x 29" Linnmon that it looks like they don't sell anymore. Note that you need 30" in with to create a turnaround on the table. That gives me about 3 feet of walking space in between a 83" x 29" surface (which will fit the Roller Coaster, Carousel & Ferris Wheel) and the 70" x 70" space for the city. There's enough room between the edge of the city and the wall so I can walk the full length of it and I can access the other side of the city via the opening in the U shape. I currently have one 1x3 Trofast underneath which stores track and road plates. Eventually I will add a second and a 1 x 4 Kallax for additional storage.

On the other side, I used a 78" x 23" Lagkapten for my building table (enough to hold two stacks of Arko Mills organizers + space to hold projects in process, etc. Next to it I have a 2 x 4 Kallax placed horizontal with the glass shelf inserts, which allows me to take full advantage of the space for shorter sets. Around the room, I have eight Bergshult shelves for smaller collections with their Granhult brackets. 

I found that buying a ClosetMaid kit from Home Depot is the cheapest way to go for storage if you're looking to also take credit for the room as a bedroom (needs some closet rods). So I went with their 5' - 8' kit (item 8809) from Amazon. I augmented it with a couple 16" wide shelves and brackets, which work fine with the uprights which come with the kit. The space is enough for all my unopened personal and investment sets, but it looks like you'll need more shelving. On the ground, I am using a couple map boxes to hold flattened boxes for the sets I have built. 

Hope this helps give you some ideas. Good luck with your project!

PS - I previously constructed a train table using 2 x 4s and a plywood top. It would work fine but I wanted the access space created by the U shape, which I could easily achieve with the Ikea tables. Also, the price of wood has really shyrocketed, so I'm not sure how much cheaper it would be now to build vs. buy the Ikea tables. 

Finally figured out how to upload photos. Hope my previous post made sense without them.


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Ooh, if we're sharing... This is how a 2 year old plays with trains. Yes, that's an Emerald night (the green train as it calls it). He rotates through the ones in the box daily as well as the carriages.

I had a 7937 station out against the wall but started putting in away one night and he asked where his train tunnel went. He calls the dk. blue gray round bricks bombs, because that's what the castle catapult uses, and his whales eat the bull from the 60052.

I offered him the box of trains or a brand new train set in storage and he picked the one with all the trains, smart kid. Now that I think about it, I don't know where he put the remote and did you know that rechargeable battery packs are over $100 a piece now! Crazy.

Yay LEGO!

15 hours ago, redghostx said:

Ooh, if we're sharing... This is how a 2 year old plays with trains. Yes, that's an Emerald night (the green train as it calls it). He rotates through the ones in the box daily as well as the carriages.

I had a 7937 station out against the wall but started putting in away one night and he asked where his train tunnel went. He calls the dk. blue gray round bricks bombs, because that's what the castle catapult uses, and his whales eat the bull from the 60052.

I offered him the box of trains or a brand new train set in storage and he picked the one with all the trains, smart kid. Now that I think about it, I don't know where he put the remote and did you know that rechargeable battery packs are over $100 a piece now! Crazy.

Yay LEGO!
 

Love it! Great collection. There's an Emerald Night hiding on one of the tables on our layout, but it's Bricklink'd. As is the Santa Fe with all the coach cars (I think they look just fine black wheels & modern magnates; plus the replacement decals from OK Brickworks really make a difference).

Yeah, I was disappointed when Power Functions were officially discontinued at the end of 2020. Since then the prices for all the components have gone through the roof. We got the Powered Up green diesel and it seems to drain the batteries far quicker than any of our Power Functions trains. My son does love the sounds though...

Busted open the 7 month old shrink-wrapped pallet of sorted Lego today, so that I could experiment with the correct height for tables based on the height of our sterlite drawers.  
 

I can’t express to you all how excited this makes me. It’s better than buying bitcoin below $40,000. 

On 5/18/2021 at 3:02 PM, StLBrian said:

Finally figured out how to upload photos. Hope my previous post made sense without them.


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Wow, talk about falling hard back into something again.  Nice setup.  Wish I had the space.

Thanks for the specs STLBrian... I think I’ve seen your IG account. 
 

I looked at all the IKEA stuff, and almost pulled the trigger, But then our local IKEA was out of everything I wanted,  and there were a few things I didn’t love, So I went the custom route. 
 

24 inches deep, 8 feet long, just high enough to fit three-3 drawer sterlite containers underneath.  Three-quarter inch particleboard covered with melamine, 1 1/4 inch angle iron around the 3 edges, and 1 inch square tube legs all welded together. I attached 2 inch angle To the concrete wall with tapcons to support the back side.

The angle iron around the edges serves two purposes. The first is that it makes the table stiff enough with minimal legs to maximize the storage area. The other purpose is that it sticks up above the surface of the table about a quarter inch. I did that on our old build table, and it’s super convenient to keep things from sliding off the edge.

I was going to build the city table at the same time, but then I realized I need to do a lot of prototyping to decide what’s gonna work and how we want to construct the city. So for now just the build table and a folding table for experiments.
 

I started a time lapse video. If it turns out ok I’ll post it. 

Time lapse of my day today... The boy was building from the second we brought bin's in, the girl spent some time building minifigs, and the wife said "I'm gonna build that Bonsai tree tomorrow".  I didn't know how much we missed it! Now all we need is: more parts, more drawers, more tables, and more time. MOARRRRR!

On 5/19/2021 at 1:43 PM, StLBrian said:

Yeah, I was disappointed when Power Functions were officially discontinued at the end of 2020. Since then the prices for all the components have gone through the roof. We got the Powered Up green diesel and it seems to drain the batteries far quicker than any of our Power Functions trains. My son does love the sounds though...

I think I am going to switch to 9v and put copper tape on all the rails... I just get so tired of the battery changing!