Lego City Center

[Klaus-Dieter]

Hello everybody!

The most of you surely will agree with me that with the awesome 10184 Town Plan, the brilliant 7641 City Corner and some other smaller great civilian City sets a new erea has begun regarding civilian City sets.

And surely a lot of you already included or planed to include these sets in your City layout. Perhaps you even own some older Town sets form the 80s and 90s which you include in your layout.

Since every Lego City has its own city center now the question arises what is placed in the center of your Lego Cities:

So what shall in your opinion the city center of your Lego City - or even of a Lego City in general - include? Or if you already built up a City layout what does your city center already include? Are there/Shall there be only official sets included or even some small MOCs? A signposted place with a statue on it or a green park with benchs? ...

Let us know - comments are welcome!

Klaus-Dieter

[lifeinplastic]

I posted this in the ideas for new city sets thread but feel it may have been overlooked. I really like your ideas Klaus Dieter about having more civilian aspects to the city theme. The thing that is really missing from Lego City are residential buildings (houses, apartments, offices, etc). However, these can be built quite easily from other sets so I am not that bothered that we don't have them (perhaps a brick bucket with useful parts to build them would be good,eg windows, doors and roof parts in better, less bright colours). I'd really just like more variety in the figures we are offered (the carousel and the city minifigs packs just churn out the same minifigs we already have). Such a shame, especially as licensed sets always get new moulds, etc.

anyway, I'd like a park in the city centre...

Take care

I wish there were more City sets with a rural aspect to them. The farm sets are great, even if they aren't strictly 'City'. Even so, I'd like there to be more green spaces like real cities, such as parks, etc. I was annoyed that from the three sets we voted on last year, the preliminary design of the set we all thought would be like a town 'park' looked exactly like the 50th anniversary town plan, which perhaps put people off voting for it. Anyway, I'd like to see...

- A playground with working swings, a slide, see saw and roundabout.

- An ice cream van, with ice creams and lollipop accessories, a driver wearing a shirt, 2 kids and a mother.

- A small park cafe selling hot dogs and coffee with lots of trees and added scenery, including fountain, grandparents and children with skateboards and new coloured bikes (I used to have a great Playmobil set like this!).

It's also a shame we don't have many sets just to bulk our cities up with more minifigures. The 8401 City Mini-figure collection was a start but I already had all the figures from other sets and there weren't many of them or much variety. http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=8401-1

It would be great to have a much larger version of this with a lot more figures, each one with new torsos and heads, which are not available in other sets. It should include about 25 figures, including children (with various new-coloured stubbies), old people, civilians in both casual and office attire and lots of trees, plants, flowers and accessories, such as new coloured bikes (1 lime green, 1 purple and 1 light blue please!). I'd also love a grey moulded manual wheelchair like the red cargo trolley.

In my opinion, everyone would want to get this set as they would include new, exclusive figures and would please people wanting civilian sets without having to build something specific to add playability (they could just be sold as City 'filler' packs). They could even make 2 versions - a summer one (more Paradisa style figs) and a winter one (minifigs with coloured hands for gloves, the trees with snow, etc). I understand it would cost more to produce exclusive minifigures but they do it for the licensed sets all the time. It's frustrating they don't treat Lego City with the same importance it quite rightly deserves.

Edited September 10, 2009 by lifeinplastic

[Klaus-Dieter]

Thanks, lifeinplastic!

Like you can see here my city center already includes the awesome 10184 Town Plan, a small park, a lot of trees, street lamps, cars and additional minifigs.

Which I'd like to add as official sets to my city center would be:

- bank and/or office building

- street cafe with a big terrace and many treees and flowers

- mall/shopping center

- big town hall/church/government/... with many trees and flowers and a black or white limousine included

- taxi station

- elevated train with two stations (which luckily imo will be very supposably released as the TRU Exclusive in next summer)

- hamburger stall

- some Impulse sets like an ice cream vendor, a hot dog vendor, a mother with buggy, an old man with stick and bench, a buisiness man on his black or blue bicycle, a child with a city scooter, ...

And I'd like a statue in my city center - but this statue doesn't necessarily have to be included in an official set since I could build it on my own, too.

Klaus-Dieter

Edited September 10, 2009 by Klaus-Dieter

[Section8]

I currently envision a "core" consisting of 4 32 x 32 baseplates with skyscrapers on them. They would all be custom built and have a few residental towers and a few commercial towers (likely a bank and an Octan office). Around them would be shorter structures, like the parking garage from 6394 (possibly detached from the gas station), 7892 Hospital (modified and off that goofy baseplate), and the Terminal from 10159, which I want to turn into a TV studio. Also would be custom 2-track monorail station. Around that will be most of the other system town buildings like Town Plan and others. My airport will be in it's own location with some other buildings (small gas station, hotel, maybe another parking garage), almost like it's own town. Between them will be residential buildings.

