So I set up my LEGO Christmas display once again this year:

LEGO Winter Village Post Office

Click to see the gallery; just a few pictures, nothing special and nothing particularly original, mostly just either the LEGO holiday sets and some pieces from LEGO Advent calendars of years gone by.

I did, however, have the opportunity to try out my ME Model 9V replacement rails.  The set I bought was double length bagged set with brown ties.  The bagged set doesn’t include the seven 2×8 tiles needed to complete the look, but since purchasing these last spring I’ve been adding 2×8 brown tiles to my bricklink orders, and now have a pretty good number of them; a plastic shoe storage box about half full after setting up these rails.  ME still doesn’t have curved pieces available; it’s a shame because I only have dark gray 9V curves, so while I have more than I’ll probably ever need (they were readily available – and cheap – when they were discontinued), they don’t match the brown I opted for when I purchased the ME rails.  Moreover, the plans are to offer wider radius curves as well.

ME Rails Connected to LEGO Rails

The rails are fully compatible with the existing LEGO 9V (and non powered) rails.  The metal connects securely and I had no problem running the 9V holiday train on the track.  The rails are not perfect, though.  Occasionally the LEGO plates fit in a little bit too easily, but much more often the LEGO was an incredibly tight fit.  With all the pieces together, there’s no fear that it will come apart, though, and I don’t plan on taking the ties off the rails, so it’s not an issue.

The ME rails came with metal tape to help make a sure connection between rail segments, but I found it (thankfully) unnecessary, and don’t plan on using it.

If you’re still a 9V hold out, check out what ME Models has to offer; as I write this curves are still not available, and the longest rails are sold out, but they offer sets that go anywhere from half LEGO track size to quadruple LEGO track size in either brown or gray.  You can opt to get boxed instead of bagged sets, which include the 2×8 plates in the color you need.  I’m personally looking forward to getting a lot more of these when the quad size is available again, or when curves are finally available.

ME Models should also be applauded for trying to come up with a complete 9V replacement system for LEGO.  Whether they succeed in having replacement components for all the 9V parts or not, I’m glad someone is trying.  The power function trains are just fine; in fact, if you go to the photo-stream in the link I gave above, you should be able to see the Toy Story 3 train making an appearance on my layout.  It’s been modded to included a AAA battery pack and PF motor, and runs really well, but generally speaking I am much happier without having to deal with batteries or figuring out how to work them, and the infrared receiver, into a train.  I find batteries problematic also because I so rarely get to set up loop to run on; the battery pack I used last spring to mod the Toy Story train already was having battery leakage problems.  Yes, I should have taken them out… but no, I didn’t mix batteries, so it shouldn’t really have happened.

Bottom line: I was considering the flex track using O-gauge tracks and modified 2×8 plates, as described in one of my first posts about LEGO trains, but find this is a great, much more professional, and cleaner looking solution.

Aside from the cool little vignettes one can make with the LEGO collectible minifigures, I’ve finally received the cases I ordered from The Container Store.  My last post included links to the Eurobricks article that pointed out the availability of these cases, and already has some new discussions about a new LEGO® licensed display case that was on display at the current (as of the time of this writing) Toy Fair in New York.  The following is from FBTB.net’s photo stream:

These displays are interesting – they are very much in keeping with the LEGO® style; they are stackable, and they include enough room for even large accessories, although I think my fisherman holding up his fishing rod probably wouldn’t fit, and I note that they put the skier in sideways in order to make him fit while wearing his skis (you’ll have to take a look at the photo stream).  Each section seems to be large enough to hold a 4×6 plate, which makes it possible to create a very mini vignette for some figures.  These are a lot better than the laughable cases created by The LEGO® Group.  They were laughable because they could hold 15 figures and were released around the same time as Series 1 (sixteen figures per series);  to be fair, I don’t think they were planning on it being used just for CMFs, but it did seem a bit awkward.