[marvinblue]

My City, Georgetown, currently has the Town Hall from Town Plan as the City Centre, with the fountain sitting close by.

pic. It still needs some fleshing out and I think a larger park, along the lines of Klaus-Dieter's park might do the trick. Eventually, Georgetown will have an "old" part, with the addition of Fire Brigade next to Green Grocer. A Hospital and some more trees and flowers would be nice as well. I just got City Corner the other day, so that has to be included, probably opposite the Town Hall.

[Vaders_son]

My City Center will be formed around the Eiffel Tower and will probably consist of the modular buildings to one side and the Town Plan buildings to the other.

Benny

[chriz]

mine has a gas station

[Zorbas]

Very nice topic K-D and good motive for thinking.

During past summer I was experimenting on how my layout would form. So, I started setting up small temporary layouts just for fun. I ended up thinking that a monument type of structure would take place in my layout. Something like this:

Don't ask me what that is. Even I don't have a clue.

Freestyle-buliding-not-knowing-the-result on!

[lightningtiger]

Mine won't be a city, but a country town. Much more realistic, containing a rural hardware store, remodelled 7993 service station and city corner style row of buildings for the town centre. Of which there is a bank, police station, sporting/outdoors store and hopefully if I get the design it right, a pub ! Hey, what's a town will out of pub, even a minifig needs a drink .....of water. Plus finally a large tractor/vehicle dealership with workshops and if squeeze it in a tyre dealership (both making use of 7642 components).

[Vestabuyer]

Greetings!

My city is currently all boxed up due to lack of space but at one time I included #10184 Town Plan as my "old town" or main street of my city and for my down town (across the tracks of set #4534 My Own Train) I had the following:

#6349 Holiday Villa

#4999 Vestas Turbine

#1854 Velux House

#6350 Pizzaria

#4532 Railroad Crossing Station

#6378 Shell Gas Station

#6377 Delivery Center

#6386 Police Station

#6389 Fire Station

#6380 Hospital

#6362 Post Office

#6376 Breezeway Cafe

MOC Drive In Theater

MOC Humble Abode

A little further out of town is the airport (#6392) with an airshow (#6345) and various other air vehicle sets:

#6342 Rescue Chopper

#6341 Gas N Go Flyer

#6375 Trans-Air Carrier

#1974 Flyer Cracker

#7732 Air Mail

And of course, what would a town be without the hustle and bustle of cars and accessories:

#6628 Shell Tow Truck

#6354 Pusuit Squad

#1896 Trauma Team

#6351 Camper

#6601 Ice Cream Cart

#6624 Delivery Van

#6671 Utility Repair

#6590 Vacation Camper

#6606 Road Repair

#6693 Garbage Truck

#7742 Street Sweeper

#7731 Mail Van

#8398 BBQ Stand

#8401 Mini Fig Collection

#6655 Auto and Tire Repair

#6627 Convertable

#6632 Tactical Patrol

#5611 Public Works

#5613 Fire Fighter

#6309 Town Mini Figs

#6314 City People

#6650 Fire and Rescue Van

This is all that I have aquired to make my city and hopfully I will have room again to build it up and take pictures

[Rapseflaps]

My next layout will have something of a divide between old and new. The "center" will have my old fire station, jetport and metro parking thingy. Around that I will lay some train track to run my two RC trains that I recently acquired. On the other side of the tracks we'll find New Lego Town, featuring all the stuff that came after my Dark Ages: new road plates, City Corner a Police Station, the Octan gas station, Town Plan and the Modular buildings. I have a rough draft of it in BlueBrick already.

[Marko]

I started my town with Church on set 302 plates roads going around it, next was Hotel opposite the Church on 300 set plates. On the other side of the church on the beach it got Soldiers Fort from set 6242 to operate as police station. Then center got a bit further gas station modeled according to the 377 next to Ferrari 248 F1 team 8144. To the other direction from the Church there is a small hill with pine trees that occasionally get cut down by drunk Fire Fighters who live on other side of the hill in residential area with block of sets 1484 and 6372 copies Town Houses.

My center is still missing Town Hall with shops next to the Hotel and there was planned as well Pink Department Store but this plan will probably be discarded until world stock markets gain 2007 level.

What I did for starting the whole project was to buy all the road baseplates that I would need for my total project to visualize the area.

Marko

Edited October 31, 2009 by Marko

[Piranha]

Cool Topic

Yes I will take more civilian sets LEGO

I think these should be included:

Bank

Post Office

Ice Cream Shop

Train Station

Level Crossing

Zoo