Personally, I haven’t made up my mind about these new licensed cases. FBTB indicates it looks like the target prices is $24 for one of these, which seems a bit pricey compared to the display cases from the Container Store being discussed on Eurobricks.

For the record, I finally received mine (as noted above) and finally spent some time setting it up.  I measured out the space in the case… it’s a perfect fit, depth-wise, at 16 studs.  Length-wise is disappointing, coming in at about 31 studs… not quite enough to fit a 16×32 baseplate (or two 16×16 baseplates).  The height of each riser is also just between the height of a plate off, which means building up a LEGO® base would be… awkward.  So I took out my piles and piles of Collectible Minifigure (CMF) baseplates and, being 4 studs wide, fixed seven of them on each of the two risers and on the base of the case itself using Elmer’s Tack (although any tack/putty would do):

Even if you’re terrible at math you can figure out that 21 is a terrible number for CMFs that come 16 in a series… this was just a first attempt, I believe I will remove one plate from the middle row and recenter (or, more likely, just remove a figure and slide the others over by 2 studs) to fit 20 in a case.  Four cases will exactly equal the five planned series, then, and as you can see from the picture below, I’m not particularly interested in grouping them by series as much as I am interested in grouping them by themes:

I love the way this looks.  I have only two cases, but will order at least two more; we also know now what’s coming in Series 4 and 5, so it’s possible to plan ahead and make room amongst the figures we already have to place them by theme.  These cases are stackable, too, and will be able to display many more figures in the same amount of shelf space as the licensed ones.

For those who haven’t seem them yet, there are two more Eurobrick threads, here for series 4 and here for series 5, where you can see what’s coming in the CMFs.

Series 3 Collectible Minifigures (CMFs):

So series 3 CMFs arrived last month; in reality I was able to buy these even before Christmas at our local Toys R Us, and before New Years at our local LEGO Store.

Many are calling series 3 the weakest series so far, but I don’t know if that’s really true.  Not only do we have a strong contender for a piece most desired in multiples (the Elf, compared to series 2 Spartans), but s3 has it’s own historical fighting figure in the Samurai; sports figures are well represented with the baseball player, tennis player, snow boarder and race car driver, with females being well represented.  You might add the Sumo to that group; depending on how you want to lump the figures together, the Sumo could join the Samurai, Ninja, and Martial Artist… or the Luchador from series 1.

The movie monster trend continues with the mummy, who joins the vampire (s2) and zombie (s1), and ostensibly the witch (s2) as well, and perhaps something a bit less obvious… the gorilla suit guy.  Series 5 seems like it will bring us someone in a Godzilla type suit, and I can foresee several movie MOCs in my future.

One other figure I find very interesting is the Hula girl.  First, the grass skirt is an interesting addition to LEGO parts.  Hula girls, from what I’ve seen, actually rarely use maracas, they have a sort of pom-pom or “feather duster” implement, as well as leis and other plant made decorations (arm and ankle bracelets).  Mixing up the faces and using a number of sumos and hula dancers, I was able to make this little MOC:

It’s been updated since, I added a Hula and changed around some more hair, but there are definitely interesting possibilities… it seems like we’ll be getting an Elvis-like figure in the future, so use your imagination.

One more thing, while I’m on the subject – there was discussion at Eurobricks about how to display your minifigures; the links I’m going to give are all contained in that article, for brevity I’m going to repost some of them; user DrNightmare wrote a review on his blog about using AMAC containers for display purposes.  For the record, here are AMAC made boxes that we bought gaming dice in from a gaming store.  They were nice enough and cheap enough that they prompted me to buy a handful of entirely clear ones for displaying single figures in:

There’s a problem with the large lids; I use them upside down and need to build a slight base up in order to avoid have the line between the container top and base interfere with viewing the figure; but read the review linked to above if you’re interested at all, there are some interesting ideas and more details.

I bought a couple of other display boxes from the Container Store described in the Eurobricks posts, and have a feeling I’ll need to work with them a bit to get something I’ll be happy with, which I’ll talk about later.   Of course there are a large variety of boxes for displays – figures, MOCs, sets – easy way to make displays look great and safe from dust, and they don’t cost much at all.

Thanks to all the %$hole spammers out there.

The advent calendars are available to buy this morning, as are all the Harry Potter sets (although they are pre-orders). The minifigures are on “back order,” which means, to me, they are sold out.

While LEGO Shop@Home has finally put up Series 2 Collectible Minifigures for sale, what’s more interesting to me is what isn’t for sale… yet.

Last year we were treated with the Winter Toy Shop as our holiday treat along the usual City Advent Calendar; from what I understand, the Winter Toy Shop will be back with us this year, but what’s more interesting (since I already have the Toy Shop), is the Winter Village Bakery, a companion set that looks to out-do last year’s fantastic set.  Now, that set has been listed for some time (not available for order until October, however).  But today they have added:

• City Advent Calendar
• Kingdoms Advent Calendar (yes, the other Advent Calendar that they seem to not want to sell in the U.S.)

I’ve not been buying the Advent Calendars the past few years, but the Kingdoms Calendar seems especially good this year, and there’s always cool little things in the City Calendar, so I’ll be getting both… possibly two Kingdoms Advent Calendars.

Also finally making an appearance are some sets I’ve been waiting years for… Harry Potter.  I had a sort-of mini dark ages the past few years, and even when I was getting back into LEGO as an adult, I was only interested in Trains and Star Wars… I’m not really too thrilled about Star Wars anymore, but feel terrible about just passing on all that was Harry Potter.  But now they are releasing new versions of pretty much every set I missed that I wanted:

• Hogwarts Express
• Hogwarts Castle
• Hagrid’s Hut
• The Burrow (this is a completely new one)

Just to be complete, I’ll list the other ones, but I’m not personally too interested in them:

• Freeing Dobby
• Quiddich Match

Exciting times for Harry Potter/LEGO fans…. if you’re a LEGO enthusiast, you already knew these sets were coming, but now that they actually appear on the Shop@Home site, it’s getting exciting!

There’s been more discussion on 9V trains at Eurobricks, and some people get passionate about the most insignificant things which can lead to a lot of hard feelings… it’s just LEGO!

If you want to be a pragmatic LEGO Train Enthusiast, then you have to accept that 9V is gone and PF is here. I do have some problems with it, it’s true, but the one good thing, in my opinion, that comes from using the PF M, XL, or E motors is that even if The LEGO Group (TLG) discontinues those motors, there will likely be drop in replacements.  I guess I’m not entirely pragmatic, but I have accepted that my future trains will need to be PF powered.

A lot of people seem to think that the latest powered train bogey from LEGO (the one that comes with the two new trains released this summer) should be called PF for no better reason than the PF connector has been integrated into the unit. But TLG told us that the were trying to make a set of functional pieces that would work across a variety of lines to help “amortize” the cost of development and allow larger (therefore cheaper) runs of production. While I’m disappointed about the death of 9V, the business decision is sound and logical… so why make a powered train bogey? Why make something specific to the train line?

LEGO train enthusiasts have already created bogeys that can swivel and are powered by the standard PF motors… the Emerald Night is powered by an XL motor. It seems to me this is the direction TLG implied trains were going. I think there is a conflating of different lines of parts by TLG. The power functions website generally shows what we had all accepted up to this point were the PF components. Yet, in a separate section, they actually show the older 9V RC train motor… simply because it can be connected to PF via a cable.

So is the new motor PF? Not in my opinion, but then it’s just my opinion. For the record, BrickLink lists it as a 9V RC motor with integrated PF attachment. I agree with that description, but it’s sort of a pointless discussion, it doesn’t matter what I call it; what matters is that the stated goal, from this correspondence:

Using the LEGO Power Functions system the new train system will benefit from a set of electric elements that are cross theme, widely available and not completely train specific which allows us to amortize the development and on going cost across multiple themes.

That doesn’t seem to fit the powered train bogey in anywhere, but nevertheless, the objective is an interesting one – I believe TLG can and will simply drop powered bogeys out of production at any kind of whim or decision from accountants, or for whatever reason they want… because they are train specific parts and they can’t leverage their production across other themes.

My advice to people powering their train MOCs (or LEGO trains) is, if you want to “future proof” yourself from the whims of TLG, then design your locomotion using one of the “generic” motors… M or XL. I don’t know enough about the “E” motor to comment on it. If TLG redesigns the motors in the future, it’s a much safer bet that the redesigns will fit in the the space required for an M or XL motor (or less), than it is to bet that TLG will continue selling powered bogeys forever.

For reference, LEGO train master extraordinaire, Anthony Sava, wrote an article for RailBricks describing such a bogey.

Lately I’ve run into the problem of describing the scale of my modular castle. I’ve updated the blog post to include the phrase “microfigure scale,” as the scale is based around the official LEGO® “Microfigure,” which is 1×1x2 . I think this disambiguates from the generic term “micro,” which is often applied by LEGO® enthusiasts to mean anything less than minifigure scale.

“Official” LEGO® scales:

• Minfigure: minifigures were released in 1978, an update to a 1974 figure of the same scale. Most LEGO® play-sets are built to minifigure scale, and because this is the most common scale, most people don’t explicitly say “minifigure” scale, they just use the phrase “LEGO scale.”
• Mini: the first use by TLG (The LEGO® Group), that I’m aware of, was for the Star Wars “minis” that was used for the very small Star Wars models that were first released in 2003. They may have used the term before, but it’s the first I was aware of. Subsequently I’d seen other sets labeled at “mini,” including trains and jets. The label was applied sometimes to other sets that were actually minifigure sets, but with very small vehicles.
• Micro: TLG applied the term “Micro” to, as I write this, two sets that I can find: “Micro Wheels,” a tiny truck and forklift, and the very interesting “Micro building set,” which I’d never heard of until just now…
• Midi: TLG created a “new” official scale in 2009 with the “Midi” scale Millennium Falcon, and continued that size on into 2010 with the midi scale Star Destroyer.
• Microfigure: (as opposed to simply “micro”) were new figures released in some of the new line of games released early in 2010. These “figures” are 1×1x2 (length x width x height).

So what do they mean? Minifigure scale means, of course, things (vehicles, buildings, etc.) built to accommodate minifigures.

As far as I can tell, in official LEGO® nomenclature, the other scales refer to the general size of the models and have nothing to do with scale. The mini TIE Fighter and X-Wing, for example, scale well with the midi Millennium Falcon… but the Falcon is a much larger and more detailed set. Of course, there’s a mini Millennium Falcon, too… which is about the same size as the mini X-Wing… as a scale size, they don’t make sense (as a little collectible set of ships, though, they are just perfect). The most interesting thing to me this year is those microfigures from the games, and whether TLG cares to refer to anything as “microfigure scale” or not doesn’t matter to me… microfigure is now an official LEGO® term with a specific meaning, just like minifigure, so the scale is now fixed.

Of course, even with TLG’s minifigure sets, scale only refers to the fact they are built to accomodate minifigures – the sets themselves do not match in scale. Something like the Death Star would be the size of a football stadium in actual minifigure scale, if not larger. The Millennium Falcon playset would have to be the size of a typical kitchen table to scale with the X-Wing and TIE Fighter play sets. Obviously they play loose with scale… who can afford a $5000 Millenniun Falcon just so it can be to scale with their $30 TIE Fighter?

The community of LEGO® enthusiasts also has fairly loose definitions, with “micro” traditionally meaning “any scale smaller than minifigure.” I think this should change, personally, but I can’t change the community. To disambiguate on my own MOCs, though, I think the terms that should be used are:

• Minifigure (and absent any given size, minifigure would be assumed).
• Microfifgure: a scale based on an average person being 1×1 by 2 bricks high.
• Micro: anything smaller than minifigure scale… this makes “micro” a superset of “microfigure,” with microfigure just being a term used to explicitly describe the scale.

Always open to ideas, though.

Just an update with a few pictures from the microfigure scale castle project. I’ve built a number of wall sections and towers, and am nearly finished with the outer walls. I will need buildings to fill up inside, and inspired by this thread at Eurobricks, decided I need to add a large army of “tinyfigs.” I’d seen these little microfigures before, but I think these are the best I’ve seen. I will need to update mine to be as good, but I still like my tiny horses.

Castle Work in Progress

Entryway with some Tinyfigs and Horses

Tinyfig Wizard and Tinyfig Horses

I’m working on changing the towers… square towers with square roofs, round towers with round roofs. Will need to order a few parts. Also discovered the hard way that the new 2×2 macaroni pieces are not stackable, so ordered some older ones (with open bottoms) from bricklink. The tinyfigs need weapons, and it seems that minifigure knives work well as swords. I will need to wait before ordering some, though, as well as 6×6 dishes I need to do the round roofs, as I spent a bit too much money on LEGO this past week, ordering a complete set of series 1 collectible minifigures, which wasn’t cheap… for the record, neither Toys R Us, the LEGO Store, or any Targets near me had them available either in person or online by the time I looked (I was on vacation in June).

I will add a barracks, a stable (I’d like to do a lot more horses… I like my tiny horses a lot more than the ones I’ve seen online), and because I’m keeping the the four towered structure that I made with my daughter (although with some modifications), I am thinking of a back story. I’ve already made a little princess tinyfig.

I’ve been inspired by a thread over at Eurobricks. The discussion is about what we would like to see from TLG in the castle theme. Frankly, while I loved Fantasy Era, and while I wish they would continue it for a little while longer so that we can build up our characters for Lord of the Rings MOCs, the new theme, “Kingdoms” sounds like a winner. There are no orcs, no trolls, no dwarves… just a more realistic human versus human theme. Which ones are the good guys? Like real life, that’s up to you – history is written by the winners, after all.

But the discussion veered towards generic “modular” castle sets. I was inspired by the community build, also on Eurobricks, and a lot of discussion in the first thread I mention in this post. I don’t have enough pieces (or space) to make a minifigure scale modular castle. Instead, hot off the mini-trains, I figured I could do it in mini scale.

I find the terminology confusing… minis usually refer to something smaller than minifigure scale. In this case, though, we have some relatively new pieces from TLG found in some of the games. I’m referring to what they call “microfigures.” I bought a Minotaurus game, and it comes with 12 microfigures (3 each in four colors). So I’m going to call this scale “microfigure scale.”

Here are the first five modules… two wall sections, two small towers, and a gate.

Using the technic pins to hold the modules together, here’s what we get.

Notice the microfigures standing guard. Here’s a close-up of the gate; the two doors open.

Corner tower from the inside. I’ve added battlements, not shown in this particular picture.

The thread discussing the modular castles raised the question of whether modules should be joined by technic pins, as I’d been doing, or hinge bricks. Since hinge bricks separate, the modularity would remain fairly generic. But I had a thought the other night; why not do both? This next picture shows three wall sections joined by two “hinge bridges.” The hinge-bridge is simply a small hinged section that can be put between any two of the larger modular sections.

The round 1×1 bricks are used to “hide” the awkward looking section left by the hinges. If you were to have a larger angle, you could instead use 2×2 bricks… something I’ll have to get a picture of.

A wall section next to two hinge bridges… front and back. You could make the hinge go the other way simply by changing the way the battlements face.

So that’s all I have for now. I’m going to finish off a few modules that I have enough pieces for, but I’m waiting for a couple of new bricklink orders to really help flesh it out. Since it’s a small scale, I want to make it absolutely huge.